the astute conspiracy had tumbled to ruins, the keystone, félise, being knocked out. it was no longer a family affair. fortinbras listened to the young man’s statement of his case with professional detachment. his practised wit questioned. martin replied until he had laid bare his candid and intoxicated soul. at last fortinbras, with a wave of his plump hand, and with his benevolent smile, said:—
“let us now adjourn from labour to refreshment. i will give myself a luxury i have not enjoyed for many a year. i will entertain a guest. you shall lunch with me. when our spirits are fortified and our judgments mellowed by generous food, we shall adjourn from refreshment to labour. sometimes you can put a five-franc piece into the slot and pull out an opinion. sometimes you can’t. let us go to another table.”
they lunched. fortinbras talked of men and things and books. he played the perfect host until the first cigarette had been smoked. then he lay back in the upholstered seat against the wall and looked into vacancy, his face a mask. martin, sitting by his side, dared not disturb him. he felt like one in the awe-inspiring presence of an oracle. presently the oracle stirred, shifted his position and resumed human semblance, the smile reappearing in his eyes and at the corners of his pursy mouth.
“my dear martin,” said he, one elbow on the table and the hand caressing his white hair, “i have now fully considered the question, and see distinctly your path to happiness. as my good old friend montaigne says—an author i once advised you to cultivate——”
“i’ve done so,” said martin.
fortinbras beamed. “there is none richer in humanity. in his words, i say ‘the wisdom of my instruction consists in liberty and naked truth,’ i take the human soul as it is and seek to strip it free from shackles and disguises. i strip yours from the shackles of gross material welfare and the travesty of content. i see it ardent in the pursuit, perhaps of the unattainable, but at any rate in the pursuit of splendour, which is a splendid thing for the soul. liberty and naked truth are the only watchwords. sell out some of your capital, equip yourself in lordly raiment, go to egypt and give your soul a chance.”
“i needn’t tell you,” said martin, after a pause, “that i was hoping you would give me this advice. it seems all crazy. but still——” he lit a cigarette, which during fortinbras’s discourse he had been holding in his fingers. “well—there it is. i don’t seem to care a hang what happens to me afterwards.”
“from my professional point of view,” said fortinbras, “that is an ideal state of mind.”
“all the same, i can’t help feeling a brute. what the devil can i say to bigourdin?”
“you can leave that to me,” replied fortinbras. “he is aware that you are a client of mine and not only honour me with your confidence, but are willing to be guided by my counsel. if you will accept my society, i will accompany you to the land of the pharaohs——”
“what?” cried martin, taken aback. “you? good god! of course,” he added, after recovery, “i should love you to come.”
“as i was saying,” fortinbras continued, “i will accompany you, take upon my shoulders your responsibilities with regard to bigourdin, and, for my own private satisfaction, realise the dream of my life which is to go up to the sphinx and say, ‘now, my dear creature, confidentially as between augur and augur, what the deuce is it all about?’?”
later, when martin had accustomed himself to the amazing proposal, they discussed ways and means.
“you,” said fortinbras, “in order to drink the deep draughts essential to your evolution, must peacock it with the best. you must dwell in palaces and drive in chariots. i, on the other hand, journeying as a philosopher, need but a palm-tree’s shade, a handful of dates and a cup of water. i shall therefore not be of your revellings. but i shall always be near at hand, a sort of private djinn, always at your distinguished service.”
“it’s most delightful and generous of you to put it that way,” laughed martin, “but for the life of me i can’t see why you should do it.”
fortinbras replied simply: “i’m a very weary man, my dear boy, and my heart needs a holiday. that is why i grasp this opportunity of going into the sunshine. as to my offer of counsel, that is a matter which it would be futile to discuss.”
his last words were flavoured with mystery. as far as martin was concerned, fortinbras was free to go whithersoever he pleased. but why this solicitude as to his welfare, this self-made slave of the lamp obligation? soon he gave up the riddle. too many exciting thoughts swept his brain.
