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Morals of Marcus Ordeyne

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<h2> CHAPTER VIII </h2> July 4th. Judith has come back. I have seen her and I have explained Carlotta. All day long I felt like a respectable person about to be brought before a magistrate for being drunk and disorderly. Now I have the uneasy satisfaction of having been let off with a caution. I am innocent, but I mustn’t do it again. As soon as I entered the room Judith embraced me, and said a number of foolish things. I responded to the best of my ability. It is not usual for our quiet lake of affection to be visited by such tornadoes. “Oh, I am glad, I am glad to be back with you again. I have longed for you. I couldn’t write it. I did not know I could long for any one so much.” “I have missed you immensely, my dear Judith,” said I. She looked at me queerly for a moment; then with a radiant smile: “I love you for not going into transports like a Frenchman. Oh, I am tired of Frenchmen. You are my good English Marcus, and worth all masculine Paris put together.” “I thank you, my dear, for the compliment,” said I, “but surely you must exaggerate.” “To me you are worth the masculine universe,” said Judith, and she seated me by her side on the sofa, held my hands, and said more foolish things. When the tempest had abated, I laughed. “It is you that have acquired the art of transports in Paris,” said I. “Perhaps I have. Shall I teach you?” “You will have to learn moderation, my dear Judith,” I remarked. “You have been living too rapidly of late and are looking tired.” “It is only the journey,” she replied. I am sure it is the unaccustomed dissipation. Judith is not a strong woman, and late hours and eternal gadding about do not suit her constitution. She has lost weight and there are faint circles under her eyes. There are lines, too, on her face which only show in hours of physical strain. I was proceeding to expound this to her at some length, for I consider it well for women to have some one to counsel them frankly in such matters, when she interrupted me with a gesture of impatience. “There, there! Tell me what you have been doing with yourself. Your letters gave me very little information.” “I am afraid,” said I, “I am a poor letter writer.” “I read each ten times over,” she said. I kissed her hand in acknowledgment. Then I rose, lit a cigarette and walked about the room. Judith shook out her skirts and settled herself comfortably among the sofa-cushions. “Well, what crimes have you been committing the past few weeks?” A wandering minstrel was harping “Love’s Sweet Dream” outside the public-house below. I shut the window, hastily. “Nothing so bad as that,” said I. “He ought to be hung and his wild harp hung behind him.” “You are developing nerves,” said Judith. “Is it a guilty conscience?” She laughed. “You are hiding something from me. I’ve been aware of it all the time.” “Indeed? How?” “By the sixth sense of woman!” Confound the sixth sense of woman! I suppose it has been developed like a cat’s whiskers to supply the deficiency of a natural scent. Also, like the whiskers, it is obtrusive, and a matter for much irritatingly complacent pride. Judith regarded me with a mock magisterial air, and I was put into the dock at once. “Something has happened,” I said, desperately. “A female woman has come and taken up her residence at 26 Lingfield Terrace. A few weeks ago she ate with her fingers and believed the earth was flat. I found her in the Victoria Embankment Gardens beneath the terrace of the National Liberal Club, and now she lives on chocolate creams and the ‘Child’s Guide to Knowledge.’ She is eighteen and her name is Carlotta. There!” As my cigarette had gone out, I threw it with some peevishness into the grate. Judith’s expression had changed from mock to real gravity. She sat bolt upright and looked at me somewhat stonily. “What in the world do you mean, Marcus?” “What I say. I’m saddled with the responsibility of a child of nature as unsophisticated and perplexing as Voltaire’s Huron. She’s English and she came from a harem in Syria, and she is as beautiful as the houris she believes in and is unfortunately precluded from joining. One of these days I shall be teaching her her catechism. I have already washed her face. Kindly pity me as the innocent victim of fantastic circumstances.” “I don’t see why I should pity you,” said Judith. I felt I had not explained Carlotta tactfully. If there are ten ways of doing a thing I have noticed that I invariably select the one way that is wrong. I perceived that somehow