Читать книгу The Rash Act - Ford Madox Ford - Страница 6

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It had flashed suddenly through Henry Martin's mind that the fortunate young man was the Lieutenant Smith who had interrogated him outside the regimental clink...That, then, was why his thoughts had taken their tone of wartime reminiscence...The curves of his features must have awakened them.

Henry Martin's definite wish that he could become that accomplished and elegant fellow redoubled itself. He at least had knowledge of the world, assurance, and, in the companionship of Gloria Sorenson, indisputable good fortune. How differently he could look around the room and how differently the room with its bright papery decorations and shining floor must seem to him! Worry—more particularly financial worry—and the curse of ineffectiveness can take the brightness out of any colours. To the other Smith the scarlets of the Japanese paper umbrellas and the Chinese lanterns must be a blaze—a gay, vivifying blaze.

And Gloria Sorenson...the idol of a dozen capitals!...By the quick pang at his heart every time he caught sight of her without having looked for her, he knew that Wanda, in his memory, had lost none of her physical glow. He had been astonished by that unsuspected constancy in himself. It pleased him momentarily because he thought it must make him an interesting figure. He had apparently cherished a passion for twelve—nearly thirteen—years...But he should not have been pleased. It was nothing to write home about. It was merely that the four or five women with whom he had more or less transitorily to do since then had been mentally and physically mediocre. Except perhaps Mrs. Percival...But he had never...'enjoyed her favours,' was the phrase. She might have married him, though,...if Anacondas had stopped say at 75...

But mediocre persons would be his lot, drifting into bored or warmed-up adultery because it was the fashion of the times. Passion...that was not for him or for his day.

That fellow Smith...Molesworth Smith...Moulton Smith...no, it was Monckton Smith because he was connected with the Shreiner-Monckton aero-engines...Monckton Smith had always for Henry Martin gone about in an atmosphere of awe...

A draught from a wind-fan raised the fellow's brown hair from his tanned right brow. There was the jagged weal of an old wound...It immediately brought back to Henry Martin the Cockney pronounced words:

'E'll come into er million an a arf, E will. What price our chanstesses of a million an er arf?'

Evans, one of his fellow clerks in the battalion orderly room had said those words and they had, even then, filled Henry Martin with envy. They had been looking at Monckton Smith sitting at the adjutant's table with his elbows on the grey blanket that covered it. His fingers were pushed into his hair. He had been frowning over some incomprehensible order from headquarters...The jagged scar had become visible.

'Bloomin' Fortunatus!' the clerk Evans had said. 'Some 'as hall the luck.'

'A million an er arf' represented at that date seven and a half million dollars. Father had told Henry Martin that he never expected to cut up for more than a million and a half at his death...Not more than five hundred thousand apiece for Sister Carrie, Brother Hal and himeself. Even if they got it!...And the Monckton engines had gone ahead like blazes since that day...They had extended most extraordinarily in times when nothing else had. The extremely wealthy put down their Packards and Napiers. And bought Moncktons...When all the world...all the bloody world...dreaded starvation, that fellow was scooping in more millions...What a hope!

Some 'as indeed hall the luck! That fellow had had the luck to go out with the first battalion of the regiment, to distinguish himself in the petty little war of movements that began the game. And to have a piece of his skull clipped off by a cavalry sabre. Nothing less! Other men had to be hit by pieces of shell or old tin. That fellow could be incapacitated after a month or two of fun in fine weather. By a sword wound...Gallantry and romance! With three or four ribbons, bright on his tunic. And the sword wound to give him for ever the chance that women would say of him:

'One of the Old Contemptibles, my dear. One of the Old Contemptibles.'

That was the swanky title that those fellows gave to themselves who had gone out with the first hundred thousand British troops. Because the enemy leader had called them in the earliest days: 'The contemptible little British army.' He should not of course have done it. It gave them a chance of exciting awe. Even Henry Martin felt a certain awe as he looked at Monckton Smith!

It was awe, of course, not for that military achievement but for that amazing continuance of good fortune. From a sword-cut on the Marne to the bed of Gloria Sorenson...And who knew how many others! An immensely powerful God must be behind that fellow. If you came within his sphere you might be under the cognizance of that tremendous Power. For good or ill!...