until it was written, the letter to bigourdin weighed on his mind. the problem confronting him was to explain his refusal without reference to lucilla. to fortinbras, keeper of his conscience, he could avow his splendid lunacy and be understood. to bigourdin his english reserve forbade his writing himself down an ass and saying: “the greasy waiter cannot accept partnership with you, as he must follow to the ends of the earth the radiant lady to whom he handed the mutton cutlets.” the more he tried the less could he do it. he sat up all night over the letter. it contained all the heart of him that was left for the h?tel des grottes and brant?me and périgord; but—well—he had arranged to abide by fortinbras’s decision. fortinbras had advised him to see more of the world before definitely settling his life. with a disingenuousness which stabbed his conscience, he threw the responsibility on fortinbras. fortinbras was carrying him to egypt on an attempt to solve the riddle of the sphinx. bigourdin knew the utter faith he had in fortinbras. he sent his affectionate regards to everybody—and to félise. it was the most dreadful, heart-tearing letter he had ever had to write.
meanwhile, fortinbras, betraying, for the first time in his life, professional secrecy, revealed the whole matter to bigourdin in an illuminating document. and bigourdin, reading it, and comparing it with martin’s letter, said “bigre!” and “sacrebleu!” and “nom de dieu de nom de dieu!” and all sorts of other things. at first he frowned incredulously. but on every re-perusal of the letter the frown grew fainter, until, after the fifth, the placid smile of faith overspread his broad countenance. but félise, who was only told that martin was not returning but had gone to egypt with her father, grew white and thin-lipped, and hated the day she had met lucilla merriton and all the days she had spent with lucilla merriton, and, in a passion of tears, heaped together everything that lucilla merriton had ever given her, gowns and furs and underlinen and trinkets, in a big trunk which she stowed away in an attic. and the plongeur from the café de l’univers was appointed waiter in martin’s stead and strutted about proudly in martin’s cast-off raiment. he was perhaps the most care-free person in the h?tel des grottes.
martin went on a flying visit to london, and, on the advice of fortinbras, put up at the savoy.
“accustom yourself to lordliness,” the latter had counselled. “you can’t conquer egypt with the self-effacing humility of the servitor. by rubbing shoulders with the wealthy, you will acquire that suspicion of arrogance—the whiff of garlic in the salad—in which your present demeanour is so sadly lacking. you will also learn by observation the correct wear in socks and ties, and otherwise steep yourself in the study of indispensable vanities.”
martin studied conscientiously, and when he had satisfactorily arranged his financial affairs, including the opening of a banking account with messrs. thomas cook & son, visited tailors and haberdashers and hatters and bootmakers, ordering all the things he had seen worn by the opulent youth of the savoy hotel. if he had stolen the money to pay for them, or if he had intended to depart with them without paying, he could not have experienced a more terrifying joy. like a woman clothes-starved for years, who has been given the run of london shops, martin ran sartorially mad. he saw suitings, hosiery, shoes, with lucilla’s eye. he bought himself a tie-pin, a thing which he had never possessed nor dreamed of possessing in his life before; and, observing that an exquisite young lothario upon whom he resolved to model himself did not appear with the same tie-pin on two consecutive days, he went out and bought another. modesty and instinctive breeding saved him from making himself a harlequin.
in the midst of these preoccupations, he called, by arrangement, on corinna. she was living with another girl on the fifth floor of a liftless block of flats in wandsworth. the living room held two fairly comfortably. three sat at somewhat close quarters. so when martin arrived, the third, corinna’s mate, after a perfunctory introduction, disappeared into a sort of cupboard that served her as a bedroom.
corinna looked thin and ill and drawn, and her blouse gaped at the back, and her fair hair exhibited the ropiness of neglect. the furniture of the room was of elementary flimsiness. loose newspapers, pamphlets, handbills, made it as untidy as corinna’s hair. as soon as they were alone, martin glanced from her to her surroundings and then back again to her.
“my dear corinna,” said he, putting hat, stick and gloves on a bamboo table, “what on earth are you doing with yourself?”
she looked at him defiantly, with a touch of haggardness.
“i am devoting myself to the cause.”
martin wrinkled a puzzled brow. “what cause?”
“for a woman there is only one,” said corinna.
“oh!” said martin. “may i sit down?”
“please do.”
she poked a tiny fire in a diminutive tiled grate, while he selected the most solid of the bamboo chairs. she sat on a stool on the hearthrug.
“i suppose you’re anti-suffrage like any other bigoted reactionary,” she said.
martin replied truly: “i haven’t worried about it one way or the other.”
she turned on him swiftly. “then you’re worse than a downright opponent. it’s just the contemptuous apathy of men like you that drive us mad.”
she entered upon a long and nervous tirade, trotting out the old arguments, using the stock phrases, parroting a hundred platform speeches. and all the time, though appearing to attack, she was on the defensive, defiant, desperate. martin regarded her with a shocked expression. her thin blonde beauty was being pinched into shrewishness.
