The Island Pharisees

“They produce a strange condition of affairs in me,” said the thinner one.

“They ‘re just divine,” said the fatter.

“I don’t know if you can call the fleshly lusts divine,” replied the thinner, looking into the eyes of the writer of the songs.

Amidst all the hum of voices and the fumes of smoke, a sense of formality was haunting Shelton. Sandwiched between a Dutchman and a Prussian poet, he could understand neither of his neighbours; so, assuming an intelligent expression, he fell to thinking that an assemblage of free spirits is as much bound by the convention of exchanging their ideas as commonplace people are by the convention of having no ideas to traffic in. He could not help wondering whether, in the bulk, they were not just as dependent on each other as the inhabitants of Kensington; whether, like locomotives, they could run at all without these opportunities for blowing off the steam, and what would be left when the steam had all escaped. Somebody ceased playing the violin, and close to him a group began discussing ethics. Aspirations were in the air all round, like a lot of hungry ghosts. He realised that, if tongue be given to them, the flavour vanishes from ideas which haunt the soul.

Again the violinist played.

“Cock gracious!” said the Prussian poet, falling into English as the fiddle ceased: “Colossal! ‘Aber, wie er ist grossartig’.”

“Have you read that thing of Besom’s?” asked shrill voice behind.

“Oh, my dear fellow! too horrid for words; he ought to be hanged!”

“The man’s dreadful,” pursued the voice, shriller than ever; “nothing but a volcanic eruption would cure him.”

Shelton turned in alarm to look at the authors of these statements. They were two men of letters talking of a third.

“‘C’est un grand naif, vous savez,’.rdquo; said the second speaker.

“These fellows don’t exist,” resumed the first; his small eyes gleamed with a green light, his whole face had a look as if he gnawed himself. Though not a man of letters, Shelton could not help recognising from those eyes what joy it was to say those words: “These fellows don’t exist!”

“Poor Besom! You know what Moulter said.”

Shelton turned away, as if he had been too close to one whose hair smelt of cantharides; and, looking round the room, he frowned. With the exception of his cousin, he seemed the only person there of English blood. Americans, Mesopotamians, Irish, Italians, Germans, Scotch, and Russians. He was not contemptuous of them for being foreigners; it was simply that God and the climate had made him different by a skin or so.

But at this point his conclusions were denied (as will sometimes happen) by his introduction to an Englishman – a Major Somebody, who, with smooth hair and blond moustache, neat eyes and neater clothes, seemed a little anxious at his own presence there. Shelton took a liking to him, partly from a fellow-feeling, and partly because of the gentle smile with which he was looking at his wife. Almost before he had said “How do you do?” he was plunged into a discussion on imperialism.

“Admitting all that,” said Shelton, “what I hate is the humbug with which we pride ourselves on benefiting the whole world by our so-called civilising methods.”

The soldier turned his reasonable eyes.

“But is it humbug?”

Shelton saw his argument in peril. If we really thought it, was it humbug? He replied, however:

“Why should we, a small portion of the world’s population, assume that our standards are the proper ones for every kind of race? If it ‘s not humbug, it ‘s sheer stupidity.”

The soldier, without taking his hands out of his pockets, but by a forward movement of his face showing that he was both sincere and just, re-replied:

“Well, it must be a good sort of stupidity; it makes us the nation that we are.”

Shelton felt dazed. The conversation buzzed around him; he heard the smiling prophet saying, “Altruism, altruism,” and in his voice a something seemed to murmur, “Oh, I do so hope I make a good impression!”

He looked at the soldier’s clear-cut head with its well-opened eyes, the tiny crow’s-feet at their corners, the conventional moustache; he envied the certainty of the convictions lying under that well-parted hair.

“I would rather we were men first and then Englishmen,” he muttered; “I think it’s all a sort of national illusion, and I can’t stand illusions.”

“If you come to that,” said the soldier, “the world lives by illusions. I mean, if you look at history, you’ll see that the creation of illusions has always been her business, don’t you know.”

This Shelton was unable to deny.

“So,” continued the soldier (who was evidently a highly cultivated man), “if you admit that movement, labour, progress, and all that have been properly given to building up these illusions, that – er – in fact, they’re what you might call – er – the outcome of the world’s crescendo,” he rushed his voice over this phrase as if ashamed of it – “why do you want to destroy them?”