He himself had come into the town that night which was to be his last night on earth with the hope of some of the glory that attached to sharing the bed of someone with some of Gloria Sorenson's blazing flesh. For her flesh seemed to give off lights of its own. And no doubt incandescent heat and perfume. As Wanda's had done. She was extraordinarily like Wanda. Larger as it were, in the way that in ancient hieratic pictures the important personages were represented as large, the less important as exactly the same shape but smaller.

Wanda's fate had been even similar, if smaller, too. From paragraphs or inspired articles in entertainment columns during her rare visits to Paris Henry Martin had gathered that she made starring tours in Scandinavian, Dutch, or North German towns and in the smaller cities of the United States where the populations were mainly German or Scandinavian. She travelled with her husband, the distinguished violinist called Pipperogios or something like it. Apparently a Greek. Apparently he conducted the small travelling orchestra that she took about with her. Sometimes he played solos between her turns. The French papers said that she was noted for the 'seriousness' of her conduct, her avoidance of the fashionable world and the devotion to her career that her husband, Mr. Pipperogios, displayed. According to the photographs she had become astonishingly more beautiful...She had danced...had given pleasure...It was he that was to be dead.

The last time he had seen her she had come bearing white flowers because she thought he was dead. Well, he hadn't been. He had tried to see her after that. On the stage of a theatre on the outer boulevards when she was being unusually successful. Presumably because she was so sérieuse, avoided the fashionable world and no doubt because of her husband, Paris had never taken to her like Berlin or Copenhagen or, say, Chesterton, Indiana...He had not been able to go and see her. Alice had been away visiting. But the woman to whom he had been temporarily attached had taken grippe and he had taken it from her. That was the sort of thing that would have happened to him. But never to Monckton!...

He examined critically the poule at his side. She had a cold. That was all you could say about her...There were much better looking girls in the room. Dark creatures with high colours and hat-brims that hid flashing eyes. If you wanted to go out in a blaze of sexual glory you could have taken one of them. At least he supposed you could have. He was really unacquainted with the etiquette of the place. They were perhaps only dancing partners. He didn't know. In New York he had once penetrated into a public dancing hall on the corner of Twenty-Third Street and Sixth Avenue. They had handed you out rolls of strip tickets at a quarter apiece. Each ticket gave you the right to dance with a girl for three minutes. Or to sit out and treat her to soft drinks for three. He did not exactly know. He had danced with a rather pretty, fairish girl in a pink dress, though he could not remember how it had been cut. Only it was pink. Or perhaps mauve. Apparently he had not given much pleasure to her with his dancing. Because, after a couple of turns they had sat at a table for a long time and talked...About Estonia. She was an Estonian by birth. In Estonia she had had a swing that her father had put up between two fir trees. And a cat called something or other. He could not remember what. It was a peculiar name. After he had talked with her for some time about Estonia he had handed her his roll of strip tickets. It had cost four dollars. He had expected her to take what she was entitled to, but she had put the roll into her bag and gone away without thanking him. Four times four were sixteen. He did not think he had talked about Estonia for forty-eight minutes. At any rate he still did not know where Estonia was. Somewhere in the north of Europe, very likely. Fie didn't equally know whether he was expected to invite the lady home with him.

He didn't even know whether the present poule wanted him to go home with her. He had given her drinks and danced desultorily with her two or three times already. That was his luck. He didn't know that world any more than he knew the world of lower Sixth Avenue dancing saloons. He did know that she was the last person in it that he would want to go home with. But he began to think that he knew nothing in the world about anything—or at least about life. People's lives. How did they live?...Even where! He was pretty sure he had given up the novel he had once begun because of that. He could imagine characters but not how they lived. He could not imagine their surroundings at home. Of course the novel had been about the war. And if you write a novel about the war there will have to be lots of characters in it. But he didn't know anything about the war. From the inside. He had seen nothing of it.

This girl now. What sort of room did she live in? He had not the ghost of an idea. She was tidy. Neat about the ankles. Then perhaps her room—in the Red Light quarter no doubt—was very neat. He had once gone home with a French poule. Her room had been unusually clean. Its chief adornment had been a first communion card. Her own! Except for that it had seemed to be nearly all wax flowers. There had been hundreds of wax flowers of every colour and shade. And the astonishing thing was that there had not been a speck of dust on any of them. She must have gone over them, probably every day, with a feather duster if not with a polishing cloth...But he had never had much to do with that class. They said that it had died out in America. They said that amateurs had put up too much competition for the professionals to be able to make a living any more. That had certainly been his dreary experience. The amateurs had seemed to stand like a wall between him and the professionals. He imagined that that particular underworld might have proved amusing if he could have tried it. Perhaps it wouldn't. The samples he had seen had been dreary enough. But he might have been unlucky.