“but, my dear corinna,” said he. “i’ve come to see you, as an old friend. i just want to know how you’re getting on. what’s the good of a political argument between us two? you may be wrong or you may be right. i haven’t studied the question. let us drop it from a contentious point of view. let us meet humanly. or if you like, let us tell each other the outside things that have happened to us. you haven’t even asked me why i’m here. you haven’t asked after félise, or fortinbras, or bigourdin.” he waxed warm. “i’ve just come from brant?me. surely you must have some grateful memories of the folks there. they treated you splendidly. surely you must still take some interest in them.”
corinna supported herself on an outspread hand on the hearthrug.
“do you want me to tell you the truth?” she held him with her pained blue eyes. “i don’t take an interest in any damned thing in god’s universe.”
“may i smoke?” said martin. he lit a cigarette, after having offered her his case which she waved aside impatiently.
“if that is so,” said he, “what in the world is the meaning of all the stuff you have just been talking?”
“i thought you had the sense to have learned something about me. how otherwise am i to earn my living? we’ve gone over the ground a hundred times. this is a way, anyhow, and it’s exciting. it keeps one from thinking of anything else. i’ve been to prison.”
martin gasped, asked her if she had hunger-struck.
“i tried, but i hadn’t the pluck or the hysteria. isabel banditch can do it.” she lowered her voice and waved towards her concealed companion. “i can’t. she believes in the whole thing. the vote will bring along the millennium. once we have the power, men are going to be as good as little cherubs terminating in wings round their necks. drink will disappear. wives shall be like the fruitful soda-water siphon on the sideboard, and there will be no more struggle for existence and no more wars. oh! the earth is going to be a devil of a place when we’ve finished with it.”
“do you talk like this to miss banditch?” asked martin.
she smiled for the first time, and shook her head.
“on the whole you’re rather a commonplace person, martin,” she replied, “but you have one remarkable quality. you always seem to compel me to tell you the truth. i don’t know why. perhaps it is just to puzzle you and annoy you and hurt you.”
“why should you want to hurt me?”
she shrugged her shoulders, and sat with her hands clasping her knees. “well—for one thing, you were my intimate companion for three months and never for a single second did you think of making love to me. for all the impression i made on you i might have been your austere maiden aunt. sometimes i’ve wanted to take you between my teeth and shake you as a terrier shakes a rat. instead, like an ass, i’ve told you the blatant truth.”
“that’s interesting,” said martin, calmly. “but you seem to want to hurt everybody—those who don’t fall in love with you and those who do. you hurt our poor old bigourdin and he hasn’t got over it.”
corinna looked into the diminutive fire. “i suppose you think i was a fool.”
“i can’t believe it matters to you what i think,” said martin, his vanity smarting at being lashed for a joseph andrews.
“it doesn’t. but you think me a fool all the same. i’ll go on telling you the truth”—she flashed a glance at him. “bigourdin’s a million times too good for me. i should have led him a beast of a life. he has had a lucky escape. you can tell him that when you go back.”
“i’m not going back.”
“what?” she said with a start.
he repeated his statement and smiled amiably.
“fed up with being a waiter? i’ve wondered how long you could stick it. what are you going to do now? as a polite hostess, i suppose i should have asked that when you first came into the room.”
“i did expect something of the sort,” martin confessed, “until you declared you didn’t take an interest in any damned thing.”
then they both laughed. corinna stretched out a hand. “forgive me,” she said. “i’ve been standing nearly all day in front of the tube station, dressed in a green, mauve and white sandwich-board and selling newspapers, and i’m dog-tired and miserable. i would ask you to have some tea, but that would only bring out isabel, who would talk our heads off. why have you left brant?me?”
he told her of bigourdin’s proposal and of fortinbras’s counsel; but he made no reference to the flashing of the divine lucilla across his path. once he had confessed to her the kiss of the onion-eating damsel who had married the plumber. she had jested but understood. his romantic knight-errant passion for lucilla was stars above her comprehension. when he mentioned the fact of the death of mrs. fortinbras, corinna softened.
“poor little félise! it must have been a great sorrow to her. i’ll write to her. she’s a dear little girl.” she paused for a few moments. “now, look here, martin,” she said, seizing a fragile poker and smiting a black lump of coal the size of a potato, “it strikes me that as fools we’re very much in the same box. we’ve both thrown over a feather-bed existence. i’ve refused to marry bigourdin and incidentally to run the h?tel des grottes, and you have refused to run the h?tel des grottes and incidentally marry félise.”
