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16 7a
THE APES OF GOD
I
 THE

APES OF GOD

BY

WYNDHAM LEWIS

NEW YORK MCMXXXII

ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
 COPYRIGHT, i912
BY WYNDHAM LEWIS
Firee Published, Febrwy, I9JJ
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

THE APES OF GOD

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
?J3 ?SS

CONTENTS
PROLOGUE.
DEATH—THE—DR UMMER.
Oh Dear Mabel !
The Toilette of a Veteran Gossip-Star.
Saint Bride.
The Body Leaves the Chair.
PART I.
DICK p. 27
PART //.
THE VIRGIN p. 59
PART III.
THE ENCYCLICAL p. 113
Extract from Encyclical addressed to Mr. Zagreus.
PART IV.
BE NOT TOO FINICAL p. 133
PART V.
THE SPLIT-MAN p. 143
PART VI.
APE-FLAGELLANT p. 177
PART VII.
PAMELA FARNHAM'S TEA-PARTY . . . P- «9S
PART VIII.
LESBIAN-APE p. 221
PART IX.
CHEZ LIONEL KEIN, ESQ p. 237
PART X.
WARNED FOR DUTY AT LORD OSMUND'S . . p. 319
Directions for Lord Osmund's Party.
 CONTENTS
PART XI.
MR. ZAGREUS AND THE SPLIT-MAN P- 327
PART XII.
LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY P- 349
I. The Banquet.
II. The Players Solus.
III. The Kitchen.
IV. Mrs. Bosun's Closet.
V. At the American Bar.
VI. Dan at the Assembly.
VII. Blackshirt.
VIII. Finnian Shaw Family Group.
IX. Blackshirt Explains Ratner, Ratner Blackshirt.
X. The Old Colonels.
XI. The Thresholds.
XII. Now Jonathan Bell was an old John Bull.
XIII. Captain Blunderbuss and his Man Squib.
XIV. The Wicked Giant " Cockeye."
XV. The Library.
XVI. Albino Blushes.
XVII. Dan and the Tropical Man.
XVIII. Post-Champagne.
XIX. Killed by Kindness.
XX. God Always Desires to Manifest Himself.
XXI. The Vanish.
XXII. The Play.
XXIII. Beware of Pickpockets.
PART XIII.
THE GENERAL STRIKE p. 607

The designs in this book are by Wyndham Lewis.

THE APES OF GOD
PROLOGUE.

DEATH — THE — DRUMMER

— I
 APES OF GOD

PROLOGUE
OH DEAR MABEL!
A CAT like a beadle goose-stepped with eerie convulsions out of
/-* the night cast by a cluster of statuary, from the recesses of the
entrance halli A maid with matchless decorum left a door silently,
she removed a massive copper candlestick. Site reintegrated the gloom that
the cat had left.
The cat returned, with the state ofa sacred dependent, into the gloom.
Discreet sounds continually rosefrom the nether stair-head, a dark whisper
of infernal presences. The antlers of the hall suggested that full-busted
stags were embedded in its substance. A mighty canvas contained in its
bronze shadows an equestrian ghost, who otherwise might have ruffled the
empty majesty of the house with confusing posthumous activity.
Should a visitor, from just within the entrance, have been able to
proceed at right angles to his left, overcoming septum after septum, hung
as though with gigantic medals with the bulging gilt frames, he would
have reached the gardener's tool-shed, and an arrangement offlagged steps—
where the impeccable staff indulged in those trite exchanges, inseparable
from the menial life, with the more alert of the tradesmen's messengers.
There was a gap where the rhododendron hedge was just exceeded by the
stalwart street-front balustrade—where between the bulbous stone the police
man could be observed at his usual occupation known as Oh-dear-Mabcl !,
which consists in a repeated readjustment of the stiff melton trouser-fork,
by a simultaneous flexion of both legs.
In a room upstairs a dead domestic, sneezing behind his hand because
of the chill he had received as he entered the vast apartment, placed heavy
chiselled blocks of coal within the well of a grate, armoured with a trans
verse caging two inches thick.
THE TOILETTE OF A VETERAN GOSSIP-STAR
A grey-haired lady's-maid stood with a monk-like reverence before the
figure of her mistress. The veteran beauty awoke and the maid cast down
her eyes. She then approached, armed for the carding of her lady's hair.
Trapezoid in profile—an indoor model of the Maya Pyramid, the
 8 APES OF GOD
building for which that structure is the blank pedestal represented by her
savage head—Lady Fredigonde Follett received the combing at first with
immobility.
" We will dispense with the second transformation, Bridget ! "
The voice of her ladyship abruptly boomed upon the air of her colossal
bed-vault and boudoir in one.
" Yes milady ! "
The response came from the tutelary penguin, clockwork answering
elockwork, while itfigged out the other as if it had been its big doll.
" I have not worn that cap for some time ! " thundered the magister,
the aristocrat, strapped up erect in her upholstered box, puncheon within
puncheon, tossing with temper. The comb relaxed in its strokes until the
reports had ceased bursting from the crater of her lips.
" Which cap was ityour ladyship wishedfor ? "
The comb slowed down not to rock the breath that was to expel the
mistress's answer through the slack parchment tinted with lipstick.
" The one of course I got the pattern offrom old Mrs. Hennessey,
before her death perhaps you recollect—the one old Pamela Hennessey
passed on to me you understand ! "
The lips ofparchment whinnied " hennessey," and shaken at the same
time by the vicious plucks of the comb, the large false-teeth rattled in the
horse-like skull, while she panted at this person for so long a body-servant
with a patrician scorn bridled and bitted, with hissing politeness :
" Can you find it do you think—I should be so glad ifyou could, today
for a change Ifancy I might use that one, what doyou think—canyou put
your hand on it, are you sure ? "
Fulting her hand in fancy upon the caps, Bridget responded—
" / think I can milady. Is it the cap thatyour ladyship "
" // is the cap, it is the reticella" shortwinded there was a lacuna, " a
pattern I got," an asthmatic air-pocket, a particle slipped, " old Mrs.
Hennessey."
Huzza huzza huzza ! therefollowed a thin peppery coughing.
" les milady."
" Mrs. Hennessey."
" Your ladyship ? "
" Hennessey ! "
She scoffed out the winged word in a long brazen whinny.
" Willyour ladyship have the clan ribbons ? "
The ribbons that went with the caps, of startling buff scarlet and
agate, of her clan-tartan. Also perhaps the lozenge to which as Fredigonde
 DEATH — THE —DRUMMER 9
she was entitled (both according to the Lyon Office and the Ulster Office)
chiselled upon the face of a locket, reposing upon the ribbon and fixing
it to the cap, or else a Houssa brooch from Gando, a talismanic gift of
Mr. ^agreus. There was a pause, it was followed by a muted bellow
that buffeted Bridget busy behind her.
" How can I put tartan Bridget upon reticella ? " then in a harsh
hushed aside—addressed to herself as if to a third party—" Upon
reticella!"
Bridget was dumb.
" Is it feasible to place tartan upon reticella, it is impossible tartan
upon reticella ! "
This went unanswered too—ear-trumpet in hand, to catch any whisper
of contradiction that might escape the naked ear, Lady Fredigonde frothed
up the silence with the spermy energy of her tongue.
" Dash it Bridget can you be so blind! " in sudden testy open temper.
" Dash it Bridget have you eyes in your head ? I think not."
The echo died away. There was a guilty hush but without so much as
the ghost of a sporting peccavi. Tartan upon reticella ! The four
walls swam—around the culprit in giddy charivari—splashed with the
tartans of Scotch-Whisky posters. The silence hummed horridly with the
nasal complaint of the pipes. Lady Fredigonde delivered a large detached
sniff: as if the signalfor the tart reply of the so-far tongue-tied dummy,
it was answered in prompt undertone.
" Milady has worn " Bridget was heard to object, but not loudly
" the clan-ribbon upon all her caps "
But her voice stopped at caps. Fredigonde heavilyfluffed the dialogue
before her " caps " was out. -
" Since Christmas ! " in a withering assent " since Christmas I have
done that," and her ladyship nodded to the air, curtseyed clumsily with her
skull to Its Emptiness.
" Since December your ladyship."
Picking at a scurfy root Bridget muttered her qualification.
The pedestrian cap, of unimportant toilettes, had, day by day, lain
beneath the tartan.
" Since Christmas I have done so yes "yawned her ladyship, remitting
suddenly these black provocations, " since Christmas. It was a barbarous
expedient—temporary measure."
A spasm of asthma transfixed her, faintly colouring her temples.
" It was my idea by that means to admonish a barbarity."
" Yes milady."
to APES OF GOD
But this was too much, if Bridget was to persist, the old mule, what
next!
" Please, Bridget, keep your nostrils away from my nuque, you tickle
me as I've remarked before. I believe there's a beetle in my hair, willyou
be so good as to remove it ? No there, over my ear. That's it."
As the comb tugged at the pale green yarn, Lady Fredigonde met it
with a massive libration—she was glad to rock her head. Asidefrom that
for self-expression there was nothing left her in her body. The neck had
survived, that was still elastic, but it dwelt upon a plaster-bust. Her
arms were ofplaster—they moved, but upon either hand of a lay-torso.
Too stately to maltreat—as she had been used with her person, in her
hey-day, like a naughty horse—she still would exercise her headpiece
sharply, upon the ruined clock-work of her trunk. In dumb-show or
stationary make-believe she would sweep and roll with it, as if it were
still carried hither and thither, from apartment to apartment, or swept
through the air above her hunter, strapped to a black billy-cock, as it
galloped after foxes, or else, tossed in the sports of Venus in preposterous
fourposters of the epoch of the middleclass Elizabeth, Victoria. Ex-Gossip-
column-belle, she behaved like an independent elf that had crept into this
roughly carved knap. She directed the eyes this way and that, propelled
the tongue and lips with appropriate phrases, peering now and then down
the dark shafts, godspeeding the offerings of milk, fruit and eggs. In this
manner she. had composed her differences with matter.
" / think my hair is a very surprising substance : nothing seems able
to pull it out."
- " Your ladyship has beautiful hair, still. It is very strong."
" It must be conceded that it is very strong."
She made her head buck viciously against the comb.
Heralded with a low nasal growl that took the aspect of a" though "
asthmatically Fredigonde burst into a petulant rumination, the oldest
spoilt-baby in Britain by seven summers—oldest veteran Gossip-Star.
" Though rather a disgusting colour, don't you think—why is it not
a proper white ? I am sufficiently old, it cannot be on the score of age that
my scalp has not quit dyeing the follicles old gold or is it what I eat ? It
can't be the sandwiches. I must knock off chocolate."
The distinct silence, say a quarter-minute, to establish a
respectful distance twixt answer and question, was clocked out by the
servant.
" If milady would allow me to order "
" / have said once " crashed out the raging voice of the mistress, " that
 DEATH — THE — DRUMMER
you shall not order for me the trash you have often mentioned from the
chemist. Am I compelled to repeat it ! "
The clock struck off a good number of hefty seconds, standing, in the
centre of the mantelpiece, upon its bandy bronze legs and claws.
" It is a recognized bleaching agent milady" with thrilling quietness
the maid insisted in the most appropriate language to persuade—" ofgreat
efficacy."
As an afterthought she whispered—" By all the medical profession."
The irresistible formulafellflat. A nasal purr spread to her chest and
with a puff Fredigonde retorted :
" Ofgreat efficacy, what is efficacy ! I have never heard of it ! You
use the thing yourself if you must my girl. Efficacy ! as though I
wanted to be decorated with spots like Lady Hortense Spankmann- Trotter
that was, who sought to be white before her time—as I should be if I
listened to your tips for bleaching dirty dowagers ! "
The maid's hand still swept with her hand-harrow with the action of
shuttles up and down the green rood. It was grained with all the sea's
coastal colours. The head-growth was as heavy as seaweed, in the maid's
palm.
" No milady."
Then the hair must still be the strange green of age, not the beautiful
white of eternity—in spite of the tips sub rosa of the beauty-doctor and
cosmetic statistics, cut out of the Fortnightly Gentle-lady.
Fredigonde squattedplumb, approximately at the centre of a great room,
herformidable image framed by a cheval-glass. The room accommodated a
state-bed where it grew dark almost a decametrefrom the windows. A sleeve
less garment hung to the floor contained by a silver morse, from which each
stiffened neafprojected, occasionally touched by spasms as her temper rose.
Her buccinator muscle let down a pasty shield upon either side of her face.
Like two dour blinkers that had slipped, these cheeks flapped sometimes as
she spoke, and her eyes flashed in the white helm of her head.
The carding was succeeded by the ritual of the construction of the bun.
The bold wattlework was effected in swift-fingered in-and-out of human
basket-making. The bun was completed. Twenty minutes had elapsed.
Bridget now moved to the right-hand side of the vast chair, tongs in hand,
in order to address herself to the manufacture of the curls.
As the curls were being laid down, beside each other, in stiffened
cylinders, the eyes of her ladyship glazed. She began to pooh with a soft
whistling pout. This was a nap upon which the solitary mason of this
quick monument, so sharp-tongued a monolith, counted. Bridget put the
 12 APES OF GOD
finishing touches to the beldam, her mighty mistress, point by point,
stepping about the passive purring skull that was her cull and old single-
woman's bachelor passion.
Her ladyship awoke as the last touches ceased. She raised her head
with slumberous majesty and sheperceived that the curls were there. She was
now at eye-practicefor a spell after the glooms ofsleep. At present she moved
her gums, upon which the teeth hung, in and out, preparatory to a dialogue.
" / think we will have the cap, now we will have the cap."
The first uncertain whinny after the doze was thick.
"Milady."
" The cap. The cap."
" Yesyour ladyship the cap is here. Willyour ladyship have it ? "
" Have, it ? Certainly. The cap"
It was the cap, modelled upon that of Mrs. Hennessey, of the finest -
reticella.
Lady Fredigonde liftedfrom her knees a hand-mirror, her hand grasp
ing it as a diver's flexible masked paw might mechanically seize some
submarine object. She held it steadily before her and examined the curled
but capless bust.
What a decadent emperor ! Bridget crowned her with the cap.
Gingerly held on high, she lowered it, breathing through her ears, down
upon the crown of the head. The seagreen of the hair, the formal surf of
the cap, coalesced.
" A little more over the left eye : no a thought forward and up, for
ward and then up, over my left eye—my left one. You're not tall enough
really areyou to attend to me, you are too short by half-a-foot."
The reticulated eaves were poked up from the green margin of hair by
two forkedfingers with their lustreless plates of copper skin.
" Dear me, my head one would say has grown : how very odd that
would be if it were the case."
She rocked her headpiece as if it had been a pumpkin and the surface
of the vegetable's mother-earth had extended just beneath her chin.
"It is not so big as I thought. An alternative to my head having
grown is I suppose that the cap may have shrunk in the wash."
" Your ladyship will pardon me, I think it is the same as it was
before."
" Which. The cap or the head ? "
" The capyour ladyship."
" I thinkyou are mistaken, I should certainly say that it is a quarter of
an inch out quite that—/ am very familiar with this landscape garden."
 DEATH — THE — DRUMMER i3
Indomitable, detached geologist, she cast a professional eye over her polar
ice-cap.
But cap and hair had not conformed to her canon—the pattern of the
cap-cum-curled-temples offancy. She replaced the mirror upon her lap
and she looked sideways at her maid. Bridget refused her face of an old
sheepish scapegoat (which she had averted) to the lazy circling of the
predatory eye. Fredigonde heaved a surly breath and as before took up
the hand-glass.
The elements of the arrangement proposed were as follows. Three
distinct zones were involved. There was that of the white arcs in perspec
tive of the cap, there was the green region of hair, and there was the pallid
copper of the skin. She snapped them together, half shutting a connois-
seurish eye and expected the synthesis.
Depositing the hand-glass and the hand fixed round its handle upon
her knees then, she said—
" / give it up, didyou hear me Bridget—let us after all haveyesterday's
cap."
The servant wearily rustled in her shadow, her dark arms rising to
remove the reticella.
" Willyour ladyship have the clan ribbons."
The old lady's hands trembled and she thundered
" Yes ! "
Her Yes had that full-chested hiss of dark volumes of escaping steam,
spat from a geyser, noted by travellers. It was such an absolute Yes in
its empty force, that her hands quaked upon her lap.
So back to the tartan !

