He lit his pipe again, smiling to himself quietly, with that painful smile of his, as though he were enjoying a joke that hurt him. Charley had several things to say, but did not know how to put them so that they should not sound affected and so arouse Simon’s irony.
“But is it your wish to cut human relations out of your life altogether?” he asked, uncertainly.
“Altogether. I’ve got to be free. I daren’t let another person get a hold over me. That’s why I turned out the little sempstress. She was the most dangerous of the lot. She was gentle and affectionate. She had the meekness of the poor who have never dreamt that life can be other than hard. I could never have loved her, but I knew that her gratitude, her adoration, her desire to please, her innocent cheerfulness, were dangerous. I could see that she might easily become a habit of which I couldn’t break myself. Nothing in the world is so insidious as a woman’s flattery; our need for it is so enormous that we become her slave. I must be as impervious to flattery as I am indifferent to abuse. There’s nothing that binds one to a woman like the benefits one confers on her. She would have owed me everything, that girl, I should never have been able to escape from her.”
“But, Simon, you have human passions like the rest of us. You’re twenty-three.”
“And my sexual desires are urgent? Less urgent than you imagine. When you work from twelve to sixteen hours a day and sleep on an average six, when you content yourself with one meal a day, much as it may surprise you, your desires are much attenuated. Paris is singularly well arranged for the satisfaction of the sexual instinct at moderate expense and with the least possible waste of time, and when I find that my appetite is interfering with my work I have a woman just as when I’m constipated I take a purge.”
Charley’s clear blue eyes twinkled with amusement and a charming smile parting his lips displayed his strong white teeth.
“Aren’t you missing a lot of fun? You know, one’s young for such a little while.”
“I may be. I know one can do nothing in the world unless one’s single-minded. Chesterfield said the last word about sexual congress: the pleasure is momentary, the position is ridiculous, and the expense is damnable. It may be an instinct that one can’t suppress, but the man’s a pitiful fool who allows it to divert him from his chosen path. I’m not afraid of it any more. In a few more years I shall be entirely free from its temptation.”
“Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even to the most prudent men.”
Simon gave him a strange, one might even have thought a hostile, look.
“I should tear it out of my heart as I’d wrench out of my mouth a rotten tooth.”
“That’s easier said than done.”
“I know. Nothing that’s worth doing is done easily, but that’s one of the odd things about man, if his self-preservation is concerned, if he has to do something on which his being depends, he can find in himself the strength to do it.”
Charley was silent. If anyone else had spoken to him as Simon had done that evening he would have thought it a pose adopted to impress. Charley had heard during his three years at Cambridge enough extravagant talk to be able, with his common sense and quiet humour, to attach no more importance to it than it deserved. But he knew that Simon never talked for effect. He was too contemptuous of his fellows’ opinion to extort their admiration by taking up an attitude in which he did not believe. He was fearless and sincere. When he said that he thought this and that, you could be certain that he did, and when he said he had done that and the other you need not hesitate to believe that he had. But just as the manner of life that Simon had described seemed to Charley morbid and unnatural, so the ideas he expressed with a fluency that showed they were well considered seemed to him outrageous and horrible. He noticed that Simon had avoided saying what was the end for which he was thus so sternly disciplining himself; but at Cambridge he had been violently communist and it was natural to suppose that he was training himself to play his part in the revolution they had then, all of them, anticipated in the near future. Charley, much more concerned with the arts, had listened with interest, but without feeling that the matter was any particular affair of his, to the heated arguments he heard in Simon’s rooms. If he had been obliged to state his views on a subject to which he had never given much thought, he would have agreed with his father: whatever might happen on the Continent there was no danger of communism in England; the hash they’d made in Russia showed it was impracticable; there always had been rich and poor in the world and there always would be; the English working man was too shrewd to let himself be led away by a lot of irresponsible agitators; and after all he didn’t have a bad time.
Simon went on. He was eager to deliver himself of thoughts that he had bottled up for many months and he had been used to impart them to Charley for as long as he could remember. Though he reflected upon them with the intensity which was one of his great gifts, he found that they gained in clearness and force when he had this perfect listener to put them to.
“An awful lot of hokum is talked about love, you know. An importance is ascribed to it that is entirely at variance with fact. People talk as though it were self-evidently the greatest of human values. Nothing is less self-evident. Until Plato dressed his sentimental sensuality in a captivating literary form the ancient world laid no more stress on it than was sensible; the healthy realism of the Muslims has never looked upon it as anything but a physical need; it was Christianity, buttressing its emotional claims with neo-Platonism, that made it into the end an aim, the reason, the justification of life. But Christianity was the religion of slaves. It offered the weary and the heavy-laden heaven to compensate them in the future for their misery in this world and the opiate of love to enable them to bear it in the present. And like every drug it enervated and destroyed those who became subject to it. For two thousand years it’s suffocated us. It’s weakened our wills and lessened our courage. In this modern world we live in we know that almost everything is more important to us than love, we know that only the soft and the stupid allow it to affect their actions, and yet we pay it a foolish lip-service. In books, on the stage, in the pulpit, on the platform the same old sentimental rubbish is talked that was used to hoodwink the slaves of Alexandria.”
