‘He told you so?’
Stewart said nothing without a purpose and now withdrew from his cardcase the card of Aristide Raccamond. He looked at Alphendéry sharply while he studied it.
‘Nice card,’ said Alphendéry.
They reached the Avenue de l’Opéra and after a few minutes’ walking came into the Rue d’Antin which runs into the Marché St. Honoré. There is Griffon’s, a good restaurant. They entered.
‘However,’ finished Stewart, ‘that’s for you to decide. When the time comes. I suppose it pays you to risk it at present. (It always does.) You have no expenses. A Chateaubriand and peas for me. Shall we have a carafe of Beaujolais?’
Alphendéry took off his glasses, leaned on the table, and looked up, foreshortened, at Stewart, with his admirable large dusky eyes. ‘For myself, Stewart, no. But I have a wife. A very beautiful lady, elegant and ‘aristocratic.’ A Central European who feels Paris is outlandish, practically situated in the Atlantic Ocean. She prefers Vienna, Berlin, Brussels. It’s not her fault. As a matter of fact,’ he continued, lower, making a queer face, ‘she spends most of her time in Brussels where she has two establishments to keep up, one house that she is furnishing and a pied-à-terre where she meets Theus, the minister. I presume her latest venture shows economy: she will use one of her own apartments for Theus. The whole of Brussels says that I am the only one who does not know that she is his mistress. And so, out of decency, I remain ignorant. The legend is that she and Theus are the most dashing malpractitioners of love in Brussels. Her library is absolutely stuffed with books on flagellation and sex life in ancient Greece, helped out with a little fortunetelling—a modern lady’s library. It’s quite amusing. When I last went to see the Brussels office, Theus gave a brilliant dinner. University professors were there, some men of mark from Paris—Blériot the deputy, Tourcarré the physicist, Robert Menikian the financial journalist, a few ministers of the Belgian crown besides, Theus—Mme. Theus—she’s a famous pervert, too—the Duchesse de Scheveningen, Estelle my wife, and I. Henri Léon was there too, a dolphin out of water, invited at the request of the reigning beauty, Mme. Cécile Ganse, mistress of a Continental royal personage, and also Léon’s mistress. (He followed her all over Europe and finally ran her to earth at Bruges. The Bruges religious processions were on and when she saw them she got so emotional and mystic that she fell right into Léon’s arms.) Léon was wretched; so was I. Every soul in the room except Léon was thinking about Theus, Mme. Theus, Estelle, and me. I thought, what the devil? What difference does it make to my reputation if my wife takes lovers? A wife is noble who lets her husband run around with girls and never complains. Why not a man? Ridiculous convention dating back to the harem. I’m not conventional, that’s all.’ He said with regret and some pride, ‘I was brilliant that evening, Stewart. Even my wife turned her eyes on me a number of times with admiration. For once she saw ministers of the crown, scholars, diplomats, savants admiring me, chiming in; as our wits rose more varied and more harmonious, she began to concede a little respect for me. For naturally she despises me for the disgrace she herself brings me! Naturally, also, she has accepted the popular view of me that I am worthless, clever, but shallow, talented but aimless—that means, I don’t care to make big money! A stomach of energy without head or tail or grasp. Women rarely love a man for himself. At least not women of the higher, refined society. They think it beneath them. I wish I had had the sense to marry a working girl.’
Stewart was inexpressibly shocked; his fork stayed in the air. But he liked Alphendéry. ‘You can divorce your wife.’