SAINT BRIDE
That ended the toilette.
Like the lights in an Astoria after midnight one by one snapping out,
until the complete pile is switched off, and in a black block, signs of
animation went dead one by one in her ladyship, from curled cap-rest to
uncut semi-celestial finger-tips.
Cut offfrom the optic or tactile connections, Fredigonde passed most of
her time in her menlal closet, a hermit in her own head. Sometimes she
would Stein away night and morning to herself, making patterns ofconver
sations, with odds and ends from dead disputes, and cat's-cradles of this
thing and that—a veritable peasant industry, ofpersonal chatterboxing and
shortsighted nonsense. It had been at the allotted span that the great
 reversal had been completed, of outside into in—so all that is external
was become nothing but bursts of dreaming, railed through andfought out
foot to foot upon the spot.
Outside, external and restless, she couldfeel her servant, full of a faint
pneumatic breath, never far off, poor parasite that she was, with a path
around her like a lovesick moon. Mournfully she moved up against her
dully at this moment—she felt her apologetic hand, her dry breath.
Horace J£agreus is a great dear huskily she purred—she did not care
what they said—much that he says is undeniably most sensible and true.
Horace confessed that by the name of her attendant he was somewhat
puzzled. " It is not every day you meet it—Bridget." To be a
" Bridget," he told them when she was there, was to combine in one the
images of a monastic bog-saint with the brutish british Saint Bride—
Patron ofprisons was it ? Yes the Brideswell—it was prisons.
That all-the-world-over in his words was to be a Bridget.
Bridget became Budget in the mouth of Kathleen the comic Limerick
parlour-maid : that he noticed and chuckled when she called to her Budget.
—Brudget actually—a smudge, not a naming.
And Bognor ! The perfect servant's holiday, a week of freedom—
Lady's lady ! She would go down to the sea in ships she would and
naturally fell in the flood. That served her right !— When she told us
about her accident—" Poor old virgin," he had exclaimed. Poor old virgin !
That is appropriate, most.
(If Horace came she would ask him outright. She had often speculated
herself but of course.)
Unless you chanced to be raised to the honours of the altar, it was
a clear case of the compulsion of words.
" Come here then Bridget you still unravished Bride of quietness,
that I may ask you a question " his voice had cried softly to her, and the
old maid had crept smirking up to hisfeet, the sly old puss, and stood there
like a tuppenny tin-saint in fact, meekly awaiting the gentleman's pleasure.
Well Horace ^agreus is a most attractive person really. A great dear
in his way is Horace—he is attractive, with such lovelyfluffy colourless albino
locks and moustaches, or were the moustaches mother-of-pearl—and all that
he says is most sensible and true or has something that's worth listening to
at all events, which is more than can be saidfor most. He is a gentleman.
" Budget ! " (He was a very good mimic.)
"Yes sir?"
" Are you a virgin ? "
" Get along with you mister ^agreus sir ! "
 DEATH — THE — DRUMMER 15
Is Budget a virgin ? Query. Is she intaclo the old virgo ?
If Horace comes I will get him to ask her to herface, smirking old horror.
What's in a name ? Bolts from the blue they flop down on men and
women from nowhere, in their cradles, on each anonymous noddle—all of
us worse luck have to be a Something ! Seeing how at random names
fall upon the heads to be accommodated with tags, descriptive whatnots—
the shower of Violets, the downpour of Jacks, Joans, Peters, Toms—what
reference can there be ? No but seriously.
To think of the nondescripts that answer to the names offirst-class
saints—a practice, that, which emphatically should be discontinued ! All
against that—that everybody should be called the same blessed old thing—
as if the understairs staff were to be to a man Fredigondes, just as
illustration !
But numbers for us all round—that would be as bad if not worse.
No—all against numbers ! Numbers I should hate. Suppose he did
not mean it really—he does one was bound to admit pose the least bit
though such a lot that he says is true in its way and always quite sensible.
About his own assumed name it was he got on to that topic. What
made him call himself Z.agrooce is a mystery to me, his own name was
scarcely more difficult. " Iron-rust " or " Egg-roost " that's the sort of
thing that happens. Egg-roost. Delightful !
There are tramps sport the name of Herod—french tramps he declares
baptised Hannibal. But we survive by words he says—things perish.
He got that most likely from one of those Smart Alicks he goes about
with.—In some respects he is a master ofparadox.
By words, this is it seems the idea, we are handed over to the tender
mercies of the Past. That is that parasitic no-longer-with-us class of
has-beens, he cleverly calls it. In other words the dead.
Horace has the most charming eyes which have always reminded me of
Duncan's. Why has he not married ? I could wish he went about less
with those beastly boys. It lays him open—but that is his business.
To the dead he is most delightfully disrespectful ! All clever men
are.—/ am all for that. The dead get us, as he puts it, caught at the
extremity of a sentence, baited with a sweet rhyme—that is excellent.
Then in lexicons we succumb at every turn, they are ambushed. " All
language whatever is a dead tongue." How true that is ! But that is
how they catch us live-ones dash it, the old devils—those life-coveting dead
'wis, to live upon us AU-alive-ohs—as second-rate succubuses.
I myself have been imposed upon by the dead all the days of my life
who hasn't.
i6 APES OF GOD
At this Fredigonde preened and shook herself heartily and heavily. She
took a long and searching breath. She sniffed without nostrils a disem
bodied odour that was not there.
So far at least that abominable stench had kept away that was some
thing ! It was a disadvantage there was no denying, that disgusting
mouldering scent—a little bit too mar corruption ! No sooner had the
eyes ceased to function than the nostrils announced it. Like a whiff of
Pluto's pantry, on an inner wind blown against the inside of the senses,
filling the 'brain, it was there, almost immediately.
And then as to Death's daily dancing in the street ! If householders
would only combine to prevent that music. A veritable death-dance it was,
there must be troops of drummers. The great panes in the morning-room
rattatted, shook by the percussion : all day one was compelled to listen to
its idiot-step—afro-american, nigger-footed : watching as one did when
it was windy the wild seesawing of sunlit clusters of ashes, that tossed
to the wave-length of atlantic rollers, quite out-of-time with the machine-
tap of the detested rapid measures. Above all things she hated that street-
music. Wind-and-percussion street-drummers, jazzing in the gutter,
rattling their boxes for coppers. But the jazz is fate, Zagreus insisted—
whereas the trees roll in the hollows of the wind (which of course bloweth
whither it listeth and is notfate) in a vaster dance. Everytime she heard
it, at the foot of the block coming rat-tat up-hill, a grimacing Saint-Vitus
chorus she would cross herfingers detecting its first drum-tap, its first soft
cymbal—crash-cratA, crash-crash.
I am practically certain to go (considering with cold caution these
slippery subjects she harangued her private ladyship) barring accidents—
to go to live when I die (she admitted the daylight into afilmy eye-ball, to
introduce a few hasty fragments of recognised matter for luck) in—No—
never THAT! What an anti-climax !
Rank death that would be—why it was posthumous murder to ask it !
to be buried undead and sentient up to your neck in the disobliging bosom of
a domestic—thank you for nothing! In Bridget! What a survival!
At that identical moment hi presto ! the especial effluvium of death,
like a stale peach crept in her nostrils, with cold sleepy wind. She experi
enced a most offensive ghastly chill but not of the grave but of Bridget !
Actually the dank impact of that dismal woman ! Death stung her hotly
on the occiput with whirling nightstick.—Ai-ee ! The soul bolted like a
pip into her poor partner and silly shadow. Had the actual Brideswell—
not its press-yard not even that, the complete prison—been bodily present,
in that instant of time, matters could not have been worse. Embedded in
 DEATH— THE— DRUMMER i7
Bridget ! What an end !—in a passion of escape she was back again
with the rush of a howitzer's muzzle-velocity, her heart ticking like
one-o'clock !)
To announce her evasion the great hectoring voice tolled out in a peal
ofpanic :
"Budget! Bud-get! BUDGET!"
" Your ladyship ! " Budget's voice was on the spot.
Fredigonde raised her ear-trumpet as though to wind a stentorian
challenging revelly.
" When I die you understand, Iforbid you Budget I hope you follow
me, ever—you hear me, ever—to think dream or excogitate of myself in any
manner whatever—shouldyou—should you as I pray you may not, survive
me, you are attending ? If those were my last wishes as they are not by a
long shot, would they be perfectly clear or not ? "
" Yesyour ladyship."
" Areyou perfectly certain you have heard me, it is most important ? "
" Yes milady."
" I have never had such an experience never ! " If when her soul came
to take its departure (and enough's as good as a feast) it simply was to go
of all places there (the fingers of Bridget upon her head, crawling under
her cap, fishing—timidfamily of worms, imperfectly animated—for a lost
curl, caused her a frisson) andfrom thence into Bessie—even so—and in a
fainter condition still more stodgy and dim over into the offspring of Bessie
—if it was to be that, she would clear the house at once of all these
walking coffins, living henceforth indeed without servants. She would seek
death-the-drummer out, with his insulting strut, his hypnotic tapping :
when the house was empty except for Sir James, go to the bath and bleed
into it like a Roman, from an incision in an artery !
Her eyes held fast and stern, the motif of roman suicide gave them a
glyptic fortitude. Immediately she put over the big ruthless question :
What would be the last thing alive in that room ?
Beyond all doubt things, not persons. Was not the clock yonder
already a Methuselah !
" Morbid ! " thought Fredigonde. " Merely morbid," a word, that,
ever-favoured since she first learnt it as a young person offashion—one
that did its work well—upon the people who were " morbid."
The quilted lavender-laden envelope with the caps, ready to the hand
of the busy toilette-saint, lay upon the toilette-table. Phalanges and
scallops of expensive lace protruded. In terms of mortal survival, as a
thing not a person, the significance of the Lace-cap was at once apparent.
i8 APES OF GOD
The great lady went through the action of wetting her lips, with the
grey cactus-welt of her rubber tongue, flourishing harshly in the drought of
the desiccated head.
" Bridget ! "
" Your ladyship."
" Bridget I think I shall bequeath my collection of laces to the—some
museum, that is my idea."
" Yes your ladyship ? "
" I wonder which is the best ? "
There were museums and museums—the Valhalla of Things. ( There
was no Valhalla of Persons, it was understood.)
" / must ask Sir James when I see him, he knows best about that sort
ofplaces."
" Yes your ladyship"
Far calmer at last, Fredigonde again withdrew. She closed her eye
lids to relax herself. The day and night cinema that exists immediately
within was encouraged to operate. The brain on its own initiative from
its projector was flashing lace-caps upon the screen. All her collection was
idly calledforth, in startling close-ups, for her inspection.
The question seemed about ripe for solution and she was nothing averse.
For survival she did not give a button. Let her by all means survive as a
cap—there were worse things than that, by Jupiter !

