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diff --git a/40375-0.txt b/40375-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0930ba9 --- /dev/null +++ b/40375-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3018 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40375 *** + + _The London Venture_ + MICHAEL ARLEN + + + + + _By_ MICHAEL ARLEN + + _These Charming People_ + + _The Green Hat_ + + _"Piracy"_ + + _The London Venture_ + + _The Romantic Lady_ + + + + + _The_ + _London Venture_ + + _by_ + _Michael Arlen_ + + _With Drawings by_ + _MICHEL SEVIER_ + + [Illustration] + + _NEW YORK_ + GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + + + + + _Copyright, 1920,_ + _By George H. Doran Company_ + + [Illustration] + + THE LONDON VENTURE + -- B -- + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + + _To_ + THE SISTER + of + SHELMERDENE + + + + + APOLOGIA PRO NOMINE MEO + + +Out of consideration (in part) to such readers as may read this book I +have assumed a name by which they may refer to me (if ever he or she may +wish to do so kindly) in the same manner at least twice running--a feat +of pronunciation which few of my English acquaintances have performed +with my natal name. But there is also another reason, considerate of the +author. I have been told that there are writers whose works would have +been famous if only their names could have been familiarly +pronounced--Polish and Russian writers for the most part, I gather. +Since I had already taken every other precaution but this to deserve +their more fortunate fate, in changing my name I have, I hope, robbed my +readers of their last excuse for my obscurity. + + _Dikran Kouyoumdjian._ + "MICHAEL ARLEN." + + + + + _The London Venture_: I + + + [Illustration] + + + + + THE + LONDON VENTURE + + + I + +My watch has needed winding only twice since I left London, and already, +as I sit here in the strange library of a strange house, whose only +purpose in having a library seems to be to keep visitors like myself +quiet and out of harm's way, I find myself looking back to those past +months in which I was for ever complaining of the necessity that kept me +in London. How I would deliver myself to a congenial friend about what +men are pleased to call "the artificial necessity of living"--a +cocktail, that courtesan of drinks, lent some artificiality! With what +sincerity I would agree with another's complaint of the "monotonous +routine of politeness," without indulging which men cannot live +decently; how I would mutter to myself of streets and theatres full of +men and women and ugliness! Even as a cab hurried me through the +Tottenham Court Road to Euston the smile which I turned to the +never-ending windows of furniture shops was at the thought that I should +not see them again for many days, and I could not imagine myself ever +being pleased to come back to this world of plain women and bowler hats +and bawdily coloured cinema posters, whose duty it is to attract and +insult with the crude portrayal of the indecent passions of tiresome +people. If there be a studio in purgatory for indiscreet æsthetics, +Rhadamanthus could do no better than paper its walls with illustrations +of "The Blindness of Love," or "Is Love Lust?" For it is now a London of +coloured drawings of men about to murder or be murdered, women about to +be seduced or divorced. One has to see a crowd of people surging into a +cinema, by whose doors is a poster showing a particularly vapid +servant-girl, a harlot of the "dark-eyed, sinister" type, and a drunken, +fair-haired young man who has not yet realised that discretion is the +better part of an indiscretion, before one can understand "the lure of +the screen." + +And even the entrance of Euston, rebuilt and newly painted, gave my eyes +only the pleasure of foreseeing that the new yellow paint would soon be +dingy, and that the eyes of porters would soon no longer be offended +with upstart colours which quarrelled with the greyness of their +experience. And in the carriage I leant back and closed my eyes, and was +glad that I was leaving London. + +But the train had scarce left the station, and was whirling through the +northern suburbs which should so fervently have confirmed my gladness, +when I felt suddenly as though some little thing was being born inside +me, as though some little speck of dust had come in through the open +window, and fixed itself upon my pleasure at leaving London; and very +soon I realised that this was the first grain of regret, and that I +should not spend so many months away from London as my late depression +had imagined. Then up will start the strong-minded man, and pish and +pshaw me for not knowing my own mind. And if he does, how right he will +be! For little do I care whether this mood be as the last, so they both +fill up the present moment with fitting thoughts, and pain, and +pleasure! + +Now, I was already thinking of how I would return to London next year in +the spring. What I would do then, the things I would write, the men I +would talk to, and the women I would lunch with, so filled my mind, and +pleasantly whirled my thoughts from this to that, that Rugby was long +passed before even I had come to think of the pleasures that London in +early summer has in store for all who care to take. When the days were +growing long, it would be pleasant to take a table by the windows of the +Savoy, and dine there with some woman with whom it would be no effort to +talk or be silent. + +Such a woman at once comes to my mind, with dark hair and grey-blue +eyes, the corners of whose mouth I am continually watching because it is +only there I find the meaning of her eyes, for she is a sphinx, and I do +not yet know if what she hides is a secret or a sense of humour. You +will say that that means nothing, and that she is quite invisible to +you; but you do not know her, and I do--at least, I know that much of +her. And with her it seems to me that I could dine only at that table by +the windows where I could turn from her eyes to the slow-moving English +river, and the specks of men and trams, which are all that the leaves of +trees will let me see of the Embankment. Perhaps I would tell her of +that novel which I once began to write, but could never finish nor have +any heart to try again; for it began just here at this table where we +are now sitting, but the man was alone, and if he ever lived outside my +halting pages and had the finishing of my novel, he would put himself +here again at the end, with you sitting in front of him. For that is the +whole purpose of the novel, which I never realised till this moment, +that once a young man was sitting here alone and wondering why that +should be and what he should do, and in the end he was sitting here +again with a woman for whom his passion had died, but whose eyes still +made him talk so that he could not see the slow darkening of the river, +or hear the emptying of the restaurant, until at last she laughed, and +he had to stop because of the waiters who hovered round the table to +relay it for the bored people who would come in from the theatres for +supper. But all this I had never realised till I told you of it, and +perhaps now I shall one day finish it, and call it "Nadine," for that is +your name in the novel. + +Thinking of the young man of my unfinished novel who had sat there so +alone sent my thoughts back to the day not many years past when I first +came to live in London. I am bitter about those first months, and will +not easily forgive London for them; and if any young person shall begin +to tell me how splendid were his first lonely days in the wilderness of +people, how much he enjoyed the aimless wandering about the streets, how +he liked to watch the faces of the people as they passed, laughing, or +talking, or hungry, while he could do or be none of these for lack of +company and convenience of means, then I will turn on him and curse him +for a fool or a knave, and rend the affected conceit of his +self-contained pleasure with my own experience and that of many others +whom I know of. But then for a young Englishman--how pleasant it is to +write of "young Englishmen," as though one were really a foreigner!--the +circumstances are a little different, and he need never taste that first +absolute loneliness, which, as the weeks go by and the words are not +spoken, seems to open out a vista of solitude for all the days of life; +nor need he be conscious that it is on himself--how, while it +exaggerates, loneliness stifles self!--he must rely for every +acquaintance, for every word spoken in his life. But for him there are +aunts who live in Chester Square, and cousins who come up to stay a +month or so at the Hyde Park Hotel, and uncles who live somewhere about +Bruton Street, and have such a fund of _risqué_ anecdotes that the +length of Bond Street and Piccadilly will not see the end of them; and, +perhaps, there are age-long friends of the family who have houses in +Kensington and Hampstead, and "nice" parquet floors on which you can +dance to a gramophone; while for an Armenian, who soon realises that his +nationality is considered as something of a _faux pas_, there are none +of these things, and he is entirely lost in the wilderness, for there is +no solid background to his existence in another's country; and, as the +days lengthen out and he grows tired of walking in the Green Park, he +comes to wonder why his fathers ever left Hayastan; for it seems to me +much better to be a murdered prince in Hayastan than a living vagabond +in London. So I wandered about, moved my chambers gradually from Earl's +Court to the heart of St. James's and read "Manon Lescaut," and sat in +front of Gainsborough's "Musidora" until I found that she had three +legs, and could never look at it again. + +Then, somehow, came acquaintance, first of the world, then of literature +and its parasites; came teas at Golder's Green and Hampstead, and +queerly serious discussions about sub-consciousness; "rags" at Chelsea, +and "dalliance with grubbiness," and women. Through this early maze of +ribaldry and discussion, the first of which bored me because of its +self-consciousness, and because I do not like lying on the dirty floors +of studios with candle grease dripping on me, and the latter which +affected my years miserably and almost entirely perverted my natural +amiability into a morbid distaste for living (which still breaks out at +odd moments, and has branded me among many people as a depressing and +damnably superior young person); through this maze of smoke and talk I +can only still see the occasional personality of Mr. D. H. Lawrence, as +his clear, grey eyes--there is no equivalent to _spirituel_ in +English--flashed from face to face, smiling sometimes, often but a +vehicle for those bitter thoughts (and thoughts are so often conclusions +with men of arrogant genius like Lawrence) which find such strange and +emphatic expression in his books. I would need the pen of a De Quincey +to describe my impression of that man, and I am candid enough to admit +that I lack the ability, rather than the malice, which caused the little +opium-eater to be so justly hated by such a man as Bob Southey. There is +a bitterness which can find no expression, is inarticulate, and from +that we turn away as from a very pitiful thing; and there is that +bitterness which is as clear-cut as a diamond, shining with definitions, +hardened with the use of a subtle reasoning which is impenetrable but +penetrating, "the outcome of a fecund imagination," as Lawrence himself +might describe it; a bitterness so concisely and philosophically +articulate, that, under the guise of "truth," it will penetrate into the +receptive mind, and leave there some indelible impressions of a strange +and dominating mind. I have found that in the books and person of Mr. D. +H. Lawrence. He seems to lack humility definitely, as a man would lack +bread to eat, and a note of arrogance, as splendid as it is shameless, +runs through his written words; and the very words seem conscious that +they are pearls flung before swine. He will pile them one on top of the +other, as though to impregnate each with his own egotism, to describe +the sexual passions of this man or that woman, words so full of _his_ +meaning, so pregnant with _his_ passions, that at the end of such a page +you feel that a much greater and more human Ruskin is hurling his dogmas +at your teeth, that there is nothing you can say or think outside that +pile of feeling which is massed before you, that you must accept and +swallow without cavil and without chewing. With what relief one turns +over a page and finds that here is no touch of the flesh, but that Mr. +Lawrence is writing of earth! Let him sink into earth as deep as he may, +he can find and show there more beauty and more truth than in all his +arrogant and passionate fumblings in the mire of sex, in all his bitter +striving after that, so to speak, sexual millennium, that ultimate +psychology of the body and mind, which seems so to obsess him that in +his writings he has buried his mind, as, in his own unpleasant phrase, a +lover buried his head, in the "terrible softness of a woman's belly." +Who has not read "Sons and Lovers," and laid it down as the work of a +strange and great man, of the company of Coleridge, Stendhal, and +Balzac? And who, as he read it, has not been shocked by a total lack of +that sweetness which must alloy all strength to make it acceptable? +"That strange interfusion of strength and sweetness," which Pater so +admiringly found in Blake and Hugo, cannot be found in Mr. D. H. +Lawrence; there is a mass of passionate strength, that of an angry man +straining with his nerves because he despises his hands; there is a +gentleness in his writing of children which could never be capable of +such melodrama as that in Mr. Hardy's "Jude the Obscure," but in his men +and women, in their day and night, there is no drop of sweetness. And I +do not think he wishes it otherwise. + +As the train flew through the Derbyshire countryside, whose hillsides +and vales, covered with the brilliant sheen of the autumn sun, met the +eye pleasantly with a rising and falling of pale yellowish green, with +here and there a dark green patch of woodland, and made me want to stop +the hurrying train and breathe the air of the place, my thoughts slipped +back to the spring and the summer just before the war; and, with my eyes +on the quickly passing sunshine on the low hills, I found that, after +all, those last few months of peace had passed, perhaps, too lightly, +too carelessly; but it was pleasant to think back to those days when +lunches and dinners and week-ends took up so much of one's time. I was +glad now that I had not spent the three summer months in Yorkshire on +the moors, where I should have been uncomfortable; and had to be for +ever sending postcards to Hatchard's to post me this or that book, which +would come when my mood for it had passed. + +And how dreadful it is to want to read suddenly "Love in the Valley," +and have to be content with Tennyson, to long for a chapter of +Dostoieffsky, and be met with complete editions of Trollope and Surtees! +So I see that my middle age will be crabbed and made solitary by my +books, and that I shall never have the heart to leave them and go to the +East to see the land of my father Haik, or to walk about the lake upon +which the great Queen Semiramis (who was the first in the world to +discover that men could be conveniently changed into eunuchs) built the +city Semiramakert, which is now called Van, and where later, when she +was pursued by the swordsmen of her son, she threw a magic bracelet into +the lake and turned herself into a rock, which still stands there +covered with the triumphant script of the Assyrians. + + + + + _The London Venture_: II + + [Illustration] + + + + + II + + +Once (in those far-off peaceful days when men still had enough +grammatical sense to know that the word "pacifist" does not exist, but +that the less convenient "pacificist" does) I had been very depressed +for a week, and had scarcely spoken to any one, but had just walked +about in my rooms and on the Embankment, for I suddenly found myself +without any money at all; and it is thus with me that when I am without +money I am also without ideas, but when I have the first I do not +necessarily have the last. I wondered if I had not done a very silly +thing in being independent, and in not doing as my brothers had done, +reading "The Times" in an office every morning from ten to twelve, and +playing dominoes in the afternoon, and auction bridge in the evening, +and having several thousands a year when I was forty, and a Wolseley car +to take my wife for a holiday to Windermere, because she looked pale, or +because we were bored with each other. I smiled to think of the look on +my brothers' faces if I suddenly appeared at their office one morning, +and said that it was no good, and that I couldn't write, and was very +hungry. I could not make up my mind whether they would laugh at me and +turn me out, or whether they would teach me how to play auction and set +me to answer letters about what had happened on such and such a day +inst., and why the firm of ---- thought it unnecessary that it should +happen again, while they would sit in the next room, marked "Private," +signing cheques and talking to visitors about the weather and the cotton +markets. Perhaps I will do that some day, for, from what I have heard, +it seems to me the easiest thing in the world to talk about rises and +falls and margins without knowing anything about them at all. + +The same thing happens with regard to books, for one often meets people +who seem to have read every modern novel, and can discuss quite prettily +whether Mr. Wells is a man or a machine, or whether Mr. Arnold Bennett, +ever since he wrote the last lines to "The Old Wives' Tales," has not +decided that it is better to be a merchant than a writer, or whether Mr. +E. V. Lucas thinks he is the second Charles Lamb, and what other grounds +than his splendid edition has he for thinking so, or whether Mr. George +Moore does or does not think that indiscretion is the better part of +literature, or whether Mr. Chesterton or vegetarianism has had the +greatest effect on Mr. Shaw's religion; but then, after all this talk, +it turns out that they read "The Times Literary Supplement" every week, +and think Epictetus nothing to Mr. Clutton-Brock, or they are steeped in +Mr. Clement Shorter's weekly criticism _en deshabille_ in the +"Illustrated London News." + +At last I could stand my depression no longer, and late one night, after +a day in which I had spoken to no one but a little old woman who said +that she wasn't a beggar but that God blessed the charitable, I sat down +and wrote a long, conceited letter to Shelmerdene; for to her I can +write whether I am gay or depressed, and be sure that she will not be +impatient with me. I told her how I had a great fund of ambition, but +had it not in me to satisfy a tenth part of it; for that is in the +character of all my people, they promise much greater things in their +youth than they can fulfil in their mature age. From twenty onwards they +are continually growing stale, and bitter with their staleness; the +little enthusiasm of their youth will not stretch through their whole +life, but will flicker out shamefully with the conceit of their own +precocity, and in trying to fly when other people are just learning to +walk; and as the years pass on and youth becomes regret, the son of +Haik, the faded offspring of a faded nation whose only call to exist is +because it has lived so long and has memories of the sacking of Nineveh +and Carchemish, is left without the impetus of development, with an +ambition which is articulate only in bitterness; while the hardy +Northerner, descendant of barbarian Druid worshippers whose nakedness +was rumoured with horror in the courts and pleasure gardens of Hayastan +and Persia, slowly grows in mind as in body, and soon outstrips the +petty outbursts of the other's stationary genius. I told Shelmerdene +that I, who had thought that England had given me at least some of her +continually growing enthusiasm, that _I_ who had thought I would not, +like so many of my countrymen, be too soon stranded on "the ultimate +islands" of Oriental decay, was even now in the stage between the dying +of enthusiasm and its realisation; for the first impetus of my youthful +conceits was vanishing, and there looked to be nothing left to them but +an "experience" and a "lesson of life" without which I would have been +much happier. In moods such as these one can hear in the far distance +the wailing of a dirge, a knell, indefinitely yet distinctly, and the +foreboding it brings is of an end to something which should have no end; +a falling away, a premature decay which is like a growing cloud soon to +cover the whole mind.... Shelmerdene, do you know the story of the +Dán-nan-Rón, which Fiona Macleod tells? How there lived three brothers +on the isle of Eilanmore: Marcus, who was "the Eilanmore," and Gloom, +whose voice "was low and clear, but cold as pale green water running +under ice," and Sheumais, on whose brow lay "the dusk of the shadow." +Gloom was the wisest of the brothers, and played upon an oaten flute, +which is called a _feadan_; and men were afraid of the cold, white notes +of his barbaric runes, as he played his _feadan_ from rock to rock and +on the seashore, but most of all they feared the playing of the +Dán-nan-Rón, which is the Song of the Seal and calls men to their death +in the sea. And when the eldest brother Marcus was killed with the +throwing of a knife, the murderer heard the woods of Gloom, which said +that he would hear the Dán-nan-Rón the night before he died, and lest he +should doubt those words, he would hear it again in the very hour of his +death. It happened as Gloom said: for one night the playing of the +_feadan_ drove the slayer, Manus MacCodrum, down into the sea, and as he +battled madly in the water, and the blood gushed out of his body as the +teeth of seals tore the life out of him, he heard from far away the +cold, white notes of the Dán-nan-Rón. + +This tale always brings to me that many men, in some sudden moment which +even M. Maeterlinck would hesitate to define as "a treasure of the +humble," hear the playing of a tune such as that, which tells them of +some ending, unknown and indefinite, just as, in the moments of greatest +love, a man will feel for a terrible second the shivering white ice of +sanity, which tells him a different tale to that which he is murmuring +to the woman in his arms. Men who have heard it must have become morose +with the fear this distant dirge brought upon them; but of that +foreboding nothing certain can be known, and it is only in such a mood +as this, and to a Shelmerdene of women, that a fool will loosen his +foolishness to inquire into such things. Clarence Mangan must have heard +the tune as he lay drunk and wretched in his Dublin garret, for there is +more than Celtic gloom in the dirge of his lines. John Davidson, whose +poetry you so love, and who wrote in a moment of madness "that Death has +loaded dice," must have heard it, perhaps when first he came to venture +his genius in London, a young man with a strange, bad-tempered look in +his eyes; and he must have heard the exulting notes, as clearly as did +Manus MacCodrum, when he walked into the sea from Cornwall. Charles +Meryon must have heard it as he walked hungrily about the streets of +Paris, and wondered why those gargoyles--strange things to beautify!