CHAPTER VI
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 Gr„fin 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 Gr„fin 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 Gr„fin 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 thingl" 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.