There was commiseration in Alphendéry’s face: he smiled, ‘Poor thing! She’s counting on Theus’s marrying her. He likes his own wife too well. True, he doesn’t sleep with her but he likes her. If I divorce her, where will she be? Poor, silly, vain, spendthrift, dishonest, shameful, beautiful Estelle! Where will she be then? She is not in love with anyone. Where would she be, divorced, adrift on the tides of society, trying to pick her living off men? Where do they all end up? I know a woman here—she has every natural advantage—the mistress of Achitophelous: what a charming, lovable, gracious, beautiful girl! And she is worn to a shadow calculating who’s going to marry her next and what to do with her money to make it safe so that one or other of her quondam lovers won’t take it back from her and what to do to grind a bit more out of her lovers and how to put up with the rest of her friends who hate her and whom she detests, and how to keep her beauty and late hours and what on earth she’s going to do in exactly five years when she’s forty! And her answer is—suicide! Of course, I don’t think she will. There is still time for more prostitution in the grand manner, and selling herself to dressmakers and wearing new styles in jewelry for jewelers and going a bit to grand houses of rendezvous and scrounging her way on to yachts and in to banquets and wearing out the pity of her friends, and drugs and drink and sanatariums and the inexperience of a couple of young men, and then, perhaps, by the merest luck, some obscure hideous marriage, or mother, or some still loyal brother, and an old age full of lies. She sees it all. And in her I see Estelle. This delightful Mimi comes round to the bank now making a hell of a row if her stocks drop a point: she expects us to make it up to her—and Jules sometimes does, just to stop the noise. She is always sitting on the edge of her statement of account peering for mistakes in percentages, calling us up on the telephone, trying to gouge us, trying to jew us down from two and one-half to one and one-half per cent, trying to get it for nothing, squabbling about ten shares, wetting three handkerchiefs for half a share of stock dividend, outacting three Sarah Bernhardts for the sake of one hundred francs. And still she’s a woman, and she once had a life fuller of promise than mine ever was, because of the ease of life for a beautiful woman! I’m sorry for her, I can’t help it. I’m here and I forget Estelle. When she’s old, I’ll send her a little income if I’ve still got it and if not, she’s got her brother and mother. She likes me in a way; she wishes me no harm.’ Stewart, with knife and fork poised, said, ‘If it were not for the immortality of the soul, life would not be worth living.’ Alphendéry raised his respectacled eyes attentively and let them rest on the pink lead-pencil face. Stewart laid down his knife and fork. ‘I have been in the City since I was a boy of twelve. I like it. I’m a businessman. But if I didn’t feel that Jesus Christ was leading me ‘towards that distant Aiden’ the endless rough-and-tumble would be insupportable. Don’t you agree with me, Michel?’
Alphendéry looked at Stewart’s steak with anxiety. He half pointed at it, but desisted, ‘No, I’m an atheist, Stewart. My father and his father before him were atheists.’
‘Yes, but whatever you believe in, whatever the Principle is, gives you courage, I mean.’
‘Oh, yes, there are things I have faith in. Principles.’ He hesitated and pointed mildly, ‘Your steak, Ralph—don’t let it get cold.’
Obediently Stewart took a bite. Alphendéry cautiously, but with insistence, nodded at the glass of wine. Stewart drank some wine, obediently. He went on, ‘You know, Alphendéry—you know Austin Friars?—I look down from my window and just for a moment, I know there is a haven for me outside all those things. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in the green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.’ A rapt expression floated on the sharp, raffish features. Alphendéry looked round. ‘He prepareth a banquet for me in the presence of mine enemies,’ went on Stewart, ‘and I will dwell in the House of the Lord for ever. I see it before me, there in Austin Friars, you know, the pastures, the still waters. That gives me comfort. That was why I took the places in Virginia Water and on Lake Windermere. I—’
Alphendéry slid in, sotto voce, ‘Your steak, Stewart.’
He ate, chewing it thoughtfully, ‘This steak! Why is it so fine, Michel? Because the cow itself delights in green pastures. Poor beast. I suppose it spent a few happy months before it was led to the sl
aughterhouse. I never could hold with the vegetarians. I want you to come down to my place over the week end, next time you come to London, Michel. I go to church twice on Sunday. The service is Anglican, but I go because it’s the only church near and the singing is so good. But the Anglicans sing praises of their Redeemer through stiff collars.’ Alphendéry, with an amazed look, as of a man who finds himself sleepwalking, motioned to the waiter.