She imagined at once the museum.—// was not the British, or Kensing
ton, the Soames or the Wallace : outside its window might be the gravel of
the Tuileries, yet it was not precisely the Louvre—she attempted to ascer
tain its position. She could not see out : really no indication. But there
were the lines of horizontal cases. In the cases were the headdresses of
course ; she had often seen them.
Lady Fredigonde Follett would be written upon the typed
etiquette.
There was a chill in the gallery, of an alpine april. The shadows of
passers-by struck across to where she was sitting, a schoolgirl perhaps ;
they were bending over the cases, she felt cool in their tremendous shadows
—these were time-shadows of spatial beings—they cooled her shoulders
like the shadows from precipices. From what a distance they must be.
projected, to be so icy !
Her name was constantly spelt out, in foreign accents, very halting,
 DEATH — THE — DRUMMER 19
from the typed etiquettes, by sluggish baedekered visitors, frequenting the
cap-eases—it was natural, it was there to commemorate a head. Cap-
wearing victorian heads. There were even photographs under the glass—
how the ribbons were knotted—and a bust with a cap upon it. A
tone of distinct mockery she did not at all relish occasionally reached
her, in some of the voices. Fredigonde ! // would appear that the
name—yes there was too much chuckling and muttering frankly to be
pleasant.
Ofcourse there was scarcely any doubt (with some difficulty she caught
glimpses of this prophetic photo-play in a violet mist) that many unsuitable
persons must in the nature of things examine the exhibits. That was only
to be expected and that they would spit, several had spat—foreign habits,
doubtless Americans. The name of Follett must be spelt out by ignorant
trippers, what more natural, stopping at the cap-cases. " Fredigonde "
itself would be offensively stuttered. They approached, just perceived by
her ladyship with difficulty. It was a school of children. The caps were
examined by the hundred bloodshot eyes of a Red Sunday-School.
Cloudily she acquiesced in the sleepy Sabbath or Anti-Sabbath, of the
museum-gallery. The robot-youth, in double-file, submitted itself to sum
mary instruction. She attempted to estimate the numbers of the caps in
the cases—all that could be said was that they were very numerous, tojudge
by the cases : idly she took tu totting up the gob-capped polls of the
members of the Red Sunday-School.
Docile periwinkle eyes blinked and squinted at the laces. Communist
skull-caps of orphanage-cut flooded the fairways of the mahogany show
cases. Dr. Barnardo and Harney Barnato inscribed their names simul
taneously in the Visitors' Book but did not appear, except on an Out-of-
Work's brick-red banneret a small Scout colour-sergeant was carrying.
At a word from the spectacled Red Scout-Master (in a vermilion
flannel-shirt with polished police-whistle, and blood-red Kiwi leggings, of
honestyeoman calfiness) the little jumping bolsheviks smash the glasses of
the show-cases. A thunder of smallfists breaks out, like a crash ofkettle
drums. Dcath-the-drummer ! With idiot-yawp, civilised and whit-
manic, they distribute the expensive headwear swiftly, passing from hand
to hand. Each adjusts one to its cropped noseless skull : like the spangled
paper headdresses torn from a super-Christmas-cracker, the caps decorate
the cropped bullet-heads.
The Red Scout-Master, arching out his Kiwi calves and protruding his
Robin-red-breast, reserves for himself the prize-cap, that of Pamela
Hennessey. He tries it on. He smirks in the glass of a show-case. He is
2o APES OF GOD
seen to be in reality an old woman, just an old woman as was to be
expected—a matriarch in sheep's blood-red clothing.
Breathless, Fredigonde perceives that it is indeed her oldfriend Pamela
Hennessey, who has become a Red Scout-Master and a dirty bolshevik. She
withdraws a little, she has no desire to get mixed up in that. She does not
wish to be questioned. A quoi bon ? A quoi ca sert-il?
All commence to perform a carmagnole, heading off with a fine Red
picnicking impulse down the glades of a gothic tapestry, pursued by a pas
sionate official who has come upon the scene unperceived, in a towering
passion, and who brandishes a gold-ringed watchman's fist.
Lady Freddy as-ever-was picks up her skirts to make off as well—for
perhaps who can say she has no right there at all, it is possible. But,
thrilling coincidence ! she cannot move a muscle ! This is a singular
contretemps—with consequences not to be readily foreseen.
Upon glancing down casually, she notices that her feet are attached to
a circular platform. More strange if anything is the sensation in her hem
hem ! nether limbs, such as you get in waxen dummies, of brown beeswax.
At this she begins frankly undulating her body, it is the best thing to do.
In the manner of an abandoned Andalusian she offers, very crane and
quite sauce-box, very oh la la !, a stunning stomacher seemingly ofscarlet :
to one sidefirst, then to the other. As she does so she most archly raises—
oh peepo I—from the trixy ankle, her brocaded pannelledfrock—with a
Whoopsie ! and a Houp-la !
The natty little high-born trotters come free with a slight report : she
steps gaily down upon the tiledfloor of the gallery.
" YOUR LADYSHIP ! "
Ominous words to have addressed to one in that galere-ry !—in that
connection, under circumstances—really ! Ahha ! how now ! she has
been observed it seems—it is only a matter of time for her to be unmasked
completely !
Fredigonde afugitive ! She has a gesture to dissimulate the twinklctoes
—she pushes down the stiff stubborn state-dress of a wax-work effigy's
wardrobe—about to escape from the custodian, who has his eye on her
now—an absconding exhibit ! It is loo late ! Square the keeper ! That
is the first thing, it is most important—she thrusts her hand into the bom-
basting of her farthingale, into a manly pocket in fact, to extract a fiver or
ifpossible a pony if it is there too.
YOUR LADYSHIP!
Ho ho ! again that tell-tale address. The game is up—I am but a
lost body !
 DEATH — THE — DRUMMER 21
That was, it is as well to remark, the voice of Bridget. What I
Bridget lure ? a strange coincidence !
The girl can help in this emergency it may be—where there is life there
is hope—it is but a step to the porch of the Wax-Work—then the streets
andfreedom !
" Bridget, assist me to leave this building at once ! " she mutters to
the figure that she cannot however remark, for she does not make herself
known but only calls and remains hidden.
" Ladyship " is that Open Sesame, the magic watchword, granted—
but not there ! There is a timefor everything.
The cloud lifts. Ladyship has been uttered in another connection—
with heavier lips, offlesh and blood, propounding with insistence their
words of brutal weight. Ponderously she passes into a sequence of
solider facts. At every step she takes on avoirdupois, of a logic less
startling. She is no longer in the cast of her private photo-play : she is
being heavily miladied. Bridget is there at her elbow, holding out an
identification disk.
" Is that Bridget ? " she enquires pointedly : she is stiff—strapped
down again now, it is impossible to move, but she is master of the situation.
" Put it down," she says.
Bridget places the locket she has been holding upon the table.

