CHAPTER VIII
July 4th.
Judith has come back. I have seen her and I have explained
Carlotta.
All day long I felt like a respectable person about to be brought
before a magistrate for being drunk and disorderly. Now I have
the uneasy satisfaction of having been let off with a caution. I
am innocent, but I mustn't do it again.
As soon as I entered the room Judith embraced me, and said a
number of foolish things. I responded to the best of my ability.
It is not usual for our quiet lake of affection to be visited by
such tornadoes.
"Oh, I am glad, I am glad to be back with you again. I have
longed for you. I couldn't write it. I did not know I could
long for any one so much."
"I have missed you immensely, my dear Judith," said I.
She looked at me queerly for a moment; then with a radiant smile:
"I love you for not going into transports like a Frenchman. Oh,
I am tired of Frenchmen. You are my good English Marcus, and
worth all masculine Paris put together."
"I thank you, my dear, for the compliment," said I, "but surely
you must exaggerate."
"To me you are worth the masculine universe," said Judith, and
she seated me by her side on the sofa, held my hands, and said
more foolish things.
When the tempest had abated, I laughed.
"It is you that have acquired the art of transports in Paris,"
said I.
"Perhaps I have. Shall I teach you?"
"You will have to learn moderation, my dear Judith," I remarked.
"You have been living too rapidly of late and are looking tired."
"It is only the journey," she replied.
I am sure it is the unaccustomed dissipation. Judith is not a
strong woman, and late hours and eternal gadding about do not
suit her constitution. She has lost weight and there are faint
circles under her eyes. There are lines, too, on her face which
only show in hours of physical strain. I was proceeding to
expound this to her at some length, for I consider it well for
women to have some one to counsel them frankly in such matters,
when she interrupted me with a gesture of impatience.
"There, there! Tell me what you have been doing with yourself.
Your letters gave me very little information."
"I am afraid," said I, "I am a poor letter writer."
"I read each ten times over," she said.
I kissed her hand in acknowledgment. Then I rose, lit a
cigarette and walked about the room. Judith shook out her skirts
and settled herself comfortably among the sofa-cushions.
"Well, what crimes have you been committing the past few weeks?"
A wandering minstrel was harping "Love's Sweet Dream" outside the
public-house below. I shut the window, hastily.
"Nothing so bad as that," said I. "He ought to be hung and his
wild harp hung behind him."
"You are developing nerves," said Judith. "Is it a guilty
conscience?" She laughed. "You are hiding something from me.
I've been aware of it all the time."
"Indeed? How?"
"By the sixth sense of woman!"
Confound the sixth sense of woman! I suppose it has been
developed like a cat's whiskers to supply the deficiency of a
natural scent. Also, like the whiskers, it is obtrusive, and a
matter for much irritatingly complacent pride. Judith regarded
me with a mock magisterial air, and I was put into the dock at
once.
"Something has happened," I said, desperately. "A female woman
has come and taken up her residence at 26 Lingfield Terrace. A
few weeks ago she ate with her fingers and believed the earth was
flat. I found her in the Victoria Embankment Gardens beneath the
terrace of the National Liberal Club, and now she lives on
chocolate creams and the 'Child's Guide to Knowledge.' She is
eighteen and her name is Carlotta. There!"
As my cigarette had gone out, I threw it with some peevishness
into the grate. Judith's expression had changed from mock to
real gravity. She sat bolt upright and looked at me somewhat
stonily.
"What in the world do you mean, Marcus?"
"What I say. I'm saddled with the responsibility of a child of
nature as unsophisticated and perplexing as Voltaire's Huron.
She's English and she came from a harem in Syria, and she is as
beautiful as the houris she believes in and is unfortunately
precluded from joining. One of these days I shall be teaching
her her catechism. I have already washed her face. Kindly pity
me as the innocent victim of fantastic circumstances."
"I don't see why I should pity you," said Judith.
I felt I had not explained Carlotta tactfully. If there are ten
ways of doing a thing I have noticed that I invariably select the
one way that is wrong. I perceived that somehow or other the
very contingency I had feared had come to pass. I had prejudiced
Judith against Carlotta. I had aroused the Ishmaelite--her hand
against every woman and every woman's hand against her--that
survives in all her sex.
