‘I went out of my room hideous with all those photographs and littered papers and to drive care away went on to the boulevard and sat down at the Café de la Paix. After a time I saw a friend passing and he nodded to me and smiled. I tried to smile but my heart was sore. I realized that I must spend the years that remained to me in a cheap pension at Toulon or Brest as an officier de marine en retraite. Zut! My friend stopped and coming up to me sat down.
“What is making you look so glum, mon cher?” he asked me. “You who are the gayest of mortals.”
‘I was glad to have someone in whom I could confide my troubles and told him the whole story. He laughed consumedly. I have thought since that perhaps the incident had its comic side, but at the time, I assure you, I could see in it nothing to laugh at. I mentioned the fact to my friend not without asperity and then, controlling his mirth as best he could, he said to me: “But, my dear fellow, do you really want to marry?” At this I entirely lost my temper.
“‘You are completely idiotic,” I said. “If I did not want to marry, and what is more marry at once, within the next fortnight, do you imagine that I should have spent three days reading love letters from women I have never set eyes on?”
“Calm yourself and listen to me,” he replied. “I have a cousin who lives in Geneva. She is Swiss, du reste, and she belongs to a family of the greatest respectability in the republic. Her morals are without reproach, she is of a suitable age, a spinster, for she has spent the last fifteen years nursing an invalid mother who has lately died, she is well educated and par dessus le marche she is not ugly.”
“It sounds as though she were a paragon,” I said.
“I do not say that but she has been well brought up and would become the position you have to offer her.”
“‘There is one thing you forget. What inducement would there be for her to give up her friends and her accustomed life to accompany in exile a man of forty-nine who is by no means a beauty?”‘
Monsieur le Gouverneur broke off his narrative and shrugging his shoulders so emphatically that his head almost sank between them, turned to us.
‘I am ugly. I admit it. I am of an ugliness that does not inspire terror or respect, but only ridicule, and that is the worst ugliness of all. When people see me for the first time they do not shrink with horror, there would evidently be something flattering in that they burst out laughing. Listen, when the admirable Mr Wilkins showed me his animals this morning, Percy, the orang-utan, held out his arms and but for the bars of the cage would have clasped me to his bosom as a long lost brother. Once indeed when I was at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and was told that one of the anthropoid apes had escaped I made my way to the exit as quickly as I could for fear that mistaking me for the refugee, they would seize me and, notwithstanding my expostulations, shut me up in the monkey house.’
‘Voyons, mon mil said Madame his wife, in her deep slow voice, ‘you are talking even greater nonsense than usual. I do not say that you are an Apollo, in your position it is unnecessary that you should be, but you have dignity, you have poise, you are what any woman would call a fine man.’
‘I will resume my story. When I made this remark to my friend he replied: “One can never tell with women. There is something about marriage that wonderfully attracts them. There would be no harm in asking her. After all it is regarded as a compliment by a woman to be asked in marriage. She can but refuse.”
“But I do not know your cousin and I do not see how I am to make her acquaintance. I cannot go to her house, ask to see her and when I am shown into the drawing-room say: Voila, I have come to ask you to marry me. She would think I was a lunatic and scream for help. Besides, I am a man of an extreme timidity, and I could never take such a step.”
“I will tell you what to do,” said my friend. “Go to Geneva and take her a box of chocolates from me. She will be glad to have news of me and will receive you with pleasure. You can have a little talk and then if you do not like the look of her you take your leave and no harm is done. If on the other hand-you do, we can go into the matter and you can make a formal demand for her hand.”
‘I was desperate. It seemed the only thing to do. We went to a shop at once and bought an enormous box of chocolates and that night I took the train to Geneva. No sooner had I arrived than I sent her a letter to say that I was the bearer of a gift from her cousin and much wished to give myself the pleasure of delivering it in person. Within an hour I received her reply to the effect that she would be pleased to receive me at four o’clock in the afternoon. I spent the interval before my mirror and seventeen times I tied and retied my tie. As the clock struck four I presented myself at the door of her house and was immediately ushered into the drawing-room. She was waiting for me. Her cousin said she was not ugly. Imagine my surprise to see a young woman, enfin a woman still young, of a noble presence, with the dignity of Juno, the features of Venus, and in her expression the intelligence of Minerva.’
‘You are too absurd,’ said Madame. ‘But by now these gentlemen know that one cannot believe all you say.’
‘I swear to you that I do not exaggerate. I was so taken aback that I nearly dropped the box of chocolates. But I said to myself: La garde meurt mais ne se rend pas. I presented the box of chocolates. I gave her news of her cousin. I found her amiable. We talked for a quarter of an hour. And then I said to myself: Allons-y. I said to her:
“Mademoiselle, I must tell you that I did not come here merely to give you a box of chocolates.”
‘She smiled and remarked that evidently I must have had reasons to come to Geneva of more importance than that.
“I came to ask you to do me the honour of marrying me.” She gave a start. “But, monsieur, you are mad,” she said.
