Part 36 (1/2)

For there the pure motives of the mind have ever to be regulated and falsified, the heart crushed, the face veiled.

To break with all that falsity means s.h.i.+pwreck.

”Which way does the sea lie?” asked the girl. Raft turned to the left as though the smell of the sea were leading him.

”I'm glad to be out of there,” said he, ”I was near smothered in that place.”

”So was I,” said she, ”did that man bring you your food all right?”

”Another chap brought it,” said Raft, ”a Dutchman.”

She laughed.

”Do you know what I was thinking?” said she.

”I was thinking of the time you brought me food when I was nearly dying.

You didn't tell a Dutchman to bring it. I'd have brought you your food myself and we would have had it together only I had to talk to those people. Well, I've got rid of them. How would you like to live always in a place like that hotel?”

Raft mentally reviewed the room done in blue silk, Fritz, and the rest of it.

”I'd rather be out in the open,” said Raft. ”Not that I have anything to say against it--but I'd rather be out in the open.”

They walked along.

Companions.h.i.+p with Raft had for her one delightful thing about it, it was companions.h.i.+p without restraint. In a way it was like companions.h.i.+p with a dog, or a child. Like two old sailors they would hang silent, sometimes, for a long time, not bothering to speak, content with being together.

She had never imagined the possibility of a man and a woman of absolutely different social position in such a relations.h.i.+p, never drawn the ghost of such an idea from all the books she had read, all the plays she had seen. Never could she have imagined a common sailor man striking Art for her to pieces, as he had struck the story of Anatole France, and creating above a world he had taught her to despise, a nest for her mind rough as himself, but in air pure and living.

Raft, the common man, had made her social world seem vulgar as well as small, chill as well as vulgar.

She was thinking just now as she walked beside him how when she had told him that the hotel manager would bring him something to eat, he had said, ”but you will want something to eat yourself.” That was the sort of thing constantly recurring in all sorts of ways that had brought her to know him truly, occurring in little ways as well as in that great and heroic moment when he had told her to destroy herself with the knife if he were killed.

As they pa.s.sed along the Cannabier they saw a drunken sailor reeling along towards them through the crowd, and Raft drew her by the arm off the sidewalk to avoid him.

The sight in other times would have made him laugh, or more likely it would have been scarcely noticed, but She, in some manner or another, made drink discreditable, and the sight of it to be avoided. It would have been the same, most likely, had he been taking a child for a walk.

Down near the docks they pa.s.sed a birdshop before which Raft cast anchor almost forgetful of his companion. There were all sorts of birds here, those tiny birds from the African coast one sees in the shops of the Riviera, canaries and parrots.

There was one parrot, enormous and coloured like a tropical sunset, drowsy-eyed and insolent looking. When he saw the sailor man he seemed to rouse up. He looked at Raft and Raft at him.

”I'd like that chap,” said Raft, ”he beats the lot of them.”

”And you shall have him,” said she.

He laughed.

”Much good he'd be to a chap like me. Where'd I keep him?”

Her eyes softened as she looked at the bird and from the bird to the man. Where, indeed, could he keep him? He who had no home--nothing. Then it was that Money seemed to her what it really is, a G.o.d, beautiful and benign.

It had often seemed to her as a demon, but Raft, who unconsciously had cast ridicule on her world, was now, unconsciously, shewing her the great truth she had never seen before, the truth that Money is more beautiful than Apollo, more etherial than Psyche, more powerful than Jove.