The Journal of a Disappointed Man Part 32

After a morning of very mixed emotions and more than one annoyance ...

at last sat down to lunch and a little peace and quiet with R----. We began by quoting verse at one another in open compet.i.tion. Of course neither of us listened to the other's verses. We merely enjoyed the pleasure of recollecting and repeating our own. I began with Tom Moore's "Row gently here, my Gondolier." R---- guessed the author rightly at once and fidgeted until he burst out with, "The Breaths of kissing night and day"--to me an easy one. I gave, "The Moon more indolently sleeps to-night" (Baudelaire), and in reply he did a great stroke by reciting some of the old French of Frangois Villon which entirely flummuxed me.

I don't believe we really love each other, but we cling to each other out of ennui and discover in each other a certain cold intellectual sympathy.

At the pay desk (Lyons' is our rendezvous) we joked with the cas.h.i.+er--a cheerful, fat little girl, who said to R---- (indicating me),--

"He's a funny boy, isn't he?"

"Dangerous," chirped R----, and we laughed. In the street we met an aged, decrepit newsvendor--very dirty and ragged--but his voice was unexpectedly fruity.

"British Success," he called, and we stopped for the sake of the voice.

"I'm not interested," I said--as an appetiser.

"What! Not.... Just one sir: I haven't sold a single copy yet, and I've a wife and four children."

"That's nothing to me--I've three wives and forty children," I remarked.

"What!" in affected surprise, turning to R----, "he's Brigham Young from Salt Lake City. Yes I know it--I've been there myself and been dry ever since. Give us a drink, sir--just one."

In consideration of his voice we gave him 2d. and pa.s.sed on....

After giving a light to a Belgian soldier whose cigarette had gone out, farther along we entered a queer old music shop where they sell flageolets, serpents, clavichords, and harps. We had previously made an appointment with the man to have Schubert's Unfinished Symphony played to us, so as to recall one or two of the melodies which we can't recall and it drives us crazy. "What is that one in the second movement which goes like this?" and R---- whistled a fragment. "I don't know," I said, "but let's go in here and ask." In the shop, a youth was kind enough to say that if we cared to call next day, Madame A----, the harp player would be home and would be ready to play us the symphony.

So this morning, before Madame's appearance, this kind and obliging youth put a gramophone record of it on, to which we listened like two intelligent parrots with heads sideways. Presently, the fat lady harpist appeared and asked us just what we wanted to find out--a rather awkward question for us, as we did not want to "find out" anything excepting how the tunes went.

I therefore explained that as neither of us had sisters or wives, and we both wanted, etc.... so would she...? In response, she smiled pleasantly and played us the second movement on a shop piano. Meanwhile, Henry the boy, hid himself behind the instruments at the rear of the shop and as we signed to her she would say,--

"What's that, Henry?"

And Henry would duly answer from his obscurity, "Wood wind," or "Solo oboe," or whatever it was, and the lad really spoke with authority. In this way, I began to find out something about the work. Before I left, I presented her with a copy of the score, which she did not possess and because she would not accept any sort of remuneration.

"Won't you put your name on it?" she inquired.

I pointed gaily to the words "Ecce h.o.m.o," which I had scribbled across Schubert's name and said, "There you are." Madame smiled incredulously and we said, "Good-bye."

It was a beautifully clement almost springlike day, and at the street corner, in a burst of joyousness, we each bought a bunch of violets of an old woman, stuck them on the ends of our walking-sticks, and marched off with them in triumphant protest to the B.M. Carried over our shoulders, our flowers amused the police and ----, who scarcely realised the significance of the ritual. "This is my protest," said R----, "against the war. It's like Oscar Wilde's Sunflower."

On the way, we were both bitterly disappointed at a dramatic meeting between a man and woman of the artizan cla.s.s which instead of beginning with a stormy, "Robert, where's the rent, may I ask?" fizzled out into, "Hullo, Charlie, why you _are_ a stranger."

At tea in the A.B.C. shop, we had a violent discussion on Socialism, and on the station platform, going home, I said that before marriage I intended saving up against the possibility of divorce--a domestic divorce fund.

"Very dreadful," said R---- with mock gravity, "to hear a recently affianced young man talk like that."

... What should I do then? Marry? I suppose so. Shadows of the prison-house. At first I said I ought not to marry for two years. Then when I am wildly excited with her I say "next week." We could. There are no arrangements to be made. All her furniture--flat, etc. But I feel we ought to wait until the War is over.

At dinner-time to-night I was feverish to do three things at once: write out my day's Journal, eat my food, and read the _Journal_ of Marie Bashkirtseff. Did all three--but unfortunately not at once, so that when I was occupied with one I would surrept.i.tiously cast a glance sideways at the other--and repined.