THE BODY LEAVES THE CHAIR

Keeping her eyes away from the face, that is quickly restored to con
sciousness, not to catch its eyes ofher ladyship—marking time with a halting
hand—Bridget patted the cap which she had just placed upon her
mistress's head. With a small fan, in the other hand, she simulated the
draughts from beneath the doors or advancing from chimneys which might
disturb the heavy tendrils of the hollow sculptured curls. She tests their
solidity, sending gusts, as well, over the extremities of the fronds of the
lace.
" I must have been asleep," said, with the voice of an equal, this
peculiar picture-fan, straight from her private cinema, " didyou notice it ?
I had a most eccentric experience." The stifffist of Fredigonde closed
upon the handle of the glass. Sticking it [without looking) up into the air,
she then cocked a detached pale eye, with a fatigued deliberate archness, at
the maid's handiwork. The eye made its routine rounds, in matter-of-
course up and down : itfound it good, or not at all bad.
 22 APES OF GOD
" Yes that's better aint it, I think that is by no means bad ; that will
have to do Bridget, it is not bad at all. The curls are excellent—they lie
well." More and more abstractedly. " It is a good piece ofwork. Not
bad, Saint Bride, not at all bad."
Sceptical of the extinction of the critical spirit, the maid stood to
attention, awaiting, at a great pitch of passive resistance, the outcome.
" By no means bad, you have wielded the tongs well ! " the voice cooed
and sneered. The glass rested again upon the brief broad ledge of her lap.
" That will do. Not another touch—you would undo it. It is a master
piece."
" Ifyour ladyship "
" Yes yes—do not waitfor more compliments. You have actedfor the
best. Un petit maitre, un petit maitre ! " she sneered and panted.
Posterity for the moment held no further interest for her—one museum
was much the same as another. All of her that was museumfahig should
go whither the wind of death blew it, at her departing.
* * *
^ The old body-servant was in a distant spot, she came up with a noise
less even tread and stood resting with patience upon an alpenstock. Her
ladyship perceived the alpenstock : she directed peremptory injunctions
throughout her ruined establishment, to the entire vasomotor system beneath
—bells rang hot-temperedly in every basement and galley.
A local briskness, of a muscular nature, was patent, in the depths of
the chair. The massively-anchored person shook as iffrom the hidden
hammering of a propeller, revolving at her stern, out of sight. A deter
mined claw went out andgrappled the alpenstock. It planted it at aforward
cant to obtain the preliminary purchase.
Without fuss the two masses came apart. They were cut open into
two pieces. As her body came awayfrom the dense bolsters of its cyclopean
cradle, out into space, the skimpy alpaca forearm of the priestly Bridget,
a delicate splint, pressed in against the small of the four-square back. It
was applied above the region where the mid-victorian wasp-waist lay buried
in adipose.
The unsteady solid rose a few inches, like the levitation of a narwhal.
Seconded by alpenstock and body-servant (holding her humble breath), the
escaping half began to move out from the deep vent. It abstracted itself
slowly. Something imperfectly animate had cast offfrom a portion of its
self. It was departing, with a grim paralytic toddle, elsewhere. The,
socket of the enormous chairyawnedjust short of her hindparts. It was.
 DEATH— THE — DRUMMER 23
a sort of shell that had been, according to some natural law, suddenly
vacated by its animal. But this occupant, who never went far, movedfrom
trough to trough—another everywhere stood hollow and ready throughout
the compartments of its elaborate animal dwelling.
They passed out at the bedchamber door in their dead-march time—the
dark coadjuvant in awful step, skull bowed, with the countenance of a pall
bearer. And then (black as a Spade-queen) the pall itself as it were, the
dolmen, the catafalque, advanced on end, in a dreadful erectness. It struck
at thefurniture in its path, with the abandon of the blind, stamping with its
stick, till this first portal had been reached. En bloc they passed through
that, pinchedfor a moment by its stolidjambs. In the vistas of the stair
ways and passages of the solitary hotel, servants were seen, who watched
their translation. That opposite door was opened at their approach by a
brass-buttoned footman. They passed through the second door without
a stoppage. Their funeral goose-step was timed upon the rigid pattern
of the second-hand of a considerable clock—with the left-left left-left of
its difficult, heavy tick. Once well inside the fresh apartment her ladyship
looked up. She discerned her chair, lighted by the sun, in the middle-
distance, placed near the embrasure of a splendid bay-window, that, with
its web of high-slung lace and blinds half-drawn of honey-amber, had the
appearance (at the end of this drill-hall of a salon) of a lighted stage.
Fredigonde proceeded—eye-fixed, her gait acquiring a slight roll, as though
in liveliness—to rollick, to dance, a little, after the manner ofa dying top.
When they were near the rear of the chair, they took a course at a
tangent, then tacked, passing around its left arm. They entered the spotlight
shot in a shaft computed to be ninety million miles from the solar projector
—so stupendously aloft, in its narrow theatre, for this human performance.
She lowered her body into its appointed cavity, in the theatrical illumina
tion, ounce by ounce—back first, grappled to Bridget, bull-dog grit all-out
—at last riveted as though by suction within its elastic crater, corseted by
its mattresses of silk from waist to bottom, one largefeeble arm riding the
stiff billows of its substantialfluted brim. S
There were some moments during which she lay bolt upright, like a
deadbeat Marathon competitor. Only Bridget stood idly at her side and no
restoratives were offered—if seemed a toss-up if she would come-to. Her
fixed eye was bloodless and without any animation, a stuffed eagle's sham
optic in fact, or a glass eye in the head of a corpse—though the bellows
plainly worked still, the shoulders slowly grinding on, blown up and let
down with the labour of the breath. Gradually however her personality
made its appearance. Fragment by fragment she got it back., in rough
 24 APESOFGOD
hand-over-hand, a bitter salvage. Herfingers could be seen groping slightly
upon the chair-arm. . Last of all the eyes began to strike more firmly and
to register. It was apparent that a mind had moved in behind them. There
was a great bustle all at once. Her head was lived in once again. A strong
wheezing sigh, as the new air went in and the foul air went out, and
then she realized the tones of a mutedfog-horn to exclaim—
" There will come a time Bridget when I shall not be able to move
about like that ! "
Bridget started, she approached her quickly.
" / hope that will be a long time yetyour ladyship."
" / am persuaded that that must occur."
" Your ladyship I hope is mistaken—not yet I hope for a long time,
your ladyship."
Between them they fastened the mournful yankee-pebbles upon the high
bones ofher nose and behind her ears. Each strut was covered with a green
festoon of Waxen hair. She directed her eyes upon the narrow opening in
the curtains—where the important thoroughfare, beyond the gates of the
private road, was visible. Idly she was watching the bodies of the omni
buses fit themselves into the space and slip out of it, slacking or speeding
according to the pulsation of this current of machines. As if they had
been shadows upon the ceiling, cast into a darkened room from a sunlit
street underneath, she remarked their passage. The window before her
shook with the weight of the super-traffic. The amusing skeleton of new
skyscraping fiats entered into novel combinations with the geometric maze
of the patterned curtains.
The manufacture of olivets, the Clapham Sect, the Book of Common
Prayer—Stanley and Crescendo— Valentines with their faded lenten dog
gerel, obventionsfor mortuary pomp, clematis vitalba "the traveller's joy,"
oleographs of Ophelia—Christian striding through VANITY FAIR, vade-
mecums, lockets and church-hassocks—cockatoos, Japanese lacquers, curry
and Port Wine—Linley Sambourne, DROPPING THE PILOT—
Douglas Jerrold and love's-old-sweet-song—crept like an illicit wave
with the rustle of her silk petticoats, up to her six and ninetieth birthday :
had just licked the base of the GREAT WAR—just wafted her softly1
beyond it, like a large and sodden leaf.
PART I.