Shelton thought a moment, then, squeezing his body with his folded arms, replied:

“The past has made us what we are, of course, and cannot be destroyed; but how about the future? It ‘s surely time to let in air. Cathedrals are very fine, and everybody likes the smell of incense; but when they ‘ve been for centuries without ventilation you know what the atmosphere gets like.”

The soldier smiled.

“By your own admission,” he said, “you’ll only be creating a fresh set of illusions.”

“Yes,” answered Shelton, “but at all events they’ll be the honest necessities of the present.”

The pupils of the soldier’s eyes contracted; he evidently felt the conversation slipping into generalities; he answered:

“I can’t see how thinking small beer of ourselves is going to do us any good!”

An “At Home!”

Shelton felt in danger of being thought unpractical in giving vent to the remark:

“One must trust one’s reason; I never can persuade myself that I believe in what I don’t.”

A minute later, with a cordial handshake, the soldier left, and Shelton watched his courteous figure shepherding his wife away.

“Dick, may I introduce you to Mr. Wilfrid Curly?” said his cousin’s voice behind, and he found his hand being diffidently shaken by a fresh-cheeked youth with a dome-like forehead, who was saying nervously:

“How do you do? Yes, I am very well, thank you!”

He now remembered that when he had first come in he had watched this youth, who had been standing in a corner indulging himself in private smiles. He had an uncommon look, as though he were in love with life – as though he regarded it as a creature to whom one could put questions to the very end – interesting, humorous, earnest questions. He looked diffident, and amiable, and independent, and he, too, was evidently English.

“Are you good at argument?” said Shelton, at a loss for a remark.

The youth smiled, blushed, and, putting back his hair, replied:

“Yes – no – I don’t know; I think my brain does n’t work fast enough for argument. You know how many motions of the brain-cells go to each remark. It ‘s awfully interesting”; and, bending from the waist in a mathematical position, he extended the palm of one hand, and started to explain.

Shelton stared at the youth’s hand, at his frowns and the taps he gave his forehead while he found the expression of his meaning; he was intensely interested. The youth broke off, looked at his watch, and, blushing brightly, said:

“I ‘m afraid I have to go; I have to be at the ‘Den’ before eleven.”

“I must be off, too,” said Shelton. Making their adieux together, they sought their hats and coats.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NIGHT CLUB

“May I ask,” said Shelton, as he and the youth came out into the chilly street, “What it is you call the ‘Den’.”

His companion smilingly answered:

“Oh, the night club. We take it in turns. Thursday is my night. Would you like to come? You see a lot of types. It’s only round the corner.”

Shelton digested a momentary doubt, and answered:

“Yes, immensely.”

They reached the corner house in an angle of a dismal street, through the open door of which two men had just gone in. Following, they ascended some wooden, fresh-washed stairs, and entered a large boarded room smelling of sawdust, gas, stale coffee, and old clothes. It was furnished with a bagatelle board, two or three wooden tables, some wooden forms, and a wooden bookcase. Seated on these wooden chairs, or standing up, were youths, and older men of the working class, who seemed to Shelton to be peculiarly dejected. One was reading, one against the wall was drinking coffee with a disillusioned air, two were playing chess, and a group of four made a ceaseless clatter with the bagatelle.

A little man in a dark suit, with a pale face, thin lips, and deep-set, black-encircled eyes, who was obviously in charge, came up with an anaemic smile.

“You ‘re rather late,” he said to Curly, and, looking ascetically at Shelton, asked, without waiting for an introduction: “Do you play chess? There ‘s young Smith wants a game.”

A youth with a wooden face, already seated before a fly-blown chess-board, asked him drearily if he would have black or white. Shelton took white; he was oppressed by the virtuous odour of this room.

The little man with the deep blue eyes came up, stood in an uneasy attitude, and watched:

“Your play’s improving, young Smith,” he said; “I should think you’d be able to give Banks a knight.” His eyes rested on Shelton, fanatical and dreary; his monotonous voice was suffering and nasal; he was continually sucking in his lips, as though determined to subdue ‘the flesh. “You should come here often,” he said to Shelton, as the latter received checkmate; “you ‘d get some good practice. We’ve several very fair players. You’re not as good as Jones or Bartholomew,” he added to Shelton’s opponent, as though he felt it a duty to put the latter in his place. “You ought to come here often,” he repeated to Shelton; “we have a lot of very good young fellows”; and, with a touch of complacence, he glanced around the dismal room. “There are not so many here tonight as usual. Where are Toombs and Body?”