--on +Notre Dame, into which he had put so much life, could not scream aloud +to the people of Paris that a genius was dying among them for lack of +food and praise. Do you remember, Shelmerdene, how you and I, when first +I began to know you, stood before a little imp of wonderfully carved +onyx stone which leered at us from the centre of your mantelpiece, and I +said that it was like one of those gargoyles of Meryon's; and that +afternoon I told you about his life and death, and when I had finished +you said that I told the tale as though I enjoyed it, instead of being +frightened by the tragedy of it. But I admired your imp of onyx stone +very much, telling you that I loved its ravenous mouth and reptile +claws, because they looked so helplessly lustful after something +unattainable; and that same night I found a little black-and-gold box +awaiting me in my rooms, in which was the imp of onyx stone, and a note +saying that I must put it on my table because it would bring me luck. +For a second I did not believe your words, but thought that you had +given it to me to be a symbol for my helplessness, for I had said that +it lusted after something utterly unattainable. But the second passed, +and I found later that you had forgotten those words, and had sent it to +me because I liked it.... I would like to spend these glorious spring +days away from London with you, in quietness, perhaps in Galway +somewhere; but if you cannot come away with me to-morrow, I will take +you out to dinner instead, and we will talk about yourself and the +_ci-devants_ who have loved you; and though I have no money at all now, +I am quite sure that to-morrow will bring some. + +Sure enough a few hours later I awoke to a bright spring morning, which +brought happiness in itself, even without the help of a cheque which a +recreant editor had at last thought fit to send me. As I walked out into +the blaze of sunshine on the King's Road, I felt that I must surely be a +miserable fellow to let my ill-nature so often oppress me that only very +seldom I was allowed to enjoy such mornings as this; mornings which seem +to spring suddenly out at you from a night of ordinary sleep, when, as +you walk through streets which perhaps only the day before you hated +bitterly, the spring sun wholly envelops your mind and comes between +yourself and your pretty dislikes, and the faces of men and women look +brown, and red, and happy as the light and shadow play on them; such a +day was this, a pearl dropped at my feet from the tiara of some Olympian +goddess. + +Later I telephoned to Shelmerdene to ask her to lunch with me instead of +dine, as the day was so beautiful; but she said that she had already +promised to lunch with some one, a man who had loved her faithfully for +more than ten years, and as all he wanted from her was her company over +lunch on this particular day of the week, she could not play him false, +even though the day was so beautiful. But I told her that I would not be +loving her faithfully for ten years, and that she must take the best of +me while she could, and that on such a day as this it would be a shame +to lunch with an inarticulate lover; for a man who had loved her +faithfully for more than ten years, and wanted only her company over +lunch once a week, must be inarticulate, or perhaps a knave whose subtle +cunning her innocence had failed to unveil. So in the end we lunched +together in Knightsbridge, and then walked slowly through the Park. + +The first covering of spring lay on every thing. The trees, so +ashamed--or was it coyness?--were they of their bareness in face of all +the greenness around them, were doing their best to hurry out that +clothing of leaves which, in a few weeks' time, would baffle the rays of +the sun which had helped their birth; and there was such a greenness and +clearness in the air and on the grass, and about the flowers which +seemed surprised at the new warmth of the world, hesitating as yet to +show their full beauty for they were afraid that the dark winter was +playing them a trick and would suddenly lurch clumsily upon them again, +that the Park has never seemed to me so beautiful as on that spring +afternoon when a careless happiness lay about everything. + +So far I have not said a word about Shelmerdene, except that she had +found a man--or, rather, he had tiresomely found her--to love her +faithfully for ten years, and she had so affected him that he thought a +weekly lunch or dinner was the limit of his destiny with her. And yet, +had he searched himself and raked out the least bit of gumption, he +would have found he was tremendously wrong about her--for there were +pinnacles to be reached with Shelmerdene unattainable within the +material limits of a mere lunch or dinner. She was just such a +delightful adventuress as only a well-bred mixture of American and +English can sometimes make; such a subtle negation of the morals of +Boston or Kensington that she would, in the searching light of the one +or the other, have been acclaimed the shining light of their William +Morris drawing-rooms. She drew men with a tentative, all-powerful little +finger, and mocked them a little, but never so cruelly that they +weren't, from the inarticulate beginning to the inevitable end, +deliriously happy to be miserable about her. She was a Princess +Casassimma without anarchical affectations; and like her she was almost +too good to be true. + +So much then, for Shelmerdene; for if to cap it all, I should go on to +say that she was beautiful I would be held to have been an infatuated +fool. Which, perhaps, I carelessly was, since I can't even now exactly +fix upon the colour of her hair, doubting now in memory as I must have +done actually in those past days with her, whether it was brown or black +or, as sometimes on a sofa under a Liberty-shaded lamp, a silver-tinted +blue, so wonderfully deep.... Perhaps destined, in that future when +Shelmerdene is at last tired of playing at life, to be the "blue silver" +of the besotted madman to whom she, at the weary end, with but a look +back at the long-passed procession of _ci-devants_, will thankfully give +herself. _Dies iræ, dies illa...._ + + + + + _The London Venture_: III + + + [Illustration] + + + + + III + + +We sat on chairs in the sun, and after we had been silent a long while, +she began to do what women will never cease doing, so wise men say, as +long as men say they love them, to define what the love of a man meant +to a woman, and to explain the love of a man. She said that that man was +wise who had said that love was like religion, and must be done well or +not at all, but that she had never yet found in any man sincere love and +delicacy, for there was always something coarse, some little note which +jarred, some movement of the mind and body maladroit, in a man who is +shown a woman's love. "When men love and are not loved," she said, +"often they kept their grace and pride, and women are proud to be loved +by such men--even faithfully for more than ten years; but when men are +loved and are confident, then they seem to lose delicacy, to think that +love breaks down all barriers between man and woman; that love is a vase +of iron, unbreakable, and not, as it is, a vase of the most delicate and +brittle pottery, to be broken to pieces by the least touch of a careless +hand. They seem to think that the state of love stands at the end of a +great striving; they do not realise that it is only the beginning, and +that the striving must never cease, for without striving there is no +love, but only content. But they do not see that; they insist on +spoiling love, breaking the vase with stupid, unconscious hands; and +when it breaks they are surprised, and they say that love is a fickle +thing and will stand no tests, and that women are the very devil. Always +they spoil love; it comes and finds them helpless, puzzling whether to +clothe themselves entirely in reserve or whether to be entirely naked in +brutality; and generally they compromise, and, physically and mentally, +walk about in their shirts." + +"As you say that," I said, "you remind me of that woman, Mrs. Millamant, +in Congreve's play, 'The Way of the World.' Do you remember that scene +between her and Mirabell, when she attaches 'provisos' to her consent to +marry him? She says, 'We must be as strange as though we had been +married a long time, and as well bred as though we had never been +married at all.' And it seems to me that she was right, and that you are +right, Shelmerdene. Nowadays there is a reaction against convention, and +such people make life unclean. They talk about being 'natural,' and +succeed only in being boorish; they think that the opposite of 'natural' +is 'artificial,' but that is absurd, for why was the title 'gentleman' +invented if not for the man who could put a presentable gloss on his +primitive, 'natural' instincts in polite company? There must always be +etiquette in life and in love, and there is no friendship or passion +which can justify familiarity trying to break down the barriers which +hide every man and every woman from the outside world. Men grow mentally +limp with their careless way of living; and life is like walking on the +Embankment at three o'clock in the morning, when London is very silent: +and if you lounge along as your feet take you, your hands deep in your +pockets, being 'natural,' you will see very little but the general +darkness of the night and the patch of pavement on which your eyes are +glued: but if you walk upright, your mind taut and rigid as it always +must be except when asleep, then you will see many things, how the river +looks strange beneath the stars, the mystery of Battersea Park which +might, in the darkness, be an endless forest of distantly murmuring +trees, the figure of a policeman by the bridge, a light here and there +in the windows of the houses in Cheyne Walk, which might mean birth or +death or nothing, but is food for your mind because you are living and +interested in all living things. It was probably some wise philosopher, +an Epicurean, and not a buffoon, as is supposed, who first uttered that +saying which is now become farcical, that 'distance lends enchantment.' +For he did not mean the material distance of yards and furlongs and +miles, but the distance of necessary strangeness, of inevitable mystery, +and of a rigid mental etiquette, the good manners of the mind. And that +is why Henry James was a great man, and with a great propaganda. He was +subtle with his propaganda--an ugly word which can be used for other +things than the bawling of tiresome men in this Park on Sunday +afternoons--for he could do nothing without an almost obvious subtlety; +but it is there in all his work, a teaching for all who care to be +taught. In the world of Henry James, for he was more fastidious than +Meredith or Mr. Hardy and would have nothing to do with this world as it +was, but made one of his own, in this world the men and women are not +just men and women, with thoughts and doings bluntly and coarsely +expressed as in real life; but he showed them to be subtle creatures, +something higher than clever animals, with different shades of meaning +in every word--what fool was it who said that a word spoken must be a +word meant!--with barriers of reserve and strangeness between each +person; and their conversation is not just a string of words, but a +thing of different values, in which the mind of the speaker and the +listener is alive and rigid to every current of refined thought which is +often unexpressed but understood. I think 'thin' is the right epithet +for the minds of James' characters; and the difference between them and +ordinary people is that within us there is a sort of sieve between the +mind and the mouth, or in whatever way we choose to be articulate, +which, unlike ordinary sieves, allows only the coarse grains to drop +through and be given out, but keeps the subtleties and the refinement to +itself; but between the minds and the articulation of James' people +there are no sieves, and the inner subtleties and shades are given +expression. There is a strangeness, a kind of mental tautness, a +never-ceasing etiquette, about them all." + +But then I laughed, and when she asked me why I did not go on, I said +that I had suddenly realised that I had strayed from the subject, and +that whereas she had begun to talk of love I had ended by talking of +Henry James. "It is all about the same thing," she said, "for we are +both grumbling at that mental limpness which makes people think that +they need make no effort, but that life will go on around them just the +same. And that is why I think one of the most dreadful sights is a man +asleep. No one should see another person asleep; it seems to me the most +private thing in the world, and if I were a man and a woman had watched +me as I lay asleep, I should want to kill her so that she should not go +about and tell people how I had looked as I lay stupidly unconscious of +everything around me. Only once I have seen a man asleep, and that was +the end of a perfect love affair. I had suddenly gone to see him in his +chambers, and when his man showed me into his room I found him lying +there on the sofa, with his head thrown back on a cushion, sleeping. His +man said that he must be very tired as he had been working all night, +and that it would be kind of me not to wake him. I waited in the room +for an hour, trying not to look at him but to read a book, but his +breathing filled the room and I could not take my eyes away from him; +and at the end of an hour I felt that my love had gone from me minute by +minute as I had looked at him, and that now I might just as well get up +and go away, for I did not care any longer if he was asleep or awake. So +I went away, but I do not know if he woke up as the door closed behind +me." + +"And did you ever tell him why you had ceased to love him?" I asked. + +"I couldn't do that," she said, "because if he had not understood me I +should have hated him, and I do not like hating people whom I have +loved. But now I dine with him from time to time, and I can see that he +is still wondering how it was that on Monday I loved him and on Tuesday +I didn't." + +As we walked through the Park towards the Park Lane gates, it seemed to +me wonderful that this day, one among many days, should already be +passing, irrevocably, and that what we had said and what we had felt as +we sat on chairs in the sun would never be repeated, would never come +again except perhaps in a different way and with different surprises. +And when I asked her if she felt the happiness of the afternoon, she +laughed slightly and said that she liked the Park this spring afternoon. +"It is perfect now," she said, "but when we come here in a month's or +two months' time it will be too warm to sit in the sun and talk about +love and Henry James, and in the autumn we will sit down for a moment +and shiver a little and pity the brown leaves falling, and in the winter +we will walk quickly through because it will be too cold; and then in +Park Lane you will put me into a taxi and stand by the door with your +hat in your hand, and say good-bye. For the seasons will have gone +round, and we shall each have given what the other will take, and when I +look at you you will be different, and when you look at me you will not +see, as you see now, my eyes looking far away over your shoulder, and +you will not wonder what it is that I am looking at. For then, as you +stand by the door of the taxi and smile your good-bye at me, the end +will have come, and there will be nothing to look at in the distance +over your shoulders. And next year you will be an 'old friend,' and I +shall ring you up and say that I am very sorry I can't lunch and walk in +the Park with you that day because an Oxfordish young man has fallen in +love with me, and it will be amusing to see what sort of lunch he will +order when he is in love. + +"But is a rose less beautiful because it is sure to die?" she said. + +But the winter she spoke of was not of the seasons, for it rushed +incontinently in upon us between the summer and the autumn, and I, too, +was delicately added to the sedate statuary of Shelmerdene's "old +friends...." + +And now I am in this strange library whose rows of books stare so +unfamiliarly at me. The table at which I write is by the big French +windows, and I must be careful to keep my elbows from sprawling as they +would, for everything is covered with dust, and if I were fussy and +wiped it away I should raise a great cloud of it around my head.... All +is quiet and leisurely this morning. Outside there is no sun or mildness +to make me restless and self-conscious about my laziness; it is one of +those days on which one need not think of doing anything which will be +"good for one," and until about tea-time the outside world will be +better to look at than to breathe. For the windows show me a very dark, +wet-laden garden, and the steady rain falling among the last leaves of +the trees and their myriad dead comrades on the grass and gravel makes +that "swish" which comes so coolly and pleasantly to ears which need not +be wet with it. But at about five o'clock, if the rain has stopped by +then, I shall go out and walk about the garden for an hour or so; I +shall walk to the top of the Divvil Mound, which lies above half the +county to the west and, on a fine day, gives your eyes a rugged length +of the distant Cheviots, and there I shall look up to the sky and draw +in long draughts of the fresh rain-scented air, and feel that I shall +never be ill again in all my life; and as I walk back under the trees +the wet will drip on to me and I shall splash myself here and there; but +I shall not swear, for my clothes are done for the day, and when I get +in I shall have a bath and change, and feel all new and clean for +whatever the evening may bring. + +Beside me now is an envelope with an American stamp, and the vaguely +woebegone look which readdressed envelopes have; for it followed me here +some ten days ago from London, reaching me the same morning that I sat +down to write this (for it has taken me more than a week of long +mornings to write these few thousand words) which was at first to have +been an essay on London, but seems now to have fallen into the state of +a personal confession. Many times I have taken out this letter and +re-read it, for it is a strange letter, such a one as a man may receive +only once in his life. This letter needs no answer, for it is dead like +the person who sent it; and that the sender should not now care if I +read it or not gives me a queer feeling of triviality; for in her letter +she asks me to write back, not knowing then that a letter from a dead +person is the only sort one need not answer without blame or reproach. + +The day has long passed when, if you felt inclined, you could moralise +on death and the frailty of human life to your heart's content and be +sure of a hearing. I am sorry that the commonplaces on death find now +only impatient readers, for they make pleasant reading in the pioneer +essayists from poor Overbury to Steele; for death, with all its +embroideries and trappings of destiny and Nemesis, is a pretty way of +exercising that philosophy which no one is without. I envy the courage +of the man who could now write an essay "On Death" as Bacon did once, +laying down the law of it with no hint of an apology for the monotony of +his subject; but there is now no essayist or philosopher with the calm +and aloof assurance and arrogance of a Bacon, that you might see, after +the last written words on the most trivial theme, this last seal, as +though he were God, "Thus thought Francis Bacon." But of death there is +nothing trivial and pleasant left to be said, and as a subject it has +grown monotonous, except for the inevitable slayer and the slain, and +that prevalent instinct for fair play ("the essential quality of the +looker-on") which interests itself in the manner of the slaying. + +But this letter has seemed strange to me because, perhaps, I shall never +again receive a letter whose writer is dead, and who, when writing it, +dreamt of all material things but death. Were I Oscar Wilde I might +wonder now if English-women who die in America come back to London; for +there is much of London in the letter: "I should like to be in London +to-day--Bloomsbury London, Mayfair London, Chelsea London, London of the +small restaurants and large draughts of wine, London of the intellectual +half-lights, drone of flippant phrases and racy epigrams, with a thin +fog outside; London of a resigned good humour, of modulated debauch +moving like her traffic, strips of colour through dusk, and drab, +optimistic, noisy solitude, tranquillity of incessant sound: autumn +lamplight, busy park, sheep, men, women, prostitutes: doors slamming, +people coming in and sitting by the fire, more cigarettes, cakes, shops, +myriads of people...." + +But I would not like to be in London this month of November. + + + + + _The London Venture_: IV + + + [Illustration] + + + + + IV + + +But there was once a month of November, about