THE ISLAND

OR

AN ADVENTURE OF A PERSON OF QUALITY

BY

RICHARD WHITEING

LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET 1888

All rights reserved

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PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON

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CONTENTS.

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THE ISLAND.

CHAPTER I. OUT OF FOCUS.

Lat. 25° 4′ S.; long. 130° 8′ W.: August 18.

Rest, peace, the sounds of a summer noon, and the murmur of waves. The calm of a peak in the Pacific thirteen thousand miles away from the dome of St. Paul’s, and completely out of sight of it, if only by reason of the curvature.

I hardly know how I came here. When last I took stock of myself, I was standing on the steps of the Royal Exchange, on another summer afternoon, and looking down. I was busy as usual. I am playing with my little pocket agenda now (perhaps the last I shall ever buy) as I lie here on the broad of my back, and I turn to the entry for that day:(2) ‘8, Gallop, Row; 9.30, letters, coffee; 10.30, article for “Quarterly”; 12.30, City (I wanted Staples to put something on Turks, and thought I had better be on the spot); 1.30, lunch; 2.30 to bedtime, horse sale, chrysanthemums, calls, club, early dinner, address Working Men’s Constitutional Association—“Social Harmonies,” dance at Mrs. G.’s, club again, Daudet, bed.’

A mosaic like this is all very well, but a trifle throws it out. When I had done with Staples, I had no further business at the Royal Exchange. I had certainly nothing to do on the steps; yet I lingered there. It was only for ten minutes, but it spoiled my day, and perhaps changed my destiny.

It was such a sight—civilisation in a nutshell—that was what made me pause. I was a part of it, and Apollo was taking a peep at his own legs. Why not? we all seemed to be going on so beautifully; we were all busy, all doing something for progress. What a scene! The Exchange I had just left, with its groups of millionaires gossiping Bagdad and the Irawaddy, Chicago and the Cape; dividend day over at the Bank yonder,(3) and the well known sight of the Blessed going to take their quarterly reward; a sheriff’s coach turning the angle of the Mansion House (breakfast to an African pro-consul, I believe), a vanishing splendour of satin and plush and gold; dandy clerks making for Birch’s, with the sure and certain hope of a partnership in their easy grace; shabby clerks making for the bun shops; spry brokers going to take the odds against Egyptians, and with an appropriate horsiness of air; a parson (two hundred and fortieth annual thanksgiving sermon at St. Hilda’s to commemorate Testator’s encounter with Barbary pirates, and providential

escape); itinerant salesmen of studs, pocket combs, and universal watch keys; flower girls at the foot of the statue, a patch of colour; beggar at the foot of the steps, another patch, the red shirt beautifully toned down in wear—Perfect! We want more of this in London—giant policeman moving him on; irruption of noisy crowd from the Cornhill corner (East-End marching West to demonstrate for the right to a day’s toil for a day’s crust); thieves, and bludgeon men, and stone men in attendance on demonstration; detectives in(4) attendance on thieves; shutters up at the jewellers’ as they pass; probable average of 7s. 6d. to the hundred pockets; with a wall only to divide them from all the turtle of the Mansion House, or all the bullion of the Bank! And, for background, the nondescript thousands in black and brown and russet and every neutral hue, with the sun over all, and between the sun and the thousands the London mist.

It was something as a picture, but so much more as a thought. What a wonder of parts and whole! What a bit of machinery! The beggars, and occasionally the stock jobbers and the nondescripts to go wrong; the policeman to take them up; the parson to show the way of repentance; and the sheriff to hang them, if need be, when all was done. With this, the dandies to adorn the scene—myself not altogether unornamental—the merchants, the clerks, and the dividend takers, all but cog and fly and crank of the same general scheme. What a bit of machinery!

