“I don’t think there are many men who would have stayed in that hell for two long years when they could get away, for the sake of a friend.”
The man chuckled.
“You see, over there time is just the opposite of money; there a little money is a great deal and a lot of time is nothing very much. While six sous is a sum that you hoard as if it was a fortune, two years is a period that’s hardly worth talking about.”
Lydia sighed deeply. It was plain of what she was thinking.
“Berger isn’t there for so long, is he?”
“Fifteen years.”
There was a silence. One could see that Lydia was making a great effort to control her emotion, but when she spoke there was a break in her voice.
“Did you see him?”
“Yes. I talked to him. We were in hospital together. I went in to have my appendix out, I didn’t want to get back to France and have trouble with it here. He’d been working on the road they’re making from St. Laurent to Cayenne and he got a bad go of malaria.”
“I didn’t know. I’ve had one letter from him, but he said nothing about it.”
“Out there everyone has malaria sooner or later. It’s not worth making a song and dance about. He’s lucky to have got it so soon. The chief medical officer took a fancy to him, he’s an educated man, Berger, and there aren’t many of them. They were going to apply to get him transferred to the hospital service when he recovered. He’ll be all right there.”
“Marcel told me last night that he’d given you a message for me.”
“Yes, he gave me an address.” He took a bundle of papers out of his pocket and gave Lydia a scrap on which something was written. “If you can send any money, send it there. But remember that he’ll only get half what you send.”
Lydia took the bit of paper, looked at it, and put it in her bag.
“Anything else?”
“Yes. He said you weren’t to worry. He said it wasn’t so bad as it might be, and he was finding his feet and he’d make out all right. And that’s true, you know. He’s no fool. He won’t make many mistakes. He’s a chap who’ll make the best of a bad job. You’ll see, he’ll be happy enough.”
“How can he be happy?”
“It’s funny what one can get used to. He’s a bit of a wag, isn’t he? He used to make us laugh at some of the things he said. He’s a rare one for seeing the funny side of things, there’s no mistake about that.”
Lydia was very pale. She looked down in silence. The elder man turned to his friend.
“What was that funny thing I told you he’d said about that cove in the hospital who cut his blasted throat?”
“Oh, I remember. Now what was it? It’s clean gone out of my mind, but I know it made me laugh my head off.”
A long silence fell. There seemed nothing more to say. Lydia was pensive; and the two men sat limp on their chairs, their eyes vacant, like the mechanical dolls they sell on the Boulevard Montparnasse which gyrate, rocking, round and round and then on a sudden stop dead. Lydia sighed.
“I think that’s about all,” she said. “Thank you for coming. I hope you’ll get the job you’re looking for.”
“The Salvation Army are doing what they can for us. I expect something will turn up.”
Charley fished his note-case out of his pocket.
“I don’t suppose you’re very flush. I’d like to give you something to help you along till you find work.”
“It would be useful,” the man smiled pleasantly. “The Army doesn’t do much but give one board and lodging.”
Charley handed them five hundred francs.
“Give it to the kid to take care of. He’s got the saving disposition of the peasant he is, he sweats blood when he has to spend money, and he can make five francs go farther than any old woman in the world.”
They went out of the café, the four of them, and shook hands. During the hour they had spent together the two men had lost their shyness, but when they got out into the street it seized them again. They seemed to shrink as though they desired to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible, and looked furtively to right and left as if afraid that someone would pounce upon them. They walked off side by side, with bent heads, and after another quick glance backward slunk round the nearest corner.
“I suppose it’s only prejudice on my part,” said Charley, “but I’m bound to say that I didn’t feel very much at my ease in that company.”
Lydia made no reply. They walked along the boulevard in silence; they lunched in silence. Lydia was immersed in thought the nature of which he could guess and he felt that any attempt on his part at small talk would be unwelcome. Besides, he had thoughts of his own to occupy him. The conversation they had had with the two convicts, the questions Lydia asked, had revived the suspicion which Simon had sown in his mind and which, though he had tried to put it aside, had since then lurked in his consciousness like the musty smell of a long closed room which no opening of windows can quite dispel. It worried him, not so much because he minded being made a fool of, as because he did not want to think that Lydia was a liar and a hypocrite.
“I’m going along to see Simon,” he said when they had finished luncheon. “I came over largely to see him and I’ve hardly had a glimpse of him. I ought at least to go and say good-bye.”
“Yes, I suppose you ought.”
He also wanted to return to Simon the newspaper cuttings and the article which he had lent him. He had them in his pocket.
“If you want to spend the afternoon with your Russian friends, I’ll drive you there first if you like.”
“No, I’ll go back to the hotel.”
“I don’t suppose I shall be back till late. You know what Simon is when he gets talking. Won’t you be bored by yourself?”
“I’m not used to so much consideration,” she smiled. “No, I shan’t be bored. It’s not often I have the chance to be alone. To sit in a room by oneself and to know that no one can come in—why, I can’t imagine a greater luxury.”
They parted and Charley walked to Simon’s. He knew that at that hour he stood a good chance of finding him in. Simon opened the door on his ring. He was in pyjamas and a dressing-gown.
