“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.”
CHAPTER IV
THE PLAY
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