“I beseech you not to answer till you have heard the facts,” I interrupted, and before she could say another word I told her the whole story. I told her about my advertisement in the Figaro and she laughed till the tears ran down her face. Then I repeated my offer.
“‘You are serious?” she asked.
“I have never been more serious in my life.”
“I will not deny that your offer has come as a surprise. I had not thought of marrying, I have passed the age; but evidently your offer is not one that a woman should refuse without consideration. I am flattered. Will you give me a few days to reflect?”
“‘Mademoiselle, I am absolutely desolated,” I replied. “But I have not time. If you will not marry me I must go back to Paris and resume my perusal of the fifteen or eighteen hundred letters that still await my attention.”
—It is quite evident that I cannot possibly give you an answer at once. I had not set eyes on you a quarter of an hour ago. I must consult my friends and my family.”
“‘What have they got to do with it? You are of full age. The matter is pressing. I cannot wait. I have told you everything. You are an intelligent woman. What can prolonged reflection add to the impulse of the moment?”
“‘You are not asking me to say yes or no this very minute? That is outrageous.”
“‘That is exactly what I am asking. My train goes back to Paris in a couple of hours.”
‘She looked at me reflectively.
“‘You are quite evidently a lunatic. You ought to be shut up both for your own safety and that of the public.”
“Well, which is it to be?” I said. “Yes or no?”
‘She shrugged her shoulders.
“Mon Dieu.” She waited a minute and I was on tenterhooks. “Yes.” The Governor waved his hand towards his wife.
‘And there she is. We were married in a fortnight and I became Governor of a colony. I married a jewel, my dear sirs, a woman of the most charming character, one in a thousand, a woman of masculine intelligence and a feminine sensibility, an admirable woman.’
‘But hold your tongue, mon ami,’ his wife said. ‘You are making me as ridiculous as yourself.’
He turned to the Belgian colonel.
‘Are you a bachel
or, mon colonel? If so I strongly recommend you to go to Geneva. It is a nest (une pepiniere was the word he used) of the most adorable young women. You will find a wife there as nowhere else. Geneva is besides a charming city. Do not waste a minute, but go there and I will give you a letter to my wife’s nieces.’
It was she who summed up the story.
‘The fact is that in a marriage of convenience you expect less and so you are less likely to be disappointed. As you do not make senseless claims on one another there is no reason for exasperation. You do not look for perfection and so you are tolerant to one another’s faults. Passion is all very well, but it is not a proper foundation for marriage. Voyez-vous, for two people to be happy in marriage they must be able to respect one another, they must be of the same condition, and their interests must be alike; then if they are decent people and are willing to give and take, to live and let live, there is no reason why their union should not be as happy as ours.’ She paused. ‘But, of course, my husband is a very, very remarkable man.’
MIRAGE
♦
I had been wandering about the East for months and at last reached Haiphong. It is a commercial town and a dull one, but I knew that from there I could find a ship of sorts to take me to Hong-Kong. I had some days to wait and nothing to do. It is true that from Haiphong you can visit the Bay of Along, which is one of the Sehenswurdigkeiten of Indo-China, but I was tired of sights. I contented myself with sitting in the cafés, for here it was none too warm and I was glad to get out of tropical clothes, and reading back numbers of L’Illustration, or for the sake of exercise taking a brisk walk along straight, wide streets. Haiphong is traversed by canals and sometimes I got a glimpse of a scene which in its varied life, with all the native craft on the water, was multicoloured and charming There was one canal, with tall Chinese houses on each side of it, that had a pleasant curve. The houses were whitewashed, but the whitewash was discoloured and stained; with their grey roofs they made an agreeable composition against the pale sky. The picture had the faded elegance of an old water-colour. There was nowhere an emphatic note. It was soft and a little weary and inspired one with a faint melancholy. I was reminded I scarcely know why of an old maid I knew in my youth, a relic of the Victorian age, who wore black silk mittens and made crochet shawls for the poor, black for widows and white for married women. She had suffered in her youth, but whether from ill-health or unrequited love, no one exactly knew.
But there was a local paper at Haiphong, a small dingy sheet with stubby type the ink of which came off on your fingers, and it gave you a political article, the wireless news, advertisements, and local intelligence. The editor, doubtless hard pressed for matter, printed the names of the persons, Europeans, natives of the country, and Chinese, who had arrived at Haiphong or left it, and mine was put in with the rest. On the morning of the day before that on which the
Old tub I was taking was to sail for Hong-Kong I was sitting in the café of the hotel drinking a Dubonnet before luncheon when the boy came in and said that a gentleman wished to see me. I did not know a soul in Haiphong and asked who it was. The boy said he was an Englishman and lived there, but he could not tell me his name. The boy spoke very little French and it was hard for me to understand what he said. I was mystified, but told him to show the visitor in. A moment later he came back followed by a white man and pointed me out to him. The man gave me a look and walked towards me. He was a very tall fellow, well over six feet high, rather fat and bloated, with a red, clean-shaven face and extremely pale blue eyes. He wore very shabby khaki shorts and a stengah-shifter unbuttoned at the neck, and a battered helmet. I concluded at once that he was a stranded beachcomber who was going to touch me for a loan and wondered how little I could hope to get off for.
