There was a general disturbance. Flanagan and two or three more went on to
the music-hall, while Philip walked slowly with Clutton and Lawson to the
Closerie des Lilas.
"You must go to the Gaite Montparnasse," said Lawson to him. "It's one of
the loveliest things in Paris. I'm going to paint it one of these days."
Philip, influenced by Hayward, looked upon music-halls with scornful eyes,
but he had reached Paris at a time when their artistic possibilities were
just discovered. The peculiarities of lighting, the masses of dingy red
and tarnished gold, the heaviness of the shadows and the decorative lines,
offered a new theme; and half the studios in the Quarter contained
sketches made in one or other of the local theatres. Men of letters,
following in the painters' wake, conspired suddenly to find artistic value
in the turns; and red-nosed comedians were lauded to the skies for their
sense of character; fat female singers, who had bawled obscurely for
twenty years, were discovered to possess inimitable drollery; there were
those who found an aesthetic delight in performing dogs; while others
exhausted their vocabulary to extol the distinction of conjurers and
trick-cyclists. The crowd too, under another influence, was become an
object of sympathetic interest. With Hayward, Philip had disdained
humanity in the mass; he adopted the attitude of one who wraps himself in
solitariness and watches with disgust the antics of the vulgar; but
Clutton and Lawson talked of the multitude with enthusiasm. They described
the seething throng that filled the various fairs of Paris, the sea of
faces, half seen in the glare of acetylene, half hidden in the darkness,
and the blare of trumpets, the hooting of whistles, the hum of voices.
What they said was new and strange to Philip. They told him about
Cronshaw.
"Have you ever read any of his work?"
"No," said Philip.
"It came out in The Yellow Book."
They looked upon him, as painters often do writers, with contempt because
he was a layman, with tolerance because he practised an art, and with awe
because he used a medium in which themselves felt ill-at-ease.
"He's an extraordinary fellow. You'll find him a bit disappointing at
first, he only comes out at his best when he's drunk."
"And the nuisance is," added Clutton, "that it takes him a devil of a time
to get drunk."
When they arrived at the cafe Lawson told Philip that they would have to
go in. There was hardly a bite in the autumn air, but Cronshaw had a
morbid fear of draughts and even in the warmest weather sat inside.
"He knows everyone worth knowing," Lawson explained. "He knew Pater and
Oscar Wilde, and he knows Mallarme and all those fellows."
The object of their search sat in the most sheltered corner of the cafe,
with his coat on and the collar turned up. He wore his hat pressed well
down on his forehead so that he should avoid cold air. He was a big man,
stout but not obese, with a round face, a small moustache, and little,
rather stupid eyes. His head did not seem quite big enough for his body.
It looked like a pea uneasily poised on an egg. He was playing dominoes
with a Frenchman, and greeted the new-comers with a quiet smile; he did
not speak, but as if to make room for them pushed away the little pile of
saucers on the table which indicated the number of drinks he had already
consumed. He nodded to Philip when he was introduced to him, and went on
with the game. Philip's knowledge of the language was small, but he knew
enough to tell that Cronshaw, although he had lived in Paris for several
years, spoke French execrably.
At last he leaned back with a smile of triumph.
"Je vous ai battu," he said, with an abominable accent. "Garcong!"
He called the waiter and turned to Philip.
"Just out from England? See any cricket?"
Philip was a little confused at the unexpected question.
"Cronshaw knows the averages of every first-class cricketer for the last
twenty years," said Lawson, smiling.
The Frenchman left them for friends at another table, and Cronshaw, with
the lazy enunciation which was one of his peculiarities, began to
discourse on the relative merits of Kent and Lancashire. He told them of
the last test match he had seen and described the course of the game
wicket by wicket.
"That's the only thing I miss in Paris," he said, as he finished the
bock which the waiter had brought. "You don't get any cricket."
Philip was disappointed, and Lawson, pardonably anxious to show off one of
the celebrities of the Quarter, grew impatient. Cronshaw was taking his
time to wake up that evening, though the saucers at his side indicated
that he had at least made an honest attempt to get drunk. Clutton watched
the scene with amusement. He fancied there was something of affectation in
Cronshaw's minute knowledge of cricket; he liked to tantalise people by
talking to them of things that obviously bored them; Clutton threw in a
question.
"Have you seen Mallarme lately?"
Cronshaw looked at him slowly, as if he were turning the inquiry over in
his mind, and before he answered rapped on the marble table with one of
the saucers.
