drive away evil spirits." That is, of course, only a figure of speech. What they really do is this : the physical gesture startles the mind out of its lethargy, so that the idea which has been troubling it is replaced by a new one. They have various dodges for securing a new one and making sure that the new one shall be pleasant. More of this later.
What happened is that at this moment my mind was seized with sharp, black anger, entirely objectless. I had at the time not the faintest inkling as to its nature, but there it was. The cafe' was intolerable-like a pest-house. I threw a coin on the table, and was astonished to notice that it rolled off. I went out as if the devil were at my heels.
I remember practically nothing of the next half-hour. I felt a kind of forlorn sense of being lost in a world of incredibly stupid and malicious dwarfs.
I found myself in Piccadilly quite suddenly. A voice purred in my ear, " Good old Peter, good old sport, awfully glad I met you-we'll make a night of it."
The speaker was a handsome Welshman still in his prime. Some people thought him one of the best sculptors living. He had, in fact, a following of disciples which I can only qualify as " almost unpleasantly so. "
He had no use for humanity at the bottom of his heart, except as convenient shapes which he might model. He was bored and disgusted to find them pretending to be alive. The annoyance had grown until he had got into the habit of drinking a good deal more and a good deal more often than a lesser man might have needed. He was a much bigger man than I was physically, and he took me by the arm almost as if he had been taking me into custody. He poured into my ear an interminable series of rambling reminiscences, each of which appeared to him incredibly mirthful.
For about half a minute I resented him; then I let myself go and found myself soothed almost to slumber by the flow of his talk. A wonderful man, like an imbecile child nine-tenths of the time, and yet, at the back of it all, one somehow saw the deep night of his mind suffused with faint sparks of his genius.
I had not the slightest idea where he was taking me I did not care. I had gone to sleep, inside. I woke to find myself sitting in the cafe' Wisteria once more.
The head waiter was excitedly explaining to my companion what a wonderful scene he had missed.
" Mr. Fordham, he nearly kill' ze Lord," he bubbled, wringing his fat hands. " He nearly kill' ze Lord."
Something in the speech tickled my sense of irreverence. I broke into a high-pitched shout of laughter.
" Rotten," said my companion. " Rotten ! That fellow Fordhain never seems to make a clean job of it anyhow. Say, look here, this is my night out. You go 'way like a good boy, tell all those boys and girls come and have dinner."
The waiter knew well enough who was meant; and presently I found myself shaking hands with several perfect strangers in terms which implied the warmest and most unquenchable affection. It was really rather a distinguished crowd. One of the men was a fat German Jew, who looked at first sight like a piece of canned pork that has got mislaid too long in the summer. But the less he said the more he did ; and what he did is one of the greatest treasures of mankind.
Then there was a voluble, genial man with a shock of gray hair and a queer twisted smile on his face. He looked like a character of Dickens. But he had done more to revitalise the theatre than any other man of his time.
I took a dislike to the women. They seemed so unworthy of the men. Great men seem to enjoy going about with freaks. I suppose it is on the same principle as tbe old kings used to keep fools and dwarfs to amuse them. " Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them." But whichever way it is, the burden is usually too heavy for their shoulders.
You remember Frank Harris's story of the Ugly Duckling ? If you don't, you'd better get busy and do it.
That's really what's so frightful in flying-the fear of oneself, the feeling that one has got out of one's class, that all the old kindly familiar things below have turned into hard monstrous enemies ready to smash you if you touch them.
The first of these women was a fat, bold, red-headed slut. She reminded me of a white maggot. She exuded corruption. She was pompous, pretentious, and stupid. She gave herself out as a great authority on literature ; but all her knowledge was parrot, and her own attempts in that direction the most deplorably dreary drivel that ever had been printed even by the chattering clique which she financed. On her bare shoulder was the hand of a short, thin woman with a common, pretty face and a would-be babyish manner. She was a German woman of the lowest class. Her husband was an influential Member of Parliament. People said that he lived on her earnings. There were even darker whispers. Two or three pretty wise birds had told me they thought it was she, and not poor little Mati Hara, who tipped off the Tanks to the Boche.
Did I mention that my sculptor's name was Owen ? Well, it was, is, and will be while the name of Art endures. He was supporting himself unsteadily with one hand on the table, while with the other he put his guests in their seats. I thought of a child playing with dolls.
As the first four sat down, I saw two other girls behind them. One I had met before, Violet Beach. She was a queer little thing-Jewish, I fancy. She wore a sheaf of yellow hair fuzzed out like a
Struwwel-peter, and a violent vermilion dress-in case any one should fail to observe her. It was her affectation to be an Apache, so she wore an old cricket cap down on one eye, and a stale cigarette hung from her lip. But she had a certain talent for writing, and I was very glad indeed to meet her again. I admit I am always a little shy with strangers. As we shook hands, I heard her saying in her curious voice, high-pitched and yet muted, as if she had something wrong with her throat
" Want you to meet Miss--"
I didn't get the name; I can never hear strange words. As it turned out, before forty-eight hours had passed, I discovered that it was Laleham-and then again that it wasn't. But I anticipate-don't try to throw me out of my stride. All in good time.
In the meanwhile I found I was expected to address her as Lou. "Unlimited Lou" was her nickname among the initiate.
Now what I am anxious for everybody to understand is simply this. There's hardly anybody who understands the way his mind works; no two minds are alike, as Horace or some old ass said; and, anyhow, the process of thinking is hardly ever what we imagine.
So, instead of recognising the girl as the owner of the eyes which had gripped me so strangely an hour earlier, the fact of the recognition simply put me off the recognition-I don't know if I'm making myself clear. I mean that the plain fact refused to come to the surface. My mind seethed with questions. Where had I seen her before ?
And here's another funny thing. I don't believe that I should have ever recognised her by sight. What put me on the track was the grip of her hand, though I had never touched it in my life before.
Now don't think that I'm going off the deep end about this. Don't dismiss me as a mystic-monger. Look back each one into your own lives, and if you can't find half a dozen incidents equally inexplicable, equally unreasonable, equally repugnant to the better regulated type of mid-Victorian mind, the best thing you can do is to sleep with your forefathers. So that's that. Good-night.
I told you that Lou was " quite an ordinary and not a particularly attractive girl." Remember that this was the first thought of my " carnal mind " which, as St. Paul says, is " enmity against God."
My real first impression had been the tremendous psychological experience for which all words are inadequate.
Seated by her side,