which I could not so +grandly say that I would not like to spend it in London; for something +happened which threw me in a great hurly-burly of change into an +uncomfortable little flat in Monday Road, which is in South Kensington, +but for all the life and gaiety there is in it might just as well be in +a scrubby corner of the Sahara on a dusty day. My father had died +suddenly, and what little question there was of my ever going into +business now dropped away, so I had to make at least a pretence of +earning my living, or, rather, of making a career for myself. I was very +definite about this, that I must _do something, be something_: for I had +learnt this much of the world, that there is no room in it for casual +comers, that a man must have a background (any background will do, but +the more individual the better); that there is no room in any part +soever of the social scale for a man who is just nothing at all; and as +I have never seriously contemplated living exclusively in the company of +landladies and their friends, I saw that I must put my back into it and +cease being a very insignificant _rentier_. I couldn't bear the idea of +going through life as just a complacent Armenian in a world where +millions and millions of others were trying honestly and otherwise to +climb up the greasy pole of respectable attainment. + +But I cannot resist saying what I think of Monday Road, though I am sure +I can do it no harm, because better men than I must have hated it, and +more virulently. Monday Road, like all the other roads which sink their +mutual differences into the so dreary Fulham Road, consists of large, +equal-faced houses stuck together in two opposite rows which are +separated by about fifteen yards or so of second-hand Tarmac; a road +like another, you will mildly say, but you cannot possibly realise its +dismal grimness if you have not lived there. The people who live in the +angular-faced houses are artists who believe in art for art's sake--else +they wouldn't be forced to live in the dismalest street in the +world--amateur intellectuals like myself, and various sorts of women. +The tribe of organ-grinders have a great weakness for Monday Road, +probably because some tactless ass has stuck up a notice there that +"Barrel-organs are prohibited," which is a silly thing to say if you +can't enforce it. Altogether it is the sort of road in which a "spinster +lady" might at any moment lock her door, close her windows, turn on the +gas, and read a novel to death. A woman in the flat next to mine did +that a week after I arrived, and I have never viewed death more +sympathetically. + +When men grow old they are apt to discover pleasant memories attached +even to the worst periods, as they thought them at the time, of their +lives. I am not very old as yet, but looking back calmly on the eighteen +months I spent in South Kensington, I can find here and there, through +an exaggerated cloud of depression and wretchedness, a pleasant memory +smiling reprovingly at me; as though, perhaps, I should not be +treacherous to the good hours God or my luck had given me.... And there +was one moment of them all, when, in the first darkness of an early +autumn night, a dim slight figure stood mysteriously on my doorstep, and +I blinked childishly at it because I did not know who the figure was nor +how it had come there--if indeed it had come at all, and I had not +dreamed the ring of the bell which had startled me out of my book. Or, +perhaps, she had made a mistake, hadn't come for me at all.... + +But when she spoke, asking for me, I began to remember her, but only her +voice, for I could not see her face which was hidden in the high fur +collar of an evening cloak. She looked so mysterious that I didn't want +to remember where I had seen her. + +"I simply can't bear it," she said nervously, "if you don't remember me. +I'll go away." And she turned her head quickly to the gates where there +stood the thick dark shape of a taxi which I had somehow not seen +before, else I would have known for certain that she was not a fairy, a +Lilith fairy, but just a woman; a nice woman who takes life at a +venture, I decided, and said abruptly: "Don't go." + +When we were upstairs in my sitting-room and I could see her by the +light of eight candles, I remembered her perfectly well, though I had +only seen her once before. We had met at some tiresome bridge party six +months before, but just incidentally, and without enough interest on +either side to carry the conversation beyond the tepid limits of our +surroundings. And as I had never once thought of her since I had shaken +myself free of them, I couldn't imagine how on earth she had known my +address or even remembered my name, which she didn't dare try to +pronounce, she had told me as we went up the stairs. + +She said that she, too, had never thought about me at all since then, +"until to-night when I was playing bridge in the same room with the same +people, except that you were not there--and I remembered you only +suddenly, as something missing from the room. I didn't remember you +because of anything you said, but because you had been the worst bridge +player in the room, and had the most unscrupulous brown eyes that ever +advised a flapper to inhale her cigarette smoke, as it was no use her +smoking if she didn't. And thinking about you among those people who +seemed more dreary than ever to-night, I had a silly homesick feeling +about you as though we were comrades in distress, whereas I didn't even +know your name properly and never shall if you don't somehow make it a +presentable one. + +"So I turned the conversation to Armenians in general, which is an easy +thing to do, because you have only to murmur the word 'massacre' and the +connection is obvious, isn't it? Of course that sent that dear old snob, +Mrs. ----, off like mad, saying what bad luck it was for you being an +Armenian, because you could so nicely have been anything else, and even +a Montenegrin would have been a better thing to be; how surprised she +had been when she met you, she told us, for she had always had a vague +idea that Armenians were funny little old men with long hooked noses and +greasy black hair, who hawked carpets about on their backs, and +invariably cheated people, even Jews and Greeks.... + +"But you are quite English and civilised really, aren't you? I mean you +don't think that, just because I managed to wrangle out your address and +came here on impulse, I want to stay with you or anything like that, do +you?" + +As she said that, I suddenly thought of Lord Dusiote's gallant villainy +in Meredith's poem, and I told her quickly how a whole Court had been +lovesick for a young princess, but Lord Dusiote had laughed, heart-free, +and said: + + "I prize her no more than a fling of the dice, + But oh, shame to my manhood, a lady of ice, + We master her by craft!" + +"But I seem to remember that my Lord Dusiote came to a bad end," she +laughed at me. + +"Not so bad an end--it must have been worth it. And at least he died for +a mistake, which is better than living on one: + + "'All cloaked and masked, with naked blades, + That flashed of a judgment done, + The lords of the Court, from the palace-door, + Came issuing forth, bearers four, + And flat on their shoulders one.'" + +But Lord Dusiote's gallant death left her quite cold, for she was +suddenly by the bookcase, running caressing fingers over a binding here +and there. + +"What perfectly divine books you have! I shall read them all, and give +up Ethel M. Dell for good--but you are probably one of those stuffy +people who 'take care' of their books and never lend them to any one +because they are first editions or some such rubbish." + +"You can have them all," I said, "and you can turn up the corner of +every page if you like, and you can spill tea on every cover or you can +use them as table props, because all these books from Chaucer to Pater +are absolute nonsense at this moment, for in not one of them is there +anything about a dark-haired young woman with blue eyes and a tentative +mouth, and the indolent caress of a Latin ancestress somewhere in her +voice, standing on a doorstep in a dingy road, calling on a man who +might quite easily be a murderer, for all you know." + +But enough of that, for the situation of a young man and a young woman +in a third-floor flat miles away from anywhere that mattered, at eleven +o'clock on such a warm autumn night as makes all things seem unreal and +beautiful, is a situation with a beard on it, so to speak. + +When I first knew Phyllis, though always candid, she was inclined to be +rather "county," the sort of woman "whose people are all Service people, +you know"; she lived with her mother, near Chester Square, who at first +disliked me because I was not in the Brigade of Guards, but later grew +quite pleasantly used to me since I, unlike the Brigade of Guards, it +seems, did at least acknowledge my habitual presence in her house by +emptying Solomon's glory into her flower vases; and if there's a better +reason than gratitude for getting into debt, tell it to me, please. + +But Phyllis, like many another good woman of these Liberal times, turned +her bored back on "county," and only remembered what was "done" the +better not to do it; fought for, and won a latchkey; asserted her right +to come home at night as late as she pleased, and _how_ she pleased--for +she had come home from a dance one night on a benevolent motor lorry, +which she had begged to pick her up on Piccadilly in pity for her "tired +bones," and which, in cumbrously dropping her at mother's door, woke up +the whole street. And I can so well imagine Phyllis, as she fitted in +her latchkey, murmuring, languidly, but without much conviction, "What +fun women have...." + +But, in the reaction of her type against the preceding age of Victoria, +she went to the other extreme; saw life too much through the medium of a +couple of absinthe cocktails before each meal, and sex too much as +though it were entirely a joke, which it isn't ... quite. She cut her +hair short, and took to saying "damn" more often than was strictly +necessary. In fact, she would have been quite unbearable if she hadn't +been pretty, which she delightfully was. And, unlike her more careless +sisters of Chelsea, Hampstead, and Golders' Green, she did not make the +terrible mistake of dressing all anyhow, or make a point of being able +to "put up with anything"; such as, sleeping on studio floors after a +party, in such a way as to collect the maximum amount of candle grease +and spilled drink on her skirts, and wearing men's discarded felt hats, +cut as no decent man would be seen alive wearing one, and Roger Fry sort +of blouses which don't quite make two ends meet at the back, and +carrying queer handbags made, perhaps, out of the sole of a Red Indian's +threadbare moccasin.... Bohemians indeed, but without so much as a "Bo" +anywhere about them! + +They can "stand anything," as they have let it be generally known. But, +by dressing like freaks and by being able to stand anything, they have +detracted considerably from their attraction for men; for freaks are +well enough in freak-land but look rather silly in the world as it +is--which is the world that matters, after all; and what the devil is +the good of being polite and making a fuss of a woman if she tells you +repeatedly that she can "stand anything," and much prefers the feeling +of independence fostered by lighting cigarettes with her own matches, +and opening doors with her own so unmanicured fingers? + +I suddenly realise at this very moment of writing why those months in +South Kensington seemed so overpoweringly dismal, and that even now it +is only time which lends a real pleasure to the memory of the tall, dim +figure (Mr. Charles Garvice would have called her "sylph-like." I wish I +were Mr. Garvice) which stood on my doorstep on an autumn night, and so +mysteriously asked for me. For that beginning had a dreary end, as +indeed all endings are dreary if the silken cord is not swiftly and +sharply cut, thus leaving a neat and wonderful surprise, instead of the +long-drawn ending of frayed edges and worn-out emotions which drive +quite nice young men into a premature cynicism of dotage. + +For we very soon tired of each other, and began to slip away into our +different lives with a great deal of talk about our "wonderful +friendship"; though we both of us knew very well that there is nothing +left to eat in an empty oyster, and nothing to talk about on a desert +island except how deserted it is, and nothing to look forward to when +you have too quickly reached _Ultima Thule_ but to get as quickly back +again and examine your bruises--but he is a coward who hasn't enough +kick left in him to begin again and repeat his mistake, for though two +wrongs may not make a right, three or four mistakes of this sort do +certainly make a man.... So we both set out to get back again, but not +as quickly as possible, because Phyllis is a woman, and, perhaps, I am +by way of having a few manners left--and, therefore, we had to take the +longest way back; and were both very tired and bored with each other +when at last I suddenly left her one night after dinner at her house at +half-past nine, because I had a headache--"my dear, aspirin isn't any +good, really it isn't"--and was sure she had one, too.... + +Six months ago I had a letter from her, saying that she was going to +marry a nice fat baronet, a real, not a Brummagem one, and not so much +because of his money, but because of his nice, solid, middle-class +ideas, which would help to tone down hers. Phyllis was like that, and +I've often wondered very much about that wretched baronet, whether he +will tone her down, or whether she will persuade him to open a hat shop +off Bond Street in aid of a "bus conductors'" orphanage. + +Phyllis, Phyllis, you really can't go through life with half a cold +grouse in one hand and a pint of Cliquot '04 in the other. There are +other things ... so they say. + + [Illustration] + + + + + _The London Venture_: V + + + [Illustration] + + + + + V + + +It shames me a little to confess that I have always fitted in my friends +to suit my moods; for it may seem superior of me, as though I attached +as much importance to my moods as to my friends, and therefore too much +to the former; but it is really quite natural and human, for there is no +man, be he ever so strong, who does not somehow sway to his moment's +mood; as a great liner imperceptibly sways to the lulling roll of the +seas--as compared to myself, a rickety, rakish-looking little craft +which goes up to the skies and down into the trough to the great swing +of those mocking waves--moods! + +But I, as I say, unlike that strong man who will pretend to crush his +mood as some trifling temptation to relax his hold on life, I am so +sociable a person that I must give my friends every side of myself and +to each friend his particular side. And, though I do not wish to seem +superior I have so far mastered the art of friendship, of which Whistler +made such a grievous mess, that that side of me which such and such a +friend may like is the side which I happen to wish to show to him. I +keep it for him, labelling it his; when I see him in the distance I say, +"Dikran, up and away and be at him"; for I think it incumbent on people +who, like myself, are not really significant, to be at least significant +in their relations with others, to stand out as something, even as a +buffoon, among their acquaintances, and not be just part of the ruck. My +ideal is, of course, that splendid person of Henry James', in "The +Private Life," who faded away, did not exist, when he was alone, but was +wonderfully and variably present when even a chambermaid was watching +him. That subtle, ironic creation of Henry James' is the very +incarnation of a Divine Sociability, but in actual life there is no +artist perfect enough to give himself so wholly to others that he +literally does not exist to himself. + +I am not selfish, then, with my moods; with a little revision and +polishing I can make them presentable enough to give to my friends as, +to say vulgarly, the real article, the real me. And of them all there is +one special mood, a neutral-tinted, tired, sceptical thing, which I have +come to reserve exclusively for my friend Nikolay, who lives in a studio +in Fitzroy Street, and faintly despises people for living anywhere else. + +When I had pressed his bell I had to step back and watch for his face at +the third-floor window, which, having emerged and grunted at me below, +would dwindle into a hand from which would drop the latchkey into my +upturned hat. Then very wearily--I had to live up to my mood, you see, +else why visit Nikolay?--I would climb the stone steps to his studio. + +Once there, I resigned myself to a delicious and conscious indolence. My +thoughts drifted up with my cigarette smoke, and faded with it. My +special place was on the divan in the corner of the large room, under a +long shelf of neatly arranged first editions, from which I would now and +again pick one, finger it lazily, mutter just audibly that I had bought +that same book half-a-crown cheaper, and relapse into silence. If +uncongenial visitors dropped in, I would abuse Nikolay's hospitality by +at once turning over on my left side and going to sleep until they had +gone. But generally no one came, and we were alone and silent. + +From the divan I would watch Nikolay at work at his long table in front +of the window, through which could be seen all the chimneys in Fitzroy +Street, Charlotte Street, and Tottenham Court Road. How he could do any +work at all (and work of colour!) with the drab cosmopolitanism of this +view ever before his eyes, I do not know; myself would have to be very +drunk before I could ignore those uncongenial backs of houses and +chimneys, stuck up in the air like the grimy paws of a gutter-brat +humanity. For an hour on end, until he turned to me and said, "Tea, +Dikran?" I would watch him through my smoke, as though fascinated by the +bent, slight figure as it drew and painted, with so delicate a precision +of movement, those unreal and intangible illustrations, which tried at +first to impress one by their drawing or colouring, but seemed to me +mainly expressions of the artist's grim and ironic detachment from other +men; a _macabre_ observer, as it were, of their passions, himself +passionless, but widely, almost wickedly, tolerant. An erect satyr in +topsy-turvydom. + +If it were any other man than Nikolay, I would know him well, for I have +seen much of him, but one knows men by their "points of view," and I am +not sure that Nikolay ever had one. He was, or rather he seemed +definitely to be, curiously wise; one never put his wisdom to the test; +one never heard him say an overpoweringly wise thing, but there was no +doubt that he was wise. People said he was wise. Women said it. A +strange man, indeed; queer, and a little sinister. Perhaps six hundred +years ago he might have been an alchemist living in a three-storied +house in Prague, exiled from his native land of Russia for criticising +too openly the size of the Czarina's ears; for Nikolay knows no fear, he +can be ruder than any man I know. I have heard him answer a woman that +her new hat didn't suit her at all. "I think it is a rotten hat," he +said, and the vanity of an admitted thirty years faded from her, she was +as a dejected _houri_ before the repelling eyes of a Salhadine. + +He had not always been so detached and passionless. Steps of folly must +somehow have led up to that philosophic wisdom which so definitely +obtruded on the consciousness; so definitely, indeed, that I have +watched women, as we perhaps sat round the card-table in his studio, and +seen them in their manner defer to him, as though he were a great man in +the eyes of the world, which he isn't. But to be treated as a great man, +even by women, when you are not a great man, is indeed the essence of +greatness! Bravo, Nikolay! I see you, not as I have always seen you, but +in Paris, where rumour tells of you; in Paris, where your art was your +hobby and life your serious business, and a dress suit the essential of +your visibility of an evening. + +I feel riot and revelry somewhere in you, Nikolay; the dim green lights +of past experiences do very queerly mock the wisdom in your +contemplative eye. I am to suppose, then, that you have seen other +things than the rehearsals of a ballet, have marvelled at other things +than the architecture of Spanish-Gothic cathedrals? Ah, I have the +secret of you! You are a mediæval, a knight of old exotic times, a Sir +Lancelot without naïveté. Now, as the years take you, it is only in your +drawings that your mind runs cynically riot among the indiscretions of +literature--what a sinister inner gleam I espied in you when you told me +that you were going to illustrate the poems of François Villon! But in +Paris, long ago, I see you, Nikolay, standing in the curtained doorway +of a cushion-spread studio, where the lights shine faintly through the +red arabesques patterned on the black lamp shades. I see you standing +there with a half-empty glass of Courvoisier in your hand, sipping, and +watching, and smiling.... And women, perhaps--nay! a princess for very +certain, it is said--running wild over the immobility of your face, +immobile even through those first perfervid years. + +But it did not always happen that I found him working at his table by +the window. Sometimes he would be pacing restlessly up and down the +room, and round the cardtable in the centre (which was also a lunch, +tea, and dinner table). + +"I have never before been four years in one place," he said. "I have +never been six months in one place." He related it as a possibly +interesting fact, not as a cavil against circumstances. It shows what +little I knew of, or about, him, that I had never before heard of his +travels. + +"But how have you ever done any work if you never stayed in one place, +never settled down?" + +"Settled down!" He stopped in his walk and fixed on me with a +disapproving eye. "That's a nasty bad word, Dikran. The being-at-home +feeling is a sedative to all art and progress. In the end it kills +imagination. It is a soporific, a--what you call it?