“there was never any question of my marrying félise,” cried martin hotly.
she scrambled to her feet and flung an impatient arm.
“you make me tired. have you a grain of sense in your head or an ounce of blood in your body?”
martin also rose. “and you?” he countered. “what have you?”
“neither,” said corinna.
“in that case,” said martin, gathering up hat, stick and gloves, “i don’t see why we should continue a futile conversation.”
he devoid of sense and blood! he who had probed the soul of félise and found there virgin indifference! he who had flung aside a gross temptation. he who was consumed with a burning passion for an incomparable goddess! a chasm thousands of miles wide yawned between him and corinna. in the same box, indeed! he quivered with indignation. she regarded him curiously, through narrowed eyes.
“i do believe,” she said slowly, “that i’ve knocked some sparks out of you at last.”
“you would knock sparks out of a putty dog,” martin retorted wrathfully.
she took hat and stick away from him and laid them on the bamboo table. “don’t let us quarrel,” she said more graciously. “sit down again and finish your story. you said something about egypt and fortinbras going with you. why egypt?”
“why not?” asked martin.
“i suppose fortinbras pointed a prophetic finger. ‘there lies the road to happiness.’ but what is he doing there himself?”
“he is going to talk to the sphinx,” said martin.
“and when you’ve spent all your capital in riotous living, what are you going to do?”
“i don’t know and i don’t care,” said he.
“well, it’s your business, not mine,” said corinna. “you’re lucky to be able to get out of this beastly climate. i wish i could.”
they talked for a while the generalities of travel. then he asked her to dine with him and go to a theatre. this brought her back to herself. she couldn’t. she had no time. all her evenings were taken up with meetings which she had to attend. and she hadn’t an evening gown fit to wear.
“i would rather die than appear in a blouse and skirt in the stalls of a theatre.”
“we can go to the pit or upper circle,” said martin, who had never sat in the stalls in his life.
but she declined. the prodigal in the pit was too ludicrous. no. she was conscientious. she had adopted martyrdom as a profession; she was paid for being a martyr; and to martyrdom, so long as it didn’t include voluntary starvation, she would stick until she could find a pleasanter and more lucrative means of livelihood.
“it’s all very well for you to talk like that,” said martin in his sober way, “but how can you call yourself conscientious when you take these people’s money without believing in their cause?”
“who told you i didn’t believe in it?” she cried. “do you know what it means to be an utterly useless woman? i do. i’m one. it is to prevent replicas of myself in the next generation that i get up at a public meeting and bleat out ‘votes for women,’ and get ignominiously chucked. can’t you see?”
“no,” said martin. “your attitude is too laodicean.”
“what?” snapped corinna.
“it’s somewhere in the bible. the laodiceans were people who blew both hot and cold.”
“my father found scriptural terms for me much more picturesque than that,” said corinna, with a laugh.
a door opened and the frozen, blue-nosed head of miss banditch appeared.
“i’m sorry to interrupt you, corinna, but are we never going to have tea?”
corinna apologised. tea was prepared. miss banditch talked on the one and only topic. martin listened politely. during a pause, while he stood offering a cup for corinna to fill for the second time, she remarked casually:
“by the way, you met miss merriton, didn’t you?”
the question was like a knock on the head. he nearly dropped the cup.
“miss merriton?”
“she’s a friend of mine. i had a note from her at christmas to say that she had been to brant?me and made your acquaintance, and had carried off félise to the south of france. why haven’t you told me about her?”
under her calm, smiling gaze he felt himself grow hot and red and angry. he fenced.
“you must remember my position in brant?me.”
she poured the milk into his cup. “she said she was going to egypt. sugar?”
miss banditch resumed her argument. the remainder of the visit was intolerable. as soon as he could swallow his tea, he took his leave. corinna followed him into the tiny passage by the flat-door.
“my dear old martin,” she said, impulsively throwing an arm round him and gripping his shoulder. “i’m a beast, and a brute, and i hate everybody and everything in this infernal world. but i do wish you the very best of good luck.”
she opened the door and with both hands thrust him gently forth; then quickly she closed the door all but a few inches behind him, and through the slit she cried:
“give my love to lucilla!”
the door banged, and martin descended the five flights of stairs, lost in the maze of the eternal feminine.
