After his journey up from Dover, Shelton was still fathering his luggage at Charing Cross, when the foreign girl passed him, and, in spite of his desire to say something cheering, he could get nothing out but a shame-faced smile. Her figure vanished, wavering into the hurly-burly; one of his bags had gone astray, and so all thought of her soon faded from his mind. His cab, however, overtook the foreign vagrant marching along towards Pall Mall with a curious, lengthy stride—an observant, disillusioned figure.
The first bustle of installation over, time hung heavy on his hands. July loomed distant, as in some future century; Antonia's eyes beckoned him faintly, hopelessly. She would not even be coming back to England for another month.
. . . I met a young foreigner in the train from Dover [he wrote to her]—a curious sort of person altogether, who seems to have infected me. Everything here has gone flat and unprofitable; the only good things in life are your letters.... John Noble dined with me yesterday; the poor fellow tried to persuade me to stand for Parliament. Why should I think myself fit to legislate for the unhappy wretches one sees about in the streets? If people's faces are a fair test of their happiness, I' d rather not feel in any way responsible....
The streets, in fact, after his long absence in the East, afforded him much food for thought: the curious smugness of the passers-by; the utterly unending bustle; the fearful medley of miserable, over-driven women, and full-fed men, with leering, bull-beef eyes, whom he saw everywhere—in club windows, on their beats, on box seats, on the steps of hotels, discharging dilatory duties; the appalling chaos of hard-eyed, capable dames with defiant clothes, and white-cheeked hunted-looking men; of splendid creatures in their cabs, and cadging creatures in their broken hats—the callousness and the monotony!
One afternoon in May he received this letter couched in French:
3, BLANK ROW WESTMINSTER. MY DEAR SIR,
Excuse me for recalling to your memory the offer of assistance you so kindly made me during the journey from Dover to London, in which I was so fortunate as to travel with a man like you. Having beaten the whole town, ignorant of what wood to make arrows, nearly at the end of my resources, my spirit profoundly discouraged, I venture to avail myself of your permission, knowing your good heart. Since I saw you I have run through all the misfortunes of the calendar, and cannot tell what door is left at which I have not knocked. I presented myself at the business firm with whose name you supplied me, but being unfortunately in rags, they refused to give me your address. Is this not very much in the English character? They told me to write, and said they would forward the letter. I put all my hopes in you.
Believe me, my dear sir,
(whatever you may decide)
Your devoted
LOUIS FERRAND.
Shelton looked at the envelope, and saw, that it, bore date a week ago. The face of the young vagrant rose before him, vital, mocking, sensitive; the sound of his quick French buzzed in his ears, and, oddly, the whole whiff of him had a power of raising more vividly than ever his memories of Antonia. It had been at the end of the journey from Hyeres to London that he had met him; that seemed to give the youth a claim.
He took his hat and hurried, to Blank Row. Dismissing his cab at the corner of Victoria Street he with difficulty found the house in question. It was a doorless place, with stone-flagged corridor—in other words, a “doss-house.” By tapping on a sort of ticket-office with a sliding window, he attracted the attention of a blowsy woman with soap-suds on her arms, who informed him that the person he was looking for had gone without leaving his address.
“But isn't there anybody,” asked Shelton, “of whom I can make inquiry?”
“Yes; there's a Frenchman.” And opening an inner door she bellowed: “Frenchy! Wanted!” and disappeared.
A dried-up, yellow little man, cynical and weary in the face, as if a moral steam-roller had passed over it, answered this call, and stood, sniffing, as it were, at Shelton, on whom he made the singular impression of some little creature in a cage.
“He left here ten days ago, in the company of a mulatto. What do you want with him, if I may ask?” The little man's yellow cheeks were wrinkled with suspicion.
Shelton produced the letter.
“Ah! now I know you”—a pale smile broke through the Frenchman's crow's-feet—“he spoke of you. 'If I can only find him,' he used to say, 'I 'm saved.' I liked that young man; he had ideas.”
“Is there no way of getting at him through his consul?”
The Frenchman shook his head.
“Might as well look for diamonds at the bottom of the sea.”
“Do you think he will come back here? But by that time I suppose, you'll hardly be here yourself?”
