June 1st
Sebastian Pasquale dined with me this evening. Antoinette, forgetful
of idolatrous practices, devoted the concentration of her being to the
mysteries of her true religion. The excellence of the result affected
Pasquale so strongly that with his customary disregard of convention he
insisted on Antoinette being summoned to receive his congratulations.
He rose, made her a bow as if she were a Marquise of pre-revolutionary
days.
“It is a meal,” said he, bunching up his fingers to his mouth and
kissing them open, “that one should have taken not sitting, but
kneeling.”
“You stole that from Heine,” said I, when the enraptured creature had
gone, “and you gave it out to Antoinette as if it were your own.”
“My good Ordeyne,” said he, “did you ever hear of a man giving anything
authentic to a woman?”
“You know much more about the matter than I do,” I replied, and Pasquale
laughed.
It has been a pleasure to see him again--a creature of abounding
vitality whom time cannot alter. He is as lithe-limbed as when he was a
boy, and as lithe-witted. I don’t know how his consciousness could
have arrived at appreciation of Antoinette’s cooking, for he talked
all through dinner, giving me an account of his mirific adventures in
foreign cities. Among other things, he had been playing juvenile lead,
it appears, in the comic opera of Bulgarian politics. I also heard of
the Viennese dancer. My own little chronicle, which he insisted on my
unfolding, compared with his was that of a caged canary compared with
a sparrowhawk’s. Besides, I am not so expansive as Pasquale, and on
certain matters I am silent. He also gesticulates freely, a thing
which is totally foreign to my nature. As Judith would say, he has a
temperament. His moustaches curl fiercely upward until the points
are nearly on a level with his flashing dark eyes. Another point of
dissimilarity between us is that he seems to have been poured molten
into his clothes, whereas mine hang as from pegs clumsily arranged about
my person. By no conceivable freak of outer circumstance could I have
the adventures of Pasquale.
And yet he thinks them tame! Lord! If I found myself hatching
conspiracies in Sofia on a nest made of loaded revolvers, I should feel
that the wild whirl of Bedlam had broken loose around me.
“But man alive!” I cried. “What in the name of tornadoes do you want?”
“I want to fight,” said he. “The earth has grown too grey and peaceful.
Life is anaemic. We need colour--good red splashes of it--good wholesome
bloodshed.”
Said I, “All you have to do is to go into a Berlin cafe and pull the
noses of all the lieutenants you see there. In that way you’ll get as
much gore as your heart could desire.”
“By Jove!” said he, springing to his feet. “What a cause for a man to
devote his life to--the extermination of Prussian lieutenants!”
I leaned back in my arm-chair--it was after dinner--and smiled at
his vehemence. The ordinary man does not leap about like that during
digestion.
“You would have been happy as an Uscoque,” said I. (I have just finished
the prim narrative.)
“What’s that?” he asked. I told him.
“The interesting thing about the Uscoques,” I added, “is that they were
a Co-operative Pirate Society of the sixteenth century, in which priests
and monks and greengrocers and women and children--the general public,
in fact, of Senga--took shares and were paid dividends. They were also
a religious people, and the setting out of the pirate fleet at the
festivals of Easter and Christmas was attended by ecclesiastical
ceremony. Then they scoured the high seas, captured argosies,
murdered the crews--their only weapons were hatchets and daggers and
arquebuses--landed on undefended shores, ravaged villages and carried
off comely maidens to replenish their stock of womenkind at home. They
must have been a live lot of people.”
“What a second-hand old brigand you are,” cried Pasquale, who during my
speech had been examining the carpet by the side of his chair.
I laughed. “Hasn’t a phase of the duality of our nature ever struck
you? We have a primary or everyday nature--a thing of habit, tradition,
circumstance; and we also have a secondary nature which clamours for
various sensations and is quite contented with vicarious gratification.
There are delicately fibred novelists who satisfy a sort of secondary
Berserkism by writing books whose pages reek with bloodshed. The most
placid, benevolent, gold-spectacled paterfamilias I know, a man who
thinks it cruel to eat live oysters, has a curious passion for crime and
gratifies it by turning his study into a _musee maccabre_ of murderers’
relics. From the thumb-joint of a notorious criminal he can savour
exquisitely morbid emotions, while the blood-stains on an assassin’s
knife fill him with the delicious lust of slaughter. In the same way
predestined spinsters obtain vicarious enjoyment of the tender passion
by reading highly coloured love-stories.”
“Just as that philosophical old stick, Sir Marcus Ordeyne, dus from this
sort of thing,” said Pasquale.
And he fished from the side of his chair, and held up by the tip of a
monstrous heel, the most audacious, high-instepped, red satin slipper I
ever saw.
I eyed the thing with profound disgust. I would have given a hundred
pounds for it to have vanished. In its red satin essence it was
reprehensible, and in its feminine assertion it was compromising.