DICK
THE windows trembled ever more forcibly : the sound of
heavy vehicles reached Fredigonde in a faint incessant roar,
caught in the funnel of her trumpet.—A more deliberate
uproar however made itself heard. It shattered the air with
reports and stopped. What was that ? Was it the shudder of
the shipwreck of a bus ? She turned her head towards her maid.
" My nephew should be here soon. Do you happen to have
heard any movement suggestive of his arrival ? "
" I believe I did hear a motor your ladyship."
" Find out if he is here will you Bridget. Let us get that
over."
Bridget moved towards the door. She had not reached it
when the floor shook slightly : a confused disturbance occurred
immediately without. Then the door rocked, there was a sound
of blows, and then one loud distinct rap cut them short.
Bridget stopped standing her face towards it. For a moment
there was a cessation of these sounds of a disquieting irregularity.
But the door slowly came ajar, it seemed to hesitate : a further
fumbling occurred outside : next it flew briskly open and an
enormous bronzed and flannelled figure burst in, exclaiming in
deafening point-blank discharge :
" Hallo Aunt ! May I come in ? "
A lush vociferating optimism, hearty as it was dutiful, was
brutally exploded in her direction : a six-foot two, thirty-six-
summered, army-and-public-school, Winchester and Sandhurst,
firework—marked " boyish high spirits "—simply went off ; but
only as a preliminary demonstration, as a benefaction by-the-way
to the world-at-large.
This huge ray of sunshine hung fulgurously in the doorway.
All towering bright-cyed juvenility, Dick was respectfully back
ward in coming too rapidly forward. But at last covered by the
half-veiled eyes of Bridget (who now stepped hastily aside), he
started himself off. Flinging forward tremendous feet to left and
to right, he got well into the place, piecemeal, in jolly sprawling
fragments, and looked round with the near-sighted surprise of a
rogue elephant who had perhaps burst into a parish church.
28 APES OF GOD
" How are you Dick ? "
Fredigonde watched him approach with expressionless atten
tion. Then, as if calling to mind something she had omitted to
do, she removed her spectacles—lifting them clear off her nose
and unhooking them from her ears, calmly but as quickly as
possible ; for she feared that he might break them when at last
he reached her.
" Was that your new Bugatti that I heard Dick ? You nearly
shook the house down as you stopped. Ah you young space-
eating spalpeens, you, I'm sure I don't know what we're coming
to ! "
At this there was the promptest possible burst of full-chested
clucking, as the " young spalpeen " threw six-foot-two of brown
seasoned manhood heartily about : the simple giant was frankly
enchanted at hearing himself called a young spalpeen—the charm
ing old word ! He focussed the misty shape of his ancient relative
(naturally with nerves shattered by these inventions) with an
effort. Poor old Lady Freddy !—rather a dear all the same.
This spontaneous response having spent most of its force, Dick
turned round upon the door. He inclined his stature towards it,
his eye fixed upon its handle : with clumsy careful hand he seized
it, but it swiftly ran away from him and banged.
Nonplussed Dick bucked slightly back with nearsighted alarm
(as if something upsetting had been thrust impromptu rudely up
under his smallish greek beak, a little snubbed, in a big face—
for him to smell) : then, his trousers cork-screwing, he plunged
gallantly forward—he seemed in danger of falling as he dived
after the escaping door-handle.
Before ushering himself into the presence of her ladyship the
fact was he had entirely omitted at first to move forward as he
should, out of forgetfulness. Hence the delay in the opening of
the door. Once inside however he had completely overlooked
the necessity of closing up the gap made by his entrance, that was
it. Ever-absent-minded whimsical personality, a door for it was
a puzzling obstacle.
All the dislocations in which successively he had become in
volved arc soon recovered from (with an effort replete with a gauche
grace born of large extremities and loose obstreperous limbs) :
hands sunk in the side-pockets of the soiled sports-bags, belted
stomach protruding—a happy " here-I-am " smile upon a bronzed
 DICK 29
beaming boyish face, he kicks his jolly way over to Lady Fredi-
gonde. As he goes he laughs blushing happily around the roots
of his prussian-blue jowl-stubble, and upon the tanned tonsure
exposed in all weathers (" All handsome men are slightly sun
burnt ") and in the big cleft of the bull-dog chin so difficult to
shave—a blush of bland embarrassment at the thought of the
joke that his arrival palpably was—a " here-I-am " joke, con
cerning the unquestionable oddity, so pleasing to others, of being
" Dick "—ofjust getting, hit or miss, from spot to spot—turning
up, being present awhile, drifting, then disappearing—a welcome,
a notable, a regretted apparition.
" How are you Aunt ? Quite well, I hope ? I am so glad—
you do look most awfully well—you astonish me more everytime
I see you ! "
He bent down and pressed his mouth upon the firmest stretch
of flesh he could find, in a quick mannish peck. While she patted
his hand dutifully, he patted her in return upon the forearm, with
an easy patronage. He rose from the enforced contact, with a
healthy open-air man's distaste for old female flesh interfering
with his smiling, with a wry illumination, as though he w6uld
have spat.
He had seen the lipstick's trail at close quarters, he had smelt
the breath blowing straight out of the no man's land of death at
the hollow heart of the decrepit body. His eyes rested upon her
for a moment, in the process of straightening himself to his fullest
height, with a spasm of disgust, in self-defence, at having been
let in for a disagreeable experience.
"How are you Dick! Not alarmingly well, I hope"
Fredigonde's voice followed him up, with surprising force.
" But still able to get about—that is excellent ! When did you
arrive ? "
" Oh—I have just come ! "
He turned brusquely upon the woman of the bedchamber.
" How are you Bridget ? "
A still mellower patronage escaped from the gigantic glow
worm before her at every pore, as, affably inclined, he gazed
down at the shrinking dependant, devouring her in one brob-
dingnagian gulp of bluff grinning savoir-faire.
" Quite well thank you sir " came the abashed voice in-duty-
bound. " I hope you are quite well sir."
 3o APESOFGOD
" Oh yes thank you Bridget, quite well ! "
Well was not the word !—in the absence of some expression of
a more crashing heartiness it must pass muster. But floods of
indulgent laughter were forthcoming, to give this assurance its
proper medium of a kindly banter. Bridget was rapidly devoured,
all over again, with a scorching beam of overbearing good-will
—cooked in the fat of her own joke—the common joke of being
the maid—to wait hand and foot upon—of my great-aunt Lady
Freddy—called " Bridget " for fun. He pulled himself up to
exclaim in a different key :
" Where is Sir James ? I hope he's remembered Rogers is
coming ? "
An abrupt peevishness baaed up, in reproachful crescendos of
anticipatory alarm—in near-sighted query he stared at the old
lady. A querulous frown gathered, for the benefit of the respon
sible party.
" You had better remind him about Mr. Rogers without
delay!" her ladyship warned him very earnestly : " I suppose he is
sitting downstairs in his study : that's where he generally is about
this time. You really had better remind him—is it important ? "
I She did not pause but in decided accents pursued : " I am glad
to see you looking so well Dick, and if I may say so, strong ! "
She paused and there was a strong silent hush of short duration.
" Still you were never very delicate were you—I suppose we
should be thankful for that."
The young spalpeen turned on the excited naif illumination,
at once, for the eager baby eyes. The switch for all that was
open, boyish and enthusiastic if anything over-functioned, and
those qualities abounded in the apartment. He tossed one huge
foot out, threw back his head, the dark hair streaked with grey
waving bravely around the patch of tanned common—chucked a
mouthful of laughs up in the welkin, at the ceiling, and exclaimed
with a super-crashing heartiness :
" Yes I feel terribly fit ! "
And there was a noise like the wrath of he-goats associated
with the bright bravery of healthy he-men in the first flush of
nascent manhood. .
" But you, Aunt Fredigonde—I've never seen anyone ever look
so terribly well ! How do you manage it ? It's too marvellous ! "
The watery beer of fourscore years with a decade and a half
 DICK 31
on top of that in her old Gossip-starring eyes spilled a little from
their brims. She patted her face with a handkerchief.
His hands knotted, presented symmetrically like buffers in the
pockets of the soiled mauve bags—face inclined to the ground—
the bright essence, regardless-of-cost, left burning in his staring
head-lights—the spacious involuntary tonsure now visible as he
slightly rolled forward his head, the good Dick paced away from
her, faced unstably about and returned—with the action of the
refractory child being dragged along by something like its
umbilical cord, while mischievously but indolently it kicks
objects in its path, to obstruct high-handed Nanny's dragging.
" What lovely ribbons Aunt Fredigonde ! " he exclaimed,
peering with half-closed eyes, in owlish attention, at the vivid
parterre of her cap. " I've never seen those before have I now
Aunt Fredigonde ! I think they are too lovely ! " Booming,
arch and boisterous, he danced before her, flinging out his feet of
Gogmagog.
Slowly Aunt Fredigonde rocked her head, impersonating Any-
Woman-Flattered, as it were. Dick drew back damped, eyeing
her with a dying growl of heartiness upon his hps. Large
lumps of dental gold disappeared with the sunset of his smile.
" I'm not sure if you have seen them " Aunt Fredigonde
replied. " Haven't you surely—it is the tartan of my mother's