A gleam of amusement played about the Frenchman's teeth:
“I? Oh, yes, sir! Once upon a time I cherished the hope of emerging; I no longer have illusions. I shave these specimens for a living, and shall shave them till the day of judgment. But leave a letter with me by all means; he will come back. There's an overcoat of his here on which he borrowed money—it's worth more. Oh, yes; he will come back—a youth of principle. Leave a letter with me; I'm always here.”
Shelton hesitated, but those last three words, “I'm always here,” touched him in their simplicity. Nothing more dreadful could be said.
“Can you find me a sheet of paper, then?” he asked; “please keep the change for the trouble I am giving you.”
“Thank you,” said the Frenchman simply; “he told me that your heart was good. If you don't mind the kitchen, you could write there at your ease.”
Shelton wrote his letter at the table of this stone-flagged kitchen in company with an aged, dried-up gentleman; who was muttering to himself; and Shelton tried to avoid attracting his attention, suspecting that he was not sober. Just as he was about to take his leave, however, the old fellow thus accosted him:
“Did you ever go to the dentist, mister?” he said, working at a loose tooth with his shrivelled fingers. “I went to a dentist once, who professed to stop teeth without giving pain, and the beggar did stop my teeth without pain; but did they stay in, those stoppings? No, my bhoy; they came out before you could say Jack Robinson. Now, I shimply ask you, d'you call that dentistry?” Fixing his eyes on Shelton's collar, which had the misfortune to be high and clean, he resumed with drunken scorn: “Ut's the same all over this pharisaical counthry. Talk of high morality and Anglo-Shaxon civilisation! The world was never at such low ebb! Phwhat's all this morality? Ut stinks of the shop. Look at the condition of Art in this counthry! look at the fools you see upon th' stage! look at the pictures and books that sell! I know what I'm talking about, though I am a sandwich man. Phwhat's the secret of ut all? Shop, my bhoy! Ut don't pay to go below a certain depth! Scratch the skin, but pierce ut—Oh! dear, no! We hate to see the blood fly, eh?”
Shelton stood disconcerted, not knowing if he were expected to reply; but the old gentleman, pursing up his lips, went on:
“Sir, there are no extremes in this fog-smitten land. Do ye think blanks loike me ought to exist? Whoy don't they kill us off? Palliatives—palliatives—and whoy? Because they object to th' extreme course. Look at women: the streets here are a scandal to the world. They won't recognise that they exist—their noses are so dam high! They blink the truth in this middle-class counthry. My bhoy”—and he whispered confidentially—“ut pays 'em. Eh? you say, why shouldn't they, then?” (But Shelton had not spoken.) “Well, let'em! let 'em! But don't tell me that'sh morality, don't tell me that'sh civilisation! What can you expect in a counthry where the crimson, emotions are never allowed to smell the air? And what'sh the result? My bhoy, the result is sentiment, a yellow thing with blue spots, like a fungus or a Stilton cheese. Go to the theatre, and see one of these things they call plays. Tell me, are they food for men and women? Why, they're pap for babes and shop-boys! I was a blanky actor moyself!”
Shelton listened with mingled feelings of amusement and dismay, till the old actor, having finished, resumed his crouching posture at the table.
“You don't get dhrunk, I suppose?” he said suddenly—“too much of 'n Englishman, no doubt.”
“Very seldom,” said Shelton.
“Pity! Think of the pleasures of oblivion! Oi 'm dhrunk every night.”
“How long will you last at that rate?”
“There speaks the Englishman! Why should Oi give up me only pleasure to keep me wretched life in? If you've anything left worth the keeping shober for, keep shober by all means; if not, the sooner you are dhrunk the better—that stands to reason.”
In the corridor Shelton asked the Frenchman where the old man came from.
“Oh, and Englishman! Yes, yes, from Belfast very drunken old man. You are a drunken nation”—he made a motion with his hands “he no longer eats—no inside left. It is unfortunate-a man of spirit. If you have never seen one of these palaces, monsieur, I shall be happy to show you over it.”
Shelton took out his cigarette case.