But suddenly the sunlight faded, and there was a change in me. It was not a(5) change of cause and effect, but only a coincidence. I fancied I saw the man in red furtively writhing in his shirt with the beggar’s itch, scratching himself, so to speak, against his own clothes. At any rate, something threw the apparatus out of gear. They seemed all scratching themselves on the sly. The whole thing looked as well as ever; but how did it work? I saw the clerks home, the shabbies to Stockton lodgings of unstained brick, where infants down with the measles called for drink in the night, and querulous wives compounded that claim for romance with which every woman born of woman comes into the world for the not too solid certainty of bread and butter, at thirty shillings a week all told. I saw the brokers making for their haven of Bayswater stucco to receive the reports of Jane’s progress in Elementary Physics, Master Harry’s broken window, the afternoon call of the Bristow family to bring news that of late Mr. Bristow has not been feeling quite so well—receiving

these things, I say, and wanting to stamp and shout, or do something to give a pulse to life. I saw the sheriff’s coach, methought, with(6) Care in it. There had been another troublesome meeting in Hyde Park; London was going to be governed for Londoners; and to-night’s snug Company Dinner, with its guzzling treasurers, masters, wardens, upper wardens, renter-wardens, past masters, chaplains, and the whole batch might be one of the last of the disgusting series. The very policeman had his anxieties; would civic reform bring him down to the wage level of the Metropolitan force? A soldier who had strayed into the prospect seemed to think it was odd to have to guard the Bank on sevenpence a day. They were all scratching themselves; and when an entire civilisation begins to do that, it is a serious thing.

It was a serious thing for me. For the life of me I could not get them into focus again for my grand pictorial composition of a community all playing the game of life for mutual diversion. Theirs was rather that infernal game of bowls in the Fourth Circle, where the tormented wretches will roll the balls in one another’s faces, when a more sensible direction would give them delightful sport. I drove home, telegraphed an excuse(7) to the Constitutional Association, and, I am ashamed to say, went to bed.

I was no better next morning. Human society was still out of focus. I describe the complaint with some minuteness, because I believe it is quite a new case for the books, and I may go down to posterity, with my name tacked to this disease, like a second Bright. The anguish is insufferable: it is a sort of intense vertigo, with a very disagreeable accompaniment of sickness in the region of the heart, that robs life of all joy. The men and women about you, instead of having any relation to one another of love, friendship, trust, sympathy, and use, become a mass of gyrating atoms, with nothing but repulsions for their principle of movement. At times you do not know your own brother for such. They form no whole; they will not compose; say, rather, they are out of focus, I come back to that. How to get them in?

I consulted a friend of a most practical order of mind, and, while frankly confessing his ignorance of the complaint, he thought, from my persistent mention of the word focus, that distance might be the remedy. ‘You(8) were too near,’ he said, ‘get further off. Go down to Richmond, and dine.’ I thought there might be something in that, and I took his advice. Still it would not come right. So I started for Paris by the night mail.

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CHAPTER II. FURTHER AFIELD.

London was now quite out of the question: Paris compelled me to be so busy with itself. I had not seen it for years, and had never gone below the surface. The tomb of Napoleon, and the view from the Arch (see Guide) were about the measure of my experience. This time I found a guide of another kind, and he gave me a glimpse of the real show.

He put me down at the Flute, a delightful club, where they try to amuse themselves all the year round. When they are not fiddling, at select evening concerts, they are showing their pictures; and when they are not showing their pictures, they are holding an assault-at-arms—the Flute is a great school of fence—or reviewing the year in a fancy piece, written, mounted, and played by their own men, in their own theatre. My Mentor gave me a(10) month—as he facetiously put it—at another club, the choicest thing there. Through an acquaintance at the Jockey, I found a box-seat on a coach for the private race meeting at La Marche—very pretty, very select; no coming in your thousands, as at the Grand Prix, but just a snug thing between you and me, and a few others, of entirely the right sort. The women looked sweet and fresh as a bed of primroses; the course was like a tennis lawn; we lunched al fresco, and no one threw bones on the grass. Far, far away the yell of the bookmaker, and the smell of town. I never enjoyed anything more.

I was presented all round, and was engaged for a reception that night, at the house of one of the chaperones.

‘You will see the best salon in Paris,’ said A.

‘And what is a salon?’