tribe, the McAras. I put them on as it happens to annoy Sir
James—to elicit some trace of better-feeling in that old stot.
(Excuse me that was a harsh expression.) Such was my inten
tion."
" Oh really ? " Dick trilled, with puzzled high-pitched
patronage. " Why does that cause annoyance to Uncle James ? "
Lady Fredigonde Follett raised a hand to her lips, to remove
a particle of foreign matter, to give her well-chosen words the
freest access to the air.
" Your uncle has always been a man of very strong antipathies
my boy, you have noticed that I expect more than once. The old
man's dislike of his mother-in-law was very marked at the outset.
It gradually extended to the whole Scottish nation." After an
impressive pause she whetted her tongue upon her lips up and
down, and continued.
" He became convinced that the Scottish People were aiming
at a new world-hegemony, of an oppressive character that
3a APES OF GOD
beggared description, with the noble weltstadt of Glasgow as its
capital and main port, that was his persuasion, the fruit of a great
deal of obscure and I fear not very creditable meditation. In
every land they are to be found, he argued, in positions of the
highest trust : England, he would doggedly affirm, is run by
Scots—that of course was why it was going to the dogs—and he
predicted freely that the day would come when all nations of the
earth would eat porridge and worship in a kirk ! "
A burst of applauding laughter broke out at once from the
towering audience.
" How lovely ! did he really believe that do you think ? It
sounds too fantastic even for Sir James ."
Aunt Fredigonde waved aside all qualifying interjections
with a dogmatic index-finger, at which Dick barked again, with
mellow glee, and danced a hornpipe—as performed by a deep-sea
diver for the camera men before entering the skiff and so below,
to show he is not downhearted.
" It was in vain that I protested that half of the Scotch were
now Irish" roared as best she could Aunt Fredigonde, in the highest
spirits, " owing don't you know to irish immigration, and that
Glasgow was more irish than scottish—that was absolutely no
use at all ! He would reply that the more mixed they were the
worse they became, and indeed the more scotch ! "
" What an extraordinary idea ! " boomed Dick.
" Yes, a most preposterous paradox, and perfectly mad,"
bellowed the super-aunt of this super-nephew.
" I don't think he can have been really serious " protested,
bashfully mellifluous, the clumsily-dancing Richard.
" My dear lad, no Scot was ever more in earnest " insisted the
stationary mammoth idol before which he slightly charlestoned :
" but I had no idea that he still harboured such feelings. Then
the other day I had startling proof of it. Sometimes Sir James is
revolting."
Dick charlestoning as he stood, the two knots of his fists
deeply entrenched in the gnarled Oxford bags to which he now
imparted a ponderous molten shiver, Gog or Magog turned a
dervish, was irresponsible. He softly whistled : Aunt Fredigonde
was not usually so long-winded ! He hoped she would soon
change the subject or he would !
" Don't you find hatred in the old, Dick, as unbecoming as love
 DICK 33
my child ? " Master Richard pricked his ears up—could love
become—was love becoming—-? His legs kept turning to the
massed gramophoning of his slowly revolving eardrums, like the
disks of records, while he answered with genial off-hand kindness,
softly—
" I don't know.—Why ! "
A rich round booming sudden " whoi," sent over with a quick
grin.
He stopped the impromptu ballroom practice. There was a
pause of respectful uncertainty. What was expected of one whom
everything became—in all modesty ! A shamefacedly half-hidden
smile at the odd sibylline utterances of the aged perplexed his face.
Then quick and bright, with mellow respectful matter-of-factness—
" I don't think hatred becomes anybody ! "
That was the proper answer, sober and trite.
" Don't you ? " clamoured the image or the imposing sibyl,
from Age's mighty pedestal—before which he bowed with a will :
but not to be too servile he would say—
" No."
Very respectfully decisive, no, with a whimsical pained smile
—but guns must be stuck to, isn't that so Aunt Fredigonde ? even
if only an old-fashioned ordnance : and the spectacle ofadolescent
loyalty associated with a thoroughly effete object is highly
picturesque. Was not he a pattern of duty ? And was what she
had just said appropriate to a pedestal ? Undeniably that had
not been the case—it was right to recall her to the proprieties—
Bowing with respectful shame his head, he corkscrewed four
times, very slowly, from left to right.
" At all events, for my part," her ladyship retorted, " I find
all passion offensive in elderly persons—just as I look for it in the
young, that is understood."
Aunt Fredigonde looked over at him—looking genially for
passion, with a flattering pointedness.
Dick bashfully responded, looked the part with expedition :
he looked away, in pleasant abstraction.
" They arc all the same, Sir James's family," continued to
remark the persistent old sibyl. " Their passions have no age I
am sorry to say, I am exceedingly sorry to have to say that ! To
treat themselves objectively—they refuse to do that altogether—it
is unpleasant, you must concede that it is that."
34 APES OF GOD
But this was upon ground where Dick felt strongly : he roared
dogmatically at once (about the " objective " a term he had
cause to mistrust) :
" Should people treat themselves objectively ? After all why
should they ? "
The high-hearted spirit (if not exactly passion) that was to be
expected, burst out, most argumentative. But the mummy, with
its fixed idea, went on, as though he had not spoken with such
rapid youthful cogency at all :
" There is your grandfather. He illustrates what I am
advancing, he who got married again did he not at sixty-six—to
a child of thirty-five odd or a mere forty ; yes it was a forty, I
beg your pardon, and had the unsuitable idea of going for a
honeymoon to the venetian Lido.—I believe you will agree that
that was offensive. The Folletts are like that I am sorry to have
to say, to a man, they are prone to such peculiar lapses of
taste."
" You are very hard on the Folletts, Aunt Fredigonde ! " Dick
exclaimed with a violent rapture of caressing reproach—letting out
a long airy chain of laughter—nasal, protesting.
He averted his eyes from the sibyl, now, however—there was
much malice in fossilised ' Gossip.' He brought to an abrupt
close his stationary jazz with a peevish abruptness : flinging a foot
forward a yard about, he moved off heavily in the direction of
Bridget (who eluded him, quickly removing herself, under the
shelter of the massive chimneypiece).
" I was not including you my dear " the slightly obnoxious
figure upon the pedestal screamed after him.
" Thank you so much Aunt Fredigonde ! I was sure you
weren't. I'm only half a one a Follett anyway ! " he howled
back over his shoulder towards the ear-trumpet, pointed after
him : he was full of fight and he raised his voice till even to him
it sounded a shade harsh, to make sure he would be heard,
though her ears were sharp enough when she wanted them to be.
" The lot of them are all only half Folletts too, of course " she
agreed.
(But half a Follett—there are no Folletts really !)
" Of course " in retreat he assented very shortly now.
" Do you like them ? "
Dick drove up the room, feet flying and teeth bared,
 DICK 35
while with full-throated irony he bellowed back as he ad
vanced :
" Not terribly. I try to ! "
He was always trying—mixing up the Folletts with the McAras.
Still, patience with this old bore of a Freddy—we shall soon be
losing her now, there was that much about it.
" You will succeed one day young man—Kopfhoch, nur Mut !
—If you go on as you're going that's understood. I applaud your
reserve—you perceive I see the drift of my remarks !—What
Bridget is the time my child ? Master Dick I know has not the
time, it is useless to ask him the time."
No, he would not go so far as to say that Aunt Fredigonde was
his favourite relative, but—her dazzling past as Gossip-belle and
ex-Chat-champion must awe Dick, so thinking almost with large
physical thoughts of this renown he laughed apologetically—he
took a very firm hold of himself almost in comic corps-a-corps.
Responsibly frowning he drew up before her, a picture of public
schoolboyish duty, gigantic and sheepish.
" It is five minutes to twelve your ladyship." Bridget had
consulted the clock.
" Five to twelve—thank you Bridget."
" Your ladyship will not require me any further ? " Bridget
asked from the neighbourhood of the door.
" No thank you Bridget, not for the moment."
As the door closed upon Bridget, Dick flung his body into a
sofa (which gasped in its wheezy bowels) and then slightly
eructated, with a heavy zigzag movement up his body, the back
of his flat occiput becoming for a moment as stiff as a poker—
from hair en brosse, flourishing straight up into the air in the
same plane as his neck, and so in a sheer undeviating drop to his
coccyx, against the high-backed squatting apparatus to which he
had brutally committed his person. Once more a ball of wind
made its way irresistibly up his neck. His trunk shook, contracted
and relaxed, to assist the slight explosion.
In a brown study, Richard did not seek to dissemble these
indecorous accidents, or to give a colour to them by coughing—
he was well-pleased just now with the bucolic directness of his
body. His feelings might be even more forcibly conveyed if it
let itself go ! He sat with the earnest look of schoolboy-applica
tion to the first steps in scholarship, fresh from play, come into the
36 APES OF GOD
presence of the form-master, and grimly confronted with the
instruments of learning.
For a moment his giant aunt stared over at him.
" Well here you are back in your cradle Dick " at last she
sighed—" so to speak."
" That's the idea " the rattle of conventional applause clap-
pered genteelly in Dick's throat, while his eye shot up into his
aunt's face to catch her meaning—the luminous youthfulness