“Yes, yes,” said the Frenchman, making a wry nose and taking a cigarette; “I'm accustomed to it. But you're wise to fumigate the air; one is n't in a harem.”
And Shelton felt ashamed of his fastidiousness.
“This,” said the guide, leading him up-stairs and opening a door, “is a specimen of the apartments reserved for these princes of the blood.” There were four empty beds on iron legs, and, with the air of a showman, the Frenchman twitched away a dingy quilt. “They go out in the mornings, earn enough to make them drunk, sleep it off, and then begin again. That's their life. There are people who think they ought to be reformed. 'Mon cher monsieur', one must face reality a little, even in this country. It would be a hundred times better for these people to spend their time reforming high Society. Your high Society makes all these creatures; there's no harvest without cutting stalks. 'Selon moi',” he continued, putting back the quilt, and dribbling cigarette smoke through his nose, “there's no grand difference between your high Society and these individuals here; both want pleasure, both think only of themselves, which is very natural. One lot have had the luck, the other—well, you see.” He shrugged. “A common set! I've been robbed here half a dozen times. If you have new shoes, a good waistcoat, an overcoat, you want eyes in the back of your head. And they are populated! Change your bed, and you'll run all the dangers of not sleeping alone. 'V'la ma clientele'. The half of them don't pay me!” He, snapped his yellow sticks of fingers. “A penny for a shave, twopence a cut! 'Quelle vie'. Here,” he continued, standing by a bed, “is a gentleman who owes me fivepence. Here's one who was a soldier; he's done for! All brutalised; not one with any courage left! But, believe me, monsieur,” he went on, opening another door, “when you come down to houses of this sort you must have a vice; it's as necessary as breath is to the lungs. No matter what, you must have a vice to give you a little solace—'un peu de soulagement'. Ah, yes! before you judge these swine, reflect on life! I've been through it. Monsieur, it is not nice never to know where to get your next meal. Gentlemen who have food in their stomachs, money in their pockets, and know where to get more, they never think. Why should they—'pas de danger'. All these cages are the same. Come down, and you shall see the pantry.” He took Shelton through the kitchen, which seemed the only sitting-room of the establishment, to an inner room furnished with dirty cups and saucers, plates, and knives. Another fire was burning there. “We always have hot water,” said the Frenchman, “and three times a week they make a fire down there”—he pointed to a cellar—“for our clients to boil their vermin. Oh, yes, we have all the luxuries.”
Shelton returned to the kitchen, and directly after took leave of the little Frenchman, who said, with a kind of moral button-holing, as if trying to adopt him as a patron:
“Trust me, monsieur; if he comes back—that young man—he shall have your letter without fail. My name is Carolan Jules Carolan; and I am always at your service.”
Shelton walked away; he had been indulging in a nightmare. “That old actor was drunk,” thought he, “and no doubt he was an Irishman; still, there may be truth in what he said. I am a Pharisee, like all the rest who are n't in the pit. My respectability is only luck. What should I have become if I'd been born into his kind of life?” and he stared at a stream of people coming from the Stares, trying to pierce the mask of their serious, complacent faces. If these ladies and gentlemen were put into that pit into which he had been looking, would a single one of them emerge again? But the effort of picturing them there was too much for him; it was too far—too ridiculously far.
