________________________________________________
_ Matthew Peel-Swynnerton sat in the long dining-room of the Pension
Frensham, Rue Lord Byron, Paris; and he looked out of place there.
It was an apartment about thirty feet in length, and of the width
of two windows, which sufficiently lighted one half of a very long
table with round ends. The gloom of the other extremity was
illumined by a large mirror in a tarnished gilt frame, which
filled a good portion of the wall opposite the windows. Near the
mirror was a high folding-screen of four leaves, and behind this
screen could be heard the sound of a door continually shutting and
opening. In the long wall to the left of the windows were two
doors, one dark and important, a door of state, through which a
procession of hungry and a procession of sated solemn self-
conscious persons passed twice daily, and the other, a smaller
door, glazed, its glass painted with wreaths of roses, not an
original door of the house, but a late breach in the wall, that
seemed to lead to the dangerous and to the naughty. The wall-paper
and the window drapery were rich and forbidding, dark in hue,
mysterious of pattern. Over the state-door was a pair of antlers.
And at intervals, so high up as to defy inspection, engravings and
oil-paintings made oblong patches on the walls. They were hung
from immense nails with porcelain heads, and they appeared to
depict the more majestic aspect of man and nature. One engraving,
over the mantelpiece and nearer earth than the rest, unmistakably
showed Louis Philippe and his family in attitudes of virtue.
Beneath this royal group, a vast gilt clock, flanked by pendants
of the same period, gave the right time--a quarter past seven.
And down the room, filling it, ran the great white table, bordered
with bowed heads and the backs of chairs. There were over thirty
people at the table, and the peculiarly restrained noisiness of
their knives and forks on the plates proved that they were a
discreet and a correct people. Their clothes--blouses, bodices,
and jackets--did not flatter the lust of the eye. Only two or
three were in evening dress. They spoke little, and generally in a
timorous tone, as though silence had been enjoined. Somebody would
half-whisper a remark, and then his neighbour, absently fingering
her bread and lifting gaze from her plate into vacancy, would
conscientiously weigh the remark and half-whisper in reply: "I
dare say." But a few spoke loudly and volubly, and were regarded
by the rest, who envied them, as underbred.
Food was quite properly the chief preoccupation. The diners ate as
those eat who are paying a fixed price per day for as much as they
can consume while observing the rules of the game. Without moving
their heads they glanced out of the corners of their eyes,
watching the manoeuvres of the three starched maids who served.
They had no conception of food save as portions laid out in rows
on large silver dishes, and when a maid bent over them
deferentially, balancing the dish, they summed up the offering in
an instant, and in an instant decided how much they could decently
take, and to what extent they could practise the theoretic liberty
of choice. And if the food for any reason did not tempt them, or
if it egregiously failed to coincide with their aspirations, they
considered themselves aggrieved. For, according to the game, they
might not command; they had the right to seize all that was
presented under their noses, like genteel tigers; and they had the
right to refuse: that was all. The dinner was thus a series of
emotional crises for the diners, who knew only that full dishes
and clean plates came endlessly from the banging door behind the
screen, and that ravaged dishes and dirty plates vanished
endlessly through the same door. They were all eating similar food
simultaneously; they began together and they finished together.
The flies that haunted the paper-bunches which hung from the
chandeliers to the level of the flower-vases, were more free. The
sole event that chequered the exact regularity of the repast was
the occasional arrival of a wine-bottle for one of the guests. The
receiver of the wine-bottle signed a small paper in exchange for
it and wrote largely a number on the label of the bottle; then,
staring at the number and fearing that after all it might be
misread by a stupid maid or an unscrupulous compeer, he would re-
write the number on another part of the label, even more largely.
Matthew Peel-Swynnerton obviously did not belong to this world. He
was a young man of twenty-five or so, not handsome, but elegant.