damped, with a doggish eye of cross reproach he returned to her
countenance silently, and looked away : a very trying old woman
indeed, as she was always apt to be, though terribly brilliant.
" I shan't be in my cradle long this time however."
" How is that ? "
" Oh I just shan't be long here today that's all I meant—I am
going down to March by the three-forty."
" Such a short visit ? "
He got up and heaved himself over to the fireplace. He dis
simulated a series of yawns, set up with promptitude by the contra
diction he had experienced, in the course of the consequent fatigue.
With ringing blows upon the fire-bricks of the grate he discharged
the dottle from his bulldog pipe. Smartly he struck it down at
the end of its stem, as in the game called Conquerors.
" How have you been getting on with your lessons ? "
" How do you mean ? "
" Oh the lessons with the—what is the man's name."
" Oh do you mean with Mr. Mundy ? "
" What is that ? "
" Quite well, I find it rather boring.—I am not having any
more. I am painting by myself."
" Indeed ! Why ? "
" Oh I dont know."
" I suppose you're anxious to get through with your educa
tion now, Dick."
" That's the idea ! I'm a big boy now aren't I Aunt Fredi-
gonde ! "
" You di grow, I believe, you surely must have a little since
we last met, haven't you ? " Tremendous yawns following great
fatigue broke his face in half.
" Well, I think I'll go down and see Sir James "—smothering
yawn after yawn which now came crowding on him, very tired.
 DICK 37
" You seem tired, my dear child " said Lady Fredigonde
coaxing her nephew.
" I am a little. I was up rather late with Duff going over
things. Well I'll go and see Sir James, Aunt Freddy ! "
A stern look came into his face as he referred to duty manfully
met. Small needle-like glances of pinpricking reproach were
darted deftly over at the old woman, at the same time that he
addressed her.
" Do, Mr. Rogers will be stopping to lunch I suppose ? " she
said.
" I suppose so."
Out shuffled Dick, burying his resentment rapidly in a lofty
absent-mindedness. His eyes sank, a prey to gravitation, floor-
wards, as he moodily receded. Behind him the door stood unshut,
he took no notice.
As Dick reached the stair-head a strident tearing sneeze
crashed in the room he had just left. A slight smile of self-
understanding, comfortable and private, came into his face.
When they sneezed like that—it was not far off ! Another sharp
winter would do it ! A second sneeze shrieked out behind him.
Cocking one eye to the ceiling he stood still and in quick succession
released two rasping snorts from his anus. A third sneeze screamed
with a stupid violence as he relaxed from the cocking position.
At the same time he noted in his tablets—in the vernacular of
the army he had left five years previously to marry, before he
knew he was an artist or 'genius,' " Snotty old barstard ! "
Sounding the melancholy hour of twelve, the Major's clock in
Armadale prevailed solemnly over the bell-like stillness of the house.
Dick kicked the hours moodily, like footballs, in front of him as
he descended the stairs. Each hollow resurrected hour as it pre
sented itself in this concentrated form for him, preceded by the
rushing of the noisy instrument, was accompanied by a foot flung
out, and twelve of the imposing stairs were passed, stroke by
stroke, on the downward path, to Sir James's study.
" Hallo, Sir ! Goodmorning ! How are you ! " the rich
bright growl of man-to-man buffeted the leather faces of the
study. He bent down and opened a volume resting upon Sir
James's knee. The True Intellectual System of the Universe, Ralph
Cudworth he read, and then closed the book again as though with
quiet understanding.
38 APESOFGOD
An irish tweed, given a tint of desiccated blood with the bodies
of mexican insects, upholstered Sir James's withered trunk and
arms. A clouded tiger upon a stand, stuffed and rampant,
recalled early days in Borneo, before he had succeeded to the title.
Sustaining the cracked scales of his aged brain—in which he had
been balancing Cudworth's weighty niceties—he had wearied, and
the book had subsided at the same time as his failing machine.
He fixed his eyes upon the clouded tiger. He did not recall the
day when with a bullet he had stopped this swift restless clock
work dead. A vivid shadow of life, he was too familiar with it to
replace it mentally in its distant series.
Sir James Follett took Cudworth from his knees and placed
him upon the table at his side, across the prose works of Dryden.
In the gentle debate set up in his mind between Dryden and
Cudworth, the latter being on the side of the imminent angels
had won the day.
" Ah hallo Dick, that's you is it ? When did you get here ?
You were expected quite early, for some reason. How are
you ? "
" Very well indeed ! " Dick shouted to wake the dead, with
grateful gusto, performing a shambling war-dance, hands in
pockets, all his joints dislocating themselves in succession, his huge
feet constantly flung outwards, a stomach protruding in that
manner that made him appear a jerky and unwilling toy dragged
forward by a ghostly umbilical cord.
" That's capital ! How have you been getting on ? Have you
seen your aunt ? "
" Yes I've just left her ladyship ! " Dick threw in a slight
growling laugh to keep the snobbish epithet (used in snobbish
servant-mockery) company, as was expected of him. " She was
in surprising form ! She sent me down here almost at once ! "
He threw half-a-crown up into the air and caught it with an
animal deftness, his knees stuck together, the feet pawing out
wards with enormous blunt tips.
He then stamped up and down, for a little—the silver piece,
grasped in his fist, back in his pocket—with the travesty of the
man-with-a-game-leg, and acting the part of a person who had
left the room a minute gone, say to fetch his pipe from his pocket
in the hall, instead of reappearing after an absence of three
months.
 DICK 39
Sir James did not look at Dick at all but gazed ahead, holding
his weak eyes wide open, with a civil smile frozen absent-mindedly
upon his face.
" Her ladyship has been in almost unexampled form recently "
SirJames then remarked. " Indeed I have been somewhat uneasy,
in a woman of her age it is not of the best augury."
" What nonsense, sir ! I'm quite sure she will outlive all of
us ! I'm quite certain, at all events, that she will outlive me ! "
A rheumy sideglance struck the outsize health-advertisement
like a wet ghost.
" I'm sure she'll outlive me " Sir James grinned in bland
repose, the death's head sweetened with the faintest irony. For
a moment they grinned in each other's eyes—the animal, which
has suddenly caught sight of its own person in a glass, and for
a moment, before it thinks it has happened on another dog,
perceives itself. The presence in their thoughts of the bitter
matriarch whom he had just left, and under whom Sir James had
suffered for half a century, conspired to compel their minds
together in what was almost a caress.
With whistling lips percussioning upon the air a sugared one-
step monotone, Dick trailed his always astonished, reluctant
hoofs down the apartment—his neck craned in swan-like trances,
his Adam's-apple jutting out, the nose smallish and female sniffing
shortsightedly six feet above the savage jazzing hoofs. Those t
are pearls that were his eyes he heard a voice muttering in the
thick of the perpetual music, inconsequent cutting-in, in the j
accents of Haarlem : but he detected a tramping in the hallway '
outside.
" Oh sir ! " he exclaimed recalling himself urgently from
Richard Whittingdon's proverbial abstraction : " You haven't
forgotten have you sir that Mr. Rogers is coming this morning—
I came down to remind you."
" No he should have been here by now. What is the time ?
It must be almost time he was here."
" It's after twelve—It's about ten past. I thought I might find
him here. I believe I hear him though."
Dick's voice rose in a querulous startled howl to put in quickly
a fresh question, while his eyes were directed towards the door,
with angry anxiety.
" I suppose no one else is coming ? "
4" APES OF GOD
" Not so far as I know—no, no one but Mr. Rogers, unless her
ladyship has anyone coming."
" She didn't mention that she had."
The door opened as though to swallow the room. A small
man in black was first revealed holding it by the handle.
" Mr. Zackroost sir, to see you."
A tall figure eclipsed at once the body-servant of the invalid
baronet, and like the shadow of that first commanding figure
another tall form arrived at the same instant, out of the twi
light of the hall. Crossing the threshold almost neck-and-neck,
they both swept quickly forward, at unusual speed for human
beings.
" How are you uncle ? I hear that you are expecting your
lawyer. This is Mr. Boleyn of whom I have spoken to you, Mr.
Daniel Boleyn, sir." His shadow came forward, and bowed to
the aged invalid.
" Mr. Boleyn is only nineteen " Mr. Zagreus remarked, looking
at Mr. Boleyn.
" Is that all ? " Sir James said. " Won't you sit down."
Mr. Boleyn bowed again.
" He has a great future—Mr. Daniel Boleyn has a very great
future—of course as yet he is too young to have done much, but
he has written one most lovely poem. I will show it to you."
" Thank you very much " Sir James replied. " I should like
to read it very much. Is it in free verse ? I suppose so."
A look of momentary indignation appeared in the face of
Horace Zagreus.
" Not at all—it is in a quite traditional metre. Absolutely the
youngest generation, sir, do not write in free verse—they have gone
back to quite traditional forms."
" Have they ? That is very interesting."
" Yes quite the youngest generation ! It is only, you will
find, the thirties and the forties that believe in violent experiment
—the very youngest generation " Mr. Zagreus thundered, his eyes
flashing " are super-victorian now, if you like—are classical to a
man ! "
He returned with a fine frenzy of false fierceness, his arms a
little raised, towards Mr. Daniel Boleyn —While another person
was speaking, the eyes of Mr. Zagreus never left their face : when