--a dope. There's a +feeling of contentment in being at home, and you can't squeeze any +creation out of contentment. + +"Permanent homes," he said, "were invented because men wanted safety. +The safety of expectation! Imagination is a curse to most men; they are +not comfortable with it; they think it is unsettling. Life is an +experiment until you have a home, and feel that it is a home. Men like +that. They like the idea of having a definite pillow on which to lay +their heads every night, of having a definite woman, called a wife, +beside them.... Bah! Charity begins at home, and inertia stays there. +Safety doesn't breed art or progress--and when it does, it +miscarries--the Royal Academy.... + +"Men want homes," he said, "because they want wives. And they generally +want wives because they don't want to be worried by the sex-feeling any +more. They don't want women left to their own imagination any more. They +want the thing over and done with for ever and ever. Safety! Men are not +adventurous...." + +He turned to me sharply. "Look at you!" he said. "Have you done +anything? Since I have known you, you have done nothing but write +self-conscious essays which "The New Age" tolerates; you have played +about with life as you have with literature, as though it were all a +question of commas and semi-colons.... You have tried to idealise +love-affairs into a pretty phrase, and in your spare time you lie on +that divan and look up at the ceiling and dream of the luxurious vices +of Heliogabalus.... You are horribly lazy, not adventurous at all. +What's it matter if your cuffs get dirty as long as your hands get hold +of something?" + +"One can always change one's shirt, if that is what you suggest, +Nikolay. But you are wrong about my not being adventurous--I shall +adventure many things. But not sensationally, you know. I mean, I can't +look at myself straight, I can only look at myself sideways; and that +perhaps is just as well for I overlook many things in myself which it is +good to overlook, and I can smile at things which James Joyce would +write a book about. And when I write a novel--for of course I will write +one, since England expects every young man to write a novel--the quality +I shall desire in it will be, well, fastidiousness.... I come from the +East; I shall go to the East; I shall try to strike the literary mean +between the East and the West in me--between my Eastern mind and Western +understanding. It will be a great adventure." + +"The East is a shambles," he said shortly. And in that sentence lay my +own condemnation of my real self; if any hope of fame ever lay in me, I +suddenly realised, it was in that acquired self which had been to a +public school and thought it not well bred to have too aggressive a +point of view. Oh, but what nonsense it all was! I lazily thought--this +striving after fame and notoriety in a despairing world. + +I looked at Nikolay, who had done all the talking he would do that day, +and was now sitting in an arm-chair and staring thoughtfully at the +floor; thoughtfully, I say, but perhaps it was vacantly, for his face +was a mask, as weird, in its way, as those fiendish masks which he +delighted in making. And, as I watched him like this, I would say to +myself that, if I watched long enough, I would be sure to surprise +something; but I never surprised anything at all, for he would surprise +me looking at him, and his sudden genial smile would bring him back into +the world of men, leaving me nothing but the skeleton of a guilty and +ludicrous fancy; and of my many ludicrous fancies about my friend this +was indeed the most ludicrous, for I had caught myself thinking that he +was not really a man at all, but just part of a drawing by Félicien +Rops.... + + + + + _The London Venture_: VI + + + [Illustration] + + + + + VI + + +From my flat in Monday Road to Piccadilly Circus was a long way, and the +first part of it wearisome enough through the Fulham Road, with its +cancer and consumption hospitals, its out-of-the-centre dinginess, its +thrifty, eager-looking, dowdy women, and its decrepit intellectuals +slouching along with their heads twisted over their shoulders looking +back for a bus, on the top of which they will sit with an air of grieved +and bitter dislike of the people near them. But at Hyde Park Corner I +would get off the bus, for I have a conventional fondness for +Piccadilly, and like to walk the length of it to the Circus. + +I like to walk on the Green Park side; in summer because of the fresh, +green, rustling trees, an unhurried pleasaunce in London's chaotic +noises, and in winter because I like nothing better than to look at +leaf-stripped trees standing nakedly against a grey sky, finger-posts of +Nature pointing to the real No-Man's Land, and illustrating the +miraculous wonder of being just beautiful, as no man-made thing can be; +for all things made by man, a picture, or, if you like, a woman's shoes +with heels of stained majolica, have an aim and a purpose. They lack the +futility, of which Nature alone has the secret, of being just carelessly +beautiful. When I say Nature, I do not see the Dame Nature of Oscar +Wilde's crooked vision, a crude, slatternly charwoman, but a spendthrift +prodigal, spending for the sheer love of spending; he takes every man by +the sleeve, and with delicious good manners he makes it seem that he +values your opinion above all others, that he has created the beauty of +the world to please in particular your eye, that you will sadly +disappoint him if you hint that you hadn't much liked the tinge of +vermilion in yestreen's sunset, for he had touched in that vermilion +just to give you a pleasant surprise. + +Thus it is with Nature and myself; I see him as an old beau, given to +leering in cities, but frank and natural in open places. And he knows me +well, too; knows I am no minor poet, no poet at all, in fact, and, +therefore, not to be gulled by insincere sunsets and valleys without +shade or colour; that the idea of a fawn skipping about where I don't +expect him, far from causing in me a metrical paroxysm after Mr. Robert +Nichols, frankly bores me; he has shown me an odd nymph here and there, +but I haven't encouraged him.... They are so intangible, I thought, and +they faded away. So at last, in desperation, he stuck up a naked tree +against a grey sky, and I thought it beautiful. It is a matter entirely +between the old beau and myself. For all I care, you may think my +stripped tree a stupid old tree, but to me it is beautiful. I see life +that way. + +But the day I am thinking of, when I got off the bus at Hyde Park +Corner, was towards the end of October, when oysters have already become +a commonplace; and as I walked up the Green Park side, the path around +me was strewn with brown and red and faded green leaves, the last +sacrifice of autumn to winter. I wondered why all things did not die as +beautifully and as naturally as autumn dies. If all things died like +that, there would be no fear in the world, and a world without fear +would be just a splendid adventure, and life would be like chasing a +sunset to the Antipodes--it would disappear only to appear again, more +wonderfully. + +But the fear of the shapeless bogey behind existence has been the +peculiar gift of God; for so long He has chosen to be secretive about +death, and the secret of it is in the eating of the last remaining apple +on the Tree of Knowledge. But, O God, it is all a vain secrecy, this +about death. Man was not made to be so easily satisfied. Education may +have made him ignorant, but he was born inquisitive. Some day, some day, +a more subtle and less solid Conan Doyle will arise, and valiantly catch +a too indiscreet ancestral ghost, and holloa to a professor to X-ray his +astral vitals, to find out by what means and processes came a living man +to be a dead man and then an ancestral ghost. Their discoveries will +then be written down in the form of a memoir and made into a fat book, +complete with a spiritual preface and an astral index, and will cause a +great stir in the world. But it will be a great shame on the Tree of +Knowledge to have its last apple knocked down from it by a paltry book. + +This last week or so of autumn is the time of all times when the fanatic +hermit, sitting alone in his desert place, should be tolerant of the +world's frailty. If such an one would let me, a worldly enough young +man, approach him, I would tell him of the great joys there is in +walking with a loved woman on crisp wind-blown leaves, under country +trees, with tea soon to be ready before a big fire in the house +half-a-mile away. At that my hermit would look at me angrily, for a +fleshly young man indeed, but I would go on to tell him of how there is +no splendour anywhere like to the splendour of a youth's dreams at that +quiet time; dreams that may be of a palace made of dead leaves, with +terraced pleasure gardens fashioned out of autumn air, in which he would +walk with his mistress, and be a king and she a queen of more than one +world.... + +As though for the first time, I noticed that afternoon a sheen of livid +copper over the scattered leaves, and I said to myself that it was an +undefinable addition to their beauty, like the sheen of blue in the dark +hair of Shelmerdene, as she sat in the corner of a sofa under a +Liberty-shaded lamp. + +The passing thought of Shelmerdene fixed my attention through the Park +railings on the prostrate figures here and there of men sleeping, for it +was a very mild afternoon for late October. Sleep was her foible, the +hobby-horse on which she would capriciously ride to heights of unreason +whither no man could follow her and remain sane. She admitted that she +herself had, occasionally, to sleep; but she apologised for it, resented +the necessity. And, as I walked, I saw a sleeping, dejected figure too +near the Park railings as though with her eyes, and was as disgusted. +But I smiled at the memory of her wild flights of mythical reasoning. + +"The mistake Jehovah made," I heard her saying, "was to teach Adam and +Eve that it was pleasanter and more comfortable to lie and sleep on the +same well-worn spot in Eden every night than to move about the Garden +and venture new resting-places. It was a great mistake, for it gave +sleep a definite and important value, it became something to be sought +for in a special and comfortable place. Sleep ceased to be a careless +lapse, as it had been at first when Adam madly chased the shadow of +Lilith through the twilight. In the company of Eve sleep was no more a +state for the tired body, and only for the body, but it became a thing +of the senses; so many hours definitely and defiantly flung as a sop to +Time. Sleep became part of the business of life, whereas, in those first +careless days of Adam's unending pursuit of Lilith, it had been only +part of the hazard of life. + +"If Lilith had been allowed to have the handling of Adam," she said, +"instead of Eve, who was the comfortable sort of woman 'born to be a +mother,' sleep, as we know it, would never have happened; unnecessary, +gluttonous sleep, the mind-sleep! + +"Lilith was a real woman, and very beautiful. She was the first and +greatest and most mysterious of all courtesans--as, indeed, the devil's +mistress would have to be, or lose her job. She must have had the eyes +of a Phoenix, veiled and secret, but their secret was only the secret of +love and danger--Danger! Jehovah never had a chance against Lucifer, who +was, after all, a man of the world, in his fight for the soul of Lilith. +She never had a soul, and it was of Lilith Swinburne must have been +thinking when he wrote 'Faustine,' which silly fools of men have +addressed to me.... Of course, she chose Lucifer. Who wouldn't choose a +dashing young rebel, a splendid failure if ever there was one, with a +name like Lucifer, as compared to a darling, respectable, anxious old +man called Jehovah? It's like asking a young woman to choose between +Byron and Tolstoi ..." + +But Shelmerdene had long since gone, to play at life and make fools of +men; to make men, to break men, they said of her, and leave them in the +dust, grovelling arabesques on the carpet of their humiliated love. "Let +them be, let them be in peace," I had said to her impatiently, but she +had turned large, inquiring, serious eyes on me, and answered, "I want +to find out." She had, indeed, gone "to find out"--to Persia, they said, +on a splendid, despairing chase. And I saw a vision of her there, but +not as the proud, beautiful creature who filled and emptied a man's life +as though for a caprice; I saw her on her knees in a ruined pagan temple +on a deserted river bank, purified, and satisfied, and tired, entreating +the spectre of the monstrous goddess, Ishtar, to let her cease from the +quest of love ... I am so tired, she is saying to the nebulous goddess +who has fashioned the years of her life into a love-tale. But who is +Shelmerdene to beg a favour from Ishtar, who, in the guise of Astarte in +Syria and Astaroth in Canaan, upset the gods and households of great +peoples and debauched their minds, so that in later ages they were fit +for nothing but to be conquered and to serve Rome and Byzantium as +concubines and eunuchs? + +Poor, weak Shelmerdene! Slave of Ishtar! Didn't you know, when, as a +young girl, you set yourself, mischievously but seriously, "to find out" +about men and life, that you would never be able to stop, that you would +go on and on, even from Mayfair to Chorasan? You should have known. You +have been so wantonly blind, Shelmerdene. You have idealised to-morrow +and forgotten to-day--and now, perhaps, you are on your knees in a +ruined temple in the East, begging favours of Ishtar. Not she to grant +you a favour! Trouble has always come to the world from such as she, a +malignant goddess. It has been said that Semiramis conquered the world, +and Ishtar set it on fire.... + + + + + _The London Venture_: VII + + + [Illustration] + + + + + VII + + +I asked her once, but long after I had realised that loving Shelmerdene +could not be my one business in life, if she did not feel that +perhaps--I was tentative--she would some day be punished. "But how young +you are!" she said. "You don't really think I am a sort of Zuleika +Dobson, do you?--just because one wretched man once thought it worth +while to shoot himself because of me, and just because men have that +peculiar form of Sadism which makes them torture themselves through +their love, when they have ceased to be loved.... It's a horrible sight, +my dear--men grovelling in their unreturned emotions so as to get the +last twinge of pain out of their humiliation. I've seen them grovelling, +and they knew all the time that it would do no good, merely put them +farther away from me--or from any woman, for the matter of that. But +they like grovelling, these six-foot, stolid men." + +"But haven't _you_ ever been on your knees, Shelmerdene?" + +"Of course I have. Lots of times. I always begin like that--in fact, +I've never had an affair which didn't begin with my being down and +under. I am so frightfully impressionable.... + +"You see," she touched my arm, "I am rather a quick person. I mean I +fall in love, or whatever you call my sort of emotion, quickly. While +the man is just beginning to think that I've got rather nice eyes, and +that I'm perhaps more amusing than the damfool women he's known so far, +I'm frantically in love. I do all my grovelling then. And, Dikran! if +you could only see me, if you could only be invisible and see me loving +a man more than he loves me--you simply wouldn't know me. And I make +love awfully well, in my quiet sort of way, much better than any +man--and different love-speeches to every different man, too! I say the +divinest things to them--and quite seriously, thank God! The day I can't +fall in love with a man seriously, and tell him he's the only man I've +ever _really_ loved, and _really_ believe it when I'm saying it--the day +I can't do that I shall know I'm an old, old woman, too old to live any +more." + +"Then, of course, you will die?" I suggested. + +"Of course I will die," she said. "But not vulgarly--I mean I won't make +a point of it, and feel a fat coroner's eyes on my body as my soul goes +up to Gabriel. I shall die in my bed, of a broken heart. My heart will +break when I begin to fade. I shall die before I have faded...." + +"No, you won't, Shelmerdene," I said. "Many women have sworn that, from +Theodosia to La Pompadour, but they have not died of broken hearts +because they never realised when they began to fade, and no man ever +dared tell them, not even a Roi Soleil." + +"Oh, don't be pedantic, Dikran, and don't worry me about what other +women will or won't do. You will be quoting the 'Dolly Dialogues' at me +next, and saying 'Women will be women all the world over.' + +"It is always like that about me and men," she said. "I burn and burn +and fizzle out. And all the time the man is wondering if I am playing +with him or not, if it is worth his while to fall in love with me or +not--poor pathos, as if he could help it in the end! And then, at last, +when he realises that he is in love, he begins to say the things I had +longed for him to say four weeks before; every Englishman in love is +simply bound to say, at one time or another, that he would adore to lie +with his beloved in a gondola in Venice, looking at the stars; any +Englishman who doesn't say that when he is in love is a suspicious +character, and it will probably turn out that he talks French perfectly. + +"And when at last he has fallen in love," she said dreamily, "he wants +me to run away with him, and he is very hurt and surprised when I +refuse, and pathetically says something 'about my having led him to +expect that I loved him to death, and would do anything for or with +him.' The poor little man doesn't know that he is behind the times, that +he could have done anything he liked with me the first week we met, when +I was madly in love with him, that when I was dying for him to ask me to +go away with him, and would gladly have made a mess of my life at one +word from him--but four weeks later I would rather have died than go +away with him. + +"Only once," she said, "I was almost beaten. I fell in love with a stone +figure. Women are like sea-gulls, they worship stone figures.... I went +very mad, Dikran. He told me that he didn't deserve being loved by +me--he admired me tremendously, you see--because he hadn't it in his +poor soul to love any one. He simply couldn't love, he said ... and he +felt such a brute. He said that often, poor boy--he felt such a brute! +He passed a hand over his forehead and, with a tragic little English +gesture, tried to be articulate, to tell me how intensely he felt that +he was missing the best things in life, and yet couldn't rectify it, +because .... 'Oh, my dear, I'm a hopeless person!' he said despairingly, +and I forgot to pity myself in pitying him. + +"But he got cold again. He weighed his words carefully: No, he liked me +as much as he could like any one, but he didn't _think_ he loved +me--mark that glorious, arrogant _think_, Dikran!... He was very +ambitious; with the sort of confident, yet intensive, nerve-racking +ambition which makes great men. Very young, very wonderful, brilliantly +successful in his career at an age when other men were only beginning +theirs--an iron man, with the self-destructive selfishness of ice, which +freezes the thing that touches it, but itself melts in the end.... He +froze _me_. Don't think I'm exaggerating, please, but, as he spoke--it +was at lunch, and a coon band was playing--I died away all to myself. I +just died, and then came to life again, coldly, and bitterly, and +despairingly, but still loving him.... I couldn't _not_ love him, you +see. His was the sort of beauty that was strong, and vital, and a little +contemptuous, and with an English cleanness about it that was +scented.... I am still loyal to my first despairing impression of him. +And I knew that I was really in love with him, because I couldn't bear +the idea of ever having loved any one else. I was sixteen again, and +worshipped a hero, a man who did things. + +"I was a fool, of course--to believe him, I mean. But when women lose +their heads they lose the self-confidence and pride of a lifetime, +too--and, anyway, it's all rubbish about pride; there isn't any pride in +absolute love. There's a name to be made out of a brilliant epigram on +love and pride--think it over, Dikran.... What an utter fool I was to +believe him! As he spoke, over that lunch-table, I watched his grey +English eyes, which tried to look straight into mine but couldn't, +because he was shy; he was trying to be frightfully honest with me, you +see, and being so honest makes decent men shy. He felt such a brute, but +he had to warn me that in any love affair with him, he ... yes, he did +love me, in his way, he suddenly admitted. But his way wasn't, couldn't +ever be, mine. He simply couldn't give himself wholly to any one, as I +was doing. And he so frightfully wanted to--to sink into my love for +him.... 'Shelmerdene, it's all so damnable,' he said pathetically, and +his sincerity bit into me. But I had made up my mind. I was going to do +the last foolish thing in a foolish life--I'm a sentimentalist, you +know. + +"I believed him. But I clung to my pathetic love affair with both hands, +so tight--so tight that my nails were white and blue with their pressure +against his immobility. I made up my mind not to let go of him, however +desperate, however hopeless ... it was an attempt at life. He was all I +wanted, I could face life beside him. Other men had been good enough to +play with, but my stone figure--why, I had been looking for him all my +life! But in my dreams the stone figure was to come wonderfully to life +when I began to worship it--in actual life my worshipping could make the +stone figure do nothing more vital than crumble up bits of bread in a +nervous effort to be honest with me! I took him at that--I told you I +was mad, didn't I?