He came up to me and held out a large red hand with broken, dirty nails.
‘I don’t suppose you remember me,’ he said. ‘My name’s Grosely. I was at St Thomas’s Hospital with you. I recognized your name as soon as I saw it in the paper and I thought I’d look you up.’
I had not the smallest recollection of him, but I asked him to sit down and offered him a drink. By his appearance I had first thought he would ask me for ten piastres and I might have given him five, but now it looked more likely that he would ask for a hundred and I should have to think myself lucky if I could content him with fifty. The habitual borrower always asks twice what he expects to get and it only dissatisfies him to give him what he has asked since then he is vexed with himself for not having asked more. He feels you have cheated him.
‘Are you a doctor?’ I asked.
‘No, I was only at the bloody place a year.’
He took off his sun-helmet and showed me a mop of grey hair, which much needed a brush. His face was curiously mottled and he did not look healthy. His teeth were badly decayed and at the corners of his mouth were empty spaces. When the boy came to take the orders he asked for brandy.
‘Bring the bottle,’ he said. ‘La bouteille. Savvy?’ He turned to me. ‘I’ve been living here for the last five years, but I can’t get along with the French somehow. I talk Tonkinese.’ He leaned his chair back and looked at me. ‘I remember you, you know. You used to go about with those twins. What was their name? I expect I’ve changed more than you have. I’ve spent the best part of my life in China. Rotten climate, you know. It plays hell with a man.’
I still had not the smallest recollection of him. I thought it best to say so. ‘Were you the same year as I was?’ I asked.
‘Yes. ‘92.’
‘It’s a devil of a long time ago.’
About sixty boys and young men entered the hospital every year; they were most of them shy and confused by the new life they were entering upon; many had never been in London before; and to me at least they were shadows that passed without any particular rhyme or reason across a white sheet. During the first year a certain number for one reason or another dropped out, and in the second year those that remained gained by degrees the beginnings of a personality. They were not only themselves, but the lectures one had attended with them, the scone and coffee one had eaten at the same table for luncheon, the dissection one had done at the same board in the same dissecting room, and The Belle of New York one had seen together from the pit of the Shaftesbury Theatre.
The boy brought the bottle of brandy, and Grosely, if that was really his name, pouring himself out a generous helping drank it down at a gulp without water or soda.
‘I couldn’t stand doctoring,’ he said. ‘I chucked it. My people got fed up with me and I went out to China. They gave me a hundred pounds and told me to shift for myself I was damned glad to get out, I can tell you. I guess I was just about as much fed up with them as they were with me. I haven’t troubled them much since.’
Then from somewhere in the depths of my memory a faint hint crept into the rim, as it were, of consciousness, as on a rising tide the water slides up the sand and then withdraws to advance with the next wave in a fuller volume. I had first an inkling of some shabby little scandal that had got into the papers. Then I saw a boy’s face, and so gradually the facts recurred to me; I remembered him now I didn’t believe he was called Grosely then, I think he had a one-syllabled name, but that I was uncertain of He was a very tall lad (I began to see him quite well), thin, with a slight stoop, he was only eighteen and had grown too fast for his strength, he had curly, shining brown hair, rather large features (they did not look so large now, perhaps because his face was fat and puffy) and a peculiarly fresh complexion, very pink and white, like a girl’s. I imagine people, women especially, would have thought him a very handsome boy, but to us he was only a clumsy, shuffling lout. Then I remembered that he did not often come to lectures, no, it wasn’t that I remembered, there were too many students in the theatre to recollect who was there and who wasn’t. I remembered the dissecting room. He had a leg at the next table to the one I was working at and he hardly ever touched it; I forget why the men who had other parts of the body complaine
d of his neglecting the work, I suppose somehow it interfered with them. In those days a good deal of gossip went on over the dissection of a ‘part’ and out of the distance of thirty years some of it came back to me. Someone started the story that Grosely was a very gay dog. He drank like a fish and was an awful womanizer. Most of those boys were very simple, and they had brought to the hospital the notions they had acquired at home and at school. Some were prudish and they were shocked; others, those who worked hard, sneered at him and asked how he could hope to pass his exams; but a good many were excited and impressed, he was doing what they would have liked to do if they had had the courage. Grosely had his admirers and you could often see him surrounded by a little band listening open-mouthed to stories of his adventures. Recollections now were crowding upon me. In a very little while he lost his shyness and assumed the airs of a man of the world. They must have looked absurd on this smooth-cheeked boy with his pink and white skin. Men (so they called themselves) used to tell one another of his escapades. He became quite a hero. He would make caustic remarks as he passed the museum and saw a pair of earnest students going over their anatomy together. He was at home in the public-houses of the neighbourhood and was on familiar terms with the barmaids. Looking back, I imagine that, newly arrived from the country and the tutelage of parents and schoolmasters, he was captivated by his freedom and the thrill of London. His dissipations were harmless enough. They were due only to the urge of youth. He lost his head.