“Hulloa! I thought you might breeze along. I didn’t have to go out this morning, so I didn’t dress!”
He hadn’t shaved and he looked as though he hadn’t washed either. His long straight hair was in disorder. By the bleak light that came through the north window his restless, angry eyes looked coal-black in his white thin face and there were dark shadows beneath them.
“Sit down,” he continued. “I’ve got a good fire to-day and the studio’s warm.”
It was, but it was as forlorn, cheerless and unswept as before.
“Is the love affair still going strong?”
“I’ve just left Lydia.”
“You’re going back to London to-morrow, aren’t you? Don’t let her sting you too much. There’s no reason why you should help to get her rotten husband out of jug.”
Charley took the cuttings from his pocket.
“By your article I judged that you had a certain amount of sympathy for him.”
“Sympathy, no. I found him interesting just because he was such an unmitigated, cold-blooded, unscrupulous cad. I admired his nerve. In other circumstances he might have been a useful instrument. In a revolution a man like that who’ll stick at nothing, who has courage and no scruples, may be invaluable.”
“I shouldn’t have thought a very reliable instrument.”
“Wasn’t it Danton who said that in a revolution it’s the scum of society, the rogues and criminals, who rise to the surface? It’s natural. They’re needed for certain work and when they’ve served their purpose they can be disposed of.”
“You seem to have it all cut and dried, old boy,” said Charley, with a cheerful grin.
Simon impatiently shrugged his bony shoulders.
“I’ve studied the French Revolution and the Commune. The Russian
s did too and they learnt a lot from them, but we’ve got the advantage now that we can profit by the lessons we’ve learnt from subsequent events. They made a bad mess of things in Hungary, but they made a pretty good job of it in Russia and they didn’t do so badly either in Italy or in Germany. If we’ve got any sense we ought to be able to emulate their success, but avoid their mistakes. Bela Kun’s revolution failed because people were hungry. The rise of the proletariat has made it comparatively simple to make a revolution, but the proletariat must be fed. Organization is needed to see that means of transport are adequate and food supplies abundant. That incidentally is why power, which the proletariat thought to seize by making the revolution, must always elude their grasp and fall into the hands of a small body of intelligent leaders. The people are incapable of governing themselves. The proletariat are slaves and slaves need masters.”
“You would hardly describe yourself any longer as a good democrat, I take it,” said Charley with a twinkle in his blue eyes.
Simon impatiently dismissed the ironical remark.
“Democracy is moonshine. It’s an unrealizable ideal which the propagandist dangles before the masses as you dangle a carrot before a donkey. Those great watchwords of the nineteenth century, liberty, equality, fraternity, are pure hokum. Liberty? The mass of men don’t need liberty and don’t know what to do with it when they’ve got it. Their duty and their pleasure is to serve; thus they attain the security which is their deepest want. It’s been decided long ago that the only liberty worth anything is the liberty to do right, and right is decided by might. Right is an idea occasioned by public opinion and prescribed by law, but public opinion is created by those who have the power to enforce their point of view, and the only sanction of law is the might behind it. Fraternity? What do you mean by fraternity?”
Charley considered the question for a moment.
“Well, I don’t know. I suppose it’s a feeling that we’re all members of one great family and we’re here on earth for so short a time, it’s better to make the best of one another.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, only that life is a difficult job, and it probably makes it easier for everybody if we’re kind and decent to one another. Men have plenty of faults, but there’s a lot of good in them. The more you know people the nicer you find they are. That rather suggests that if you give them a chance they’ll meet you half way.”
“Tosh, my dear boy, tosh. You’re a sentimental fool. In the first place it’s not true that people improve as you know them better: they don’t. That’s why one should only have acquaintances and never make friends. An acquaintance shows you only the best of himself, he’s considerate and polite, he conceals his defects behind a mask of social convention; but grow so intimate with him that he throws the mask aside, get to know him so well that he doesn’t trouble any longer to pretend; then you’ll discover a being of such meanness, of such a trivial nature, of such weakness, of such corruption, that you’d be aghast if you didn’t realize that that was his nature and it was just as stupid to condemn him as to condemn the wolf because he ravens or the cobra because he strikes. For the essence of man is egoism. Egoism is at once his strength and his weakness. Oh, I’ve got to know men pretty well during the two years I’ve spent in the newspaper world. Vain, petty, unscrupulous, avaricious, double-faced and abject, they’ll betray one another, not even for their own advantage, but from sheer malice. There’s no trick they won’t descend to in order to queer a rival’s pitch; there’s no humiliation they won’t accept to obtain a title or an order; and not only politicians; lawyers, doctors, merchants, artists, men of letters. And their craving for publicity; they’ll cringe and flatter a twopenny-halfpenny journalist to get a good press. Rich men will hesitate at no shabby dodge to make a few pounds that they have no use for. Honesty, political honesty, commercial honesty—the only thing that counts with them is what they can get away with; the only thing that restrains them is fear. For they’re craven. And the protestations they make, the high-flown humbug that falls from their lips, the shameless lies they tell themselves. Oh, believe me, you can’t do the work I’ve been doing since I left Cambridge and preserve many illusions about human nature. Men are vile. Cowards and hypocrites. I loathe them.”