Though he was not in evening dress, though he was, as a fact, in a
very light grey suit, entirely improper to a dinner, he was
elegant. The suit was admirably cut, and nearly new; but he wore
it as though he had never worn anything else. Also his demeanour,
reserved yet free from self-consciousness, his method of handling
a knife and fork, the niceties of his manner in transferring food
from the silver dishes to his plate, the tone in which he ordered
half a bottle of wine--all these details infallibly indicated to
the company that Matthew Peel-Swynnerton was their superior. Some
folks hoped that he was the son of a lord, or even a lord. He
happened to be fixed at the end of the table, with his back to the
window, and there was a vacant chair on either side of him; this
situation favoured the hope of his high rank. In truth, he was the
son, the grandson, and several times the nephew, of earthenware
manufacturers. He noticed that the large 'compote' (as it was
called in his trade) which marked the centre of the table, was the
production of his firm. This surprised him, for Peel, Swynnerton
and Co., known and revered throughout the Five Towns as 'Peels,'
did not cater for cheap markets. A late guest startled the room, a
fat, flabby, middle-aged man whose nose would have roused the
provisional hostility of those who have convinced themselves that
Jews are not as other men. His nose did not definitely brand him
as a usurer and a murderer of Christ, but it was suspicious. His
clothes hung loose, and might have been anybody's clothes. He
advanced with brisk assurance to the table, bowed, somewhat too
effusively, to several people, and sat down next to Peel-
Swynnerton. One of the maids at once brought him a plate of soup,
and he said: "Thank you, Marie," smiling at her. He was evidently
a habitue of the house. His spectacled eyes beamed the superiority
which comes of knowing girls by their names. He was seriously
handicapped in the race for sustenance, being two and a half
courses behind, but he drew level with speed and then, having
accomplished this, he sighed, and pointedly engaged Peel-
Swynnerton with his sociable glance.
"Ah!" he breathed out. "Nuisance when you come in late, sir!"
Peel-Swynnerton gave a reluctant affirmative.
"Doesn't only upset you! It upsets the house! Servants don't like
it!"
"No," murmured Peel-Swynnerton, "I suppose not."
"However, it's not often _I_'m late," said the man. "Can't help it
sometimes. Business! Worst of these French business people is that
they've no notion of time. Appointments ...! God bless my soul!"
"Do you come here often?" asked Peel-Swynnerton. He detested the
fellow, quite inexcusably, perhaps because his serviette was
tucked under his chin; but he saw that the fellow was one of your
determined talkers, who always win in the end. Moreover, as being
clearly not an ordinary tourist in Paris, the fellow mildly
excited his curiosity.
"I live here," said the other. "Very convenient for a bachelor,
you know. Have done for years. My office is just close by. You may
know my name--Lewis Mardon."
Peel-Swynnerton hesitated. The hesitation convicted him of not
'knowing his Paris' well.
"House-agent," said Lewis Mardon, quickly.
"Oh yes," said Peel-Swynnerton, vaguely recalling a vision of the
name among the advertisements on newspaper kiosks.
"I expect," Mr. Mardon went on, "my name is as well-known as
anybody's in Paris."
"I suppose so," assented Peel-Swynnerton.
The conversation fell for a few moments.
"Staying here long?" Mr. Mardon demanded, having added up Peel-
Swynnerton as a man of style and of means, and being puzzled by
his presence at that table.
"I don't know," said Peel-Swynnerton.
This was a lie, justified in the utterer's opinion as a repulse to
Mr. Mardon's vulgar inquisitiveness, such inquisitiveness as might
have been expected from a fellow who tucked his serviette under
his chin. Peel-Swynnerton knew exactly how long he would stay. He
would stay until the day after the morrow; he had only about fifty
francs in his pocket. He had been making a fool of himself in
another quarter of Paris, and he had descended to the Pension
Frensham as a place where he could be absolutely sure of spending
not more than twelve francs a day. Its reputation was high, and it
was convenient for the Galliera Museum, where he was making some
drawings which he had come to Paris expressly to make, and without
which he could not reputably return to England. He was capable of
foolishness, but he was also capable of wisdom, and scarcely any
pressure of need would have induced him to write home for money to
replace the money spent on making himself into a fool.
Mr. Mardon was conscious of a check. But, being of an
accommodating disposition, he at once tried another direction.
"Good food here, eh?" he suggested.
"Very," said Peel-Swynnerton, with sincerity. "I was quite--"
At that moment, a tall straight woman of uncertain age pushed open
the principal door and stood for an instant in the doorway. Peel-
Swynnerton had just time to notice that she was handsome and pale,
and that her hair was black, and then she was gone again, followed
by a clipped poodle that accompanied her. She had signed with a
brief gesture to one of the servants, who at once set about
lighting the gas-jets over the table.
"Who is that?" asked Peel-Swynnerton, without reflecting that it
was now he who was making advances to the fellow whose napkin
covered all his shirt-front.