"Bring my bottle of whiskey," he called out. He turned again to Philip. "I
keep my own bottle of whiskey. I can't afford to pay fifty centimes for
every thimbleful."
The waiter brought the bottle, and Cronshaw held it up to the light.
"They've been drinking it. Waiter, who's been helping himself to my
whiskey?"
"Mais personne, Monsieur Cronshaw."
"I made a mark on it last night, and look at it."
"Monsieur made a mark, but he kept on drinking after that. At that rate
Monsieur wastes his time in making marks."
The waiter was a jovial fellow and knew Cronshaw intimately. Cronshaw
gazed at him.
"If you give me your word of honour as a nobleman and a gentleman that
nobody but I has been drinking my whiskey, I'll accept your statement."
This remark, translated literally into the crudest French, sounded very
funny, and the lady at the comptoir could not help laughing.
"Il est impayable," she murmured.
Cronshaw, hearing her, turned a sheepish eye upon her; she was stout,
matronly, and middle-aged; and solemnly kissed his hand to her. She
shrugged her shoulders.
"Fear not, madam," he said heavily. "I have passed the age when I am
tempted by forty-five and gratitude."
He poured himself out some whiskey and water, and slowly drank it. He
wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"He talked very well."
Lawson and Clutton knew that Cronshaw's remark was an answer to the
question about Mallarme. Cronshaw often went to the gatherings on Tuesday
evenings when the poet received men of letters and painters, and
discoursed with subtle oratory on any subject that was suggested to him.
Cronshaw had evidently been there lately.
"He talked very well, but he talked nonsense. He talked about art as
though it were the most important thing in the world."
"If it isn't, what are we here for?" asked Philip.
"What you're here for I don't know. It is no business of mine. But art is
a luxury. Men attach importance only to self-preservation and the
propagation of their species. It is only when these instincts are
satisfied that they consent to occupy themselves with the entertainment
which is provided for them by writers, painters, and poets."
Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years
the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he
loved conversation because it made him thirsty.
Then he said: "I wrote a poem yesterday."
Without being asked he began to recite it, very slowly, marking the rhythm
with an extended forefinger. It was possibly a very fine poem, but at that
moment a young woman came in. She had scarlet lips, and it was plain that
the vivid colour of her cheeks was not due to the vulgarity of nature; she
had blackened her eyelashes and eyebrows, and painted both eyelids a bold
blue, which was continued to a triangle at the corner of the eyes. It was
fantastic and amusing. Her dark hair was done over her ears in the fashion
made popular by Mlle. Cleo de Merode. Philip's eyes wandered to her, and
Cronshaw, having finished the recitation of his verses, smiled upon him
indulgently.
"You were not listening," he said.
"Oh yes, I was."
"I do not blame you, for you have given an apt illustration of the
statement I just made. What is art beside love? I respect and applaud your
indifference to fine poetry when you can contemplate the meretricious
charms of this young person."
She passed by the table at which they were sitting, and he took her arm.
"Come and sit by my side, dear child, and let us play the divine comedy of
love."
"Fichez-moi la paix," she said, and pushing him on one side continued
her perambulation.
"Art," he continued, with a wave of the hand, "is merely the refuge which
the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women,
to escape the tediousness of life."
Cronshaw filled his glass again, and began to talk at length. He spoke
with rotund delivery. He chose his words carefully. He mingled wisdom and
nonsense in the most astounding manner, gravely making fun of his hearers
at one moment, and at the next playfully giving them sound advice. He
talked of art, and literature, and life. He was by turns devout and
obscene, merry and lachrymose. He grew remarkably drunk, and then he began
to recite poetry, his own and Milton's, his own and Shelley's, his own and
Kit Marlowe's.
At last Lawson, exhausted, got up to go home.
"I shall go too," said Philip.
Clutton, the most silent of them all, remained behind listening, with a
sardonic smile on his lips, to Cronshaw's maunderings. Lawson accompanied
Philip to his hotel and then bade him good-night. But when Philip got to
bed he could not sleep. All these new ideas that had been flung before him
carelessly seethed in his brain. He was tremendously excited. He felt in
himself great powers. He had never before been so self-confident.
"I know I shall be a great artist," he said to himself. "I feel it in me."
A thrill passed through him as another thought came, but even to himself
he would not put it into words:
"By George, I believe I've got genius."
He was in fact very drunk, but as he had not taken more than one glass of
beer, it could have been due only to a more dangerous intoxicant than
alcohol.
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