He seemed to have a knack—it was perhaps merely a weakness—for forming attachments. People attached themselves to him. Then it was hard to get rid of them. It had been the case with Alice; with Mr. Kuhn, with the miscellaneous collection of people at his hotel...And now with this young woman...The dreariest sort of attachments.

If he ever came to this world again he would see that he kept out of them.

He had picked out this uninteresting young woman three weeks ago. He gave her gin fizzes and danced with her once or twice in the course of each evening. He had picked her out for these invitations because he had been feeling depressed, and to-night she looked depressed. She had proved so. She accepted his invitations without smiles or any evidence of satisfaction. He wondered whether he ought to have given her money. He presumed it to have been unnecessary because she had continued to dance and sit with him without either comment or unwillingness.

So he was cut off from any blaze of physical enjoyment on the last evening of his life. There was a girl in the hall—with quivering nostrils, dark—very dark tragic in expression. She might have fulfilled the requirements. He looked at her at intervals. She was well dressed—in black with an attractive hat. Her looks certainly moved him. She sat with other girls rather disdainfully or talked to men without obviously throwing herself at them. She was different—as if she knew unusual things. His poule told him that that girl had lately come out of prison after six months. She had been engaged with others in selling 'snow.'...It was not on the face of it a repulsive offence...

But his poule stood like a damp wall between him and the other. The other sat most of the evening alone. Part of the time she was at a table with a little old man with grey curly hair and a rather sulky countrifiedlooking other girl...As the evening went on she seemed to grow in attraction. He thought of going over, asking her to dance, and in the course of the dance suggesting that he should go home with her...But he had heard of ensanguined scenes in the Red Light quarter of the town. A man he knew, called Preston Hartman, from Lincoln, Nebraska, had had his nose nearly cut off there. It is true that he had innocently hired a room in a house of ill fame, taking it for a respectable boarding house. The rest of the affair had been wrapped in mystery...

But French women of that class certainly did fight for the man they considered themselves to have a claim on. He had seen it happen at the Dôme in Paris. He had at least witnessed the row and was told that was what was the matter. An American woman in a slightly canned state had smiled at a man sitting with a French Woman. They and their sympathizers on the one side and the other had broken quite a lot of furniture and a district call had had to be given for the police and fire brigades. He didn't want to distinguish his last night on earth by an affray of that sort.

Besides he did not want to hurt the feelings of his poule. She might consider that she had established a claim to him. She probably had as these things go. He began to wish that he had given her something or that he had something to give her now. He literally hadn't. His entire wealth was reduced to three hundred and ninety-four francs. He couldn't die without a sou in his pockets.

He wanted to leave, wrapped in a piece of oiled silk, in his identity card case, a fifty franc note. And a memorandum asking whoever found his body to send a cable—deferred—to his father. And a wire to Alice in Paris. Thirty-seven francs for his father: ten or eleven for Alice. Perhaps the finder would just steal the fifty francs. Then they would have to learn it from the paper...or perhaps the papers would not consider the matter of sufficient importance to notice it. A down-and-out young American drowns himself. Thousands of bundle-stiffs got rid of themselves every year unsung—between the California desert and—oh, say Fall River.

Fifty francs for the oiled sack...He was paid up till after lunch at the hotel. Forty-five francs in lieu of notice...Ninety-five—he had meant to give the dark girl a hundred and fifty...Much more than the current rate there. But as far as poules were concerned he wanted to think of himself that nothing in life became him like the leaving of it...

But he wasn't going to die in the dark girl's arms after all...It was perhaps just as well. Perhaps going out in a blaze of physical glory might turn out to be an overrated pleasure. You obviously couldn't—as a gentleman—really die in the lady's arms. You would have to go out and do it somewhere else. In the tide of reaction...Post coïtum tristia—As if she had danced. And had not given pleasure. And he had died.

