The Complete Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield. Katherine Mansfield
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of ginger whiskers?”
“No, monsieur,” he answers sadly. “We don’t sell American drinks.”
And having smeared a corner of the table he goes back to have another couple of dozen taken by artificial light.
Ugh! The smell of it! And the sickly sensation when one’s throat contracts.
“It’s bad stuff to get drunk on,” says Dick Harmon, turning his little glass in his fingers and smiling his slow, dreaming smile. So he gets drunk on it slowly and dreamily and at a certain moment begins to sing very low, very low, about a man who walks up and down trying to find a place where he can get some dinner.
Ah! how I loved that song, and how I loved the way he sang it, slowly, slowly, in a dark, soft voice:
There was a man
Walked up and down
To get a dinner in the town . . .
It seemed to hold, in its gravity and muffled measure, all those tall grey buildings, those fogs, those endless streets, those sharp shadows of policemen that mean England.
And then—the subject! The lean, starved creature walking up and down with every house barred against him because he had no “home.” How extraordinarily English that is. . . . I remember that it ended where he did at last “find a place” and ordered a little cake of fish, but when he asked for bread the waiter cried contemptuously, in a loud voice: “We don’t serve bread with one fish ball.”
What more do you want? How profound those songs are! There is the whole psychology of a people; and how un-French—how un-French!
“Once more, Deeck, once more!” I would plead, clasping my hands and making a pretty mouth at him. He was perfectly content to sing it for ever.
There again. Even with Dick. It was he who made the first advances.
I met him at an evening party given by the editor of a new review. It was a very select, very fashionable affair. One or two of the older men were there and the ladies were extremely comme il faut. They sat on cubist sofas in full evening dress and allowed us to hand them thimbles of cherry brandy and to talk to them about their poetry. For, as far as I can remember, they were all poetesses.
It was impossible not to notice Dick. He was the only Englishman present, and instead of circulating gracefully round the room as we all did, he stayed in one place leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets, that dreamy half smile on his lips, and replying in excellent French in his low, soft voice to anybody who spoke to him.
“Who is he?”
“An Englishman. From London. A writer. And he is making a special study of modern French literature.”
That was enough for me. My little book, False Coins had just been published. I was a young serious writer who was making a special study of modern English literature.
But I really had not time to fling my line before he said, giving himself a soft shake, coming right out of the water after the bait, as it were: “Won’t you come and see me at my hotel? Come about five o’clock and we can have a talk before going out to dinner.”
“Enchanted!”
I was so deeply, deeply flattered that I had to leave him then and there to preen and preen myself before the cubist sofas. What a catch! An Englishman, reserved, serious, making a special study of French literature. . . .
That same night a copy of False Coins with a carefully cordial inscription was posted off, and a day or two later we did dine together and spent the evening talking.
Talking—but not only of literature. I discovered to my relief that it wasn’t necessary to keep to the tendency of the modern novel, the need of a new form, or the reason why our young men appeared to be just missing it. Now and again, as if by accident, I threw in a card that seemed to have nothing to do with the game, just to see how he’d take it. But each time he gathered it into his hands with his dreamy look and smile unchanged. Perhaps he murmured: “That’s very curious.” But not as if it were curious at all.
That calm acceptance went to my head at last. It fascinated me. It led me on and on till I threw every card that I possessed at him and sat back and watched him arrange them in his hand.
“Very curious and interesting. . . .”
By that time we were both fairly drunk, and he began to sing his song very soft, very low, about the man who walked up and down seeking his dinner.
But I was quite breathless at the thought of what I had done. I had shown somebody both sides of my life. Told him everything as sincerely and truthfully as I could. Taken immense pains to explain things about my submerged life that really were disgusting and never could possibly see the light of literary day. On the whole I had made myself out far worse than I was—more boastful, more cynical, more calculating.
And there sat the man I had confided in, singing to himself and smiling. . . . It moved me so that real tears came into my eyes. I saw them glittering on my long silky lashes—so charming.
After that I took Dick about with me everywhere, and he came to my flat, and sat in the arm-chair, very indolent, playing with the paper-knife. I cannot think why his indolence and dreaminess always gave me the impression he had been to sea. And all his leisurely slow ways seemed to be allowing for the movement of the ship. This impression was so strong that often when we were together and he got up and left a little woman just when she did not expect him to get up and leave her, but quite the contrary, I would explain: “He can’t help it, Baby. He has to go back to his ship.” And I believed it far more than she did.
All the while we were together Dick never went with a woman. I sometimes wondered whether he wasn’t completely innocent. Why didn’t I ask him? Because I never did ask him anything about himself. But late one night he took out his pocket-book and a photograph dropped out of it. I picked it up and glanced at it before I gave it to him. It was of a woman. Not quite young. Dark, handsome, wild-looking, but so full in every line of a kind of haggard pride that even if Dick had not stretched out so quickly I wouldn’t have looked longer.
“Out of my sight, you little perfumed fox-terrier of a Frenchman,” said she.
(In my very worst moments my nose reminds me of a fox-terrier’s.)
“That is my Mother,” said Dick, putting up the pocket-book.
But if he had not been Dick I should have been tempted to cross myself, just for fun.
This is how we parted. As we stood outside his hotel one night waiting for the concierge to release the catch of the outer door, he said, looking up at the sky: “I hope it will be fine to-morrow. I am leaving for England in the morning.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Perfectly. I have to get back. I’ve some work to do that I can’t manage here.”
“But—but have you made all your preparations?”
“Preparations?” He almost grinned. “I’ve none to make.”
“But—enfin, Dick, England is not the other side of the boulevard.”
“It isn’t much farther off,” said he. “Only a few hours, you know.” The door cracked open.
“Ah, I wish I’d known at the beginning of the evening!”
I felt hurt. I felt as a woman must feel when a man takes out his watch and remembers an appointment that cannot possibly concern her, except that its claim is the stronger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He put out his hand and stood, lightly swaying upon the step as though the whole hotel were his ship, and the anchor weighed.
“I forgot. Truly I did. But you’ll write, won’t you? Good night, old chap. I’ll be over again one of these days.”
And then I stood on the shore alone, more like a little fox-terrier