“But, Simon, the slave population of the ancient world was just the proletariat of to-day.”
Simon’s lips trembled with a smile and the look he fixed on Charley made him feel that he had said a silly thing.
“I know,” said Simon quietly.
For a while his restless eyes were still, but though he looked at Charley his gaze seemed fixed on something in the far distance. Charley did not know of what he thought, but he was conscious of a faint malaise.
“It may be that the habit of two thousand years has made love a human necessity and in that case it must be taken into account. But if dope must be administered the best person to do so is surely not a dope-fiend. If love can be put to some useful purpose it can only be by someone who is himself immune to it.”
“You don’t seem to want to tell me what end you expect to attain by denying yourself everything that makes life pleasant. I wonder if any end can be worth it.”
“What have you been doing with yourself for the last year, Charley?”
The sudden question seemed inconsequent, but he answered it with his usual modest frankness.
“Nothing very much, I’m afraid. I’ve been going to the office pretty well every day; I’ve spent a certain amount of time on the Estate getting to know the properties and all that sort of thing: I’ve played golf with father. He likes to get in a round two or three days a week. And I’ve kept up with my piano-playing. I’ve been to a good many concerts. I’ve seen most of the picture shows. I’ve been to the opera a bit and seen a certain number of plays.”
“You’ve had a thoroughly good time?”
“Not bad. I’ve enjoyed myself.”
“And what
d’you expect to do next year?”
“More or less the same, I should think.”
“And the year after, and the year after that?”
“I suppose in a few years I shall get married and then my father will retire and hand over his job to me. It brings in a thousand a year, not so bad in these days, and of course eventually I shall get my half of my father’s share in the Mason Estate.”
“And then you’ll lead the sort of life your father has led before you?”
“Unless the Labour party confiscate the Mason Estate. Then of course I shall be in the cart. But until then I’m quite prepared to do my little job and have as much fun as I can on the income I’ve got.”
“And when you die will it have mattered a damn whether you ever lived or not?”
For a moment the unexpected question disconcerted Charley and he flushed.
“I don’t suppose it will.”
“Are you satisfied with that?”
“To tell you the truth I’ve never thought about it. But if you ask me point-blank, I think I should be a fool if I weren’t. I could never have become a great artist. I talked it over with father that summer after I came down when we went fishing in Norway. He put it awfully nicely. Poor old dear, he was very anxious not to hurt my feelings, but I couldn’t help admitting that what he said was true. I’ve got a natural facility for doing things, I can paint a bit and write a bit and play a bit, perhaps I might have had a chance if I’d only been able to do one thing; but it was only a facility. Father was quite right when he said that wasn’t enough, and I think he was right too when he said it was better to be a pretty good business man than a second-rate artist. After all, it’s a bit of luck for me that old Sibert Mason married the cook and started growing vegetables on a bit of land that the growth of London turned into a valuable property. Don’t you think it’s enough if I do my duty in that state of life in which providence or chance, if you like, has placed me?”
Simon gave him a smile more indulgent than any that had tortured his features that evening.
“I daresay, Charley. But not for me. I would sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.”
Charley looked at him calmly.
“You see, Simon, I have a happy nature and you haven’t.”
Simon chuckled.
“We must see if we can’t change that. Let’s stroll along. I’ll take you to the Sérail.”
iii
THE FRONT DOOR, a discreet door in a house of respectable appearance, was opened for them by a negro in Turkish dress and as they entered a narrow ill-lit passage a woman came out of an ante-room. She took them in with a quick, cool glance, but then recognizing Simon, immediately assumed an air of geniality. They shook hands warmly.
“This is Mademoiselle Ernestine,” he said to Charley and then to her: “My friend has arrived from London this evening. He wishes to see life.”
“You’ve brought him to the right place.”
She gave Charley an appraising look. Charley saw a woman who might have been in the later thirties, good-looking in a cold, hard way, with a straight nose, thin painted lips and a firm chin; she was neatly dressed in a dark suit of somewhat masculine cut. She wore a collar and tie and as a pin the crest of a famous English regiment.
“He’s good-looking,” she said. “These ladies will be pleased to see him.”
“Where is Madame to-night?”
“She’s gone home to spend the holidays with her family. I am in charge.”
“We’ll go in, shall we?”
“You know your way.”