How did it come there? I conjectured that Carlotta must have been
trespassing in the drawing-room and dropped it, Cinderella-like, in her
flight, when she heard me enter the house before dinner.
Pasquale held it up and regarded me quizzically. I pretend to no
austerity of morals; but a burglar unjustly accused of theft suffers
acuter qualms of indignation than if he were a virtuous person.
I regretted not having asked Pasquale to dinner at the club. I
particularly did not intend to explain Carlotta to Pasquale. In fact, I
see no reason at all for me to proclaim her to my acquaintance. She is
merely an accident of my establishment.
I rose and rang the bell.
“That slipper,” said I, “does not belong to me, and it certainly ought
not to be here.”
Pasquale surrendered it to my outstretched hand.
“It must fit a remarkably pretty foot,” said he.
“I assure you, my dear Pasquale,” I replied dryly, “I have never looked
at the foot that it may fit.” Nor had I. A row of pink toes is not a
foot.
“Stenson,” said I, when my man appeared, “take this to Miss Carlotta
and say with my compliments she should not have left it in the
drawing-room.”
Stenson, thinking I had rung for whisky, had brought up decanter and
glasses. As he set the tray upon the small table, I noticed Pasquale
look with some curiosity at my man’s impassive face. But he said nothing
more about the slipper. I poured out his whisky and soda. He drank a
deep draught, curled up his swaggering moustache and suddenly broke into
one of his disconcerting peals of laughter.
“I haven’t told you of the Grefin von Wentzel; I don’t know what put her
into my head. There has been nothing like it since the world began. Mind
you--a real live aristocratic Grefin with a hundred quarterings!”
He proceeded to relate a most scandalous, but highly amusing story. An
amazing, incredible tale; but it seemed familiar.
“That,” said I, at last, “is incident for incident a scene out of
_L’Histoire Comique de Francion._”
“Never heard of it,” said Pasquale, flashing.
“It was the first French novel of manners published about 1620 and
written by a man called Sorel. I don’t dream of accusing you of
plagiarism, my dear fellow--that’s absurd. But the ridiculous
coincidence struck me. You and the Grefin and the rest of you were
merely reenacting a three hundred year old farce.”
“Rubbish!” said Pasquale.
“I’ll show you,” said I.
After wandering for a moment or two round my shelves, I remembered that
the book was in the dining-room. I left Pasquale and went downstairs.
I knew it was on one of the top shelves near the ceiling. Now, my
dining-room is lit by one shaded electrolier over the table, so that
the walls of the room are in deep shadow. This has annoyed me many times
when I have been book-hunting. I really must have some top lights
put in. To stand on a chair and burn wax matches in order to find
a particular book is ignominious and uncomfortable. The successive
illumination of four wax matches did not shed itself upon _L’Histoire
Comique de Francion_.
If there is one thing that frets me more than another, it is not to be
able to lay my hand upon a book. I knew Francion was there on the top
shelves, and rather than leave it undiscovered, I would have spent the
whole night in search. I suppose every one has a harmless lunacy. This
is mine. I must have hunted for that book for twenty minutes, pulling
out whole blocks of volumes and peering with lighted matches behind,
until my hands were covered with dust. At last I found it had fallen to
the rear of a ragged regiment of French novels, and in triumph I took it
to the area of light on the table and turned up the scene in question.
Keeping my thumb in the place I returned to the drawing-room.
“I’m sorry to have--” I began. I stopped short. I could scarcely believe
my eyes. There, conversing with Pasquale and lolling on the sofa, as if
she had known him for years, was Carlotta.
She must have seen righteous disapprobation on my face, for she came
running up to me.
“You see, I’ve made Miss Carlotta’s acquaintance,” said Pasquale.
“So I perceive,” said I.
“Stenson told me you wanted me to come to the drawing-room in my red
slippers,” said Carlotta.
“I am afraid Stenson must have misdelivered my message,” said I.
“Then you do not want me at all, and I must go away?”
Oh, those eyes! I am growing so tired of them. I hesitated, and was
lost.
“Please let me stay and talk to Pasquale.”
“Mr. Pasquale,” I corrected.
She echoed my words with a cooing laugh, and taking my consent for
granted, curled herself up in a corner of the sofa. I resumed my seat
with a sigh. It would have been boorish to turn her out.
“This is much nicer than Alexandretta, isn’t it?” said Pasquale
familiarly. “And Sir Marcus is an improvement on Hamdi Effendi.”
“Oh, yes. Seer Marcous lets me do whatever I like,” said Carlotta.
“I’m shot if I do,” I exclaimed. “The confinement of your existence in
the East makes you exaggerate the comparative immunity from restriction
which you enjoy in England.”