--I took him at his own value, for as much as I could +get out of him. + +"I set out to make myself essential to him, mentally, physically, every +way.... If he couldn't love me as man to woman, then he would have to +love me as a tree trunk loves the creepers round it; I was going to +cling all round him, but without his knowing. But I hadn't much +time--just a month or perhaps six weeks. He was under orders for Africa, +where he was going to take up a big administrative job, amazing work for +so young a man; but, then, he was amazing. Just a few weeks I had, then, +to make him feel that he couldn't bear life, in Africa or anywhere, +without me. And, my dear! life didn't hold a more exquisite dream than +that which brought a childish flush under my rouge, the very dream of +dreams, of how, a few days before he went, he would take me in his arms +and tell me that he couldn't bear to go alone, and that I must follow +him, and together we would face all the scandal that would come of +it.... I passionately wanted the moment to come when he would offer to +risk his career for me; I wanted him to offer me his ambition, and then +I would consider whether to give it back to him or not. But he didn't. I +lost. + +"And I had seemed so like winning during that six weeks between that +horrible lunch and his going away! London love affairs are always +scrappy, hole-in-the-corner things, but we managed to live together now +and again. And then, _mon Dieu_! he suddenly clung to me and said he +wasn't seeing enough of me, that London was getting between us, and that +we must go away somewhere into the country for at least a week before he +left, to breathe and to love.... Wouldn't you have thought I was +winning? I thought so, and my dreams were no more dreams, but actual, +glorious certainties; he would beg me on his knees to follow him to +Africa! + +"We went away ten days before he sailed, to a delightful little inn a +few miles from Llangollen. Seven days we spent there. Wonderful, +intimate days round about that little inn by the Welsh stream; we were +children playing under a wilderness of blue sky, more blue than Italy's +because of the white and grey puffs of clouds which make an English sky +more human than any other; and we played with those toy hills which are +called mountains in Wales, and we were often silent because there was +too much to talk about.... And as we sat silently facing each other in +the train back to London, I knew I had won. There were three days left. + +"In London, he dropped me here at my house, and went on to his flat; he +was to come in the evening to fetch me out to dinner. But he was back +within an hour. I had to receive him in a kimono. I found him pacing up +and down this room, at the far end there, by the windows. He came +quickly to me, and told me that his orders had been changed--he had to +go to Paris first, spend two days there, and then to Africa via +Marseilles. 'To Paris?' I said, not understanding. 'Yes, to-night--in +two hours,' he said, quickly, shyly. He was embarrassed at the idea of a +possible scene. But he was cold. He must go at once, he said. And he +looked eager to go, to go and be doing. He shook both my hands--I hadn't +a word--and almost forgot to kiss me. It was just as though nothing had +ever happened between us, as though we hadn't ever been to Wales, or +played, and laughed, and loved; as though he had never begged me to run +my fingers through his hair, because I had said his hair was a garden +where gold and green flowers grew. He was going away; and he was just as +when I had first met him, or at that lunch--I hadn't gained anything at +all, it was all just a funny, tragic, silly dream ... he had come and +now he was going away. He would write to me, he said, and he would be +back in sixteen months.... + +"I'm not a bad loser, you know; I can say such and such a thing isn't +for me, and then try and undermine my wretchedness with philosophy. But +I simply didn't exist for a few months; I just went into my little shell +and stayed there, and was miserable all to myself, and not bitter at +all, because I sort of understood him, and knew he had been true to +himself. It was I who had failed in trying to make him false to his own +nature.... But there's a limit to all things; there comes a time when +one can't bear any more gloom, and then there is a reaction. No one with +any courage can be wretched for ever--anyway, I can't. So, suddenly, +after a few months, I went out into the world again, and played and +jumped about, and made my body so tired that my mind hadn't a chance to +think. + +"His first few letters were cold, honest things, a little pompous in +their appreciations of me tacked on to literary descriptions of the +Nile, and the desert, and the natives. I wrote to him only once, a +wonderful letter, but I hadn't the energy to write again--what was the +good? + +"At the end of a year I was really in the whirl of the great world +again. There were a few kicks left in Shelmerdene yet, I told myself +hardly, and Maurice became just a tender memory. I never thought of how +he would come back to England soon, as he had said, and what we would do +then, for I had so dinned it into myself that he wasn't for me that I +had entirely given up the quest of the Blue Bird. He was just a tender +memory ... and impressionable me fell in love again. But not as with +Maurice--I was top-dog this time. He was the sort of man that didn't +count except in that I loved him. He was the servant of my reaction +against Maurice, and to serve me well he had to help me wipe out all the +castles of sentiment I had built around Maurice. And the most gorgeous +castle of all I had built round that little Welsh inn! Something must be +done about that, I told myself, but for a long time I was afraid of the +ghost of Maurice, which might still haunt the place, and bring him back +overpoweringly to me. It was a risk; by going there with some one else I +might either succeed in demolishing Maurice's last castle, or I might +tragically have to rebuild all the others, and worship him again. + +"He had continued to write to me, complaining of my silence. And he had +somehow become insistent--he missed me, it seemed. He didn't write that +he loved me, but he forgot to describe the Nile, and wrote about love as +though it were a real and beautiful thing and not a pastime to be wedged +in between fishing and hunting. I wrote to him once again, rather +lightly, saying that I had patched up my heart and might never give him +a chance to break it again. That was just before I went to demolish the +last castle of my love for him. For I did go; one day my young man +produced a high-powered car which could go fast enough to prevent one +sleeping from boredom, and I said 'Us for Llangollen,' and away we +went.... + +"The divinest thing about that little inn was its miniature dining-room, +composed almost entirely of a large bow-window and a long Queen Anne +refectory table. There were three tables, of which never more than one +was occupied. Maurice and I had sat at the table by the window, and now +my reaction and I sat there again; we looked out on to a toy garden +sloping down to a brown stream which made much more noise than you could +think possible for so narrow a thing. My back was to the door, and I sat +facing a large mirror, with the garden and the stream on my right; he +sat facing the window, adoring me, the adventure, the stream, and the +food. And I was happy too, for now I realised that I had fallen out of +love with Maurice, for his ghost didn't haunt the chair beside me, and I +could think of him tenderly, without regret. I was happy--until, in the +mirror in front of me, I saw the great figure of Maurice, and his face, +at the open door. Our eyes met in the mirror, the eyes of statues, +waiting.... I don't know what I felt--I wasn't afraid, I know. Perhaps I +wasn't even ashamed. I don't know how long he stood there, filling the +doorway. Not more than a few seconds, but all the intimacy of six weeks +met in our glance in that mirror. At last he took his eyes off mine and +looked at the man beside me, who hadn't seen him. I thought his lips +twitched, and his eyes became adorably stern, and then the mirror +clouded over.... When I could see again the door was closed, and Maurice +was gone. The magic mirror was empty of all but my unbelieving eyes, and +the profile of the man beside me, who hadn't seen him and never knew +that I had lived six weeks while he ate a potato.... + +"I stayed my week out in Wales, because I always try to do what is +expected of me. When I got home, right on the top of a pile of +letters--I had given orders for nothing, not even wires, to be sent on +to me--was a wire, which had arrived one hour after I had left for +Wales. It was from Southampton, and it said: 'Just arrived. Am going +straight up to the little palace in Wales because of memories. Will +arrive there dinner-time. Shall we dine together by the window?' + +"And so, you see, I had won and lost and won again, but how +pathetically.... Am I such a bad woman, d'you think?" + + + + + _The London Venture_: VIII + + + [Illustration] + + + + + VIII + + +As I look back now on the past years, I find that the thing that +penetrated most into my inner self, shocked me to the heart, and gave me +no room and left no desire for any pretence about the will of fate and +destiny, such as sometimes consoles grief, was the death of my friend +Louis. Unlike most great friendships, mine with Louis began at school; +and those, to whom circumstances have not allowed friendships at school, +cannot realise the intensity of certain few friendships which, beginning +on a basis of tomfoolery and ragging, as the general relations between +schoolboys begin, yet survive them all, and steadily ripen with the +years into a maturity of companionship, which has such a quality and +nobility of its own that no other relation, not even that of passionate +love, can ever take its place when it is gone. + +I have not happened to mention Louis before in these papers for the +reason that he had actually come very little into my life in London. In +fact, we retained our intimacy against the aggression of our different +lives, which was rather paradoxical for the casual people we believed +ourselves to be. (Without a sincere belief in his own casualness the +modern youth would be the most self-important ass of all generations.) +Our ways of life lead very contrarily; there was nowhere they could +rationally touch; he, a soldier; I, a doctor, lawyer, or pedlar, I did +not know which. But I had the grace, or if you like, the foolishness, to +envy him the definite markings of his career; I envied him his knowledge +of the road he wished to tread, and of the almost certainties which lay +inevitably along that road. + +Later, in those very best of days, I used to talk about him to +Shelmerdene. And as I described, she listened and wondered. For, she +said, such a man as I described Louis to be, and myself, could have +nothing in common. But I told her that it isn't necessary for two people +to have anything "in common" but friendship--and as I made that +meaningless remark I put on a superior air, and she did not laugh at me. +She continued to wonder during months, and at last she said, "Produce +this wretched youth." But I would not produce him, "because Louis has +never in his life met or dreamt of any one like you, and he will fall in +love with you straight away. And as he is more honest than I am, so he +will fall in love with you much more seriously, and that will be very +bad for him, because you are the sort of woman that you are. It isn't +fair to destroy the illusions of a helpless subaltern in the Rifle +Brigade.... No, I will not produce him, Shelmerdene." But of course I +did, and of course Louis saw, heard, and succumbed delightedly, and all +through that lunch and for the half-hour after I had to keep a very +stern eye on Shelmerdene and take great care not to let her get within a +yard of him, else she would have asked him to go and see her next time +he was in town, and then there would have been another wild-eyed ghost +wandering about the desert places of Mayfair. As for Louis, he beat even +his own record for dulness during that lunch. He admired her +tremendously and obviously, and too obviously he couldn't understand a +beautiful woman with beauty enough to be as dull as she liked, saying +witty and amusing things every few seconds, always giving the most +trivial remark, the most stereotyped phrase, such a queer twist as would +make it seem delightfully new. For ever after he pestered me to +"produce" him again, and I made myself rather unpopular by putting him +off; and I never did let him see her again. On Shelmerdene's part it was +just cussedness to worry me to see him again, for with a disgusted laugh +at my "heavy father stunt," she forgot all about him; after that lunch +she had found him "rather dull and a dear, and much to be loved by all +women over thirty-five. I am not yet old enough to love your Louis," she +said. And she retained her surprise at our friendship. + +It was, perhaps, rather surprising; surprising not so much that we were +friends, but how we ever became friends; for there are many people in +this world, who could be great friends with each other if they could but +once surmount the first barrier, if they could but _wish_ to surmount +that barrier--and between Louis and me there was much more than a simple +barrier to surmount. We became friends in spite of ourselves, then; +though Louis, as you may believe, had nothing at all to do with the +affair; he just sat tight and let things happen, to him, for his was not +the nature consciously to defeat an invisible aim, a tyrannical decree. +As one of England's governing classes, even at the age of fourteen when +I first met him, such a rebellion as that of forcing God's hand about +the smallest trifle would somehow have savoured to him of disloyalty to +the "Morning Post" which, together with the Navy, Louis took as +representing the British Empire. + +I had been at school already one term when Louis came; and so it was at +breakfast on the opening day of the winter term that I first noticed his +bewildered face, though as we grew to prefects that same face aired so +absolute a nonchalance that, together with my rather sophisticated +features, we thoroughly deserved the title of the _blasted roués_. +However, at that time, we were not prefects, but "new bugs," though +Louis was by one term a newer "bug" than myself and my friends, and +therefore had to sit at the bottom of the "bug" table and take his food +as he found it. I, of course, took no notice of him at all; I maintained +a, so to speak, official _hauteur_ about our meal-time relations--one +couldn't do anything else, you know, if one wished to keep unimpaired +the dignity of one's seniority. I had, in fact, no use for newer "bugs" +than myself; I was quite happy at my own end of the table with the three +men (ages fourteen to fourteen-and-a-half) with whom I shared a study. +We made a good and gay study, I remember, for they were three stalwart +fellows and I, even at that age not taking my Armenianism very +seriously, gave a quite passable imitation of an English public-school +man. + +How, as I looked round at my three friends and said to myself "here are +companions for life," how was I to know of the irruption into my life of +a bewildered face! I despised that face. It was the face of a newer +"bug" than myself. But the wretched man could play soccer, I noticed; +his deft work at "inside right" to my "center forward" warmed my heart; +and, by the time the term was half over, he had gained a certain +distinction for being consistently at the bottom of the lowest form in +the school; one rather liked a man for sticking to his convictions like +that. + +Nevertheless we became silently inimical. He ceased to look bewildered; +with an English cunning he had already found that an air of nonchalance +pays best. And his sort of "Oh, d'you think so?" air began to irritate +me; it was no good doing my man of the world on a man who obviously made +a point of not believing what I said. I rather felt in speaking to him +as an irritated and fussy foreign ambassador must feel before the +well-bred imperturbability of Mr. Balfour; I wasn't then old enough to +know I felt like that, but myself and study had reasonable grounds for +deciding that "that sloppy-haired new long bug was a conceited young +swine," and that he was trading rather too much on being at the bottom +of the school. + +There was a dark-haired, sallow-faced youth, one Marsden, who had come +the same term as we three; he had at first shared our study, but had +been fired out for being a cub. And, by intimating to the House-Master +that if he was put back in our study, new bugs or no, we wouldn't answer +for his mother's knowing him, we had fired him out in such a way that he +couldn't ever get back. But he didn't try to get back. He just went into +the newest bug's study, and there, when Louis came the next term, made +firm and fast friends with him. Marsden disliked me much more than he +disliked any one else, as I had been the instigator of his ejection from +our study, and so the silent and contemptuous enmity with which Louis +eyed me wasn't very strange. Those two made common cause in their +indifference to anything we three at the head of the table might say; +and soon, things came to such a pass that we had to put lumps of salt +into the potato dish before handing it down to them. And even that +didn't seem to have much effect, for one tea-time I distinctly heard a +murmur resembling "Armenian Jew" escape from Marsden's lips; that, of +course, couldn't be borne, and I couldn't then explain to him that there +was no such person as an Armenian Jew for I wasn't myself quite certain +about it--all I knew was that I wasn't a Jew, and it wasn't Marsden who +was going to call me one in vain. So there and then I upped and threw my +pot of jam at his head, striking him neatly just above the right eye; I +didn't do it in anger, I didn't know why I did it, though now I know it +was done through a base passion for notoriety, which I still have, +though in a less primitive manner. I certainly got notoriety then, and +also six cuts from a very supple cane and a Georgic on which to work off +my ardour. + +But I gained Louis for a friend. He had, it seemed, admired the deft and +unassuming way in which I had thrown that pot of jam--he knew even less +than I did about that passion for notoriety--and when he met me in the +passage as I came back from my six cuts in the prefects' room, he said, +"I say, bad luck," and I suggested that if his friend Marsden's ugly +face hadn't got in the way of a perfectly harmless pot of jam I wouldn't +have got a licking. Thus, in a three-minute talk, we became friends; but +when we each went to our own studies we didn't know we were friends--in +fact, I was quite prepared to go on treating him as an enemy until, when +we met again, we both seemed to find that we had something to say to +each other. And throughout those years of school we had always something +to say to each other which we couldn't say quite in the same way to any +one else, and that seems to me to be the basis of all friendship.... I +don't quite know what happened to Marsden, or how Louis told him that he +had decided to discontinue his friendship. I have an idea that Marsden +went on disliking me through four years of school, and that if I met him +on Piccadilly to-morrow would recognise me only to scowl at me, the man +who not only hit him over the eye with a pot of jam, but also deprived +him of his best friend. + +Louis and I left school together; he on his inevitable road to +Sandhurst, and I, with a puckered side glance at Oxford, to Edinburgh +University. Even now I don't know why I went to Edinburgh and not to +Oxford; I had always intended going to Oxford, my family had always +intended that I should go to Oxford, up to the last moment I was +actually going to Oxford--when, suddenly, with a bowler hat crammed over +my left ear and a look of vicious obstinacy, I decided that I would go +to Edinburgh instead. + +Of course it was a silly mistake. The only thing I have gained by not +going to Oxford is an utter inability to write poetry and a sort of +superior contempt for all pale, interesting-looking young men with dark +eyes and spiritual hair who are tremendously concerned about the utter +worthlessness of Mr. William Watson's poetry. Of course my own superior +attitude may be just as unbearable as their anaemic enthusiasm over, +say, a newly discovered _rondel_ by the youngest son of the local +fishmonger; but I at least do sincerely try to face and appreciate +literature boldly, and frankly, and normally, and not self-consciously +as they do, attacking literature from anywhere but a sane standpoint, +trying to force a breach in any queer spot so that it is unusual and has +not been thought of before; and through this original breach will +suddenly appear an Oxford face with a queer unhallowed grin of +self-conscious cleverness; and all this for a thin book of poems in a +yellow cover, called, as like as not, "Golden Oxygen"! + +Louis, down at Sandhurst, was being made into a soldier, and I, up at +Edinburgh, was on the high road to general fecklessness. I only stayed +there a few months; jumbled months of elementary medicine, political +economy, metaphysics, theosophy--I once handed round programs at an +Annie Besant lecture at the Usher Hall--and beer, lots of beer. And +then, one night, I emptied my last mug, and with another side-glance at +Oxford, came down to London; "to take up a literary career" my +biographer will no doubt write of me. I may of course have had a +"literary career" at the back of my mind, but as it was I slacked +outrageously, much to Louis' disgust and envy. I have already written of +those months, how I walked in the Green Park, and sat in picture +galleries, and was lonely. + +That first loneliness was lightened only by the occasional visits to +London of Louis. He was by now a subaltern in the Rifle Brigade, with an +indefinite but cultured growth somewhere between his nose and upper lip, +and a negligent way of wearing mufti, as though to say, "God, it's good +to be back in civilised things again!" They were jolly, sudden evenings, +those! London was still careless then. Of an evening, a couple of young +men in dress suits with top hats balanced over their eyebrows and eyes +full of a _blasé_ vacancy, were not as remarkable as they now are. Life +has lost its whilom courtesy to a top hat. Red flags and top hats cannot +exist side by side; the world is not big enough for both. Ah, thou +Bolshevik, thou class-beridden shop-steward! When