Besides, it might be held up against the girl. They might jeer at her. They would say he had enjoyed her favours and immediately gone out and drowned himself. That would not be fair. Especially to a girl who had just come out of prison for supplying stupefiants...As if the narcotic had been inefficient...

Across the room the dark girl was using her vanity case—with quick, impatient dabs. Her lips blazed scarlet. Her cheeks glowed. He felt he was ready to throw all these considerations to the wind. He would pay for the gin fizzes and throw all that remained into the dark girl's lap.

The depressed poule would be all the more depressed. He couldn't help that. Just before going out of the world you owed it to Providence to say that you had used your body gloriously. It was the cock due to Aesculapius...He might even give pleasure to the dark girl. Then indeed nothing in life would have become him like the leaving it!

She was pulling on her suède gloves. She was going. He would pay the bill. He tried to attract the attention of the waiter. That nonchalant man in the white coat walked out at the back of the hall...It was always like that. By the time he had got that bill paid the girl would be gone...He would follow her out into the street: he would hurry up one street and down another. But there would be no trace of her. His life would be robbed of its last glory!...By a waiter...It had always been like that with him. That was his life. In epitome!

It had been at that point that Hugh Monckton had strolled over.

The little paper slip that he dropped nonchalantly on the table showed a total of three hundred and twentyone francs...Three bottles of champagne and three small ones of stout. With the tip say three hundred and fifty. And his own bill: thirty...Three hundred and eighty...He could just do it.

He pointed to the chair on the other side of the table.

'Sit down,' he said, 'have a drink.'

The dark girl had not gone. He wasn't however going to go with her. The duties of hospitality come before the duty to the body that Providence has given you! If he didn't go with the girl it was because he had to pay the bill for this Godhead. He must be Apollo at least. It was the story of Philemon and Baucis...Without Baucis, of course...

The least the fellow could do would be to reward him with an inexhaustible cruse...A self-filling beer jug....He wouldn't, of course.

Hugh Monckton said:

'Thanks. Can't. Wish I could. Ever since I stopped one! Mine for the water-wagon. As I believe you'd say.'

He was of course referring to the wound on his forehead...It was as if there were that drop of bitter in his sweet cup. But no doubt it wasn't. After all it's a blessing not to drink. You feel brighter. Henry Martin was pretty abstemious. But even at that he felt better when he had drunk nothing at all for a week...Better...Fitter...

'A very little drop,' Hugh Monckton said, 'gives me sometimes...Not always...Sometimes. What you'd call precious like an epileptic fit. No knowing what you mayn't do...Better not to chance it in these tiring times.'

Henry Martin said:

'You don't look tired!...You're Lieutenant Hugh Monckton Smith.'

'Oh, I'm tired enough,' Hugh Monckton said. 'No end tired...of the whole bally old game.'

He sank gracefully down on to the vacant chair. Henry Martin asked the poule if she would like another drink and called the waiter. The poule said: 'No.' Then 'Yes. Geen feez is beneficial to a cold.'

Hugh Monckton said:

'Rum is better. But gin's good, too, mademoiselle.'

Henry Martin was piqued to see that the girl bridled pleasantly before the other's amiable nonchalance.

'For us who desire to remain plutôt maigre,' she said, 'gin is better if less efficacious. Mademoiselle Gloria can no doubt drink rum. She will no doubt exercise herself. All day and all night.'

'Perhaps she will,' Hugh Monckton said. 'No doubt perhaps she will.' He added. 'You're of course White Man Smith of Magdalen. You got out of that old show early. Some people have all the luck.'

Henry Martin dropped the ineffectual-looking French notes on the table...Three hundred and fifty for Hugh Monckton's bill: forty for his own and four more francs to the unimpressed waiter. Three hundred and ninety-four francs! He was penniless. Literally sans le sou. The long downward course of Anacondas and Kennecotts was finished. It had begun in the Algonquin Hotel on the fifth of August two years before. Mr. Kuhn had brought his famous uncle to gaze on the literary heroes. And to give him, Henry Martin, a financial tip or two. The great man had said:

'Buy Anacondas at 115. They will go up to 135 by Christmas. Sell out and buy New York Central Bonds. You'll be settled for life. If that's what you want...'

With his usual aloofness a little tempered by the aweinspiring presence, so that he had the air of a distinguished top-salesman in an expensive department store, Kuhn had asked his uncle if there was no chance of copper dropping. Germany was coming into the market as a producer. Cape copper was being reorganized under American auspices so that its production might expect to be doubled.