‘Well, I don’t know; they say nobody knows but themselves. Perhaps a crowd of clever people trying to kill the worm of ennui. Nothing like that at home, where the beast is as sacred as the cow at Benares.’

It was grand monde tinctured with literature—that(11) was the social blend. We went to a delightfully old-fashioned house, one of the few left, and saluted a delightfully old-fashioned person—a Marquise, I believe, to complete the harmony of association—who looked like an original of some Moreau le Jeune. Her hair was silver—perfect Louis XV., without the powder puff; she had quick piercing eyes, black amid all this whiteness, and there was a suspicion of hoop in her skirts. She was the queen of a little court, and very condescending. The courtiers acted up to their part by elegant flatteries. They told little stories at her to exemplify her wit and spirit, and capped quotations from her last book, in stage asides. The book was just out, and we had learned it by heart that morning, as the inevitable topic of the small hours. It was a dainty article de Paris; all her ripe experiences of life distilled in maxim, after the manner of M. de la Rochefoucauld. Every other maxim was about love; they are sometimes too young, but never too old for that

vital theme. There was a certain disinterested grandeur in the attitude of the Marquise. ‘I too have played the grand(12) game,’ she seemed to say, ‘and now I umpire the match.’

‘“One of the consolations of old age for a woman,” said a quoting courtier to his neighbours, “is to dare follow her inclinations without peril of love, and show herself a devoted friend, without encouraging dangerous hopes.” Is it possible to speak with more finesse?’

‘I overheard you,’ said the Marquise gaily, ‘but you weaken the compliment by talking so loud. I am not old enough to be deaf.’

‘For my part,’ said the other, ‘I want to know how the Marquise found you all out so well, vous autres. Listen to this: “Habit has as much power over the nature of men as the unknown over the mind of women.” That is my pearl from the chaplet. It is so true.’

‘And so finely said!’

‘Ah, all you care about is the workmanship,’ said our hostess. ‘But I tell you, I have lived all that.’

A General came by, with a charming woman on his arm. He was, in some sort, a counterpart of the elderly muse—silvery hair, a raven brow, and sparkling eyes.

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‘The butcher of the Commune,’ whispered A. to me. ‘His column made the fewest prisoners.’

‘They are beginning to be troublesome again, General,’ I heard the lady say. ‘That dreadful meeting yesterday! Did you see the account?’

‘We are ready for them, Madame; and with the old argument, mitraille; I assure you they only pretend to like it: it hurts.’

There was a story about everybody—not always a good one; but their worst stories were told in their best way. With us, there is so much ingenuity of subterfuge in the other direction. We might do as well, if we dared. They dare, because the women insist on it, and the sovereign obligation is to keep the women amused—the best women, and best is brightest here. It is a great assault of arms for the gallery, and, if you have a good place, it is pleasanter to be in the gallery than in the ring. The exertion is terrible; some of the most noted performers, I believe, lie abed all next day. You have to justify by gifts, as well as by graces; and the gifts are not always(14) there. Beautiful statues are left on their pedestals: the word tells.

Still, I don’t think they make the best of their women. There is, perhaps, a finer use. They try to make the most of them, certainly. The women shape the whole civilisation, and they are just now labouring with much energy at the decline and fall. I have always wondered why they do not include a representation of this commanding interest in the government—Le Ministère de la Femme. It would soon rule the whole cabinet, for the incumbent would be sure to know the business of most of the other departments—War, Commerce, Interior, Foreign Affairs.

It is too good for every day—life on the top of a twelfth cake, and some of the figures no more to be visited by sun and rain and the winds of Heaven than if they were cast in sugar. I heard one of them taking the law from another, on the authority of a gazette of fashion, as to the right way of getting up on a winter’s morning. There are two ways, it seems. ‘An hour before you turn out, ma chère, the maid is to light your fire, and put up the screen. Silver lined with pink silk is(15) pretty; it throws a sort of rosy morning light into the room. Mind you have your chocolate on a warmer! And do you know how to warm your toast-rack? A little live charcoal sprinkled with vanilla; it makes the air so sweet. Raoul gave me such a love of a toast-rack (un amour) the other day. They are making them in gold now. Don’t jump up at once, mind—snooze. What do you wear for a déshabillé? I like satin lined with swansdown, and velvet fastenings; buttons are so horribly cold. Line your slippers with swansdown, too; I hate a cold slipper. B-r-r-r! Madame d’Argenson warms her bath-room