One particular couple, a large; fine man and wife, who, in the midst of all the dirt and rumbling hurry, the gloomy, ludicrous, and desperately jovial streets, walked side by side in well-bred silence, had evidently bought some article which pleased them. There was nothing offensive in their manner; they seemed quite unconcerned at the passing of the other people. The man had that fine solidity of shoulder and of waist, the glossy self-possession that belongs to those with horses, guns, and dressing-bags. The wife, her chin comfortably settled in her fur, kept her grey eyes on the ground, and, when she spoke, her even and unruffled voice reached Shelton's ears above all the whirring of the traffic. It was leisurely precise, as if it had never hurried, had never been exhausted, or passionate, or afraid. Their talk, like that of many dozens of fine couples invading London from their country places, was of where to dine, what theatre they should go to, whom they had seen, what they should buy. And Shelton knew that from day's end to end, and even in their bed, these would be the subjects of their conversation. They were the best-bred people of the sort he met in country houses and accepted as of course, with a vague discomfort at the bottom of his soul. Antonia's home, for instance, had been full of them. They were the best-bred people of the sort who supported charities, knew everybody, had clear, calm judgment, and intolerance of all such conduct as seemed to them “impossible,” all breaches of morality, such as mistakes of etiquette, such as dishonesty, passion, sympathy (except with a canonised class of objects—the legitimate sufferings, for instance, of their own families and class). How healthy they were! The memory of the doss-house worked in Shelton's mind like poison. He was conscious that in his own groomed figure, in the undemonstrative assurance of his walk, he bore resemblance to the couple he apostrophised. “Ah!” he thought, “how vulgar our refinement is!” But he hardly believed in his own outburst. These people were so well mannered, so well conducted, and so healthy, he could not really understand what irritated him. What was the matter with them? They fulfilled their duties, had good appetites, clear consciences, all the furniture of perfect citizens; they merely lacked-feelers, a loss that, he had read, was suffered by plants and animals which no longer had a need for using them. Some rare national faculty of seeing only the obvious and materially useful had destroyed their power of catching gleams or scents to right or left.
The lady looked up at her husband. The light of quiet, proprietary affection shone in her calm grey eyes, decorously illumining her features slightly reddened by the wind. And the husband looked back at her, calm, practical, protecting. They were very much alike. So doubtless he looked when he presented himself in snowy shirt-sleeves for her to straighten the bow of his white tie; so nightly she would look, standing before the full-length mirror, fixing his gifts upon her bosom. Calm, proprietary, kind! He passed them and walked behind a second less distinguished couple, who manifested a mutual dislike as matter-of-fact and free from nonsense as the unruffled satisfaction of the first; this dislike was just as healthy, and produced in Shelton about the same sensation. It was like knocking at a never-opened door, looking at a circle—couple after couple all the same. No heads, toes, angles of their souls stuck out anywhere. In the sea of their environments they were drowned; no leg braved the air, no arm emerged wet and naked waving at the skies; shop-persons, aristocrats, workmen, officials, they were all respectable. And he himself as respectable as any.
He returned, thus moody, to his rooms and, with the impetuosity which distinguished him when about to do an unwise thing, he seized a pen and poured out before Antonia some of his impressions:
... Mean is the word, darling; we are mean, that's what 's the matter with us, dukes and dustmen, the whole human species—as mean as caterpillars. To secure our own property and our own comfort, to dole out our sympathy according to rule just so that it won't really hurt us, is what we're all after. There's something about human nature that is awfully repulsive, and the healthier people are, the more repulsive they seem to me to be....
He paused, biting his pen. Had he one acquaintance who would not counsel him to see a doctor for writing in that style? How would the world go round, how could Society exist, without common-sense, practical ability, and the lack of sympathy?
He looked out of the open window. Down in the street a footman was settling the rug over the knees of a lady in a carriage, and the decorous immovability of both their faces, which were clearly visible to him, was like a portion of some well-oiled engine.
He got up and walked up and down. His rooms, in a narrow square skirting Belgravia, were unchanged since the death of his father had made him a man of means. Selected for their centrality, they were furnished in a very miscellaneous way. They were not bare, but close inspection revealed that everything was damaged, more or less, and there was absolutely nothing that seemed to have an interest taken in it. His goods were accidents, presents, or the haphazard acquisitions of a pressing need. Nothing, of course, was frowsy, but everything was somewhat dusty, as if belonging to a man who never rebuked a servant. Above all, there was nothing that indicated hobbies.
Three days later he had her answer to his letter:
. . . I don't think I understand what you mean by “the healthier people are, the more repulsive they seem to be”; one must be healthy to be perfect, must n't one? I don't like unhealthy people. I had to play on that wretched piano after reading your letter; it made me feel unhappy. I've been having a splendid lot of tennis lately, got the back-handed lifting stroke at last—hurrah! . . .
By the same post, too, came the following note in an autocratic writing:
DEAR BIRD [for this was Shelton's college nickname],
My wife has gone down to her people, so I'm 'en garcon' for a few days. If you've nothing better to do, come and dine to-night at seven, and go to the theatre. It's ages since I saw you.