ye die, how can ye say +that ye have ever lived if, in your aggressive experiences, you have not +known upon your foreheads the elegant weight of a top hat, made +especially to suit your Marxian craniums by one Locke, who has an +ancient shop at the lower end of St. James's Street and did at one time +dictate the headwear of the beaux of White's and Crockford's. I warrant +the life of my top hat, made by that same artist to withstand the impact +of the fattest woman on earth, against all the battering eloquence of +all the orators in all the Albert Halls of all the Red Flag countries. +With it on my head I will finesse any argument whatsoever with you any +night of the week. And at the end of the argument, if you are still +obstinate, I will cram my blessed top hat on your head and, lo and +behold! you are at once a Labour Minister in the Cabinet, and a most +respectable man with a most rectangular house in Portman Square!... But +I must go back to Louis, who never got further in his study of Labour +than an idea that all station-masters were labour leaders because they +took tips so impressively. + +Those occasional evenings were very good. I put away from myself writing +and books--Louis hadn't really ever read anything but Kipling, +"Ole-Luk-Oie" and "The Riddle of the Sands"-and I temporarily forgot +Shelmerdene, and we dined right royally. I don't know what we talked +about, perhaps we talked of nothing at all; but we talked all the time, +and we laughed a great deal, and we still had the good old "_blasted +roué_" touch about us. We were very, very old indeed, so old that we +decided that the first act of no play or revue in the world could +compensate one for a hurried dinner; and we were old enough to know that +a confidential manner to _maitres d'hôtels_ is a thing to be cultivated, +else a chicken is apt to be wizened and the sweet an unconscionable long +time in coming. After dinner, a show, and then perhaps a night club, "to +teach those gals how to dance." + +We founded a Club for Good Mannered People. I, as the founder, was the +president of the club, and Louis the vice-president; there were no +members because we unanimously black-balled every one whom, in a moment +of weakness, one or other of us might propose. We decided, in the end, +that the Club could never have any members except the president and +vice-president, simply because the men of our own generation were the +worst mannered crew God ever put within lounging distance of a +drawing-room.... There must be something wrong, we said, in a world +where public-school men could be recognised by the muddy footprints they +left on other people's carpets. So it was obviously left to us to supply +the deficiency of our generation, both as regards manners and everything +else. We made a cult of good manners; Louis took to them as a cult where +he had never taken to them as a necessity, and the happiest moments of +his life were when he could work it off on to some helpless woman who +had dropped an umbrella or a handkerchief. The Club, we decided, must +never come to an end, it must go on being a Club until one or other of +us should die ... and now the Club is no more, for suddenly a spring +gave way, the world gave a lurch towards hell, and Louis stopped playing +at soldiers to go away and be a real soldier, to die in his first attack +with a bullet in his chest.... + + + + + _The London Venture_: IX + + + [Illustration] + + + + + IX + + +Somewhere in these papers I have said that Shelmerdene left England, but +I touched on it very lightly, for I am only half-heartedly a realist, +and may yet live to be accused of shuffling humanity behind a phrase.... +Youth must endure its periods of loneliness with what grace it can; and +youth could endure them as resignedly as its preceptors, if it were not +for its grotesque self-importance, which inflates loneliness to such a +size that it envelopes a young man's whole being, leaving him at the end +a sorry wreck of what was once a happy mortal. Anyway, that is what +happened to me; I took the whole affair in the worst possible spirit, +and, during that probation time to wisdom, thought and wrote and did so +many silly things, smashed ideals and cursed idols with such morbid +thoroughness and conviction (after the fashion of all the bitterest +young men), that I must have been as detestable a person as ever +trickled wheezily from the, well, pessimistic pen of a Mr. Wyndham +Lewis.... But it takes very little effort to forget that time entirely, +to let it bury itself with what mourning it can muster from the Shades +which sent it to plague me. Enough that it passed, but not before it +had, as they say, "put me wise" about the world and its ways. + +For Shelmerdene had left behind her much more than just loneliness; much +that was more precious and, thankfully, more lasting; for she had found +a young man shaped entirely of acute angles and sharp corners, and had +rubbed and polished them over with such delicate tact that it was only +months, after she had gone that I suddenly realised how much more fit I +was to cope with a complicated world since I had known her. But, more +importantly, Shelmerdene to me was England. Before I met her I did not +know England; I knew English, but England only as a man knows the +landmarks about him in a strange country. But when she had come and gone +England was a discovered country, a vast and ever-increasing panorama in +which discoveries were continually made, leaving yet more hidden valleys +of discoveries still to be made--and to be enjoyed! So much and much +more, O unbeliever, I learnt from Shelmerdene, and in the learning of it +lay the best and gladdest lesson of all. + +Time, they say, can efface all things, but in truth it can efface +nothing but its own inability to smooth out the real problems of life; +so at least I have found in the one instance in which I have challenged +time to do its best for me, a slave bound down by an unholy wizardry; or +else, perhaps, it was that Shelmerdene was not made of the stuff which +fades into the years and becomes musty and haggard in their increasing +company. I do not know. But, take it as I will, all the service time has +been able to do for me has been negative, for without disarranging one +hair of her head it has only emphasised in me the profound and subtle +influence of that gracefully licentious woman whom I once called +Shelmerdene, because, I told her, "it is the name of an American girl +which I found in a very bad American novel about the fanatical Puritans +of New England, and the name seems to suit you because in New England +they would have treated you exactly as they treated Shelmerdene Gray, +the heroine of this book, whom they branded and burnt as a shameless +woman, but loved in their withered hearts for her gaiety, and elegance, +and wit, which they couldn't understand, but vaguely felt was as much an +expression of Christ as their own wizened virtue." + +Out of the silence of two years at last came a letter from her. I found +it when I came in very late one night, and for a long time I stood in my +little hall and examined the Eastern stamp and postmark; and the writing +on the envelope was so exactly the same as on the last note she had sent +me before leaving England that I had to smile at the idea of +Shelmerdene, in the rush of her last pursuit of her perfect fate, laying +in a sufficient store of her own special nibs to last her for the +lifetime she intended to spend abroad; for when I opened the letter I +found that, as I had guessed, she would never come back to England, +saying, "I am a fugitive branch which has at last found its parent +tree.... I have run my perfect fate to earth, Dikran! more perfect than +any dream, more lasting than the most perfect dream. And life is so +beautiful that I can scarcely bear your not being here to share it, for, +you see, I am quite sure that you are still the dear you were two years +ago. But it is so tiresome of you to be so young, and to have to +experience so many things before you can qualify for my sort of +happiness; and on top of being young you are so restless and fussy, too, +with your ideas of what you are going to do, and your ambitions--how it +must tire the mind to be ambitious! It would certainly tire mine in this +climate, so will you please make a note of the fact that I simply forbid +you to come out here to join me! You are too young to be happy, and you +aren't wise enough to be contented; and you can't hope to be wise enough +until you begin to lose a bit of that mane of hair of yours, which I +hope you never will, for I remember how I loved one particular wave in +it in the far-off age when I thought I was in love with you.... It is +terrible, but I am forgetting England. Terrible, because it must be +wrong to forget one's country, seeing how you oppressed nationalities go +on remembering your wretched countries for centuries of years, and +throwing bombs and murdering policemen for all the world as though you +weren't just as happy as every one else, while I, with a country, which +is after all worth remembering, go and forget it after a paltry two +years! Of course it will always be my country, and I shall always love +it for the good things it has given me, but as a _fact_ in my life it +has faded into something more dim than a memory. A spell has been put +upon me, Dikran, to prevent a possible ache in my heart for the things I +was born among, a spell which has made me forget Europe and all my +friends in it except just you, and you because, in spite of all your +English airs, you will always be a pathetic little stranger in a very +strange land, fumbling for the key.... Ah, this wise old East of mine! +so old and so wise, my dear, that it knows for certain that nothing is +worth doing; and as you happen, perhaps, on the ruins of a long-dead +city by the desert, you can almost hear it chuckling to itself in its +hard-earned wisdom, as though to say that since God Himself is that very +same Law which creates men, and cities, and religions only to level them +into the dust of the roads and the sands of the desert, why fight +against God! It is a corrupt and deadening creed, this of the East, but +it has a weight of ancestral will behind it which forces you to believe +in it; and belief in it leaves you without your Western defences, and +open to be charmed into non-resistance, as I and my Blue Bird have been +charmed, else perhaps I would not now be so happy, and might even be +dining with you on the terrace of the Hyde Park Hotel.... Rather +bitterly you have often called me the slave of Ishtar, though at the +time I did not know who the lady was, for I was always rather weak about +goddesses and such like; but I guessed she had something to do with love +because of the context, for you were developing your pleasant theory +about how I would come to a bad end, someday.... Well, Dikran, that +'someday' of your prophecy has come. I've never belonged so wholly to +Ishtar as I do now that I am perhaps in the very same country in which +she once haunted the imagination of the myriad East. I've made a mess of +life, I've come to my bad end, and, as I tell you, I have never known +such perfect happiness. The world couldn't wish me a worse fate, and I +couldn't wish myself a better.... Don't write to me, please. I can +always imagine you much more clearly than your letters can express you, +and if I think of you as doing big things, as I pray you may, it will be +better for me than knowing that you are doing nothing at all, which +might easily happen, seeing how lazy you are.... In the dim ages I was +all wrong about life. For I know now that restraint in itself is the +most perfect emotion...." + +I laid the letter down, and as the windows were already greying with the +March dawn it did not seem worth while going to a sleepless bed; and so +I sat on in my chair, drawing my overcoat round me for warmth, and +smoked many cigarettes. I felt very old indeed, for was not that letter +the echo of a long-dead experience, and are not long-dead experiences +the peculiar property of old men? + + [Illustration] + +No visions of the Shelmerdene of that letter came up to disturb my +peace, for she did not fit in with my ideas of the East, she had never +appealed to that Eastern side which must be somewhere in me, but had +always been to me a perfect symbol of the grace and kindliness and +devilry of the arrogant West. I could not see her as she described +herself, happy, meditative, wise in contentment.... Her contentment is +too much like an emotion, and therefore spurious, I thought, and so she +will still dine with me on the terrace of the Hyde Park Hotel, and will +wonder why I look so differently at her, for I will still be young while +she will be middle-aged.... No, that letter conjured up no perfect +vision of her in the East, except that I saw her, melodramatically +perhaps, pleading on her knees for release from the bonds of Ishtar, for +I knew that not even a Shelmerdene among women can evade the penalty of +so many unsuccessful love-affairs just by the success of one. + +The grey of the March dawn became paler, and the furniture and books in +my room seemed so wan and unreal that I thought drowsily that they were +a dream of last night and were fading before the coming daylight; and +later, when my thoughts had mellowed into a security of retrospect, I +may have slept, for I realised with a start that the maid had come in to +tidy up the room for breakfast, but had got no further than the door, +perhaps wondering whether I had been very drunk the night before, or +only just "gay." + +Retrospect came naturally after that letter, for she had written at the +end how she had found the true worth of "restraint"; it would have been +just a phrase in a letter if I had not remembered, as she must have when +she wrote it, that the word had a context, and that the context lay in a +long summer afternoon on a silent reach of the river many miles from +Maidenhead.... One day that summer I had suggested to her that, as the +world was becoming a nuisance with its heat and dust, we might go and +stay on the river for a few days, but she had said, quite firmly, "No, I +can't do that. I am not yet old enough to put my name down for the +divorce stakes, so if you don't mind, Dikran, we will call that bet off +and think of something else. For if that same husband heard of my +staying on the river with a young man of uncelibate eye and uncertain +occupation, he would at once take steps about it, and although I like +you well enough as a man, I couldn't bear you as a co-respondent.... But +if you really do want to stay on the river, I will get the Hartshorns to +ask us both down, for they have a delightful house on a little hill, +from which you can see the twilight creeping over the Berkshire downs +across the river." + +"Oh, we can't do that," I said; "Guy Hartshorn is such a stiffnecked ass +and his wife is dull enough to spoil any river--" + +"Tolerance, my dear, is what you lack," she said; "tolerance and a +proper understanding of the relation between a stiffnecked ass and a +possible host. And Guy, poor dear, always does his duty by his +guests.... Please don't be silly about it, Dikran. The Hartshorns +distinctly need encouragement as hosts, so you and I will go down and +encourage them. And if you can manage to cloak your evil thoughts behind +a hearty manner and watch Guy as he swings a racing punt down the river, +you will learn more about punting and the reason why Englishmen are +generally considered to be superior to foreigners than I could teach you +in a lifetime." + +We had been two days at the house on the little hill by the river (for, +of course, we went there) before, on the third afternoon, after lunch, +our chance came, and Shelmerdene and I were at last alone on the river; +I had not the energy to do more than paddle very leisurely and look from +here to there, but always in the end to come back to the woman who lay +facing me against the pale green cushions of the Hartshorn punt, steeped +in the happy sunshine of one of those few really warm days which England +now and again manages to steal from the molten South, and exhibits in a +new green and golden loveliness. From round a bend of the river we could +quite clearly see the ivy-covered Georgian house of our host, perched +imperiously up on the top of its little hill, but not imperiously enough +to prevent the outlet of two days' impatience in the curse I vented on +it. + +"Little man with little toy wants big toy of the same pattern and cries +when he can't have it," she mocked me, and smiled away my bad temper, +which had only a shallow root in impatience. But I would not let it go +all at once, for man is allowed licence on summer afternoons on the +river, and I challenged her to say if she did not know of better ways of +spending the whole glorious time between dinner and midnight than by +playing bridge, "as we tiresomely do at the house on the hill, much to +the delight of that sombre weeping elm which looks in at the window and +can then share the burden of its complaining leaves with my pessimistic +soul." + +"We will leave your soul severely alone for the moment, but as for +playing bridge, I think it is very good for you," she said. "It is very +good for you to call three No Trumps, and be doubled by some one who +won't stand any nonsense, and go down four hundred or so. It teaches you +restraint." + +"Restraint," I said, "is the Englishman's art of concealing his emotions +in such a way that every one can guess exactly what they are. And I have +acquired it so perfectly that you know very well that only the other day +you told me how you admired my restraint, and how I would never say to a +man's face what I couldn't say just as well behind his back." But she +did not answer, and in silence I pulled into a little aimless backwater, +and moored by a willow which let through just enough sun to speck +Shelmerdene's dress with bright arabesques. + +I changed my seat for the cushions and lay full length in front of +Shelmerdene, but it was as though she had become part of the river, she +was so silent. I said something, I can't remember what it was, but it +must have suited the day and my mood. I could not see her face because +she had turned it towards the bank and it was hidden under the brim of +her pale blue hat, but when my words had broken the quietness and she +turned it towards me, I was surprised at the firm set of her lips and +the sadness of her smile. + +"You are making love to me, and that is quite as it should be," she +said. "But on the most beautiful of all days I have the saddest +thoughts, for though you laughed at me when I talked about restraint, I +was really very serious indeed. I know a lot about restraint, my dear, +and how the lack of it can make life suddenly very horrible ... for once +upon a time I killed an old man because I didn't know the line between +my desires and his endurance." She shook her head at me gently. "No, +that won't do, Dikran. You were going to say something pretty about my +good manners, but that is all so much play-acting, and, besides, good +manners are my trade and profession, and without them I should long ago +have been down and under, as I deserve to be much more than Emma +Hamilton ever did.... The tragedy about people like me is that we step +into life at the deep end and find only the shallow people there, and +when we meet some one really deep and very sincere, like that old man, +we rather resent it, for we can't gauge him by the standards we use for +each other. Men like that bring a sudden reality into life, but the +reality is unacceptable and always ugly because it is forced upon one, +while the only realities that are beautiful are those that were born in +your heart when you were born; just like your country for you, which you +have never seen and may never see, and yet has been your main reality in +life since you were born; a reality as sad and beautiful as the +ancestral memories which must lurk somewhere in you, but which you can't +express because you have not learnt yet how to be really natural with +yourself. And when you have learnt that you will have learnt the secret +of great writing, for literature is the natural raw material which every +man secretes within himself, but only a few can express it to the world. +But I may be wrong about all that, and anyway you must know a great deal +more about great thinking and great writing than I do, for you have read +about it in dull books while I have only sensed it in my trivial +way...." + +"Shelmerdene, I want to hear about your old man," I said, "whom you say +you killed. But that is only your way of saying that he was in love with +you, and that you hurt him so much that he died of it." + +"Ah, if it had been only that I would not be so sad this afternoon! In +fact, I would not be sad at all, for he was old and had to die, and all +that about love and being hurt is fair and open warfare. But it was +something much beastlier than that, something animal in me, which will +make me ashamed whenever I think of that day when we three gave our +horses rein down to the Breton coast, and I turned on the old man, a +very spitfire of a girl broken loose from the restraint of English +generations, forgetting for one fierce moment that her saddle was not +covered with the purple of a Roman Augusta, and that she couldn't do as +she liked in a world of old men.... Have you ever seen a quarrel, a real +quarrel, Dikran? When some one is so bitterly and intensely angry that +he loses all hold on everything but his wretched desire to hurt, and +unchains a beast which in a second maims him as deeply as his enemy--no, +it maims him more. + +"The old Frenchman was my guardian," she said, "and the last of a name +which you can find here and there in Court Memoirs, in the thick of that +riot of gallantry and intrigue which passed for life at old Versailles. +But the world has grown out of that and does things much better now, for +gallantry has been scattered to the four winds of democracy and is the +navvy's part as much as the gentleman's, while intrigue has become the +monopoly of the few darling old men who lead governments, more as a way +of amusing their daughters than for any special purpose of their own. +But if the world has grown old since then so had my old man, for he was +none of your