Short Stories 1895-1926 (44 page)

I too sat down, and beckoned peremptorily to the young lady who had been so attentive about the bus.

‘My bill, please,' I said – ‘this gentleman's and mine.' And then, foolishly, I added, ‘It's hot, isn't it?'

She made no reply until, after damping her lead pencil, she had added up her figures and had handed me between her finger-tips the mean scrap of paper. Then she informed me crisply, in fastidious Cockney, that some people seemed to find it hotter than most, and that it was past closing time, and would I please pay at the desk.

My accomplice had regained a little of his self-restraint by now. He put out a wavering hand and took up his hard felt hat. It was almost incredible that so marked a change should have come over so insensitive a face in that brief space of time. Its touch of bravado, its cold clear stare as of a watchful dog, even the neatness of it, had disappeared. He looked ten years older – lost and abandoned. He put out his other hand for the check. It was a curious action for a man with an intense closeness – if not meanness – clearly visible on his features. ‘I should prefer, if you don't mind, to pay my bill myself,' he said.

‘Not at all,' I replied brusquely. ‘It was my ice-cream. I must apologize for having been so abrupt.'

He tried to smile; and it was like the gleam of a sickly evening sunshine after heavy winter rain.

‘It's broken me: that's all I can say,' he said. ‘What I say is, you read such things in the newspapers, but you don't know what they mean to them as are most concerned. I don't see how you can. But anyhow, I
can
pay my way.'

I hesitated. A furious contest – dim spread-eagled figures silhouetted, as it were, against a background of utter black – seemed to be proceeding in some dream in my mind, a little beyond actual consciousness. ‘Well,' I blurted, ‘I hope time will make things better. I can guess what I should feel like myself in similar circumstances. If I were you, I should …' But at sight of him, the words, I am thankful to say, faded out before I could utter them. ‘If I were you' – how easy! But how is that metamorphosis conceivable?

He looked at his hat; he looked at his ice-cream, now an insipid mush; he looked anxiously and searchingly at the table – marked over with the hieroglyphics of dark ugly marble. And at last he raised his eyes – those inexpressive balls of glass – and looked at me. He changed his hat from his right to his left hand, and still looking at me, hesitated, holding the empty hand out a little above the table. Then turning away, he drew it back.

I pretended not to have noticed the action. ‘There should be another Eighteen in a few minutes,' I volunteered. ‘And I think I noticed a stopping-place a few yards down.'

Nevertheless I couldn't for the moment leave him there – to the tender mercies of those censorious young waitresses in their exquisitely starched caps. ‘I am going that way,' I said. ‘Shall I see you into it?'

‘It's the heat,' he said. ‘No, thank you. You have been a …'

With a gasp I repelled as well as I could the distaste for him that was once more curdling as if with a few drops of vinegar my very blood. What monsters of hatred and uncharitableness we humans can be! And what will
my
little record look like, I wonder, when the secrets of all hearts are opened?

It seemed for the time being as though the whole of my right arm had become partially paralysed. But with an effort I put out my hand at last; and then he, too, his – a large green solitaire cuff-link showing itself against his wristband as he did so. We shook hands – though I doubt if a mere fleshly contact can express much while the self behind it is dumb with instinctive distaste.

Besides, the effect on him even of a friendly action as frigid as this was horribly disconcerting. It reminded me of ice pitted and crumbling in a sudden thaw. He seemed to have been reduced to a state of physical and spiritual helplessness as if by an extremity of emotion, or by a drug. It was nauseating. It confused me and made me ashamed and miserable. I turned away abruptly; paid our bill at the desk, and went out. And London enveloped me.

The Connoisseur

The Connoisseur
1

It was a narrow discreet street, and, in this late evening twilight, all but deserted. There had been rain, bringing with it an earthy fragrance from the not far distant park, and small clear puddles of water filled the hollows of the paving-stones. Clumsily picking his way between them, St Dusman came shuffling along between the houses to keep a rather belated tryst. He paused now and again to examine the numbers on the fanlights, and at last halted, at No. 13, where he stood for a few moments peering in over the spearheaded palisade that guarded its area. As yet the curtains of the shallowly curved window abutting on the street had not been drawn nor its shutters closed.

From a candelabrum on a lacquer Chinese table in the midst of the room, electric tapers cast their beams upon the exquisite objects that stood around them. This sharp metallic light bathed ivory and porcelain, the wax-like flowers in their slim vase, the few pictures, as if they were the sacred relics of a shrine.

The old creature's eyes gazed vaguely through their magnifying spectacles at this scene of still life, then groped onward towards the figure of a man, as yet apparently in his early thirties, who now stood in the doorway, slim, sleek, dark – as if for foil to the very vase on the table with its pale green leaves and flowers. His neat head was stooping forward and inclined a little towards his left shoulder, for at that moment with intense interest and vigilance he was vainly endeavouring to see the old man out there in the darkening street as clearly as St Dusman could see him.