Yours as ever,
B. M. HALIDOME.
Shelton had nothing better to do, for pleasant were his friend Halidome's well-appointed dinners. At seven, therefore, he went to Chester Square. His friend was in his study, reading Matthew Arnold by the light of an electric lamp. The walls of the room were hung with costly etchings, arranged with solid and unfailing taste; from the carving of the mantel-piece to the binding of the books, from the miraculously-coloured meerschaums to the chased fire-irons, everything displayed an unpretentious luxury, an order and a finish significant of life completely under rule of thumb. Everything had been collected. The collector rose as Shelton entered, a fine figure of a man, clean shaven,—with dark hair, a Roman nose, good eyes, and the rather weighty dignity of attitude which comes from the assurance that one is in the right.
Taking Shelton by the lapel, he drew him into the radius of the lamp, where he examined him, smiling a slow smile. “Glad to see you, old chap. I rather like your beard,” he said with genial brusqueness; and nothing, perhaps, could better have summed up his faculty for forming independent judgments which Shelton found so admirable. He made no apology for the smallness of the dinner, which, consisting of eight courses and three wines, served by a butler and one footman, smacked of the same perfection as the furniture; in fact, he never apologised for anything, except with a jovial brusqueness that was worse than the offence. The suave and reasonable weight of his dislikes and his approvals stirred Shelton up to feel ironical and insignificant; but whether from a sense of the solid, humane, and healthy quality of his friend's egoism, or merely from the fact that this friendship had been long in bottle, he did not resent his mixed sensations.
“By the way, I congratulate you, old chap,” said Halidome, while driving to the theatre; there was no vulgar hurry about his congratulations, no more than about himself. “They're awfully nice people, the Dennants.”
A sense of having had a seal put on his choice came over Shelton.
“Where are you going to live? You ought to come down and live near us; there are some ripping houses to be had down there; it's really a ripping neighbourhood. Have you chucked the Bar? You ought to do something, you know; it'll be fatal for you to have nothing to do. I tell you what, Bird: you ought to stand for the County Council.”
But before Shelton had replied they reached the theatre, and their energies were spent in sidling to their stalls. He had time to pass his neighbours in review before the play began. Seated next to him was a lady with large healthy shoulders, displayed with splendid liberality; beyond her a husband, red-cheeked, with drooping, yellow-grey moustache and a bald head; beyond him again two men whom he had known at Eton. One of them had a clean-shaved face, dark hair, and a weather-tanned complexion; his small mouth with its upper lip pushed out above the lower, his eyelids a little drooped over his watchful eyes, gave him a satirical and resolute expression. “I've got hold of your tail, old fellow,” he seemed to say, as though he were always busy with the catching of some kind of fox. The other's goggling eyes rested on Shelton with a chaffing smile; his thick, sleek hair, brushed with water and parted in the middle, his neat moustache and admirable waistcoat, suggested the sort of dandyism that despises women. From his recognition of these old schoolfellows Shelton turned to look at Halidome, who, having cleared his throat, was staring straight before him at the curtain. Antonia's words kept running in her lover's head, “I don't like unhealthy people.” Well, all these people, anyway, were healthy; they looked as if they had defied the elements to endow them with a spark of anything but health. Just then the curtain rose.
Slowly, unwillingly, for he was of a trustful disposition, Shelton recognised that this play was one of those masterpieces of the modern drama whose characters were drawn on the principle that men were made for morals rather than morals made by men, and he watched the play unfold with all its careful sandwiching of grave and gay.
A married woman anxious to be ridded of her husband was the pivot of the story, and a number of scenes, ingeniously contrived, with a hundred reasons why this desire was wrong and inexpedient, were revealed to Shelton's eyes. These reasons issued mainly from the mouth of a well-preserved old gentleman who seemed to play the part of a sort of Moral Salesman. He turned to Halidome and whispered:
“Can you stand that old woman?”
His friend fixed his fine eyes on him wonderingly.
“What old woman?”
“Why, the old ass with the platitudes!”
Halidome's countenance grew cold, a little shocked, as though he had been assailed in person.
“Do you mean Pirbright?” he said. “I think he's ripping.”