rigid-minded _cidevant aristos_ whom you can see any day at +the Ritz keeping up appearances on an occasional cocktail and the use of +the hotel note-paper; but the air of the _grand seigneur_ hadn't +weathered proscriptions and revolutions for nothing, and so still clung +rather finely to him in spite of himself, and made him seem as old and +faded as his ancestors in the world in which he had to live, poor old +dear! It was cruel of that other nice old gentleman above him to put him +through the ordeal, for he did so bitterly and genuinely resent a world +in which honour was second to most things and above nothing. He couldn't +forgive, you see. He couldn't forgive himself, nor France, nor God, but +especially he couldn't forgive France. Sedan, revolution, republic--and +no Turenne or Bonaparte to thrash a Moltke with the flat of his sword, +for he wasn't worth more! And all a France could muster were the +trinkets of her _monde_ and _demimonde_, and a threatening murmur of +'_revanche_' and '_Alsace-Lorraine_'--as though threats and hatred could +wipe out the memory of that day of surrender at Sedan, when he stood not +ten yards away among only too polite Prussian aides-de-camp while +Napoleon put the seal on his last mistake, and signed away an empire.... +And allowing for exaggeration, and the white-hot excitement to which +folk who fuss about honour, etc., are liable, there may have been +something in his point of view about it all, for I once heard a man with +a lot of letters behind his name say that when a country gives up a limb +it also gives up its body; but he may have been wrong, for after all +France is still France! + +"But you would have adored my old man, Dikran, just as I did. He treated +life, and men, and women with all that etiquette which you so admire, he +was simply bristling with etiquette--a deal too much of it for my taste, +for I was only seventeen then and liked my freedom like any other +Englander.... But I'm finding it very difficult to describe the man he +was, my dear, for in our slovenly sort of English we've got used to +describing a person by saying he is like another person, and I can't do +that in this case because he belongs as much to a past age as Hannibal, +and there isn't any one like him now. And even when he was alive there +were very few--two or three old men as fierce and unyielding and vital +as himself, who used to come and dine, and say pretty things to little +me who sat at the end of the table with very large eyes and fast-beating +heart, wondering why they weren't all leading Cabinets and squashing +revolutions, for they seemed to know the secrets of every secret cabal +and camarilla in Europe. + +"Yes, my old guardian was a remnant of an empire--but what a remnant! +Such a fierce-looking little man he was, with pale, steel-blue eyes +which pierced into you from under a precipice of a forehead, a bristling +Second Empire moustache, and thin bloodless lips which parted before the +most exquisite French I've ever heard; I can scarcely bear it when you +say I talk French divinely, for I know how pitiful mine is compared to +the real thing, as done by that old man and Sarah Bernhardt, for they +were very old friends and she used often to come and lunch with us. + +"He talked well, too, and all the better for having something to say, as +well he might have since he had been everything and known every one +worth knowing of his time--ministers, and rebels, and artists, and all +the best-known prostitutes of the day; but they did those things better +then, Dikran. In fact, more as an excuse for getting away from a parvenu +Paris than from any Bonapartist feelings, for he was always an +Orleanist, I think he had represented Louis Napoleon at every city which +could run to an Embassy from London to Pekin; from where he brought back +that ivory Buddha which is on my writing-table, and which has an +inscription in ancient Chinese saying that every man is his own god, but +that Buddha is every man's God, which goes a long way to prove that the +wisdom of the East wasn't as wise as all that, after all. + +"But you are getting restless," she said suddenly. "You probably want to +open the tea-basket to see what's inside, or you've just seen a water +rat----" + +"No, it's a little more subtle than that, Shelmerdene, although as a +fact I do see a water rat not a yard from you on the bank.... I merely +wanted to know how it was that, since you had a perfectly good father +alive in England, you were allowed to go gadding about in France with a +guardian, soi-disant----" + +"We will ignore your soi-disant, young man. But I'll allow your +interruption, for it may seem a bit complicated.... It was like this: as +the fortunes of our family had run rather to seed through generations of +fast women and slow horses, my father who was utterly a pet, succumbed +to politics for an honest living, or, if you pull a face like that about +it, for a dishonest living. For up to that time, in spite of having +exactly the figure for it, he had always refused to enter Parliament, +because his idea was that the House was just a club, and one already +belonged to so many better clubs. But once there nothing could stop him, +and when he entered for the Cabinet stakes he simply romped home with a +soft job and a fat income.... But all that is really beside the point, +for between politics and guineas father and I had had a slight +disagreement about a certain young man whom I was inclined to marry +offhand, being only sixteen, you know, and liking the young man--and, of +course, my father did the correct thing, as he always did, gave the +young man a glass of port and told him not to be an ass, and shipped me +off to Paris to his very old friend. You see, he knew about that old +Marquis, and how I'd be quite safe in his care, for any young man who as +much as looked at me would have a pair of gimlet eyes asking him who the +devil he might be and why he chose to desecrate a young lady's virginal +beauty by his so fatuous gaze. + +"I've been saying a lot of nice things about that old man to you, but I +didn't feel quite like that about him at the time. I liked him, of +course, because he was a man; but all that French business about the +sanctity of a young maid's innocence got badly on my nerves, for +innocence was never my long suit even from childhood, having ears to +hear and eyes to see; and I soon began to get very bored with life as my +old Frenchman saw it. So it wasn't surprising that I broke out now and +again just to shock him, he was so rigid, but I was always sorry for it +afterwards because he just looked at me and said not a word for a minute +or so, and then went on talking as though I hadn't hurt him--but I had, +Dikran! I had hurt him so much that for the rest of the day he often +couldn't bear to see me.... But though I was ashamed of myself for +hurting him, I couldn't stop; life with him was interesting enough in +a way, of course, but it left out so much, you see; it entirely left +out the stupendous fact that I was almost a woman, and a very feminine +one at that, who liked an odd young man about now and again just to +play about with. But I wasn't allowed any young men, except a +twenty-five-year-old over-manicured Vicomte who was so unbearably +worldly and useless that I wanted to hit him on the head with my +guardian's sword-stick, which he always carried about with him, as a +sort of mental solace, I think. No, there weren't any young men, nor any +restaurants, for the old man simply ignored them; my dear, there wasn't +anything at all in my young life except a few old dukes and dowagers, +and the aforesaid young Vicomte, who had manicured himself out of +existence and was considered harmless. And so Paris was a dead city to +me who lived in the heart of it, and all the more dead for the faded old +people who moved about in my life, and tried to change my heart into a +Louis-Quinze drawing-room hung with just enough beautiful and musty +tapestries to keep out the bourgeois sunshine and carelessness, which I +so longed for. + +"So I had to amuse myself somehow.... I was a bad young woman then, as I +am a bad woman now, Dikran; for I've always had a particular sort of +vanity which, though it doesn't show on the surface like most silly +women's, is deep down in me and has never left me alone; a sort of +vanity which makes itself felt in me only in the off-seasons when no one +happens to be in love with me and I in love with no one, and tells me +that I must be dull and unattractive, utterly insignificant and +non-existent; it is a weakness in me, but much stronger than I am, for +I've never resisted it, but been only too glad to fall in love again as +soon as I could; and that is why I've never made a stand against my +impressionableness, why I've never run away from or scotched a +love-affair which I knew wouldn't last two weeks, however much I loved +the wretched man at the time; it was so much the line of least +resistance, it drowned that infernal whisper in me that I was of no +account at all in the world. But the tragedy of it was, and is, my dear, +that indulgence made the monster grow; it was like a drug, for as soon +as the off-season came again it was at its old tricks with twice its old +virulence and malice, and, of course, I gave way again. And so on, and +so on--did you murmur _dies iræ_, Dikran? Well, perhaps, but who knows? +There's a Perfect Fate for every one in this world, and if any one +deserves to find it, it's myself who has failed to find it so often.... + +"At that time that wretched vanity of mine was only a faint whisper, but +there it was, and it had to be satisfied, or else I should have become a +good woman, which never did attract me very much. I simply had to amuse +myself somehow--and so I formed _la grande idée_ of my young life, just +as Napoleon III had long ago formed his equally _grande idée_ about +Mexico and Maximilian, and with the same disastrous results. True, there +was no young man about, but there was a man, anyway, and a Marquis to +boot, even though he was a bit old and rigid. But it was exactly that +rigidity of his which I wanted to see about; I wanted to find out +things, and in my own way, don't you see? And so, deliberately and with +all the malice in me, I set out to subdue the old man. Not childishly +and gushingly, although I was so young, but with all the finesse of the +eternal game, for clever women are born with _rouge_ on their cheeks. + +"But it was a disappointing business; I didn't seem to make the +impression I wanted to make; all my finesse went for nothing, except as +signs of the affection of a ward. Obviously, I thought hopelessly, I +don't know all there is to be known about subduing old French marquises, +and I had almost decided to try some other amusement when one May +morning, a few months after my father had died and appointed him as my +guardian and executor, he came into my little boudoir, looking more +stern and adorable than ever. And as he came in I knew somehow that big +things were coming into my little life; I don't know how, but I knew it +as surely as I knew that for all his grand air of calmness he was as shy +as any schoolboy. + +"'My child,' he said very gently, 'I am intruding on you only because I +have something to say to you of the utmost importance and delicacy. I am +too old and too much of the world to do things by impulse, and so if I +seem to offend against your unworldliness now it is not because I have +not thought very carefully about what I am going to say.... And I beg +you not to count it as any more than the suggestion of an old man who +thinks only of your good, and to tell me quite frankly at the end what +you think of it. + +"'My old friend, your father,' he said, 'honoured me by placing you +entirely in my charge as guardian and executor; but on looking into +matters I find that he has left very little for me to do in the latter +capacity--very little, in fact, besides that small estate in Shropshire +which is entailed on you and your children, as with all its associations +of that beautiful girl--scarcely older than you are now, your +mother--your father could not bear the thought of it ever passing to +strangers. And so, my child, without any reflection on my friend, when +you leave my care you enter the world with an old enough name to ensure +your position, but without the income to maintain it, and, if you will +forgive me, a quite insignificant _dot_; though in your case, as in your +beautiful mother's,' he added, with his little gallant smile, the first +and last of the morning, 'a _dot_ would be the requirement of a blind +man. + +"'All this preamble must seem very aimless and tiresome to you, but I +wish to put all the facts before you, my dear, before asking you to take +the responsibility, as indeed it is, of weighing the suggestion I am +going to make.... You must have seen that I am out of sympathy with this +modern world of yours, that I belong to some other period, better or +worse, what does it matter? And this world, my child, has little use for +those hard-headed persons who cannot change the bent of their minds +according to its passing whims, and so it has little use for me who +cannot and will not change.... Do you understand? I mean that I am an +old man who is every day losing touch with life, and that I know here, +quite certainly, that I have only a very few more years to live. Do not +look sad, child,' he said, almost impatiently, 'it is not that I am +complaining, but that I wish you to understand my thoughts.... Into an +old life you have come like a ray of sunshine which is even now making +light of your little puzzled frown; and I have a debt of gratitude to +pay to you, my child, which I wish to pay at the expense even of your +young peace of mind this morning. Although this new world has passed out +of my grasp, and will soon pass out of my understanding, I know that it +is the proper setting for you, the only subtle and beautiful thing that +I have found in it, and my greatest wish is to leave you in a position +worthy of your beauty and intelligence. It is not that I am afraid for +you, for you are no trivial chit of a girl, but merely that I wish to +leave you both happy and independent.... And, as it is, I can do +nothing, nothing at all! For it has been a fixed rule of our family that +we may not leave our fortune and property to any one who does not bear +our name, and thus, though my nephew and I have had no occasion to meet +for some fifteen years, I must leave him such money as I have and all +this not unappreciated furniture.... And that is why, my child, because +of my wish to leave you all I have, I have been forced to suggest the +only alternative, for I would not have even considered it otherwise, +that you should consent to bear my name with me for the few years I have +to live, and then, as a young and beautiful widow of means, and bearing +an old French name which may still be worth a little consideration, you +can take your fit position in the world in which you, and not I, were +born to be happy....' + +"There it is, Dikran, or as much of it as I can remember. And do you +need a setting for it? Oh, yes, you do, for you are a little lost. +Imagine then, sitting by a window of a large house in the _Rue Colbert_, +a young girl with a battered copy of Madame Bovary skilfully hidden +beside her, and a little erect old man, very stiff but _soigné_, and +cruelly aged by the sunlight which poured blessedly into the room, +standing by the arm of her chair, asking her to marry him. Oh! but you +can't imagine it, you will think of him as pleading, and of me as +surprised. He didn't plead, he couldn't and I, my dear, by the time he +had finished, wasn't surprised.... I knew, you see. Why, I knew +everything! Lexicons and encyclopædias had toppled off their dusty +shelves, and the Sibylline books had come running to my feet, and the +whole world had come trotting out with its wisdom, wisdom as clear and +cold as any Dân-nan-Rón that your friend Gloom ever played on his +_feadan_, and all in the few minutes that an old man was speaking to me! +Of course, it should all have happened differently; I should have been +just a 'trivial chit of a girl,' and then I would have accepted all the +old darling said, and gaped, and cried, and said 'thank you.' But as it +was I did none of those things; I'm not quite sure what I did, unless it +was nothing at all.... It all seems rather mixed now, but on that May +morning it was as clear as the sunlight in my cruel young mind--how +young and how cruel, Dikran! + +"You see, as he spoke, he opened out the world which he so despised to +me; page by page he showed me life, how beastly and how beautiful; he +showed me both sides, because he himself was both beastly and +beautiful.... And I gloried in it all! At my knowledge and the power it +gave me over life. After a while the old man didn't seem to +matter--there he was, talking away! I knew about him, and just how +beastly and beautiful he was. For he _was_ beautiful in his sincerity; I +knew that he wished for my good, that to leave me well provided was the +only condition he made with death; but I knew too that there was a +beastly little imp somewhere in him, as in other men, which turned his +finest thoughts into so much bluff, which told him through the locked +and bolted doors of his honour that he wanted me for my own sake, and +just for that, because I was young and because he loved me, and, +stripped of all his honour and guardianship, because he loved me just as +Solomon loved his wives, and Lucifer loved Lilith, and as you love me +now.... + +"There it was, then, the whole damnable world, and I, only eighteen, in +the middle of it! And there he was, my dear old man, more rigid and more +adorable than ever; for, cruel as I was in seeing through him, I loved +him all the more for his sweet naïveté and for his old, so old illusions +about his motives. While as for being shocked at the way he loved me, +I've never been shocked by anything but the vulgarity and the +indecencies of respectable people, who seem to think that sex is purely +a sort of indoor sport to be indulged in darkness and behind barricaded +doors, while it is really a setting for the most beautiful Bacchanal +that was ever devised by the fairest and purest of God's children. In +spite of bibles and the Bishop of London, Mary knew what she was about, +Dikran. Love doesn't grow anywhere, to be picked up by the wayside. Pure +beauty grows only where beauty already is.... + +"But, wise as I was, I didn't know what to say; what could I say? He was +waiting; I had to say, do something. I did--flung my arms round his neck +and told him he was a pet to be so nice to me, and that I must think +about it. For the first time that he had wanted me to behave like a +woman I behaved consciously like a child--it seemed the easiest way out. +And I think he saw that I was acting; he had expected something else, +for he smiled very sadly down at me, and patted my hair, saying I was a +sweet child not to be angry with him for making life so suddenly +serious, and then, very gently, he went away, leaving me in the +sunshine, a playmate of the gods.... And yet I was so sorry for him that +I almost cried when I thought of him sitting alone and lonely in his +library. + +"We never spoke of it again. At first it was as though he was waiting +for me to say yes, or no, or something, but I didn't say anything, and, +later, he seemed to forget. I didn't do it out of cruelty, my dear; I +simply couldn't say anything, that's all. After sunshine, rain, you +know; I was dismal, frightened of him a little. The romance of that May +morning when he had come to me in my room had become a ridiculous +fantasy, so that it seemed to me that any reference to it would rather +tarnish the very splendid dignity which he had kept, and sort of +increased, through it all. Besides, anyway, what was there to say? I had +made up my mind as he spoke that morning, through all the clearness of +my new-found knowledge. I had never a doubt as to what I was going to +do. It wasn't in me to do as he asked, or rather, as he advised, the old +dear! I wish it had been in me, for to be a rich French marquise without +a marquis is no bad fate for any girl, and it might have helped me to +steer clear of many complications. But I couldn't, because all my life, +Dikran, I've been cursed by an utter inability to make any money out of +love. And that is why I would never be a success in my mother's country +of America, where men throw pearls and beauty roses about as a matter of +course and are very offended if one suggests an economical flirtation on +a gross of diamonds and a hundredweight of Russian sables.... It isn't +that I am mean-minded, but I cannot take presents from men who love me, +for, after all, the old Marquis' offer was a present. When I see other +women with relays of fur coats, and pearl necklaces, and no visible +means of support, I am thoroughly sorry for myself, for it isn't through +any excess of morals that I haven't just as many furs and pearls; it is +simply because I don't see life that way, as, ten years ago, I didn't +see life as the wife of an old man, whom I adored but didn't love, and +couldn't have thought of marrying him even if he had promised to arrange +for his death an hour after the wedding.... Do you understand, Dikran? +For all this while I've been trying to tell you that whatever else I am +not, I am an honest woman; a very upright gentleman in my way, which is +more than you can say for most really nice women. + +"The reason why realistic tragedies are impossible, or at best only +melodramatic, on the stage is that the Person who arranges life has no +sense of drama at all. Imagine how Sardou, the wretched man who turned +Sarah Bernhardt into an exhibition, would have worked it out: the young +girl would have run away from the lustful old man to Nice; the old man +would have followed her to her boarding-house and made faces at the +landlady's fair-haired son, who was the girl's destiny; a duel, tears, +another duel, more tears, and Sarah falling about the stage in exhausted +attitudes, as well she might.... And then imagine how life worked out +the tragedy of that girl and old man; it let them be, or it seemed to +let them be! No, God can have no dramatic sense, as we know it, because +all the tragedies He arranges for us are