Shelton, too, looked anxiously around. He could not help feeling sympathy with Toombs and Body.

“They ‘re getting slack, I’m afraid,” said the little deep-eyed man. “Our principle is to amuse everyone. Excuse me a minute; I see that Carpenter is doing nothing.” He crossed over to the man who had been drinking coffee, but Shelton had barely time to glance at his opponent and try to think of a remark, before the little man was back. “Do you know anything about astronomy?” he asked of Shelton. “We have several very interested in astronomy; if you could talk to them a little it would help.”

Shelton made a motion of alarm.

“Please-no,” said he; “I – ”

“I wish you’d come sometimes on Wednesdays; we have most interesting talks, and a service afterwards. We’re always anxious to get new blood”; and his eyes searched Shelton’s brown, rather tough-looking face, as though trying to see how much blood there was in it. “Young Curly says you ‘ve just been around the world; you could describe your travels.”

“May I ask,” said Shelton, “how your club is made up?”

Again a look of complacency, and blessed assuagement, visited the little man.

“Oh,” he said, “we take anybody, unless there ‘s anything against them. The Day Society sees to that. Of course, we shouldn’t take anyone if they were to report against them. You ought to come to our committee meetings; they’re on Mondays at seven. The women’s side, too – ”

“Thank you,” said Shelton; “you ‘re very kind – ”

“We should be pleased,” said the little man; and his face seemed to suffer more than ever. “They ‘re mostly young fellows here to-night, but we have married men, too. Of course, we ‘re very careful about that,” he added hastily, as though he might have injured Shelton’s prejudices – “that, and drink, and anything criminal, you know.”

“And do you give pecuniary assistance, too?”

“Oh yes,” replied the little man; “if you were to come to our committee meetings you would see for yourself. Everything is most carefully gone into; we endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff.”

“I suppose,” said Shelton, “you find a great deal of chaff?”

The little man smiled a suffering smile. The twang of his toneless voice sounded a trifle shriller.

“I was obliged to refuse a man to-day – a man and a woman, quite young people, with three small children. He was ill and out of work; but on inquiry we found that they were not man and wife.”

There was a slight pause; the little man’s eyes were fastened on his nails, and, with an appearance of enjoyment, he began to bite them. Shelton’s face had grown a trifle red.

“And what becomes of the woman and the children in a case like that?” he said.

The little man’s eyes began to smoulder.

“We make a point of not encouraging sin, of course. Excuse me a minute; I see they’ve finished bagatelle.”

He hurried off, and in a moment the clack of bagatelle began again. He himself was playing with a cold and spurious energy, running after the balls and exhorting the other players, upon whom a wooden acquiescence seemed to fall.

Shelton crossed the room, and went up to young Curly. He was sitting on a bench, smiling to himself his private smiles.

“Are you staying here much longer?” Shelton asked.

Young Curly rose with nervous haste.

“I ‘m afraid,” he said, “there ‘s nobody very interesting here to-night.”

“Oh, not at all!” said Shelton; “on the contrary. Only I ‘ve had a rather tiring day, and somehow I don’t feel up to the standard here.”

His new acquaintance smiled.

“Oh, really! do you think – that is – ”

But he had not time to finish before the clack of bagatelle balls ceased, and the voice of the little deep-eyed man was heard saying: “Anybody who wants a book will put his name down. There will be the usual prayer-meeting on Wednesday next. Will you all go quietly? I am going to turn the lights out.”

One gas-jet vanished, and the remaining jet flared suddenly. By its harder glare the wooden room looked harder too, and disenchanting. The figures of its occupants began filing through the door. The little man was left in the centre of the room, his deep eyes smouldering upon the backs of the retreating members, his thumb and finger raised to the turncock of the metre.

“Do you know this part?” asked young Curly as they emerged into the street. “It ‘s really jolly; one of the darkest bits in London – it is really. If you care, I can take you through an awfully dangerous place where the police never go.” He seemed so anxious for the honour that Shelton was loath to disappoint him. “I come here pretty often,” he went on, as they ascended a sort of alley rambling darkly between a wall and row of houses.