Shelton turned to the play rebuffed; he felt guilty of a breach of manners, sitting as he was in one of his friend's stalls, and he naturally set to work to watch the play more critically than ever. Antonia's words again recurred to him, “I don't like unhealthy people,” and they seemed to throw a sudden light upon this play. It was healthy!
The scene was a drawing-room, softly lighted by electric lamps, with a cat (Shelton could not decide whether she was real or not) asleep upon the mat.
The husband, a thick-set, healthy man in evening dress, was drinking off neat whisky. He put down his tumbler, and deliberately struck a match; then with even greater deliberation he lit a gold-tipped cigarette....
Shelton was no inexperienced play-goer. He shifted his elbows, for he felt that something was about to happen; and when the match was pitched into the fire, he leaned forward in his seat. The husband poured more whisky out, drank it at a draught, and walked towards the door; then, turning to the audience as if to admit them to the secret of some tremendous resolution, he puffed at them a puff of smoke. He left the room, returned, and once more filled his glass. A lady now entered, pale of face and dark of eye—his wife. The husband crossed the stage, and stood before the fire, his legs astride, in the attitude which somehow Shelton had felt sure he would assume. He spoke:
“Come in, and shut the door.”
Shelton suddenly perceived that he was face to face with one of those dumb moments in which two people declare their inextinguishable hatred—the hatred underlying the sexual intimacy of two ill-assorted creatures—and he was suddenly reminded of a scene he had once witnessed in a restaurant. He remembered with extreme minuteness how the woman and the man had sat facing each other across the narrow patch of white, emblazoned by a candle with cheap shades and a thin green vase with yellow flowers. He remembered the curious scornful anger of their voices, subdued so that only a few words reached him. He remembered the cold loathing in their eyes. And, above all, he remembered his impression that this sort of scene happened between them every other day, and would continue so to happen; and as he put on his overcoat and paid his bill he had asked himself, “Why in the name of decency do they go on living together?” And now he thought, as he listened to the two players wrangling on the stage: “What 's the good of all this talk? There's something here past words.”
The curtain came down upon the act, and he looked at the lady next him. She was shrugging her shoulders at her husband, whose face was healthy and offended.
“I do dislike these unhealthy women,” he was saying, but catching Shelton's eye he turned square in his seat and sniffed ironically.
The face of Shelton's friend beyond, composed, satirical as ever, was clothed with a mask of scornful curiosity, as if he had been listening to something that had displeased him not a little. The goggle-eyed man was yawning. Shelton turned to Halidome:
“Can you stand this sort of thing?” said he.
“No; I call that scene a bit too hot,” replied his friend.
Shelton wriggled; he had meant to say it was not hot enough.
“I'll bet you anything,” he said, “I know what's going to happen now. You'll have that old ass—what's his name?—lunching off cutlets and champagne to fortify himself—for a lecture to the wife. He'll show her how unhealthy her feelings are—I know him—and he'll take her hand and say, 'Dear lady, is there anything in this poor world but the good opinion of Society?' and he'll pretend to laugh at himself for saying it; but you'll see perfectly well that the old woman means it. And then he'll put her into a set of circumstances that are n't her own but his version of them, and show her the only way of salvation is to kiss her husband”; and Shelton grinned. “Anyway, I'll bet you anything he takes her hand and says, 'Dear lady.'.rdquo;
Halidome turned on him the disapproval of his eyes, and again he said,
“I think Pirbright 's ripping!”
But as Shelton had predicted, so it turned out, amidst great applause.
Leaving the theatre, they paused a moment in the hall to don their coats; a stream of people with spotless bosoms eddied round the doors, as if in momentary dread of leaving this hothouse of false morals and emotions for the wet, gusty streets, where human plants thrive and die, human weeds flourish and fade under the fresh, impartial skies. The lights revealed innumerable solemn faces, gleamed innumerably on jewels, on the silk of hats, then passed to whiten a pavement wet with newly-fallen rain, to flare on horses, on the visages of cabmen, and stray, queer objects that do not bear the light.
“Shall we walk?” asked Halidome.
“Has it ever struck you,” answered Shelton, “that in a play nowadays there's always a 'Chorus of Scandalmongers' which seems to have acquired the attitude of God?”
