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diff --git a/40375-8.txt b/40375-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 0e30900..0000000 --- a/40375-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3416 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The London Venture, by Michael Arlen - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The London Venture - -Author: Michael Arlen - -Illustrator: Michel Sevier - -Release Date: July 31, 2012 [EBook #40375] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONDON VENTURE *** - - - - -Produced by Clarity, Ernest Schaal, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - - _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 THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONDON VENTURE *** - -***** This file should be named 40375-8.txt or 40375-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/3/7/40375/ - -Produced by Clarity, Ernest Schaal, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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