or other the very contingency I had feared had come to pass. I had prejudiced Judith against Carlotta. I had aroused the Ishmaelite—her hand against every woman and every woman’s hand against her—that survives in all her sex. “My dear Judith,” said I, “if a wicked fairy godmother had decreed that a healthy rhinoceros should be my housemate you would have extended me your sympathy. But because Fate has inflicted on me an equally embarrassing guest in the shape of a young woman—” “My dear Marcus,” interrupted Judith, “the healthy rhinoceros would know twenty times as much about women as you do.” This I consider one of the silliest remarks Judith has ever made. “Do,” she continued, “tell me something coherent about this young person you call Carlotta.” I told the story from beginning to end. “But why in the world did you keep it from me?” she asked. “I mistrusted the sixth sense of woman,” said I. “The most elementary sense of woman or any one else would have told you that you were doing a very foolish thing.” “How would you have acted?” “I should have handed her over at once to the Turkish consulate.” “Not if you had seen her eyes.” Judith tossed her head. “Men are all alike,” she observed. “On the contrary,” said I, “that which characterises men as a sex is their greater variation from type than women. It is a scientific fact. You will find it stated by Darwin and more authoritatively still by later writers. The highest common factor of a hundred women is far greater than that of a hundred men. The abnormal is more frequent in the male sex. There are more male monsters.” “That I can quite believe,” snapped Judith. “Then you agree with me that men are not all alike?” “I certainly don’t. Put any one of you before a pretty face and a pair of silly girl’s eyes and he is a perfect idiot.” “My dear Judith,” said I, “I don’t care a hang for a pretty face—except yours.” “Do you really care about mine?” she asked wistfully. “My dear,” said I, dropping on one knee by the sofa, and taking her hand, “I’ve been longing for it for six weeks.” And I counted the weeks on her fingers. This put her in a good humour. Now that I come to think of it, there is something adorably infantile in grown up women. Shall man ever understand them? I have seen babies (not many, I am glad to say) crow with delight at having their toes pulled, with a “this little pig went to market,” and so forth; Judith almost crowed at having the weeks told off on her fingers. Queer! An hour was taken up with the account of her doings in Paris. She had met all the nicest and naughtiest people. She had been courted and flattered. An artist in a slouch hat, baggy corduroy breeches, floppy tie and general 1830 misfit had made love to her on the top of the Eiffel Tower. “And he said,” laughed Judith, “‘Partons ensemble. Comme on dit en Anglais—fly with me!’ I remarked that our state when we got to the Champs de Mars would be an effective disguise. He didn’t understand, and it was delicious!” I laughed. “All the same,” I observed, “I can’t see the fun of making jokes which the person to whom you make them doesn’t see the point of.” “Why, that’s your own peculiar form of humour,” she retorted. “I caught the trick from you.” Perhaps she is right. I have noticed that people are slow in their appreciation of my witticisms. I must really be a very dull dog. If she were not fond of me I don’t see how a bright woman like Judith could tolerate my society for half an hour. I don’t think I contribute to the world’s humour; but the world’s humour contributes much to my own entertainment, and things which appear amusing to me do not appeal, when I point them out, to the risible faculties of another. Every individual, I suppose, like every civilisation, must have his own standard of humour. If I were a Roman (instead of an English) Epicurean, I should have died with laughter at the sight of a fat Christian martyr scudding round the arena while chased by a hungry lion. At present I should faint with horror. Indeed, I always feel tainted with savagery and enjoying a vicarious lust, when I smile at the oft-repeated tale of the poor tiger in Dore’s picture that hadn’t got a Christian. On the other hand, it tickles me immensely to behold a plethoric commonplace Briton roar himself purple with impassioned platitude at a political meeting; but I perceive that all my neighbours take him with the utmost seriousness. Again, your literary journalist professes to wriggle in his chair over the humour of Jane Austen; to me she is the dullest lady that ever faithfully photographed the trivial. Years ago I happened to be crossing