Halidome cleared his throat, and there was something portentous in the sound.
“You're so d—-d fastidious,” was his answer.
“I've a prejudice for keeping the two things separate,” went on Shelton. “That ending makes me sick.”
“Why?” replied Halidome. “What other end is possible? You don't want a play to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.”
“But this does.”
Halidome increased his stride, already much too long; for in his walk, as in all other phases of his life, he found it necessary to be in front.
“How do you mean?” he asked urbanely; “it's better than the woman making a fool of herself.”
“I'm thinking of the man.”
“What man?”
“The husband.”
“What 's the matter with him? He was a bit of a bounder, certainly.”
“I can't understand any man wanting to live with a woman who doesn't want him.”
Some note of battle in Shelton's voice, rather than the sentiment itself, caused his friend to reply with dignity:
“There's a lot of nonsense talked about that sort of thing. Women don't really care; it's only what's put into their heads.”
“That's much the same as saying to a starving man: 'You don't really want anything; it's only what's put into your head!' You are begging the question, my friend.”
But nothing was more calculated to annoy Halidome than to tell him he was “begging the question,” for he prided himself on being strong in logic.
“That be d—-d,” he said.
“Not at all, old chap. Here is a case where a woman wants her freedom, and you merely answer that she dogs n't want it.”
“Women like that are impossible; better leave them out of court.”
Shelton pondered this and smiled; he had recollected an acquaintance of his own, who, when his wife had left him, invented the theory that she was mad, and this struck him now as funny. But then he thought: “Poor devil! he was bound to call her mad! If he didn't, it would be confessing himself distasteful; however true, you can't expect a man to consider himself that.” But a glance at his friend's eye warned him that he, too, might think his wife mad in such a case.
“Surely,” he said, “even if she's his wife, a man's bound to behave like a gentleman.”
“Depends on whether she behaves like a lady.”
“Does it? I don't see the connection.”
Halidome paused in the act of turning the latch-key in his door; there was a rather angry smile in his fine eyes.
“My dear chap,” he said, “you're too sentimental altogether.”
The word “sentimental” nettled Shelton. “A gentleman either is a gentleman or he is n't; what has it to do with the way other people behave?”
Halidome turned the key in the lock and opened the door into his hall, where the firelight fell on the decanters and huge chairs drawn towards the blaze.
“No, Bird,” he said, resuming his urbanity, and gathering his coat-tails in his hands; “it's all very well to talk, but wait until you're married. A man must be master, and show it, too.”
An idea occurred to Shelton.
“Look here, Hal,” he said: “what should you do if your wife got tired of you?”
The expression on Halidome's face was a mixture of amusement and contempt.
“I don't mean anything personal, of course, but apply the situation to yourself.”
Halidome took out a toothpick, used it brusquely, and responded:
“I shouldn't stand any humbug—take her travelling; shake her mind up. She'd soon come round.”
“But suppose she really loathed you?”
Halidome cleared his throat; the idea was so obviously indecent. How could anybody loathe him? With great composure, however, regarding Shelton as if he were a forward but amusing child, he answered:
“There are a great many things to be taken into consideration.”
“It appears to me,” said Shelton, “to be a question of common pride. How can you, ask anything of a woman who doesn't want to give it.”
His friend's voice became judicial.
“A man ought not to suffer,” he said, poring over his whisky, “because a woman gets hysteria. You have to think of Society, your children, house, money arrangements, a thousand things. It's all very well to talk. How do you like this whisky?”
“The part of the good citizen, in fact,” said Shelton, “self-preservation!”
“Common-sense,” returned his friend; “I believe in justice before sentiment.” He drank, and callously blew smoke at Shelton. “Besides, there are many people with religious views about it.”
“It's always seemed to me,” said Shelton, “to be quaint that people should assert that marriage gives them the right to 'an eye for an eye,' and call themselves Christians. Did you ever know anybody stand on their rights except out of wounded pride or for the sake of their own comfort? Let them call their reasons what they like, you know as well as I do that it's cant.”