I notice that Carlotta is always impressed when I use high sounding
words.
“Still, if you could make love over garden walls, you must have had a
pretty slack time, even in Alexandretta,” said Pasquale.
Obviously Carlotta had saved me the trouble of explaining her.
“I once met our friend Hamdi,” Pasquale continued. “He was the politest
old ruffian that ever had a long nose and was pitted with smallpox.”
“Yes, yes!” cried Carlotta, delighted. “That is Hamdi.”
“Is there any disreputable foreigner that you are not familiar with?” I
asked, somewhat sarcastically.
“I hope not,” he laughed. “You must know I had got into a deuce of a
row at Aleppo, about eighteen months ago, and had to take to my heels.
Alexandretta is the port of Aleppo and Hamdi is a sort of boss policeman
there.”
“He is very rich.”
“He ought to be. My interview with him cost me a thousand pounds--the
bald-headed scoundrel!”
“He is a shocking bad man,” said Carlotta, gravely.
“I’m afraid it is Mr. Pasquale who is the shocking bad man,” I said,
amused. “What had you been doing in Aleppo?”
“_Maxime debetur_,” said he.
“English are very wicked when they go to Syria,” she remarked.
“How can you possibly know?” I said.
“Oh, I know,” replied Carlotta, with a toss of her chin.
“My friend,” said Pasquale, lighting a cigarette, “I have travelled much
in the East, and have had considerable adventures by the way; and I
can assure you that what the oriental lady doesn’t know about essential
things is not worth knowing. Their life from the cradle to the grave is
a concentration of all their faculties, mortal and immortal, upon the
two vital questions, digestion and sex.”
“What is sex?” asked Carlotta.
“It is the Fundamental Blunder of Creation,” said I.
“I do not understand,” said Carlotta.
“Nobody tries to understand Sir Marcus,” said Pasquale, cheerfully. “We
just let him drivel on until he is aware no one is listening.”
“Seer Marcous is very wise,” said Carlotta, in serious defence of her
lord and master. “All day he reads in big books and writes on paper.”
I have been wondering since whether that is not as ironical a judgment
as ever was passed. Am I wise? Is wisdom attained by reading in big
books and writing on paper? Solomon remarks that wisdom dwells with
prudence and finds out knowledge of witty inventions; that the wisdom of
the prudent is to understand his way; that wisdom and understanding keep
one from the strange woman and the stranger which flattereth with her
words. Now, I have not been saved from the strange young woman who has
begun to flatter with her words; I don’t in the least understand my way,
since I have no notion what I shall do with her; and in taking her in
and letting her loll upon my sofa of evenings, so as to show off her red
slippers to my guests, I have thrown prudence to the winds; and my
only witty invention was the idea of teaching her typewriting, which
is futile. If the philosophy of the excellent aphorist is sound, I
certainly have not much wisdom to boast of; and none of the big books
will tell me what a wise man would have done had he met Carlotta in the
Embankment Gardens.
I did not think, however, that my wisdom was a proper subject for
discussion. I jerked back the conversation by asking Carlotta why she
called Hamdi Effendi a shocking bad man. Her reply was startling.
“My mother told me. She used to cry all day long. She was sorry she
married Hamdi.”
“Poor thing!” said I. “Did he ill-treat her?”
“Oh, ye-es. She had small-pox, too, and she was no longer pretty, so
Hamdi took other wives and she did not like them. They were so fat and
cruel. She used to tell me I must kill myself before I married a Turk.
Hamdi was going to make me marry Mohammed Ali one--two years ago; but he
died. When I said I was so glad” (that seems to be her usual formula of
acknowledgment of news relating to the disasters of her acquaintance),
“Hamdi shut me up in a dark room. Then he said I must marry Mustapha.
That is why I ran away with Harry. See? Oh, Hamdi is shocking bad.”
From this and from other side-lights Carlotta has thrown on her
upbringing, I can realise the poor, pretty weak-willed baby of a thing
that was her mother, taking the line of least resistance, the husband
dead and the babe in her womb, and entering the shelter offered by the
amorous Turk. And I can picture her during the fourteen years of her
imprisoned life, the disillusion, the heart-break, the despair. No
wonder the invertebrate soul could do no more for her daughter than
teach her monosyllabic English and the rudiments of reading and writing.
Doubtless she babbled of western life with its freedom and joyousness
for women; but four years have elapsed since her death, and her stories
are only elusive memories in Carlotta’s mind.
