I
One night we were at a party, George Tarlyon and I, and there were also
present some other people. It was not, however, a good party, and we
left it before eleven o’clock. I cannot remember now how it was that one
had gone there so early, but anyway it is of no significance. As we
passed out, a misguided fellow said it would get better later on, but I
extracted him from Tarlyon’s teeth, and so out into the street. A long
string of cars stretched from the door towards Park Lane, and here and
there chauffeurs stood in sombre groups, and we wondered if they thought
they were missing anything. The heat of the crowded rooms had put us in
a fever, the night air penetrated our flimsy evening-coats, and we
shivered and murmured. From the open windows of the house we had left
there followed us down the length of Green Street that asinine blare
which is the punishment of England for having lost America; and George
Tarlyon muttered that there ought to be a law to prevent people from
giving fat-headed parties full of crashing bores and plain women, the
joints of whose knees cracked in trying any dance which their mothers
had not danced before them. I tried to soothe him and myself by saying
that parties were not what they were and there it was; but he would not
be soothed, for he had been given a glass of cider-cup in mistake for
champagne, and he who touches cider-cup in the watches of the night may
neither forget nor forgive.
We walked up Park Lane aimlessly, for we knew not what to do nor whither
to go. We were further elated by the fact that we could sum up only one
cigarette between us.
I suggested that one might do worse than go to bed, but Tarlyon said it
was too early for that. “It is never too early,” I said morosely, “to go
to bed.”
“Pah!” said Tarlyon, and so we walked down Park Lane.
Now it is frequently said that Park Lane is full of Jews, but very few
met our eyes, and they might quite well have been Gentiles. There are
many illusions prevalent in the provinces about life in the great
metropolis of London: such as (_a_) that it is gay: (_b_) that it is
wicked: (_c_) that boys will be boys: (_d_) that there is plenty to do
when it rains: (_e_) that you have only to go for a walk to see many
“well-dressed women in costly furs”; but the one which has even less
foundation in fact than any of these is that, life in a great city being
what it is, there is never an hour of the twenty-four when the great
streets are not, to a student of life, full of matter for observation.
But, as George Tarlyon said, you might be a student of life until you
burst and still find no matter for observation--though here we were in
Park Lane and the hour not yet eleven!
“The whole thing is a ramp,” we said. “Now take this matter about the
Jews. We have been distinctly given to understand that this Lane is full
of Jews--but what do we see? Two ’buses and a policeman. But that leads
us to an interesting speculation: can a policeman be a Jew? Has such a
thing as a Jewish policeman ever been seen or heard of? And if not, what
is it that prevents a policeman from being a Jew? Is the religious
feeling among policemen stronger than that among Privy Councillors?”
“Let’s ask him,” I suggested. The policeman was decorating the corner of
Upper Brook Street. Tarlyon asked him, and the policeman said that Vine
Street was not so far off as all that, while as for Marlborough Street,
it was even nearer. He wasn’t there to be accosted, he wasn’t, said the
policeman wickedly.
“Ho!” said Tarlyon. “And have you been arresting any more respectable
old clergymen in Hyde Park for talking to women without an introduction
from a bishop? Blast me but I wouldn’t dream of entering Hyde Park
nowadays, not at night anyway, without a battalion of chaps fringed with
torpedo-netting.”
“Good-night, constable,” I said hurriedly.
“Good-night, sir,” said he--a discreet man.
“Pah!” said Tarlyon.
We walked up Park Lane.