"My dear Judith," said I, "if a wicked fairy godmother had
decreed that a healthy rhinoceros should be my housemate you
would have extended me your sympathy. But because Fate has
inflicted on me an equally embarrassing guest in the shape of a
young woman--"
"My dear Marcus," interrupted Judith, "the healthy rhinoceros
would know twenty times as much about women as you do." This I
consider one of the silliest remarks Judith has ever made. "
Do," she continued, "tell me something coherent about this young
person you call Carlotta."
I told the story from beginning to end.
"But why in the world did you keep it from me?" she asked.
"I mistrusted the sixth sense of woman," said I.
"The most elementary sense of woman or any one else would have
told you that you were doing a very foolish thing."
"How would you have acted?"
"I should have handed her over at once to the Turkish consulate."
"Not if you had seen her eyes."
Judith tossed her head. "Men are all alike," she observed.
"On the contrary," said I, "that which characterises men as a sex
is their greater variation from type than women. It is a
scientific fact. You will find it stated by Darwin and more
authoritatively still by later writers. The highest common
factor of a hundred women is far greater than that of a hundred
men. The abnormal is more frequent in the male sex. There are
more male monsters."
"That I can quite believe," snapped Judith.
"Then you agree with me that men are not all alike?"
"I certainly don't. Put any one of you before a pretty face and
a pair of silly girl's eyes and he is a perfect idiot."
"My dear Judith," said I, "I don't care a hang for a pretty face-
-except yours."
"Do you really care about mine?" she asked wistfully.
"My dear," said I, dropping on one knee by the sofa, and taking
her hand, "I've been longing for it for six weeks." And I
counted the weeks on her fingers.
This put her in a good humour. Now that I come to think of it,
there is something adorably infantile in grown up women. Shall
man ever understand them? I have seen babies (not many, I am
glad to say) crow with delight at having their toes pulled, with a
"this little pig went to market," and so forth; Judith almost
crowed at having the weeks told off on her fingers. Queer!
An hour was taken up with the account of her doings in Paris.
She had met all the nicest and naughtiest people. She had been
courted and flattered. An artist in a slouch hat, baggy corduroy
breeches, floppy tie and general 1830 misfit had made love to her
on the top of the Eiffel Tower.
"And he said," laughed Judith, "'_Partons ensemble. Comme on dit
en Anglais_--fly with me!' I remarked that our state when we got
to the Champs de Mars would be an effective disguise. He didn't
understand, and it was delicious!"
I laughed. "All the same," I observed, "I can't see the fun of
making jokes which the person to whom you make them doesn't see
the point of."
"Why, that's your own peculiar form of humour," she retorted. "I
caught the trick from you."
Perhaps she is right. I have noticed that people are slow in
their appreciation of my witticisms. I must really be a very
dull dog. If she were not fond of me I don't see how a bright
woman like Judith could tolerate my society for half an hour.
I don't think I contribute to the world's humour; but the world's
humour contributes much to my own entertainment, and things which
appear amusing to me do not appeal, when I point them out, to the
risible faculties of another. Every individual, I suppose, like
every civilisation, must have his own standard of humour. If I
were a Roman (instead of an English) Epicurean, I should have
died with laughter at the sight of a fat Christian martyr
scudding round the arena while chased by a hungry lion. At
present I should faint with horror. Indeed, I always feel
tainted with savagery and enjoying a vicarious lust, when I smile
at the oft-repeated tale of the poor tiger in Dore's picture that
hadn't got a Christian. On the other hand, it tickles me
immensely to behold a plethoric commonplace Briton roar himself
purple with impassioned platitude at a political meeting; but I
perceive that all my neighbours take him with the utmost
seriousness. Again, your literary journalist professes to
wriggle in his chair over the humour of Jane Austen; to me she is
the dullest lady that ever faithfully photographed the trivial.