"That's the missis, that is," said Mr. Mardon, in a lower and
semi-confidential voice.
"Oh! Mrs. Frensham?"
"Yes. But her real name is Scales," said Mr. Mardon, proudly.
"Widow, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"And she runs the whole show?"
"She runs the entire contraption," said Mr. Mardon, solemnly; "and
don't you make any mistake!" He was getting familiar.
Peel-Swynnerton beat him off once more, glancing with careful,
uninterested nonchalance at the gas-burners which exploded one
after another with a little plop under the application of the
maid's taper. The white table gleamed more whitely than ever under
the flaring gas. People at the end of the room away from the
window instinctively smiled, as though the sun had begun to shine.
The aspect of the dinner was changed, ameliorated; and with the
reiterated statement that the evenings were drawing in though it
was only July, conversation became almost general. In two minutes
Mr. Mardon was genially talking across the whole length of the
table. The meal finished in a state that resembled conviviality.
Matthew Peel-Swynnerton might not go out into the crepuscular
delights of Paris. Unless he remained within the shelter of the
Pension, he could not hope to complete successfully his re-
conversion from folly to wisdom. So he bravely passed through the
small rose-embroidered door into a small glass-covered courtyard,
furnished with palms, wicker armchairs, and two small tables; and
he lighted a pipe and pulled out of his pocket a copy of The
Referee. That retreat was called the Lounge; it was the only part
of the Pension where smoking was not either a positive crime or a
transgression against good form. He felt lonely. He said to
himself grimly in one breath that pleasure was all rot, and in the
next he sullenly demanded of the universe how it was that pleasure
could not go on for ever, and why he was not Mr. Barney Barnato.
Two old men entered the retreat and burnt cigarettes with many
precautions. Then Mr. Lewis Mardon appeared and sat down boldly
next to Matthew, like a privileged friend. After all, Mr. Mardon
was better than nobody whatever, and Matthew decided to suffer
him, especially as he began without preliminary skirmishing to
talk about life in Paris. An irresistible subject! Mr. Mardon said
in a worldly tone that the existence of a bachelor in Paris might
easily be made agreeable. But that, of course, for himself--well,
he preferred, as a general rule, the Pension Frensham sort of
thing; and it was excellent for his business. Still he could not
... he knew ... He compared the advantages of what he called
'knocking about' in Paris, with the equivalent in London. His
information about London was out of date, and Peel-Swynnerton was
able to set him right on important details. But his information
about Paris was infinitely precious and interesting to the younger
man,, who saw that he had hitherto lived under strange
misconceptions.
"Have a whiskey?" asked Mr. Mardon, suddenly. "Very good here!" he
added.
"Thanks!" drawled Peel-Swynnerton.
The temptation to listen to Mr. Mardon as long as Mr. Mardon would
talk was not to be overcome. And presently, when the old men had
departed, they were frankly telling each other stories in the
dimness of the retreat. Then, when the supply of stories came to
an end, Mr. Mardon smacked his lips over the last drop of whiskey
and ejaculated: "Yes!" as if giving a general confirmation to all
that had been said.
"Do have one with me," said Matthew, politely. It was the least he
could do.
The second supply of whiskies was brought into the Lounge by Mr.
Mardon's Marie. He smiled on her familiarly, and remarked that he
supposed she would soon be going to bed after a hard day's work.
She gave a moue and a flounce in reply, and swished out.
"Carries herself well, doesn't she?" observed Mr. Mardon, as
though Marie had been an exhibit at an agricultural show. "Ten
years ago she was very fresh and pretty, but of course it takes it
out of 'em, a place like this!"
"But still," said Peel-Swynnerton, "they must like it or they
wouldn't stay--that is, unless things are very different here from
what they are in England."
The conversation seemed to have stimulated him to examine the
woman question in all its bearings, with philosophic curiosity.
"Oh! They LIKE it," Mr. Mardon assured him, as one who knew.
"Besides, Mrs. Scales treats 'em very well. I know THAT. She's
told me. She's very particular"--he looked around to see if walls
had ears--"and, by Jove, you've got to be; but she treats 'em
well. You'd scarcely believe the wages they get, and pickings. Now
at the Hotel Moscow--know the Hotel Moscow?"
Happily Peel-Swynnerton did. He had been advised to avoid it
because it catered exclusively for English visitors, but in the
Pension Frensham he had accepted something even more exclusively
British than the Hotel Moscow. Mr. Mardon was quite relieved at
his affirmative.