“Why?” asked Shelton; “it does n’t smell too nice.”

The young man threw up his nose and sniffed, as if eager to add any new scent that might be about to his knowledge of life.

“No, that’s one of the reasons, you know,” he said; “one must find out. The darkness is jolly, too; anything might happen here. Last week there was a murder; there ‘s always the chance of one.”

Shelton stared; but the charge of morbidness would not lie against this fresh-cheeked stripling.

“There’s a splendid drain just here,” his guide resumed; “the people are dying like flies of typhoid in those three houses”; and under the first light he turned his grave, cherubic face to indicate the houses. “If we were in the East End, I could show you other places quite as good. There’s a coffee-stall keeper in one that knows all the thieves in London; he ‘s a splendid type, but,” he added, looking a little anxiously at Shelton, “it might n’t be safe for you. With me it’s different; they ‘re beginning to know me. I’ve nothing to take, you see.”

“I’m afraid it can’t be to-night,” said Shelton; “I must get back.”

“Do you mind if I walk with you? It’s so jolly now the stars are out.”

“Delighted,” said Shelton; “do you often go to that club?”

His companion raised his hat, and ran his fingers through his hair.

“They ‘re rather too high-class for me,” he said. “I like to go where you can see people eat – school treats, or somewhere in the country. It does one good to see them eat. They don’t get enough, you see, as a rule, to make bone; it’s all used up for brain and muscle. There are some places in the winter where they give them bread and cocoa; I like to go to those.”

“I went once,” said Shelton, “but I felt ashamed for putting my nose in.”

“Oh, they don’t mind; most of them are half-dead with cold, you know. You see splendid types; lots of dipsomaniacs.. It ‘s useful to me,” he went on as they passed a police-station, “to walk about at night; one can take so much more notice. I had a jolly night last week in Hyde Park; a chance to study human nature there.”

“And do you find it interesting?” asked Shelton.

His companion smiled.

“Awfully,” he replied; “I saw a fellow pick three pockets.”

“What did you do?”

“I had a jolly talk with him.”

Shelton thought of the little deep-eyed man; who made a point of not encouraging sin.

“He was one of the professionals from Notting Hill, you know; told me his life. Never had a chance, of course. The most interesting part was telling him I ‘d seen him pick three pockets – like creeping into a cave, when you can’t tell what ‘s inside.”

“Well?”

“He showed me what he ‘d got – only fivepence halfpenny.”

“And what became of your friend?” asked Shelton.

“Oh, went off; he had a splendidly low forehead.”

They had reached Shelton’s rooms.

“Will you come in,” said the latter, “and have a drink?”

The youth smiled, blushed, and shook his head.

“No, thank you,” he said; “I have to walk to Whitechapel. I ‘m living on porridge now; splendid stuff for making bone. I generally live on porridge for a week at the end of every month. It ‘s the best diet if you’re hard up”; once more blushing and smiling, he was gone.

Shelton went upstairs and sat down on his bed. He felt a little miserable. Sitting there, slowly pulling out the ends of his white tie, disconsolate, he had a vision of Antonia with her gaze fixed wonderingly on him. And this wonder of hers came as a revelation – just as that morning, when, looking from his window, he had seen a passer-by stop suddenly and scratch his leg; and it had come upon him in a flash that that man had thoughts and feelings of his own. He would never know what Antonia really felt and thought. “Till I saw her at the station, I did n’t know how much I loved her or how little I knew her”; and, sighing deeply, he hurried into bed.

CHAPTER XV

POLE TO POLE

The waiting in London for July to come was daily more unbearable to Shelton, and if it had not been for Ferrand, who still came to breakfast, he would have deserted the Metropolis. On June first the latter presented himself rather later than was his custom, and announced that, through a friend, he had heard of a position as interpreter to an hotel at Folkestone.

“If I had money to face the first necessities,” he said, swiftly turning over a collection of smeared papers with his yellow fingers, as if searching for his own identity, “I ‘d leave today. This London blackens my spirit.”

“Are you certain to get this place,” asked Shelton.

“I think so,” the young foreigner replied; “I ‘ve got some good enough recommendations.”

Shelton could not help a dubious glance at the papers in his hand. A hurt look passed on to Ferrand’s curly lips beneath his nascent red moustache.