It is strange that among the deadening influences of the harem she has
kept the hereditary alertness of the Englishwoman. She has a baby mouth,
it is true; she pleads to you with the eyes of a dog; her pretty ways
are those of a young child; but she has not the dull, soulless, sensual
look of the pure-bred Turkish woman, such as I have seen in Cairo
through the transparent veils. In them there is no attraction save of
the flesh; and that only for the male who, deformity aside, reckons
women as merely so much cubical content of animated matter placed
by Allah at his disposal for the satisfaction of his desires and the
procreation of children. I cannot for the life of me understand an
Englishman falling in love with a Turkish woman. But I can quite
understand him falling in love with Carlotta. The hereditary qualities
are there, though they have been forced into the channel of sex, and
become a sort of diabolical witchery whereof I am not quite sure whether
she is conscious. For all that, I don’t think she can have a soul.
I have made up my mind that she hasn’t, and I don’t like having my
convictions disturbed.
Until I saw her perched in the corner of the sofa, with her legs tucked
up under her, and the light playing a game of magic amid the reds and
golds and browns of her hair, while she cheerily discoursed to us of
Hamdi’s villainy, I never noticed the dull decorum of this room. I was
struck with the decorative value of mere woman.
I must break myself of the habit of wandering off on a meditative
tangent to the circle of conversation. I was brought back by hearing
Pasquale say:
“So you’re going to marry an Englishman. It’s all fixed and settled,
eh?”
“Of course,” laughed Carlotta.
“Have you made up your mind what he is to be like?”
I could see the unconscionable Don Juan instinctively preen himself
peacock fashion.
“I am going to marry Seer Marcous,” said Carlotta, calmly.
She made this announcement not as a jest, not as a wish, but as the
commonplace statement of a fact. There was a moment of stupefied
silence. Pasquale who had just struck a match to light a cigarette
stared at me and let the flame burn his fingers. I stared at Carlotta,
speechless. The colossal impudence of it!
“I am sorry to contradict you,” said I, at last, with some acidity, “but
you are going to do no such thing.”
“I am not going to marry you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Oh!” said Carlotta, in a tone of disappointment.
Pasquale rose, brought his heels together, put his hand on his heart and
made her a low bow.
“Will you have me instead of this stray bit of Stonehenge?”
“Very well,” said Carlotta.
I seized Pasquale by the arm. “For goodness sake, don’t jest with her!
She has about as much sense of humour as a prehistoric cave-dweller.
She thinks you have made her a serious offer of marriage.” He made her
another bow.
“You hear what Sir Granite says? He forbids our union. If I married you
without his consent, he would flay me alive, dip me in boiling oil and
read me aloud his History of Renaissance Morals. So I’m afraid it is no
good.”
“Then I mustn’t marry him either?” asked Carlotta, looking at me.
“No!” I cried, “you are not going to marry anybody. You seem to have
hymenomania. People don’t marry in this casual way in England. They
think over it for a couple of years and then they come together in a
sober, God-fearing, respectable manner.”
“They marry at leisure and repent in haste,” interposed Pasquale.
“Precisely,” said I.
“What we call a marriage-bed repentance,” said Pasquale.
“I told you this poor child had no sense of humour,” I objected.
“You might as well kill yourself as marry without it.”
“You are not going to marry anybody, Carlotta,” said I, “until you can
see a joke.”
“What is a joke?” inquired Carlotta.
“Mr. Pasquale asked you to marry him. He didn’t mean it. That was a
joke. It was enormously funny, and you should have laughed.”
“Then I must laugh when any one asks me to marry him?”
“As loud as you can,” said I.
“You are so strange in England,” sighed Carlotta.
I smiled, for I did not want to make her unhappy, and I spoke to her
intelligibly.
“Well, well, when you have quite learned all the English ways, I’ll try
and find you a nice husband. Now you had better go to bed.”
She retired, quite consoled. When the door closed behind her, Pasquale
shook his head at me.
“Wasted! Criminally wasted!”
“What?”
“That,” he answered, pointing to the door. “That bundle of bewildering
fascination.”
“That,” said I, “is an horrible infliction which only my cultivated
sense of altruism enables me to tolerate.”
“Her name ought to be Margarita.”
“Why?” I asked.
“_Ante porcos_,” said he.
Certainly Pasquale has a pretty wit and I admire it as I admire most
of his brilliant qualities, but I fail to see the aptness of this last
gibe. At the club this afternoon I picked up an entertaining French
novel called _En felons des Perles_. On the illustrated cover was a row
of undraped damsels sitting in oyster-shells, and the text of the book
went to show how it was the hero’s ambition to make a rosary of these
pearls. Now I am a dull pig. Why? Because I do not add Carlotta to my
rosary. I never heard such a monstrous thing in my life. To begin with,
I have no rosary.
I wish I had not read that French novel. I wish I had not gone
downstairs to hunt for its seventeenth century ancestor. I wish I had
given Pasquale dinner at the club.
It is all the fault of Antoinette. Why can’t she cook in a middle-class,
unedifying way? All this comes from having in the house a woman whose
soul is in the stew-pot.