"The Hotel Moscow is a limited company now,' said he; "English."
"Really?"
"Yes. I floated it. It was my idea. A great success! That's how I
know all about the Hotel Moscow." He looked at the walls again. "I
wanted to do the same here," he murmured, and Peel-Swynnerton had
to show that he appreciated this confidence. "But she never would
agree. I've tried her all ways. No go! It's a thousand pities."
"Paying thing, eh?"
"This place? I should say it was! And I ought to be able to judge,
I reckon. Mrs. Scales is one of the shrewdest women you'd meet in
a day's march. She's made a lot of money here, a lot of money. And
there's no reason why a place like this shouldn't be five times as
big as it is. Ten times. The scope's unlimited, my dear sir. All
that's wanted is capital. Naturally she has capital of her own,
and she could get more. But then, as she says, she doesn't want
the place any bigger. She says it's now just as big as she can
handle. That isn't so. She's a woman who could handle anything--a
born manager--but even if it was so, all she would have to do
would be to retire--only leave us the place and the name. It's the
name that counts. And she's made the name of Frensham worth
something, I can tell you!"
"Did she get the place from her husband?" asked Peel-Swynnerton.
Her own name of Scales intrigued him.
Mr. Mardon shook his head. "Bought it on her own, after the
husband's time, for a song--a song! I know, because I knew the
original Frenshams."
"You must have been in Paris a long time," said Peel-Swynnerton.
Mr. Mardon could never resist an opportunity to talk about
himself. His was a wonderful history. And Peel-Swynnerton, while
scorning the man for his fatuity, was impressed. And when that was
finished--
"Yes!" said Mr. Mardon after a pause,, reaffirming everything in
general by a single monosyllable.
Shortly afterwards he rose, saying that his habits were regular.
"Good-night,' he said with a mechanical smile.
"G-good-night," said Peel-Swynnerton, trying to force the tone of
fellowship and not succeeding. Their intimacy, which had sprung up
like a mushroom, suddenly fell into dust. Peel-Swynnerton's
unspoken comment to Mr. Mardon's back was: "Ass!" Still, the sum
of Peel-Swynnerton's knowledge had indubitably been increased
during the evening. And the hour was yet early. Half-past ten! The
Folies-Marigny, with its beautiful architecture and its crowds of
white toilettes, and its frothing of champagne and of beer, and
its musicians in tight red coats, was just beginning to be alive--
and at a distance of scarcely a stone's-throw! Peel-Swynnerton
pictured the terraced, glittering hall, which had been the prime
origin of his exceeding foolishness. And he pictured all the other
resorts, great and small, garlanded with white lanterns, in the
Champs Elysees; and the sombre aisles of the Champs Elysees where
mysterious pale figures walked troublingly under the shade of
trees, while snatches of wild song or absurd brassy music floated
up from the resorts and restaurants. He wanted to go out and spend
those fifty francs that remained in his pocket. After all, why not
telegraph to England for more money? "Oh, damn it!" he said
savagely, and stretched his arms and got up. The Lounge was very
small, gloomy and dreary.
One brilliant incandescent light burned in the hall, crudely
illuminating the wicker fauteuils, a corded trunk with a blue-and-
red label on it, a Fitzroy barometer, a map of Paris, a coloured
poster of the Compagnie Transatlantique, and the mahogany retreat
of the hall-portress. In that retreat was not only the hall-
portress--an aged woman with a white cap above her wrinkled pink
face--but the mistress of the establishment. They were murmuring
together softly; they seemed to be well disposed to one another.
The portress was respectful, but the mistress was respectful also.
The hall, with its one light tranquilly burning, was bathed in an
honest calm, the calm of a day's work accomplished, of gradual
relaxation from tension, of growing expectation of repose. In its
simplicity it affected Peel-Swynnerton as a medicine tonic for
nerves might have affected him. In that hall, though exterior
nocturnal life was but just stirring into activity, it seemed that
the middle of the night had come, and that these two women alone
watched in a mansion full of sleepers. And all the recitals which
Peel-Swynnerton and Mr. Mardon had exchanged sank to the level of
pitiably foolish gossip. Peel-Swynnerton felt that his duty to the
house was to retire to bed. He felt, too, that he could not leave
the house without saying that he was going out, and that he lacked
the courage deliberately to tell these two women that he was going
out--at that time of night! He dropped into one of the chairs and
made a second attempt to peruse The Referee. Useless! Either his
mind was outside in the Champs Elysees, or his gaze would wander
surreptitiously to the figure of Mrs. Scales. He could not well
distinguish her face because it was in the shadow of the mahogany.