“You mean that to have false papers is as bad as theft. No, no; I shall never be a thief – I ‘ve had too many opportunities,” said he, with pride and bitterness. “That’s not in my character. I never do harm to anyone. This” – he touched the papers – “is not delicate, but it does harm to no one. If you have no money you must have papers; they stand between you and starvation. Society, has an excellent eye for the helpless – it never treads on people unless they ‘re really down.” He looked at Shelton.

“You ‘ve made me what I am, amongst you,” he seemed to say; “now put up with me!”

“But there are always the workhouses,” Shelton remarked at last.

“Workhouses!” returned Ferrand; “certainly there are – regular palaces: I will tell you one thing: I’ve never been in places so discouraging as your workhouses; they take one’s very heart out.”

“I always understood,” said Shelton coldly; “that our system was better than that of other countries.”

Ferrand leaned over in his chair, an elbow on his knee, his favourite attitude when particularly certain of his point.

“Well,” he replied, “it ‘s always permissible to think well of your own country. But, frankly, I’ve come out of those places here with little strength and no heart at all, and I can tell you why.” His lips lost their bitterness, and he became an artist expressing the result of his experience. “You spend your money freely, you have fine buildings, self-respecting officers, but you lack the spirit of hospitality. The reason is plain; you have a horror of the needy. You invite us – and when we come you treat us justly enough, but as if we were numbers, criminals, beneath contempt – as if we had inflicted a personal injury on you; and when we get out again, we are naturally degraded.”

Shelton bit his lips.

“How much money will you want for your ticket, and to make a start?” he asked.

The nervous gesture escaping Ferrand at this juncture betrayed how far the most independent thinkers are dependent when they have no money in their pockets. He took the note that Shelton proffered him.

“A thousand thanks,” said he; “I shall never forget what you have done for me”; and Shelton could not help feeling that there was true emotion behind his titter of farewell.

He stood at the window watching Ferrand start into the world again; then looked back at his own comfortable room, with the number of things that had accumulated somehow – the photographs of countless friends, the old arm-chairs, the stock of coloured pipes. Into him restlessness had passed with the farewell clasp of the foreigner’s damp hand. To wait about in London was unbearable.

He took his hat, and, heedless of direction, walked towards the river. It was a clear, bright day, with a bleak wind driving showers before it. During one of such Shelton found himself in Little Blank Street. “I wonder how that little Frenchman that I saw is getting on!” he thought. On a fine day he would probably have passed by on the other side; he now entered and tapped upon the wicket.

No. 3 Little Blank Street had abated nothing of its stone-flagged dreariness; the same blowsy woman answered his inquiry. Yes, Carolan was always in; you could never catch him out – seemed afraid to go into the street! To her call the little Frenchman made his appearance as punctually as if he had been the rabbit of a conjurer. His face was as yellow as a guinea.

“Ah! it’s you, monsieur!” he said.

“Yes,” said Shelton; “and how are you?”

“It ‘s five days since I came out of hospital,” muttered the little Frenchman, tapping on his chest; “a crisis of this bad atmosphere. I live here, shut up in a box; it does me harm, being from the South. If there’s anything I can do for you, monsieur, it will give me pleasure.”

“Nothing,” replied Shelton, “I was just passing, and thought I should like to hear how you were getting on.”

“Come into the kitchen, – monsieur, there is nobody in there. ‘Brr! Il fait un froid etonnant’.”

“What sort of customers have you just now?” asked Shelton, as they passed into the kitchen.

“Always the same clientele,” replied the little man; “not so numerous, of course, it being summer.”

“Could n’t you find anything better than this to do?”

The barber’s crow’s-feet radiated irony.

“When I first came to London,” said he, “I secured an engagement at one of your public institutions. I thought my fortune made. Imagine, monsieur, in that sacred place I was obliged to shave at the rate of ten a penny! Here, it’s true, they don’t pay me half the time; but when I’m paid, I ‘m paid. In this, climate, and being ‘poitrinaire’, one doesn’t make experiments. I shall finish my days here. Have you seen that young man who interested you? There ‘s another! He has spirit, as I had once – ’il fait de la philosophie’, as I do – and you will see, monsieur, it will finish him. In this world what you want is to have no spirit. Spirit ruins you.”