with little gusts of rose vapour, pumped through a hole in the wall; it is an idea. Do you know how to get warm? Never get cold. Floss silk for your stockings, if you please. I won’t even see cold. I have my blinds embroidered with a rising sun, and the maid brings in fresh flowers with the chocolate. It makes summer in the room. Excusez du peu. Then, if you want to know how happy you are, just lift the blind, and peep out, and see the people dancing on the pavement to keep themselves warm. But you’ll see enough of(16) that when you drive, if you like to look at such things. I don’t. They are making little things in enamel, for muff warmers, now; tiny apples filled with hot water—not big ones, or you’ll spoil the shape of your hands. Besides, big ones would make your fingers red; you only want to make them rosy, pas trop n’en faut.

‘What kind of gloves do you sleep in? I prefer a plush lining to the kid. Some say swansdown. I think it’s too warm. Remember there is the coverlet. Stick to plush, you can’t do better, from head to foot. I have seen the nightcap fastened with a little cosy turtle-dove, just under the left ear—if you lie on that side. And make her bring you a light crême de Sabaillon when you turn in. You know, two fresh eggs, and a small glass of Madeira. B-r-r-r! how I hate the cold.’

A padded person of the sterner sex, who was one of the council, propounded a still more original scheme. ‘Chère Comtesse, why all these precautions, when you might so easily get out of the way? I travel in search of perpetual summer, and find it. My man begins to move south, as soon as the cold(17) threatens here, and the moment he finds settled sunshine, he telegraphs me to come on. I never go till Nature is ready, and, when I reach one place, he starts for another, so I always have sunshine in reserve. We keep steadily flying south till the turn of the weather, and then we make north again for the Paris May. I was only caught twice by rain last year, and once by sleet, and then I threatened to discharge him if it happened again. Chère Comtesse, life is too precious: do not waste it in these trials. Will you have a cup of tea?’

‘He is very wretched, for all his make-believe,’ said Mentor, ‘he is going to marry; and he is in a torment of prospective jealousy. It is the funniest case in the world. The young person is faultless; all our young persons are, you know. He pays the proper visits, always in evening-dress—it is our way—and talks to her about the picture-gallery of the Louvre, and the Advent sermons, for just three-quarters of an hour by the clock, with her mother on guard all the time. This is courtship. When she marries, she will acquire the privilege of watching others in the(18) same way, and of being herself unwatched; and there the retribution comes in. He is not in the least jealous now; he only knows he is going to be. There are complications, you see. He is not only about to marry the young person, he is very fond of her, which is perhaps inexcusable at his time of life. In the days of his age he remembers his youth, and—il n’a pas confiance. He is meditating some domestic ukase about visitors, and positively wants to include his mother-in-law in

the family circle. “The duenna, or the cheap defence of households,” is, I believe, the idea. All this, of course, implies no suspicion of the lady, but only a most horrible retrospective suspicion of himself. “Do to others as you would not be done by,” has been the rule of his joyous life; and—il n’a pas confiance. We used to call him “Proverbs.” His choicest conversational effect was a detestable little saying about the folly of acquiring the material of happiness for yourself, when you might always command the stores of your friends. He never quotes his proverb now. I would rewrite the story of Don Juan from his case, with this torment for the Nemesis.(19) Let Juan marry and settle on this prospect of eternal anguish, and leave old raw-head the Commandant, and his horse, for the nursery tales.’

To a lazy man like myself there is but one drawback in this city; you are rather expected to make love to your neighbour’s wife. The nuisance is even greater than in London. They are not exactly rude to you, if you don’t, but they mark their sense of your behaviour in a thousand delicate ways. It is considered disrespectful to the lady of the house.