“I don't know about that,” said Halidome, more and more superior as Shelton grew more warm; “when you stand on your rights, you do it for the sake of Society as well as for your own. If you want to do away with marriage, why don't you say so?”
“But I don't,” said Shelton, “is it likely? Why, I'm going—” He stopped without adding the words “to be married myself,” for it suddenly occurred to him that the reason was not the most lofty and philosophic in the world. “All I can say is,” he went on soberly, “that you can't make a horse drink by driving him. Generosity is the surest way of tightening the knot with people who've any sense of decency; as to the rest, the chief thing is to prevent their breeding.”
Halidome smiled.
“You're a rum chap,” he said.
Shelton jerked his cigarette into the fire.
“I tell you what”—for late at night a certain power of vision came to him—“it's humbug to talk of doing things for the sake of Society; it's nothing but the instinct to keep our own heads above the water.”
But Halidome remained unruffled.
“All right,” he said, “call it that. I don't see why I should go to the wall; it wouldn't do any good.”
“You admit, then,” said Shelton, “that our morality is the sum total of everybody's private instinct of self-preservation?”
Halidome stretched his splendid frame and yawned.
“I don't know,” he began, “that I should quite call it that—”
But the compelling complacency of his fine eyes, the dignified posture of his healthy body, the lofty slope of his narrow forehead, the perfectly humane look of his cultivated brutality, struck Shelton as ridiculous.
“Hang it, Hall” he cried, jumping from his chair, “what an old fraud you are! I'll be off.”
“No, look here!” said Halidome; the faintest shade of doubt had appeared upon his face; he took Shelton by a lapel: “You're quite wrong—”
“Very likely; good-night, old chap!”
Shelton walked home, letting the spring wind into him. It was Saturday, and he passed many silent couples. In every little patch of shadow he could see two forms standing or sitting close together, and in their presence Words the Impostors seemed to hold their tongues. The wind rustled the buds; the stars, one moment bright as diamonds, vanished the next. In the lower streets a large part of the world was under the influence of drink, but by this Shelton was far from being troubled. It seemed better than Drama, than dressing-bagged men, unruffled women, and padded points of view, better than the immaculate solidity of his friend's possessions.
“So,” he reflected, “it's right for every reason, social, religious, and convenient, to inflict one's society where it's not desired. There are obviously advantages about the married state; charming to feel respectable while you're acting in a way that in any other walk of life would bring on you contempt. If old Halidome showed that he was tired of me, and I continued to visit him, he'd think me a bit of a cad; but if his wife were to tell him she couldn't stand him, he'd still consider himself a perfect gentleman if he persisted in giving her the burden of his society; and he has the cheek to bring religion into it—a religion that says, 'Do unto others!'.rdquo;
But in this he was unjust to Halidome, forgetting how impossible it was for him to believe that a woman could not stand him. He reached his rooms, and, the more freely to enjoy the clear lamplight, the soft, gusty breeze, and waning turmoil of the streets, waited a moment before entering.
“I wonder,” thought he, “if I shall turn out a cad when I marry, like that chap in the play. It's natural. We all want our money's worth, our pound of flesh! Pity we use such fine words—'Society, Religion, Morality.' Humbug!”
He went in, and, throwing his window open, remained there a long time, his figure outlined against the lighted room for the benefit of the dark square below, his hands in his pockets, his head down, a reflective frown about his eyes. A half-intoxicated old ruffian, a policeman, and a man in a straw hat had stopped below, and were holding a palaver.
“Yus,” the old ruffian said, “I'm a rackety old blank; but what I say is, if we wus all alike, this would n't be a world!”
They went their way, and before the listener's eyes there rose Antonia's face, with its unruffled brow; Halidome's, all health and dignity; the forehead of the goggle-eyed man, with its line of hair parted in the centre, and brushed across. A light seemed to illumine the plane of their existence, as the electric lamp with the green shade had illumined the pages of the Matthew Arnold; serene before Shelton's vision lay that Elysium, untouched by passion or extremes of any kind, autocratic; complacent, possessive, and well-kept as any Midland landscape. Healthy, wealthy, wise! No room but for perfection, self-preservation, the survival of the fittest! “The part of the good citizen,” he thought: “no, if we were all alike, this would n't be a world!”