Putney Bridge, in a frock-coat and silk hat, when a passing member of the proletariat dug his elbows in his comrade’s ribs and, quoting a music-hall tag of the period, shouted “He’s got ‘em on!” whereupon both burst into peals of robustious but inane laughter. Now, if I had turned to them, and said, “He would be funnier if I hadn’t,” and paraphrased, however wittily, Carlyle’s ironical picture of a nude court of St. James’s, they would have punched my head under the confused idea that I was trying to bamboozle them. Which brings me to my point of departure, my remark to Judith as to the futility of jesting to unpercipient ears. I did not take up her retort. “And what was the end of the romance?” I asked. “He borrowed twenty francs of me to pay for the dejeuner, and his l’annee trente delicacy of soul compelled him to blot my existence forever from his mind.” “He never repaid you?” I asked. “For a humouristic philosopher,” cried Judith, “you are delicious!” Judith is too fond of that word “delicious.” She uses it in season and out of season. We have the richest language that ever a people has accreted, and we use it as if it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter sixpence into his hat. I said something of the sort to Judith, after she had resumed her seat and I had opened the window, the minstrel having wandered to the next hostelry, where the process of converting “Love’s Sweet Dream” into a nightmare was still faintly audible. Judith looked at me whimsically, as I stood breathing the comparatively fresh air and enjoying the relative silence. “You are still the same, I am glad to see. Conversation with the young savage from Syria hasn’t altered you in the least.” “In the first place,” said I, “savages do not grow in Syria; and in the second, how could she have altered me?” “If the heavens were to open and the New Jerusalem to appear this moment before you,” retorted Judith, with the relevant irrelevance of her sex, “you would begin an unconcerned disquisition on the iconography of angels.” I sat on the sofa end and touched one of her little pink ears. She has pretty ears. They were the first of things physical about her that attracted me to her years ago in the Roman pension—they and the mass of silken flax that is her hair, and her violet eyes. “Did you learn that particular way of talking in Paris?” I asked. She had the effrontery to say she was imitating me and that it was a very good imitation indeed. We talked about the book. I touched upon the great problem that requires solution—the harmonising and justifying of the contradictory opposites in Renaissance character: Fra Lippo Lippi breaking his own vows and breaking a nun’s for her; Perugino leading his money-grubbing, morose life and painting ethereal saints and madonnas in his bottega, while the Baglioni filled the streets outside with slaughter; Lorenzo de’ Medici bleeding literally and figuratively his fellow-citizens, going from that occupation to his Platonic Academy and disputing on the immortality of the soul, winding up with orgies of sensual depravity with his boon companion Pulci, and all the time making himself an historic name for statecraft; Pope Sixtus IV, at the very heart of the Pazzi conspiracy to murder the Medici— “And Pope Nicholas V when drunk ordering a man to be executed, and being sorry for it when sober,” said Judith. It is wonderful how Judith, with her quite unspecialised knowledge of history can now and then put her finger upon something vital. I have been racking my brain and searching my library for the past two or three days for an illustration of just that nature. I had not thought of it. Here is Tomaso da Sarzana, a quiet, retired schoolmaster, like myself, an editor of classical texts, a peaceful librarian of Cosmo de’ Medici, a scholar and a gentleman to the tips of his fingers; he is made Pope, a King Log to save the cardinalate from a possible King Stork Colonna; the Porcari conspiracy breaks out, is discovered and the conspirators are hunted over Italy and put to death; a gentleman called Anguillara is slightly inculpated; he is invited to Rome by Nicholas, and given a safe-conduct; when he arrives the Pope is drunk (at least Stefano Infessura, the contemporary diarist, says so); the next morning his Holiness finds to his surprise and annoyance that the gentleman’s head has been cut off by his orders. It is an amazing tale. To realise how amazing it is, one must picture the fantastic possibility of it happening at the Vatican nowadays. And the most astounding thing is this: that if all the dead and gone popes were alive, and the