‘You’ll like it,’ insisted Stewart. ‘Strawberries and cream for me, please. It’s simply extraordinary how I like strawberries. They give some people a rash. By Jove, those are fine specimens, aren’t they? Some have been gathered with white tips, of course. A thing that should never be done. A strawberry should be eaten straight off the soil: it loses its taste after a few hours. Good, these. It’s because, I suppose, there are no fresh ones to compare them with. You’ll like the Sunday-morning service, even though it’s quite High Church, very snobbish in fact. I disapprove of anything High Church: Banners, Vestments. No, most amazing how Protestants can stomach it. These strawberries are really good. I had no idea the French had such strawberries. Well, what did Richard Ford say, “We can’t beat the Continent at two things—dancing and pastry”? Do you like strawberry jam, Michel? My housekeeper puts up very good strawberry jam. It’s all a question of the amount of sugar put in and the sealing. The pots should be sealed with paraffin, dated, and used in sequence. I put in the sugar myself.’
‘I don’t like sweets, Stewart; they’re fattening.’
‘Yes.’ He took a sip of coffee, made a face, took another sip. He began to gobble. ‘Strange you’re not a Christian, religious I mean, Alphendéry. A man and his philosophy are all of one piece, of course. No one has a right to know what passes between a man and his Maker. You always struck me as a man of principle—feeling, too. Very much so! At home in my garden, I like to ponder these things, in the week end: questions of life and death, immortality, our destiny. There’s a very good book, I must lend you—you’d like it. Our Duty to God, Man, and Ourselves, by Timothy Bletherall. A man is all alone in this world.’
‘Yes, he is alone unless he interests himself in man’s fate.’ Alphendéry sat up straight.
‘Quite so,’ said Stewart, not listening, ‘and it seems to me that the reason the English have their Empire is that they are true Christians.’
‘I beg pardon!’ Alphendéry caught himself up. ‘You mean they believe firmly they’re doing the right thing, no matter what.’
‘Exactly,’ agreed Stewart eagerly. ‘Look at the missionaries we send out to savages and heathens, Mohammedans, and Chinese; look at India. How else do we hold India? God in our work. Not only bearing a Bible but a plowshare. The most successful colonists in the world—in history, my dear fellow! We have been blessed with the fruits of the earth. The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. The world and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the Seas. This is the generation of them that seek him. You see, amazingly apt. I take off my hat whenever I pass in front of the Royal Exchange and see that: The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. There is always something amazingly inspiring about the crossing at the Bank of England. He is the King of glory. You see what we English feel is that the Empire is a dedication: the proof as well as offering of our service to Jesus Christ. You know the parable of the one talent and the ten talents … Hey, boy, garçon, un journal. What’s the name of the sheet?’
Alphendéry, slowly waking from a nightmare, said with a pale face, ‘Paris-Midi.’
‘Odd little rag. So unlike our English press. “Farmer Finds a Corpse in Well.” Real French news, eh?’
Alphendéry, with the soft crumpling spring of a baby leopard, seized one sheet as it fell and devoured the noon stock prices. ‘Woe is me, Alhama!’ Stewart looked severely at him. Alphendéry shook his head, ‘I’m afraid most of our bear customers have lost money. I’ll have to call for margins. That Raccamond will be scuttling for cover. He nearly dies of fright when his customers lose. I always have to face the embattled comtesses and ‘rectify’ their accounts. They also always think that God is—or should be—always on their side. And if not God, their banker.’
‘Eh?’ said Stewart.
‘I mean, to get rich or powerful a man has to have God working for him,’ said Alphendéry cryptically. ‘I mean history.’
‘Ah,’ Stewart shook his head archly, ‘you call it history; I call it God. But we think the same, Michel; I rather thought so.’ He was pink with satisfaction.