The old man hesitated no longer. With the aid of its wrought steel handrail he mounted the three shallow steps of the outer door, under its narrow shell-shaped porch, and rapped softly with his knuckles on the panel. The stranger himself hastened to open it, though for an instant or two he seemed to have paused with fingers on its catch, and after the briefest scrutiny of the face of his visitor from penetrating green-grey eyes, led him, almost as though surreptitiously, into the very room which the saint had surveyed from without. And he himself drew their curtains over the windows.

‘You may not have been expecting me, Mr Blumen?' said the old man   courteously, still a little breathless. ‘Although, indeed, I am a little late. My friends detain me at times. And this is my last errand for the day.'

Mr Blumen's eyes were now steadily fixed on his visitor's face. ‘I must confess,' he replied, ‘that I was
not
expecting you. Not, I mean, to-night.'

‘But you had not entirely forgotten me?' the old man pressed him whimsically. ‘You have now and then given a passing thought to me? I leave footprints outside.'

Mr Blumen smiled, at least with his lips. ‘You bring back at least one old memory – an experience often repeated when I was a small boy – in Bath, you know. The experience, I mean, of being “called-for”. Now and then, for there are many kinds of parties, it was a relief, a positive god-send.'

There was just a hint of the formal in this rapid and not unfriendly speech. It had been uttered too in a lowish voice, though, even at that, the characteristic slight lisp and blurred r's had been detectable.

The old saint peered up at the young man over his thick-glassed spectacles. ‘I can well understand it,' he said at last. ‘It meant returning home. Ours is a longer journey, Mr Blumen.'

The dark eyes had sharpened. ‘It
has
a goal, then?'

‘Surely!' replied the old man. ‘Were you uncertain even of that? Not,' he added candidly, ‘not that the metaphor carries us quite all the way. Lassitude follows after most races; and what are called goals and prizes may be disappointing. But what – if I may venture – suggested to you that any journey in this world, in any precise meaning of the word, has an
end
?'

‘Well,' replied Mr Blumen, ‘there are many philosophies, and one may listen to all without being persuaded to accept any.'

‘But hardly without divining any – just on one's own account?' returned the old man, almost as if he were smilingly bent on coaxing a secret out of a child. ‘Wouldn't that be a little unfair to the mere facts of the case? Now I'll be bound, Mr Blumen, when you were a small boy, you must have dreamed now and then? So far at least you were conscious of circles within circles – and without – so to say?'

There was remarkably little of the childish in the keen, ashen face confronting him. The dark, large-pupilled eyes had wandered almost stealthily from point to point of the objects around them, every one of which seemed now to be flashing secret signals one to the other in this motionless creek of air.

‘Well possibly,' replied Mr Blumen. ‘But even a pessimist would agree that it is as well to make the best one can of the one “circle” – without vexing oneself too much with shallow and futile speculations concerning any other. And optimists; well —' a slight shrug of the narrow shoulders completed the sentence. ‘I must be quite candid, though. I am unconscious of the least wish in the world to bid adieu to what they call “things as they are” – to things, that is, as they appear to me to be. I realize, none the less, that you have obligations. And – thank you for fulfilling them so considerately.'

At this, the old man folded one hand over the other under his loose sleeves, sighed, and quietly seated himself on the edge of a chair that stood nearby. ‘Thank
you,
Mr Blumen,' he said; ‘I will enjoy a moment's needed rest.'

‘Forgive me,' cried the other hastily, turning as he spoke towards the tiny sideboard – riding there in the offing, as it were, of this bright inward pool of silence, with its delicate cargo of Venetian glass and wine.

But his visitor pleasantly waved this little courtesy aside. ‘To tell you the truth, Mr Blumen,' he explained, ‘and you are exceedingly tolerant, I haven't the head for it. And though I am familiar with our route – almost excessively familiar – we shall still need our combined cold wits to face it out. You were saying “things as they are” – a stimulating phrase enough in itself. Still, I have no very close knowledge of what you call the world; apart, I mean, from my daily duties. May I assume that “things as they are” now surround us?' The aged eyes peered carefully and cautiously once more through their thick glasses. ‘That is so? Please, then, tell me why you are disinclined to leave them. You have seen a good deal of them?'

Mr Blumen drew in his underlip as if to moisten it with his tongue. He paused; in search of words. ‘Well,' he ventured at last, ‘partly, I suppose, because of those weeds of superstitious fear planted in one's mind when one is young; partly because life
can
be uncommonly entertaining; and partly because I dislike leaving what I have spent a good many years making my own.'

‘Making your own!' echoed the gentle old voice a little drily; though there was a twinkle in its owner's eye. ‘But you will not be ceasing to
think
when we make a start. And surely it is only thoughts, hopes, desires, dreams, and so on that you can really claim as having been made your own.

‘In a sense,' agreed his quarry. ‘But then I'm no Platonist, either. One's friends, one's pursuits, one's possessions' – he made a little gesture with his right hand that till that moment had been reposing in his pocket – ‘surely they are the very proofs of one's
self
that one hungers for. Not of course that they can be permanent; or need be.'