Years ago I happened to be crossing Putney Bridge, in a frock-
coat and silk hat, when a passing member of the proletariat dug
his elbows in his comrade's ribs and, quoting a music-hall tag of
the period, shouted "He's got 'em on!" whereupon both burst into
peals of robustious but inane laughter. Now, if I had turned to
them, and said, "He would be funnier if I hadn't," and
paraphrased, however wittily, Carlyle's ironical picture of a
nude court of St. James's, they would have punched my head under
the confused idea that I was trying to bamboozle them. Which
brings me to my point of departure, my remark to Judith as to the
futility of jesting to unpercipient ears.
I did not take up her retort.
"And what was the end of the romance?" I asked.
"He borrowed twenty francs of me to pay for the _dejeuner_, and
his _l'annee trente_ delicacy of soul compelled him to blot my
existence forever from his mind."
"He never repaid you?" I asked.
"For a humouristic philosopher," cried Judith, "you are
delicious!"
Judith is too fond of that word "delicious." She uses it in
season and out of season.
We have the richest language that ever a people has accreted, and
we use it as if it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite
wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech
dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the
misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies
and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we
heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter sixpence into
his hat.
I said something of the sort to Judith, after she had resumed her
seat and I had opened the window, the minstrel having wandered to
the next hostelry, where the process of converting "Love's Sweet
Dream" into a nightmare was still faintly audible. Judith looked
at me whimsically, as I stood breathing the comparatively fresh
air and enjoying the relative silence.
"You are still the same, I am glad to see. Conversation with the
young savage from Syria hasn't altered you in the least."
"In the first place," said I, "savages do not grow in Syria; and
in the second, how could she have altered me?"
"If the heavens were to open and the New Jerusalem to appear this
moment before you," retorted Judith, with the relevant
irrelevance of her sex, "you would begin an unconcerned
disquisition on the iconography of angels."
I sat on the sofa end and touched one of her little pink ears.
She has pretty ears. They were the first of things physical
about her that attracted me to her years ago in the Roman
pension--they and the mass of silken flax that is her hair, and
her violet eyes.
"Did you learn that particular way of talking in Paris?" I asked.
She had the effrontery to say she was imitating me and that it
was a very good imitation indeed.
We talked about the book. I touched upon the great problem that
requires solution--the harmonising and justifying of the
contradictory opposites in Renaissance character: Fra Lippo Lippi
breaking his own vows and breaking a nun's for her; Perugino
leading his money-grubbing, morose life and painting ethereal
saints and madonnas in his _bottega_, while the Baglioni filled
the streets outside with slaughter; Lorenzo de' Medici bleeding
literally and figuratively his fellow-citizens, going from that
occupation to his Platonic Academy and disputing on the
immortality of the soul, winding up with orgies of sensual
depravity with his boon companion Pulci, and all the time making
himself an historic name for statecraft; Pope Sixtus IV, at the
very heart of the Pazzi conspiracy to murder the Medici--
"And Pope Nicholas V when drunk ordering a man to be executed,
and being sorry for it when sober," said Judith.
It is wonderful how Judith, with her quite unspecialised
knowledge of history can now and then put her finger upon
something vital. I have been racking my brain and searching my
library for the past two or three days for an illustration of
just that nature. I had not thought of it. Here is Tomaso da
Sarzana, a quiet, retired schoolmaster, like myself, an editor of
classical texts, a peaceful librarian of Cosmo de' Medici, a
scholar and a gentleman to the tips of his fingers; he is made
Pope, a King Log to save the cardinalate from a possible King
Stork Colonna; the Porcari conspiracy breaks out, is discovered
and the conspirators are hunted over Italy and put to death; a
gentleman called Anguillara is slightly inculpated; he is invited
to Rome by Nicholas, and given a safe-conduct; when he arrives
the Pope is drunk (at least Stefano Infessura, the contemporary
diarist, says so); the next morning his Holiness finds to his
surprise and annoyance that the gentleman's head has been cut off
by his orders. It is an amazing tale. To realise how amazing it
is, one must picture the fantastic possibility of it happening at
the Vatican nowadays. And the most astounding thing is this:
that if all the dead and gone popes were alive, and the soul of
the saintly Pontiff of to-day were to pass from him, the one who
could most undetected occupy his simulacrum would be this very
Thomas of Sarzana.