* * *
Scene Forty-six: Friend of the King
They taxied back to the bank, through the hot, asphalted streets, crumby with people, cars, scaffoldings. ‘I met the King of Spain once,’ said Stewart. ‘He’s a charming fellow really. Good businessman. Of course, the family has this disease, haemophilia. If he gets a scratch he bleeds profusely. Dreadful, isn’t it? One would have to be careful. These overrefined old strains, you know. Comes from Louis XIV or someone like that, doesn’t it? Probably a legend. You know their lives must be a mass of legend. I shouldn’t like to be a king; most uncomfortable. Our royal family, of course, has always been so clean; no trace of any hereditary weakness, like these Continental families. Murthen met the King, our King, I mean, of course. In fact, he’s quite a friend of the King, as much as one can be of a man like that whose entire life is public. In fact (you won’t repeat this?), we’ve done a fair amount of business for the King on several occasions. Not for him directly, of course. And Murthen says he’s really a delightful soul, virile, of course, absolutely practical, not at all unworldly as you might suppose, surrounded by chamberlains and not hearing the facts. But the King insists on reading the daily papers and acquaints himself with everything he comes in contact with, meets people, reads the stock-exchange prices; most creditable, isn’t it? And so simple, Murthen says, not a bit of put-on. It’s really rather wonderful. I think we English are to be congratulated on the way we manage the whole business. No frill and yet full dignity. Now, our King, Murthen says, if someone said to you, “That’s the KING OF ENGLAND,” you’d say, “Not a bit of it: that’s plain Jack Windsor!” It’s all so simple, done without any fuss and frill.’
‘You’ve got to be careful with the King,’ mused Alphendéry. ‘He’ll be a danger one of these days like all stale, rotten institutions. One party or another will use him and then one class or another will have to get rid of the whole family.’
Stewart smiled pityingly. ‘The English don’t think like that.’
‘No? Your name is funny.’
Stewart flushed. ‘Yes, once, as a lesson, but never again. We originate: we don’t repeat.’ He teetered as if at a very good joke.
‘There’s William just coming back from his beer and sausages,’ said Alphendéry delightedly looking out the taxi window as if he and William had been separated for a year. ‘Don’t be misled by his manner, Stewart: he’s a wonderful fellow, the soul of the bank—one of its souls. It has a soul, a ghost, a wraith, a spook, a double, a reflection, and a shadow, like an old Jew. He’s the soul. Pretends to be thorny but that’s all part of his game—his game in life, I suppose. He acts the crusty bachelor but his pockets are warm and wet with generosity. Really I never met such a foolishly, even nauseatingly generous man. After the first few months I got to love William.’
They stood on the doorstep. ‘Silly notion to act like that all the same.’ Stewart was irritated. ‘You ought to speak to him, Alphendéry. It’s all so simple. He-can-think-what he-likes, no-need-to-say-it. He was down there this morning saying a lot of darn silly things. Jules Bertillon, too.’ He turned, offended, away from the entrance hall and looked out into the cool street. The sun lay overhead; the leaves in the Rothschild garden hung like sun-bathing philosophers, shone but made no sound, asleep.
As they entered Stewart said, ‘A cosmopolitan crowd.’ Alphendéry exclaimed, ‘Jules with his imaginative schemes, lavish spending, g
ay antics, disordered gilded postwar harlequinade, his playing bowls when the Armada is sailing down on him, appeals to these war boys, who have never settled down from flying, thieving, rampaging, giving orders, camping with the boys, raping the girls, spending their leave in cabarets and all the other sublunacies of the day, as it saw the sun fourteen short years ago. These rich young men had a grand spree then and they never want to grow up. Jules understands them. They flock to him. He will not grow up and accept his fate. He always reserves for himself in the future some great sunburst noon when he’ll play truant. I don’t think he could change. Out of his setting he would lose money. At present he doesn’t seem able to. He’s coining money.’
‘And also paving the streets with it,’ said Stewart.
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