Charley looked down. He was a little shy about saying what he wanted to. It sounded rather silly.
“Haven’t you any pity for them?”
“Pity? Pity is womanish. Pity is what the beggar entreats of you because he hasn’t the guts, the industry and the brains to make a decent living. Pity is the flattery the failure craves so that he may preserve his self-esteem. Pity is the cheap blackmail that the prosperous pay to the down-and-out so that they may enjoy their own prosperity with a better conscience.”
Simon drew his dressing-gown angrily round his thin body. Charley recognized it as an old one of his which he had been going to throw away when Simon asked if he could have it; he had laughed and said he would give him a new one, but Simon, saying it was quite good enough for him, had insisted on having it. Charley wondered uncomfortably if he resented the trifling gift. Simon went on:
“Equality? Equality is the greatest nonsense that’s ever muddled the intelligence of the human race. As if men were equal or could be equal! They talk of equality of opportunity. Why should men have that when they can’t take advantage of it? Men are born unequal; different in character, in vitality, in brain; and no equality of opportunity can offset that. The vast majority are densely stupid. Credulous, shallow, feckless, why should they be given equality of opportunity with those who have character, intelligence, industry and force? And it’s that natural inequality of man that knocks the bottom out of democracy. What a stupid farce it is to govern a country by the counting of millions of empty heads! In the first place they don’t know what’s good for them and in the second, they haven’t the capacity to get the good they want. What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily, self-seeking politicians. A democracy is ruled by words, and the orator seldom has brains, and if he has, he hasn’t time to use them, since all his energy has to be given to cajoling the fools on whose votes he depends. Democracy has had a hundred years’ trial: theoretically it was always absurd, and now we know that practically it’s a wash-out.”
“Notwithstanding which you propose, if you can, to get into parliament. You’re a very dishonest fellow, my poor Simon.”
“In an old-fashioned country like England, which cherishes its established institutions, it would be impossible to gain sufficient power to carry out one’s plans except from within those institutions. I don’t suppose anyone could gain support in the country and gather round himself an adequate band of followers to effect a coup d’état unless he were a prominent member of one of the great parties in the House of Commons. And since an upheaval can only be effected by means of the people it would have to be the Labour party. Even when the conditions are ripe for revolution the possessing classes still retain enough of their privileges to make it worth their while to make the best of a bad job.”
“What conditions have you in mind? Defeat in war and economic distress?”
“Exactly. Even then the possessing classes only suffer relatively. They put down their cars or close their country houses, thus adding to unemployment, but not greatly inconveniencing themselves. But the people starve. Then they will listen to you when you tell them they have nothing to lose but their chains, and when you dangle before them the bait of other people’s property the greed, the envy, which they’ve had to repress because they had no means of gratifying them, are let loose. With liberty and equality as your watchwords you can lead them to the attack. The history of the last five-and-twenty years shows that they’re bound to win. The possessing classes are enervated by their possessions, they’re humanitarian and sentimental, they have neither the will nor the courage to defend themselves; their counsels are divided, and when their only chance is in immediate and ruthless action they waste their t
ime in recrimination. But the mob, which is the instrument of the revolutionary leaders, is a thing not of reason but of instinct, it is amenable to hypnotic suggestion and you can rouse it to frenzy by catchwords; it is an entity, and so is indifferent to the death in its ranks of such as fall; it knows neither pity nor mercy. It rejoices in destruction because in destruction it becomes conscious of its own power.
“I suppose you wouldn’t deny that that entails the killing of thousands of inoffensive people and the destruction of institutions that have taken hundreds of years to build up.”
“There’s bound to be destruction in a revolution and there’s bound to be killing. Engels said years ago that the possessing classes must be expected to resist suppression by every means in their power. It’s a fight to the death. Democracy has attached an absurd importance to human life. Morally man is worthless and it’s no loss to suppress him. Biologically he’s of no consequence; there’s no more reason why it should shock you to kill a man than to swat a fly.”
“I begin to see why you were interested in Robert Berger.”
“I was interested in him because he killed, not for any sordid motive, not for money, nor jealousy, but to prove himself and affirm his power.”
“Of course it remains to be proved that communism is practicable.”
“Communism? Who talked of communism? Everyone knows now that communism is a wash-out. It was the dream of impractical idealists who knew nothing of the realities of life. Communism is the lure you offer to the working classes to rouse them to revolt just as the cry of liberty and equality is the slogan with which you fire them to dare. Throughout the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be. And it’s right that it should be so because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves; they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.”
“That’s rather a startling assertion.”
“It’s not mine, old boy,” Simon answered ironically. “It’s Plato’s, but the history of the world since he made it has amply demonstrated its truth. What has been the result of the revolutions we’ve seen in our own lifetime? The people haven’t lost their masters, they’ve only changed them, and nowhere has authority been wielded with a more iron hand than under communism.”