After dinner, paid a visit to the ---- and found Mrs. ---- playing Patience.

I told her that 12,000 lives had been lost in the great Italian earthquake. Still going on dealing out the cards, she said in her gentle voice that that was dreadful and still absorbed in her cards inquired if earthquakes had aught to do with the weather.

"An earthquake must be a dreadful thing," she gently piped, as she abstractedly dealt out the cards for a new game in a pretty Morris-papered room in Kensington.

_January_ 20.

_At a Public Dinner_

... The timorous man presently took out his cigarette-case and was going to take out a cigarette, when he recollected that he ought first to offer one to the millionaire on his right. Fortunately the cigarette case was silver and the cigarettes appeared--from my side of the dinner-table--to be fat Egyptians. Yet the timorous and una.s.suming bug-hunter hesitated palpably. Ought he to offer his cigarettes? He thought of his own balance at the bank and then of the millionaire's and trembled. The case after all was only silver and the cigarettes were not much more than a halfpenny each. Was it not impertinent? He sat a moment studying the open case which he held in both hands like a hymn book, while the millionaire ordered not wines--but a ba.s.s! At last courage came, and he inoffensively pushed the cigarettes towards his friend.

"No, thanks!" smiled the millionaire, "I don't smoke." And so, 'twas a unicorn dilemma after all.

_February_ 15.

Spent Xmas week at work in her studio, transcribing my Journals while she made drawings. All unbeknown to her I was copying out entries of days gone by--how scandalised she would be if...!

_February_ 22.

What an amazing Masque is Rotten Row on a Sunday morning! I sat on a seat there this morning and watched awhile.

It was most exasperating to be in this kaleidoscope of human life without the slightest idea as to who they all were. One man in particular, I noticed--a first-cla.s.s "swell"--whom I wanted to touch gently on the arm, slip a half-a-crown into his hand and whisper, "There, tell me all about yourself."

Such "swells" there were that out in the fairway, my little c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l boat was wellnigh swamped. To be in the wake of a really magnificent d.u.c.h.ess simply rocks a small boat in an alarming fas.h.i.+on. I leaned over my paddles and gazed up. They steamed past unheeding, but I kept my nerve all right and pulled in and out quizzing and observing.

It is nothing less than scandalous that here I am aged 25 with no means of acquainting myself with contemporary men and women even of my own rank and station. The worst of it is, too, that I have no time to lose--in my state of health. This accursed ill-health cuts me off from everything. I make pitiful attempts to see the world around me by an occasional visit (wind, weather, and health permitting) to Petticoat Lane, the Docks, Rotten Row, Leicester Square, or the Ethical Church.

To-morrow I purpose going to the Christian Scientists'. Meanwhile, the others partic.i.p.ate in Armageddon.

_February_ 23.

_Looking for Lice at the Zoo_

The other day went to the Zoological Gardens, and, by permission of the Secretary, went round with the keepers and searched the animals for ectoparasites.

Some time this year I have to make a scientific Report to the Zoological Society upon all the Lice which from time to time have been collected on animals dying in the gardens and sent me for study and determination.

We entered the cages, caught and examined several Tinamous, _Rhinochetus, Eurypygia_, and many more, to the tune of "The Policeman's Holiday" whistled by a Mynah! It was great fun.

Then we went into the Ostrich House and thoroughly searched two Kiwis.

These, being nocturnal birds, were roosting underneath a heap of straw.

When we had finished investigating their feathers, they ran back to their straw at once, the keeper giving them a friendly tap on the rear to hurry them up a bit. They are just like little old women bundling along.

The Penguins, of course, were the most amusing, and, after operating fruitlessly for some time on a troublesome Adele, I was amused to find, on turning around, all the other Adeles cl.u.s.tered close around my feet in an att.i.tude of mute supplication.

The Armadillo required all the strength of two keepers to hold still while I went over his carca.s.s with lens and forceps. I was also allowed to handle and examine the Society's two specimens of that amazing creature the _Echidna_.

_Balniceps rex_ like other royalty had to be approached decorously. He was a big, ill-tempered fellow, and quite unmanageable except by one keeper for whom he showed a preference. While we other conspirators hid ourselves outside, this man entered the house quietly and approached the bird with a gentle cooing sound. Then suddenly he grabbed the bill and held on. We entered at the same moment and secured the wings, and I began the search--without any luck. We must have made an amusing picture--three men holding on for dear life to a tall, grotesque bird with an imperial eye, while a fourth searched the feathers for parasites!

_February_ 28.