soul of the saintly Pontiff of to-day were to pass from him, the one who could most undetected occupy his simulacrum would be this very Thomas of Sarzana. “Pardon me, my dear Judith,” said I. “But this is a story lying somewhat up one of the back-waters of history. Where did you come across it?” “I saw it the other day in a French comic paper,” replied Judith. I really don’t know which to admire the more: the inconsequent way in which the French toss about scholarship, or the marvellous power of assimilation possessed by Judith. Before we separated she returned to the subject of Carlotta. “Am I to see this young creature?” she asked. “That is just as you choose,” said I. “Oh! as far as I am concerned, my dear Marcus, I am perfectly indifferent,” replied Judith, assuming the supercilious expression with which women invariably try to mask inordinate curiosity. “Then,” said I, with a touch of malice, “there is no reason why you should make her acquaintance.” “I should be able to see through her tricks and put you on your guard.” “Against what?” She shrugged her shoulders as if it were vain to waste breath on so obtuse a person. “You had better bring her round some afternoon,” she said. Have I acted wisely in confessing Carlotta to Judith? And why do I use the word “confess”? Far from having committed an evil action, I consider I have exhibited exemplary altruism. Did I want a “young savage from Syria” to come and interfere with my perfectly ordered life? Judith does not realise this. I had a presentiment of the prejudice she would conceive against the poor girl, and now it has been verified. I wish I had held my tongue. As Judith, for some feminine reason known only to herself, has steadily declined to put her foot inside my house, she might very well have remained unsuspicious of Carlotta’s existence. And why not? The fact of the girl being my pensioner does not in the least affect the personality which I bring to Judith. The idea is absurd. Why wasn’t I wise before the event? I might have spared myself considerable worry. A letter from my Aunt Jessica enclosing a card for a fancy dress ball at the Empress Rooms. The preposterous lady! “Do come. It is not right for a young man to lead the life of a recluse of seventy. Here we are in the height of the London season, and I am sure you haven’t been into ten houses, when a hundred of the very best are open to you—” I loathe the term “best houses.” The tinsel ineptitude of them! For entertainment I really would sooner attend a mothers’ meeting or listen to the serious British Drama—Have I read so and so’s novel? Am I going to Mrs. Chose’s dance? Do I ride in the Park? Do I know young Thingummy of the Guards, who is going to marry Lady Betty Something? What do I think of the Academy? As if one could have any sentiment with regard to the Academy save regret at such profusion of fresh paint! “You want shaking up,” continued my aunt. Silly woman! If there is a thing I should abhor it would be to be shaken up. “Come and dine with us at seven-thirty in costume, and I’ll promise you a delightful time. And think how proud the girls would be of showing off their beau cousin.” Et patiti et patita. I am again reminded that I owe it to my position, my title. God ha’ mercy on us! To bedeck myself like a decayed mummer in a booth and frisk about in a pestilential atmosphere with a crowd of strange and uninteresting young females is the correct way of fulfilling the obligations that the sovereign laid upon the successors to the title, when he conferred the dignity of a baronetcy on my great-grandfather! Now I come to think of it the Prince Regent was that sovereign, and my ancestor did things for him at Brighton. Perhaps after all there is a savage irony of truth in Aunt Jessica’s suggestion! And a beau cousin should I be indeed. What does she think I would go as? A mousquetaire? or a troubadour in blue satin trunks and cloak, white silk tights and shoes and a Grecian helmet, like Mr. Snodgrass at Mrs. Leo Hunter’s fete champetre? I wish I could fathom Aunt Jessica’s reasons for her attempts at involving me in her social mountebankery. If the girls get no better dance-partners than me, heaven help them! Only a fortnight ago I drove with them to Hurlingham. My aunt and Gwendolen disappeared in an unaccountable manner with another man, leaving me under an umbrella tent to take charge of Dora. I had an hour and a half of undiluted Dora. The dose was too strong, and it made my head ache. I think I prefer neat Carlotta. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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