The great man had said flatly:

'I've given you my advice. You can take it or leave it. It's good. Unless the bottom of the world falls out. But sell out at Christmas.'

The bottom of the world had fallen out. The last penny of his mother's legacy had gone. He had sold out his shares in the drug-store and followed that advice. Two years and ten days ago. By Christmas, 1929, Anacondas had been at 95. Now they were 13. He had not even a few francs to give the depressed poule. When she learned of his death—if she did learn of it—she would be more depressed still. Not because of his loss. That would probably mean nothing to her. But because the last chance of getting something out of him would be gone for good.

Hugh Monckton said:

'If you'll walk down with me to the Port I'll give it you back.'

Henry Martin said it was nothing. It didn't matter.

'You American Croesuses!' Hugh Monckton exclaimed good-humouredly. 'You must not corrupt us beggared Europeans with charity. I'll go and get the money.'

He added:

'Oh, but walk down with me. I'd be glad to talk with you...About old times, of course!' he added rather hastily...'Unless,' he began again and he waved his hand toward the poule...'In that case if you'll tell me where you're going, I'll send the money there in two two's after I get to the Port.'

Henry Martin rose wearily.

'I'm coming,' he said.

As he put up his hand to open the swing door he noticed his signet ring on his little finger. It had been mother's gift to him on his fourteenth birthday. For twenty-three years it had hardly been off his finger. Except for once when he had had it enlarged. It was so part of himself that till that moment he had never thought of it as a separate entity.

It was no doubt worth some dollars. It might give him two or three more days of life. But he was not sure that he wanted two or three days more of life. Besides, you should not pawn your mother's presents. On the other hand,'how would the ring like visiting the bottom of the sea? His body might drift out and never be found. There was a strong outward current under St. Mandrier...That was no way to treat a ring. A ring was meant to be kept warm by human flesh. It wouldn't like the ooze of the sea-bottom.

He asked Hugh Monckton to wait and went back into the hall. The dark girl was making herself up again. Gazing rather fiercely into the mirror in the flap of her bag. He dropped the ring under her nose. It spun round, the hoop of gold gleaming. The bloodstone was like an oval of red candy. She looked up at him enigmatically.

'I have seen you throwing glances at me, 5 she said.

He said:

'It is because you danced and gave pleasure.'

She laughed and said:

'Oh! Oh!...I have not danced since I came out of the...the cruel place.'

He said:

'It was before then...Fifteen hundred years before then.'

She laughed again.

'A thousand and half a thousand...' she said. 'You cannot escape that inscription here. If you came to my room you would see it on the wall...All the same I am not yet dead.'...She said. 'Saltavit et placuit...But not mortuus est...It is mortua in the feminine.'

He said:

'I shall be dead before I come to your room.'

She said:

'Courage, mon vieux...Courage, my friend...I am not so repulsive. I have a little friend, a seamstress...She became the mistress of the governor of Cochin-Annam...But before then...Elle m'adorait!...She crocheted me some curtains...If you came to my room you would see them. The likeness of the tomb...In crochet-work...Saltavit: Placuit: Mortuus Est...'

She pronounced it:

'Schltahvee...Plahssuee...'

He said:

'I regret...I have a friend waiting...'

She laughed again: throwing her head back. Her teeth were white but reddened by her lipstick.

'Naturally,' she said. 'We have all of us friends waiting.'

He thought to himself:

'If I were Hugh Monckton Allard Smith and had all the wealth of the Indies I might pass ravishing hours with that creature...'

The Russian orchestra with their white blouses, scarlet stitching and black top boots were playing 'Frankie and Johnnie'...

'It is astonishing, the education of these creatures,' he said. He was crossing the floor. He had in his ears her words:

'Vous êtes gentil, quand même,' as she put his ring on to her reticule.

He seemed to have given pleasure.

Probably her education was not so astonishing. That was the motto of that region. Naturally she would know it. Her little friend had been the mistress of the governor of French Cochin-Annam. A romantic but steel-hard commercial region where you danced and gave pleasure. If you didn't give pleasure you went down into the ooze of the sea-bottom. But if you did you become immortal. On a tombstone or as Lais Corinthiaca...a once fashionable prostitute.