slow-moving, so slow and moving +none of the actors know whither; perhaps this tragedy we are acting will +fade away, they say hopefully to themselves, and leave us again happy +and careless; a little later they are happily sure that their tragedy is +fading, there is no possible climax in sight, and then suddenly, out of +the inmost earth, from some really foul spot of their animal natures, +come the sudden ingredients for the tragical climax; the climax lasts +only a second, but after it no blessed curtain falls; God has interfered +again, Life is more cruel than Art, He says, so away with your tricks, +your curtains and your finales. And I suppose He is right, you know; it +must be right that shameful memories live beside the beautiful ones, as +twenty years from now the memory of that old man and myself will live +beside this very moment of you and I under this willow; for my abundant +confession of it all seems to make it as much yours as mine, Dikran. + +"My guardian and I lived on smoothly enough, then; as before I broke out +now and again when he stepped too sternly between myself and an amusing +indiscretion, but rebellions always ended in my smiling at some cutting +remark of his, and in his always sweet dismissal of the subject; there +was nothing to show that we were different with each other. But we were, +indeed we were. I did not know it then, but I knew it very clearly +later; how we two people, really loving each other, though in our +different ways, had found a deep, subtle antagonism in each other, a +very real antagonism, which it would have shamed us to realise at the +time, and with a very real and inevitable climax; but like God's +creatures, mummers in yet another of His cruelly monstrous plays, we +thought the tragedy was fading, had faded, and were forgetting it, for +what climax could there possibly be? + +"Four or five months after that May morning he took me to stay at a +château in Brittany; a very beautiful, tumble-down, draughty place, my +dear, standing proudly at the head of a valley like a dissipated actor +who feels that he must have done great things in the past to be what he +now is, and with nothing to show for its draughty arrogance but a few +rakish stones which were once the embattlement from which the Huguenot +_seigneur_ of the day defied the old Medici; and the slim, white-haired +old woman who charmingly met me at the door, the châtelaine of only one +castle, but with the dignity of an empire in her kind, calm elegance. My +hostess and my guardian were old, old friends, and to watch them in +their gentle, courteous intimacy was a lesson on the perfect management +of such things. When we are old and white-haired, will you come and stay +at my place, Dikran, and will you pretend that you have forgotten that +you ever liked me for anything else than my mind? Just like those two +old people in the Breton château, who a thousand years ago may have been +lovers or may have only loved one another.... Who knows? and does it +matter? + +"The idea of this visit, on my guardian's part, to the solitary château +from whose highest windows one could just see the sea curling round the +Breton coast, was of course excellent. He wanted me to be out of harm's +way and entirely his own, and was there any better way of achieving that +than by putting me in a lonely château with only my hostess as an +alternative to himself? But, poor old dear, it didn't fall out like +that; for we had only been there two days when the alternative presented +himself in the person of the young man of the house, my hostess's son, +the young lord of Tumbledown Castle.... He went and spoilt it all, good +and proper, did that young man. His mother hadn't expected him, my +guardian didn't want him, and I didn't mind him--there he was, all the +way from England on a sudden desire to see his mother, the only woman +whom Raoul had ever a decent thought about, I suppose. (His name wasn't +really Raoul, you know, but it is a sort of convention that all young +Frenchmen with the title of Vicomte and with languid eyes and fragile +natures are called Raoul.) For he wasn't by any means a nice young man, +except facially, but how was I to know that! And besides, the man could +sit a horse as gallantly as any young prince who ever went crusading, +and I strained my eyes in prolonging the little thrill I had when, the +morning after he came, I saw him from a window riding out of the gates +and down into the valley, very much the young lord of the manor, on the +huge white stallion which, with such a master, defied a Republic and +still proclaimed him as the _Sieur du Château-Mauvrai_ to the dour and +morose-minded peasants of the Breton villages.... + +"When I say that Raoul was not a nice young man, I mean that he was a +very agreeable companion; but, like little Billee, in 'Trilby,' and +Maurice, the stone-image of my dreams, that poor young man couldn't +love, it wasn't in him to love; but unlike the other two, who were sweet +about it and made up for it as much as they could, Raoul had taken it +into his head that love was all stuff and nonsense, anyway, and that he +could do a deal better with the very frequent and not very fastidious +pretences of it; and, according to his little-minded lights, he seems to +have been right, for he had already done fairly well for himself in +London--this I found much later, of course--with a flat in Mayfair which +was much more consistent with the various middle-aged ladies who came to +tea with him than with the extent of his income. + +"No reasonable person could expect that a young man like that and I +could stay in the same house and no trouble come of it. But my guardian +wasn't reasonable. He seemed still to expect me to go riding with him, +and let a perfectly good young man run to waste for want of a companion +to say pretty things to. Raoul and I, in that beautiful spot, were +scarcely ever allowed to be alone, and only twice did we manage to ride +away together to the sea for a delicious, exciting few hours; only +twice, I said, for the second time was very definitely the last.... +Somehow the Marquis was always there. Not in any unpleasant way, but he +would just happen to come into the room or the particular corner of the +large garden where we also happened to be; he didn't rebuke or look +sulky, he was just the same, except, perhaps, for a little irony to +Raoul, whom he refused to take seriously as a young man of the world. +And there is where the old man made his mistake with me, for I, too, +didn't take Raoul seriously; I took him for just what he was, more knave +than fool, a charming companion, and a very personable young man, as far +as being just 'personable' counts, and only so far. If I had been +allowed to deal with the matter in my own way, without let or hindrance, +it would only have been very pleasant trifling, and certainly no more; +even as it was, the 'no more' part of it was still safe in my keeping, +thanks entirely to my having brought myself up properly; but for the +rest a simple amusement became a rather sordid tragedy, for God and +guardian had combined to use a commonplace young man as the climax to a +faded and forgotten little fantasy, once sun-kissed by a May morning, +now to be shivered and scattered by the shrieking sea wind, discordant +chorus enough for the unmingled destinies of any Tristans and Isoldas, +which kept forcing our horses apart on that last morning of all, when we +three rode by the sea, and made a world of anger for ourselves because +some one, something, had suddenly pushed us out of the other world where +we had been so careless and happy.... + +"Once things happened, they happened quickly. For all my not taking him +at all seriously, I suppose I liked him quite a lot, really--I must have +done, else I would not have been such a fool. He was my first experience +of dishonesty in man, and I suppose I wanted to plumb this dishonesty of +his to the depths, which was very stupid of me because he was much more +likely to find out about me than I about him.... Raoul had been at the +château two weeks, and our little affair had taken the important and +unpleasant air of a conspiracy. Our own stay was to last another month, +and if it hadn't been that my guardian would not for the world have +offended his old friend by cutting short this long-looked-for visit, he +would very soon have taken me away from the so desecrating gaze of young +Raoul. + +"On that day, towards evening, he and I had managed to steal out walking +for an hour. Agreeable enough as he was, he would have bored me if I had +let him. But I wanted him, I intended to keep him in my mind; I wanted +him as an assertion of my independence from the old man. As we went back +up the drive to the château I carefully became as animated and smiling +as I could, for I knew that he would be watching us from the +drawing-room windows, and I wanted to irritate him as much as his +incessant care was irritating me, though that would have been +impossible, for that evening I was absurdly, fiercely angry with him. +Life seemed made up of the interferences of old men. I didn't want old +men in my life. I wanted young men, and sunshine, and fun. And so, as +Raoul and I went up the steps to the massive door, and as I turned to +him just below the drawing-room window and gave him my most trustful +smile, I was feeling reckless, unrestrained, fiercely independent.... +Oh, Dikran! what idiocies we do for the fancied sake of independence! + +"It was time to dress for dinner, so I left Raoul and went straight to +my room. A minute later came a knock on the door, and as I turned +sharply from the mirror, it opened and Raoul stood there, rather shy, +smiling. I wasn't old enough to know the proper way of dealing with +young men in one's bedroom, even if I had overpoweringly wanted to. + +"'I had an impulse,' he said, but he still stood in the doorway, a +little question somewhere about him. I didn't answer it; just watched +him, rather interested in his methods. + +"'Because,' he went on, 'I used to sleep in this room once, and remember +it as a dreary little place, and I wanted to see what it looked like +with you in it.' Poor silly fool, I thought, but rather loved him. I +have found since then, though, that his fatuous speech was quite the +proper one to make, for the established way of entering a woman's room +is by expressing an interest in the furniture, thus making the lady +self-conscious and not so sure about her dignity; seductions are +successful through women fearing to look fools if they refuse to be +seduced. + +"But this time, as he spoke, he closed the door behind him and came into +the room towards me. 'This isn't playing fair, Raoul,' I only said; 'you +will get me into a row.' + +"'Fair!' he said, lifting his eyebrows, the gallant ass. 'My sweet, do +you think anything real is fair in this world? And don't you trust me? +That isn't fair of you, you know--haven't I made love to you for two +weeks, haven't I loved you for two weeks, haven't I loved you all my +life--and now?' And with that he had me in his arms, not for the first +time, mind you, but this time very differently; and, over his shoulder, +as he held me, I saw the door open, and the Marquis stood there, +outraged. Raoul didn't seem to know, still held me, and I, for a +paralysed moment, couldn't move, just stared at the old man standing +very stiffly in the doorway, a hand outstretched on the door-knob--hell +seemed to have opened for him through that door, and he could move as +little as I. At last I jumped away from Raoul with a sort of cry, and he +turned quickly round to the door. He didn't go pale, or look a fool; he +must have made a study of such contretemps; nothing was said, the old +man waiting in the doorway, with words terribly smothered; he moved +aside a little from the door as though to let a dog slink through. But +Raoul wasn't going to slink; he was rather pink, negligent, resigned; +and as, without the least hurry, he bent over my fingers and his eyes +smiled gently at me, I found myself admiring him, really loving him for +the first time. Women are like that.... All this, of course, had +happened in less than a minute; from point of time my guardian came into +my room and Raoul left it--but in point of fact a great deal happened. +For, as Raoul left me and walked across the room to the door, and +through it without taking the least notice of the old man, and as I +heard his even steps receding down the _parquet_ corridor, my first +paralysed fear simmered in me and boiled up into a fierce, vixen anger. +I simply trembled now with anger at the old man as I had first trembled +with fear of him. What right had he to be standing there, ordering about +my life and my young men? What right had he to be closing the door, as +he was doing now? What right, what right? The words were throbbing +inside me, just those words, fixed unrestrainedly on the old man, who +had made a step towards me, and stopped again.... + +"'Child!' the pain in that one word, the lack of anger in it, an utter, +absolute pain accusing me, did not soothe. Accuse me? By what right? + +"The scene was dreadful, Dikran. I can't tell you what we said, what I +said, for I did most of the scene-making. He just forbade me to talk +again alone with Raoul or to go out with him; said he would take me away +to-morrow if it weren't that explanations would then be necessary to our +hostess, who was in feeble health and might be killed by such a disgrace +as this in her own house. As for Monsieur le Vicomte, he himself would +arrange that I did not see him for longer time than could be helped. +That's all he said, but my white heat took little notice of his +commands. I said I don't know what--it must all have been terrible, for +it ended on a terrible note. Dikran, how could I have done it? I pointed +at the door and asked him how he could think he had more right in my +room than Raoul, for though he was my guardian our relations had been +changed by a certain proposal, which perhaps he remembered.... A look at +me, in which was the first and last contempt that's ever been given me, +and the door closed on the wonderful old man. + +"Dinner that night passed off quite well considering the unsettled +climatic conditions aforesaid. Myself didn't contribute much, but my +guardian and Raoul talked smoothly away about anything that came, while +Madame, our hostess, smiled sweetly at us all, on brooding me in +particular.... Quite early I made for bed; the old man and I hadn't +exchanged a word all evening, and his 'good night' was a little bow, and +mine cold. As I passed Raoul he cleverly put a small piece of paper into +my hand. Upstairs in my room, that piece of paper said that he would be +going away in a day or two, and would I ride with him to-morrow morning +before breakfast, at seven o'clock. Of course I would. + +"It was all a silly business, Dikran. If I had ever been in love with +Raoul, I certainly wasn't that morning when we rode away from the +gloomy, silent château, a little frightened by our own bravado; for that +is all it was. But later, as we reached the sands, I forgot that, I +forgot Raoul, though of course he always talked; I was enjoying the +horse under me, the summer morning, the high sea wind dashing its salt +air against my cheeks; I was enjoying every one of those things more +than the company of the young man, but, tragically, my guardian could +not know that. + +"We had been out about half an hour when Raoul, looking back over his +shoulder, murmured, 'Ah!' 'What is it?' I asked. I could barely force my +little voice through the wind. 'That old man,' Raoul said indifferently. +'It seems that he too is out to take the salt air.' Yes, there was a +figure on horseback, perhaps half a mile behind us but rapidly gaining +on our slow canter. I had forgotten my anger, but now again it thrust +itself viciously on me. + +"'Come on, let's give him a run,' I said, a little excitedly. + +"'Oh, no! I am not a baby to be chased about by my own guests or other +people's grandfathers!' + +"Affected idiot, I thought, and we rode on in silence. So really silly +it all was, my dear; for if it hadn't been for my anger, the natural +reaction, in a way, of the muffled life I had led with him, I had much +sooner been riding with the old man than with the young one. But that +feeling didn't last long--no one gave it a chance to last. For at last, +after what seemed an age, his horse drew beside mine, and I heard his +voice distantly through the wind, saying, 'Sandra! You must come back.' +I didn't answer, but worse, I looked sideways at him and laughed. It was +the first time that I had ever seen him in the least bit ridiculous, and +my laugh took advantage of it. Raoul was a yard or so ahead of us and +was giving his horse rein, and so I put mine to the gallop--and +heigh-ho! there were the three of us racing away on the Breton +sands--until, with wonderful and dangerous horsemanship, my guardian's +horse leapt a yard or so ahead and swung broadside round in front of our +startled horses. Near as anything there were broken collar-bones. Our +horses reared high up, almost fell backwards, nearly braining the old +man with their frantic hoofs, and then at last took the ground, startled +and panting. My guardian didn't wait. He pointed his whip at Raoul and +said sternly, 'If I were not a guest at your mother's house I would +thrash you, for that is what you need'; and then to me, harshly, 'Come, +Sandra. Enough of this nonsense. Home.' + +"'Not I,' I cried against the wind. 'I'm enjoying my ride.' And round +his horse I went, towards the sea, leaving them to their argument. I +almost wanted him to follow me, I was so bitterly angry. I don't know +what I thought I would do--but I suppose I didn't think. + +"I must have galloped two hundred yards or so when he was beside me +again. I took no notice; we rode on, almost knee to knee. And then I saw +his hand stretch out, clutch my rein, and pull; I saw red, I saw +nothing, or just his old, lined face bending over ... and, my dear, I +swung my riding-whip as hard as I could across it. The hand left my +rein, but my horse had already been pulled up. I don't remember what +happened. I stared at him as unbelievingly as he stared at me. I seemed +to see a weal across his face, where my whip had struck him--had I done +that? And then he smiled. Dikran, that dear old man smiled after that +horrible insult, so sweetly and sadly. + +"'That then is the end, my child,' he said very gently; and then he left +me, and for a long time I watched him as he rode slowly away. +Frightfully ashamed. + +"It was done, irretrievably; such things can't be forgiven, except in +words; and as far as words went he, of course, forgave me. A few hours +later I saw him in the hall; he was going to pass me, but suddenly I +flung my arms about him, begging him ... very pitiful, dreadful thing I +was. He was splendid. He said very softly into my ear that of course he +forgave me, but that he was too old to have a proper control over his +memory, and so couldn't forget, and that he was too old to be hurt any +more, and so this would be the very last time, for he didn't think it +would be wise for me to live with him any more. 'Sandra, my child, you +must not think me too unkind for sending you away, but I think it is the +best plan. You have lived with an old man long enough--it was a mistake. +I see now that it was a mistake. You must forgive me, child. I was wrong +to keep you so long. I thought, perhaps, it might have been +different....' He was inexorable about that, and it wasn't my place to, +I couldn't, beg him to keep me. I, who had hurt him so much! + +"He must have made some excuse to our hostess, for the next day saw us +in Paris. Raoul? Oh, I never noticed him any more. And two days later I +was with a stodgy uncle in Portman Square, hating London but hating +myself more. I have been miserable many times, but never so shamefacedly +as then, during the two weeks which passed between my arrival in London +and the coming of that note from the old man's valet, saying that +Monsieur le Marquis was very ill, and the doctor said he would die; and +so he had taken the liberty of writing to me, without permission, in +case I should like to go and see him; would I be so kind as not to tell +Monsieur le Marquis that he had written to me? + +"Like a young woman to a dying lover, I went to Paris, and with a +terrible flutter in my heart stood on the doorstep of the stern-looking +house in the _Rue Colbert_.... They hadn't told him I was coming, but he +must have expected me, for there was no surprise in the smile with which +he met the timid little figure which came into his room. He seemed to me +not ill, but just dying; he looked the same, only very tired. And then I +realised that he was dying because he wanted to die. An angry girl had +shown him that life was indeed not worth living, and so he was stopping +his heart with his own hand.... It was terrible to realise that as I +stood by his bed and he smiled quite gaily up at me. The weakness was +too strong inside him, and he couldn't speak, just patted my hand and +held it very tightly.... I was very glad when I was out of that room, +and I did not see him again before he died early the next morning. + +"And so you see, Dikran, for all your talk of _dies iræ_ in the future, +I've already had my _dies iræ_, and very sadly, too--and been the wiser +for it in restraint." + + * * * * * + +Then it was that I realised with a start that my housemaid was staring +at me from the door in the grey March morning, and that I was not +listening to Shelmerdene in a backwater of the Thames, but was in +London, where there is less time for cherishing one's ideals than for +enquiring into other people's.... + + + THE END + + + + + Transcriber Notes: + +Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_. + +Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS. + +Throughout the document, the oe ligature was replaced with "oe". + +Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of +the speakers. Those words were retained as-is. + +Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected +unless otherwise noted. + +On page 19, "distate" was replaced with "distaste". + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The London Venture, by Michael Arlen + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40375 *** |