Then the portress came forth from her box, and, slightly bent,
sped actively across the hall, smiling pleasantly at the guest as
she passed him, and disappeared up the stairs. The mistress was
alone in the retreat. Peel-Swynnerton jumped up brusquely,
dropping the paper with a rustle, and approached her.
"Excuse me," he said deferentially. "Have any letters come for me
to-night?"
He knew that the arrival of letters for him was impossible, since
nobody knew his address.
"What name?" The question was coldly polite, and the questioner
looked him full in the face. Undoubtedly she was a handsome woman.
Her hair was greying at the temples, and the skin was withered and
crossed with lines. But she was handsome. She was one of those
women of whom to their last on earth the stranger will say: "When
she was young she must have been worth looking at!"--with a little
transient regret that beautiful young women cannot remain for ever
young. Her voice was firm and even, sweet in tone, and yet morally
harsh from incessant traffic--with all varieties of human nature.
Her eyes were the impartial eyes of one who is always judging. And
evidently she was a proud, even a haughty creature, with her
careful, controlled politeness. Evidently she considered herself
superior to no matter what guest. Her eyes announced that she had
lived and learnt, that she knew more about life than any one whom
she was likely to meet, and that having pre-eminently succeeded in
life, she had tremendous confidence in herself. The proof of her
success was the unique Frensham's. A consciousness of the
uniqueness of Frensham's was also in those eyes. Theoretically
Matthew Peel-Swynnerton's mental attitude towards lodging-house
keepers was condescending, but here it was not condescending. It
had the real respectfulness of a man who for the moment at any
rate is impressed beyond his calculations. His glance fell as he
said--
"Peel-Swynnerton." Then he looked up again.
He said the words awkwardly, and rather fearfully, as if aware
that he was playing with fire. If this Mrs. Scales was the long-
vanished aunt of his friend, Cyril Povey, she must know those two
names, locally so famous. Did she start? Did she show a sign of
being perturbed? At first he thought he detected a symptom of
emotion, but in an instant he was sure that he had detected
nothing of the sort, and that it was silly to suppose that he was
treading on the edge of a romance. Then she turned towards the
letter-rack at her side, and he saw her face in profile. It bore a
sudden and astonishing likeness to the profile of Cyril Povey; a
resemblance unmistakable and finally decisive. The nose, and the
curve of the upper lip were absolutely Cyril's. Matthew Peel-
Swynnerton felt very queer. He felt like a criminal in peril of
being caught in the act, and he could not understand why he should
feel so. The landlady looked in the 'P' pigeon-hole, and in the
'S' pigeon-hole.
"No," she said quietly, "I see nothing for you."
Taken with a swift rash audacity, he said: "Have you had any one
named Povey here recently?"
"Povey?"
"Yes. Cyril Povey, of Bursley--in the Five Towns."
He was very impressionable, very sensitive, was Matthew Peel-
Swynnerton. His voice trembled as he spoke. But hers also trembled
in reply.
"Not that I remember! No! Were you expecting him to be here?"
"Well, it wasn't at all sure," he muttered. "Thank you. Good-
night."
"Good-night," she said, apparently with the simple perfunctoriness
of the landlady who says good-night to dozens of strangers every
evening.
He hurried away upstairs, and met the portress coming down. "Well,
well!" he thought. "Of all the queer things--!" And he kept
nodding his head. At last he had encountered something REALLY
strange in the spectacle of existence. It had fallen to him to
discover the legendary woman who had fled from Bursley before he
was born, and of whom nobody knew anything. What news for Cyril!
What a staggering episode! He had scarcely any sleep that night.
He wondered whether he would be able to meet Mrs. Scales without
self-consciousness on the morrow. However, he was spared the
curious ordeal of meeting her. She did not appear at all on the
following day; nor did he see her before he left. He could not
find a pretext for asking why she was invisible. _
Read next: BOOK IV WHAT LIFE IS: CHAPTER I - FRENSHAM'S: PART II
Read previous: BOOK III SOPHIA: CHAPTER VII - SUCCESS: PART III
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