The two young men passed along the passage and opening a door found themselves in a vast room garishly decorated in the pinchbeck style of a Turkish bath. There were settees round the walls and in front of them little tables and chairs. A fair sprinkling of people were sitting about, mostly in day clothes, but a few in dinner-jackets; men in twos and threes; and at one table a mixed party, the women in evening frocks, who had evidently come to see one of the sights of Paris. Waiters in Turkish dress stood about and attended to orders. On a platform was an orchestra consisting of a pianist, a fiddler and a man who played the saxophone. Two benches facing one another jutted out on to the dance floor and on these sat ten or twelve young women. They wore Turkish slippers, but with high heels, baggy trousers of some shimmering material that reached to their ankles, and small turbans on their heads. The upper part of their bodies was naked. Other girls similarly dressed were seated with men who were standing a drink. Simon and Charley sat down and ordered a bottle of champagne. The band started up. Three or four men rose to their feet and going over to the benches chose partners to dance with. The rest of the girls listlessly danced together. They talked in a desultory way to one another and threw inquisitive glances at the men who were sitting at the various tables. It was apparent that the party of sight-seers, with the smart women from a different world, excited their curiosity. On the face of it, except that the girls were half naked, there was nothing to distinguish the place from any night club but the fact that there was room to dance in comfort. Charley noticed that at a table near theirs two men with dispatch-cases, from which in the course of conversation they extracted papers, were talking business as unconcernedly as if they were in a café. Presently one of the men from the group of sight-seers went and spoke to two girls who were dancing together, whereupon they stopped and went up to the table from which he had come; one of the women, beautifully dressed in black, with a string of emeralds round her neck, got up and began dancing with one of the two girls. The other went back to the bench and sat down. The sous-maîtresse, the woman in the coat and skirt, came up to Simon and Charley.
“Well, does your friend see any of these ladies who takes his fancy?”
“Sit down with us a minute and have a drink. He’s having a look round. The night’s young yet.”
She sat down and when Simon called the waiter ordered an orangeade.
“I’m sorry he’s come here for the first time on such a quiet night. You see, on Christmas Eve a lot of people have to stay at home. But it’ll get more lively presently. A crowd of English have come over to Paris for the holidays. I saw in the paper that they’re running the Golden Arrow in three sections. They’re a great nation, the English; they have money.”
Charley, feeling rather shy, was silent, and she asked Simon if he understood French.
“Of course he does. He spent six months in Touraine to learn it.”
“What a beautiful district! Last summer when I took my holiday I motored all through the Châteaux country. Angèle comes from Tours. Perhaps your friend would like to dance with her.” She turned to Charley. “You do dance, don’t you?”
“Yes, I like it.”
“She’s very well educated and she comes from an excellent family. I went to see them when I was in Tours and they thanked me for all that I had done for their daughter. They were persons of the greatest respectability. You mustn’t think that we take anyone here. Madame is very particular. We have our name and we value it. All these ladies here come from families who are highly esteemed in their own town. That is why they like to work in Paris. Naturally they don’t want to cause embarrassment to their relations. Life is hard and one has to earn one’s living as best one can. Of course I don’t pretend that they belong to the aristocracy, but the aristocracy in France is thoroughly corrupt, and for my part I set much greater value on the good French bourgeois stock. That is the backbone of the country.”
Mademoiselle Ernestine gave you the impression of a sensible woman of sound principle. You could not but feel that her views on the social questions of the day would be well worth listening to. She patted Simon’s hand and again speaking to Charley said:
“It always gives me pleasure to see Monsieur Simon. He’s a good friend of the house. He doesn’t come very often, but when he does he behaves like a gentleman. He is never drunk like some of your compatriots and one can talk t
o him of interesting subjects. We are always glad to see journalists here. Sometimes I think the life we lead is a little narrow and it does one good to talk to someone who is in the centre of things. It takes one out of one’s rut. He’s sympathetic.”
In those surroundings, as though he felt himself strangely at home, Simon was easy and genial. If he was acting it was a very good performance that he was giving. You would have thought that he felt some queer affinity between himself and the sous-maîtresse of the brothel.
“Once he took me to a répétition générale at the Français. All Paris was there. Academicians, ministers, generals. I was dazzled.”
“And I may add that not one of the women looked more distinguished than you. It did my reputation a lot of good to be seen with you.”
“You should have seen the faces of some of the bigwigs who come here, when they saw me in the foyer walking on the arm of Monsieur Simon.”
Charley knew that to go to a great social function with such a companion was the kind of joke that appealed to Simon’s sardonic humour. They talked a little more and then Simon said:
“Listen, my dear, I think we ought to do our young friend proud as it’s the first time he’s been here. What about introducing him to the Princess? Don’t you think he’d like her?”
Mademoiselle Ernestine’s strong features relaxed into a smile and she gave Charley an amused glance.
“It’s an idea. It would at least be an experience that he hasn’t had before. She has a pretty figure.”
“Let’s have her along and stand her a drink.”
Mademoiselle Ernestine called a waiter.
“Tell the Princess Olga to come here.” Then to Charley: “She’s Russian. Of course since the revolution we have been swamped with Russians, we’re fed to the teeth with them and their Slav temperament; for a time the clients were amused by it, but they’re tired of them now. And then they’re not serious. They’re noisy and quarrelsome. The truth is, they’re barbarians, and they don’t know how to behave. But Princess Olga is different. She has principles. You can see that she’s been well brought up. She has something, there’s no denying it.”