"Pardon me, my dear Judith," said I. "But this is a story lying
somewhat up one of the back-waters of history. Where did you
come across it?"
"I saw it the other day in a French comic paper," replied Judith.
I really don't know which to admire the more: the inconsequent
way in which the French toss about scholarship, or the marvellous
power of assimilation possessed by Judith.
Before we separated she returned to the subject of Carlotta.
"Am I to see this young creature?" she asked.
"That is just as you choose," said I.
"Oh! as far as I am concerned, my dear Marcus, I am perfectly
indifferent," replied Judith, assuming the supercilious
expression with which women invariably try to mask inordinate
curiosity.
"Then," said I, with a touch of malice, "there is no reason why
you should make her acquaintance."
"I should be able to see through her tricks and put you on your
guard."
"Against what?"
She shrugged her shoulders as if it were vain to waste breath on
so obtuse a person.
"You had better bring her round some afternoon," she said.
Have I acted wisely in confessing Carlotta to Judith? And why do
I use the word "confess"? Far from having committed an evil
action, I consider I have exhibited exemplary altruism. Did I
want a "young savage from Syria" to come and interfere with my
perfectly ordered life? Judith does not realise this. I had a
presentiment of the prejudice she would conceive against the poor
girl, and now it has been verified. I wish I had held my tongue.
As Judith, for some feminine reason known only to herself, has
steadily declined to put her foot inside my house, she might very
well have remained unsuspicious of Carlotta's existence. And why
not? The fact of the girl being my pensioner does not in the
least affect the personality which I bring to Judith. The idea
is absurd. Why wasn't I wise before the event? I might have
spared myself considerable worry.
A letter from my Aunt Jessica enclosing a card for a fancy dress
ball at the Empress Rooms. The preposterous lady!
"Do come. It is not right for a young man to lead the life of a
recluse of seventy. Here we are in the height of the London
season, and I am sure you haven't been into ten houses, when a
hundred of the very best are open to you--" I loathe the term
"best houses." The tinsel ineptitude of them! For entertainment
I really would sooner attend a mothers' meeting or listen to the
serious British Drama--Have I read so and so's novel? Am I going
to Mrs. Chose's dance? Do I ride in the Park? Do I know young
Thingummy of the Guards, who is going to marry Lady Betty
Something? What do I think of the Academy? As if one could have
any sentiment with regard to the Academy save regret at such
profusion of fresh paint! "You want shaking up," continued my
aunt. Silly woman! If there is a thing I should abhor it would
be to be shaken up. "Come and dine with us at seven-thirty _in
costume_, and I'll promise you a delightful time. And think how
proud the girls would be of showing off their _beau cousin_." _Et
patiti et patita._ I am again reminded that I owe it to my
position, my title. God ha' mercy on us! To bedeck myself like
a decayed mummer in a booth and frisk about in a pestilential
atmosphere with a crowd of strange and uninteresting young
females is the correct way of fulfilling the obligations that the
sovereign laid upon the successors to the title, when he
conferred the dignity of a baronetcy on my great-grandfather!
Now I come to think of it the Prince Regent was that sovereign,
and my ancestor did things for him at Brighton. Perhaps after
all there is a savage irony of truth in Aunt Jessica's
suggestion!
And a _beau cousin_ should I be indeed. What does she think I
would go as? A mousquetaire? or a troubadour in blue satin
trunks and cloak, white silk tights and shoes and a Grecian
helmet, like Mr. Snodgrass at Mrs. Leo Hunter's _fete champetre?_
I wish I could fathom Aunt Jessica's reasons for her attempts at
involving me in her social mountebankery. If the girls get no
better dance-partners than me, heaven help them!
Only a fortnight ago I drove with them to Hurlingham. My aunt
and Gwendolen disappeared in an unaccountable manner with another
man, leaving me under an umbrella tent to take charge of Dora. I
had an hour and a half of undiluted Dora. The dose was too
strong, and it made my head ache. I think I prefer neat
Carlotta.