‘Friends are friends,' said the old man. ‘I can understand that. But possessions? I take it, Mr Blumen, that you would include in that category what I see around me. Perhaps you would tell me why you value them so highly. Were there not things less perishable to possess; things that of their own nature would be less inclined to bid
you
good-bye? That old image of Kuan Yin over there, for example, is she any the more or less a symbol than the very ferocious onion-green dragon displaying his tail on that pot yonder? Better both in the imagination, don't you think, Mr Blumen, than – well, round one's neck? Besides, earth-time is fleeting. Was it ever, do you feel, worth while to do more than merely borrow its energies, apart from much else; and be grateful?'

‘To whom?' Mr Blumen blurted.

‘That is a question,' retorted the old man serenely, hugging his hands a little closer under their wide sleeves – ‘that is a question which it would take rather more earth-time than you and I have at our disposal just now to answer.'

The shoulders beneath the neat dinner-jacket slightly lifted themselves. ‘We don't always expect answers to our questions,' he said.

‘Well now, see here,' said the old man, and he vigorously readjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his broad and rather stumpy nose. There are many similar things to these in every house in every neighbouring street, are there not? Is it just the sense of possession that is the charm? Or of being possessed?'

‘Things
similar,
perhaps,' smiled Mr Blumen indulgently. ‘But I need hardly suggest to an adept like yourself that many of the specimens around us at this moment are practically unique. And do you mean to imply, sir, that the beauty and rarity of a thing amount to nothing in what perhaps – whether expressed in earth-time or otherwise – you would agree to call the long run?'

‘Come, come,' said the old man, ‘surely rarity is the reward of a mere acquisitiveness? While as for beauty; indeed, Mr Blumen, in my humble office – a little arduous, too, at times, if I may confess it – there is not much leisure for beauty. Still, I think you will agree that what you and I mean by the word, and so far as we are personally concerned, it depends solely upon the eyes in our heads. And we have a good many, you know. With the exception, too, of the rare flowers on your table – specimens, I suspect, which would hardly be recognized even by their less remote ancestors – everything here, I notice, is – what shall we call it – of human workmanship.'

‘They are works of art,' agreed Mr Blumen. ‘They represent years of human skill, human delight, and human devotion and desire. What have you against them? For that matter what has
he
against them who has so punctually provided me with your company this evening?'

A very sober countenance now scrutinized Mr Blumen – and the old man, as if to suit posture to face, seemed to have composed himself even more heavily in his chair. He gazed hard, but made no answer; then turned his head and almost cautiously surveyed the objects around him as one by one they met his eye.

All the
familles
were there:
noire, verte,
and rose; each of them signally represented by elegant ambassadors, only the more amiable and acceptable for their extreme age. On half a dozen varieties of gods, on fabulous heroes and monsters renowned in old tales, and on exquisite Tanagra figures, and shapes of beast, bird, and fable, made small in priceless images of stone, earthenware, porcelain, enamel, ivory, metal, alighted his gentle glance. The faintly greenish glass on table and sideboard, like colourless and heatless crystal flame, lifted its burden of gimcracks, sweetmeats, and liqueurs, a few inches aloft.

The rugs beneath the old man's mud-stained feet by far excelled in blended colour and design the minute French masterpieces in paint, and the worn, dimmed tapestry that here and there relieved the delicate gilt of the walls and of the few chairs. A smiling cherub disguised as Father Time stood on tiptoe with uplifted scythe above the minute gilt clock, ticking out Mr Blumen's envious moments upon the carved chimney-piece. The fragile peace around him and his visitor indeed was so tenuous it seemed that at any moment it might explode, and shatter itself into its component atoms. When the old man's voice again broke the silence, it was positively as if he himself had shattered in sheer actuality some crystal image lifting itself into the still, elastic air.

‘You would, I believe, Mr Blumen, be surprised,' that voice was murmuring gently, ‘you would be surprised at the range of humanity that lies reflected around us. Here and there our company – and, as you well know, whatever a man does is to some extent a mirror of what he is: here and there (and forgive me for confessing it) that company, I say, is detestable to the last degree. You will be well rid of it. There are poisons that enter by the eye as well as in the blood. What is even worse – except for that moth searching the shadows over there, whose presence no doubt is explained by my poor company – I perceive here no faintest sign of life. Of life, I mean, here and now.'

A thin dark cloud had mounted into Mr Blumen's pallid face. ‘If you had consented to delay your visit even by half an hour,' he retorted, with a contemptuous gesture towards the two chairs drawn up to the table, ‘your last remark would hardly have been to the point.'

‘Do not misdoubt me,' replied his visitor courteously. ‘I have no very acute intelligence. But I have heard the rumours of busy domestic sounds from below; and I detect preparations for a visitor. But I meant by life a happy freedom of the spirit rather than mere amusement of the body. A life
delighted
in.'