he spoke himself he moved his mouth often in violent panto
 DICK
mime, as if conversing in dumb-show : on occasion his lips w ould
move, too, without any words coming to account for it.
The death's head in the chair gathered (reaching over) in the
pale fields of death a voltairean flower of the most colourless
irony, and smiled faintly with its lips. Whereas the three towering
figures stood before it, one full of passion, and two profoundly
silent—one an enigma of nineteen, the other speechless with
rage.
Boleyn's expression did not change. He stood with his eyes
fixed upon the baronet. But the latter was gently repelled by
the future, as much as Horace Zagreus was its notorious devotee,
and he looked the other way. These boys-big-with-futures turned
up periodically. Always with the same futures, such as now was
said to resemble, to perfection, the past. Sir James would have
preferred the future as it was.
Dick however had stepped back, his expression at its crassest—
as the two tall interlopers, instead of Rogers, had stormed the
threshold of the study at a gallop. —Now he was watching with
what was growing into a wrathful grin, what was passing ; but
at last, as the pause persisted, impulsively he forced his way
towards Zagreus, his hand advanced.
" How are you Horace ? "
" Oh how are you Dick ? I didn't see you. Boleyn, this is my
cousin, Mr. Richard Whittingdon, Mr. Daniel Boleyn."
" How do you do ! " Dick flashed a gold-toothed signal
towards Mister Only-Nineteen.
Mr. Boleyn, with an innocent eye spying the reverent tonsure
of his patron's cousin, exclaimed demurely :
" How do you do—sir ! "
They all stood looking now at the old man for a moment,
hesitating : where attack this deafness and remoteness next ?
With resignation Sir James awaited the onslaught of their tongues.
The cost of the responses they might require of him, in terms of
energy, he gently computed. He kept his eyes away from the
stranger, for he feared, if he did not, he might speak—or perhaps
burst into song. Into " traditional " song.
" I hope you and Mr. Boleyn, Horace, will stay to lunch.
Dick and I have Mr. Rogers coming, oh yes they told you that
didn't they : we are expecting him at any minute, he should have
been here by now."
42 APES OF GOD
" I'll take Boleyn up to see her ladyship. When will you be
done with Rogers ? Perhaps we had better not stop to lunch."
" Oh we shan't be long " Dick replied for them. " That is I
don't think so—what do you think sir ? "
The door opened.
" Mr. Rogers is here sir."
" Ask him to come in."
Boleyn formally bowing, the lawyer passed in as Mr. Zagreus
and his young friend passed out with swift strides, their arms
swinging and clothes flying, like a young bodyguard-recruit of
the Household Brigade, and a seasoned colour-sergeant on their
way to the orderly-room.
" Now we'll go up and see my aunt. She is a very interesting
old lady. She is the ancitre. She's the last of the family portraits,
but she has never been painted—no artist could ever stick it out, it
was a battle between the tongue and brush. No, this way. Tread
softly because you tread on my dreams.—Mind the step."
Mr. Daniel Boleyn had stumbled slightly as they had passed,
abreast and at breakneck speed, from one level of the gloomy
entrance-hall to the next. The perfectly handsome features of
Horace's young client expressed the deepest melancholy ; as he
stumbled his passionate velvet eyes of the richest black had
looked up with burning reproach at his white-maned superior,
for his callousness, and the look said more plainly than words that
he wished he had slipped and broken his neck on the spot, or
sprained his ankle : but the stern mentor, with his cavalry mous
taches, did not so much as notice the least in the world the move
ment of passionate protest : he passed on relentlessly, an imperial
votary he swept them forward to the foot of the staircase—he
paused a moment, stretched out his arm to indicate their path,
carpeted with his dreams, and then he charged breathlessly
upward.
• * ♦
Archie Margolin examined a stupefying instrument of ugliness
that was sino-british, a great screen. He was conscious of the
vast unoccupied spaces of the drawing-room. The hulking chairs
gaped vainly for the bottoms of the defunct, the capacious
Eighteenth-Century posteriors. His was a spare one—no seats
here to his measure by a yard. His slightness was delicious—he
rejoiced in his neat pygmy stature. It was the child-height !
 DICK 43
The great bluff psyche of British brawn had left its uncouth
fingerprints, throughout this domestic museum. So much by
mere space had it not expressed itself, in a futile extension ?
So a gold-curled flat-buttocked East-end cupid, he sveltly stood,
in the day-dream of his scornful vulgar elegance, surrounded by
such upholstered shells of vanished cyclop beefeaters (and their
dead belles, whose strapping ham-pink limbs in fansy he dci_
corated with bulging period furbelows, window-dressed, baldly
spreadcagled, for his distant appetites). Watched by substances
of an alien life he was nevertheless oppressed and contemptuous :
this culture was dead as mutton but its great carcass offended
him—it would take a hundred years to melt. He grinned and
yawned.
He might have been standing in a slow, heavily-beaming, rose-
fresh gcorgian sunrise in a drawing-room, perhaps a hostile ghost
surprised by daylight, in this silent mansion, except for the tremu
lous roar of distracted surf from the traffic-way, beyond the gates
of the avenue.
" The space-mad, the English !—frpm their spacious days of
their great Elizabeth to the Imperial Victoria. But—now that
space, itself, has shrunk under their feet, by time contracted—what
a race of pygmies ! " So the great lurmture shouted to his senses
the message of its empty scale.
A sparrow outside the window, hawking for crumbs, dropped
towards the kitchens while he watched it.
Underneath an arniy of slavish snobs still ! The basement
was full of people, they were collected near the ovens, coal-holes,
sinks, dustbins—a sewer-people his soul sang, in marxist fierce
ness, for these upstairs-pleasaunces, the Follett masters and
mistresses ! One shrilled a dismal rag about a honey-stick. The
heart broke for Dixie : the voice cracked and crooned, all on
account of nigger-heavens—it was funny ! The lives of other
idiot slaves, in cotton fields, excited it to mournful passions ! (Of
more musical slaves naturally.)
" Whoop-eeee ! " went the mocking Archie softly, grinning
beneath his golden african curliness. The footman or the chauf
feur's voice was joined by the outburst of the early afternoon
Savoy Hill program. It was an organ recital.
He listlessly attended to the howling of the man. The organ
dragged itself up and down bellowing painfully. He smiled the
44 APES OF GOD
weary smile of the true Hebrew, beneath the veneer—with some
hip-movement he went over to a pier-glass, to plunge his image
into it—a bitter little Narcissus, with strained quizzical eyebrows.
Ears cocked, he examined his face. It was smooth and almond
yellow. He advanced his gold hair, of the newest Margolins, to
his mind shoddy—pushed forward it got rid of that bald appear
ance that began with his pale unlashed eyes.
Turning again to the window, he went over to it and looked
out. There stood the Bugatti, or lay, like a very large metal
lizard, the mechanical toy of his patron. Again he smiled.
He returned into the centre of the room. He approached
another mirror and observed his face, inclined to burst out
laughing as it watched him slyly in the polished surface.
From the hall came a muffled shouting. Smiling he stepped
back softly towards the spot upon which he had taken up his
position. As he reached it, the door flew open and Dick's voice
broke the stillness, to atoms, it made Arch's head feel as though
it were vast and empty.
" That's splendid ! " boomed the bright-eyed Dick circling
towards him like a cautious ring-giant. " I'm so glad you were
able to come—I thought the notice might have been too short ! "
At the thought of the short notice Archie simply grinned a broad
proletarian grimace ; but he almost laughed outright at the
figure of the strutting Goliath.
Dick flung his feet out this way and that—he stamped up and
down upon the swagger carpet of his Rittergut to show his East
End visitor how he, the jew-boy from the slum, would have
behaved, if he had been absolutely at home, as was Dick, and
had he trodden these exclusive mansions from the cradle up.
" I'm sorry I wasn't able to get away before " he exclaimed
in hearty crashing accents of delighted patronage, as happy
as a sandboy—with a sidelong glance at the speedy nozzle
of his Bugatti, which he could just catch sight of through the
window.
" The old family lawyer's here—and Mr. Rogers is not the
man to be hustled I'm afraid ! "
Dick was radiant at the thought of the deliberate methods of
Mr. Rogers which was unspeakably funny ; but his face relaxed
into a decorous melancholy, as he found himselfdefinitely mastered
with compassion for this octogenarian attorney.
 DICK 45
" He's an awfully nice old boy all the same—he's the old
family lawyer—quite a good lawyer I believe."
Archie looked up with the most insolent naivety.
" Have you a family lawyer ? " he gazed round the huge
apartment where they stood, as if he realized for the first time that
he found himself in an establishment that had an old lawyer to
live on it—as well as two butlers and a big Bugatti on its back.
Dick savoured with seigneurial restraint the simplicity of the
jewish slums, in condescending cool haw-haws, while he flung his
oil-stained Oxford bags this way and that, in buxom spasms of
shyness.
" Yes we have a family-lawyer " he trilled in deep contralto.
" I sometimes wish we hadn't ! The poor old man gets unspeak
ably fussed if he's asked to move a fraction quicker than they did
in 185o."
They both had a good laugh about 185o especially Richard.
They imagined the velocipede, exposed to the competition of
the Bugatti. Archie Margolin took the opportunity of having a
really good laugh at the same time on his own account—which he
had felt if he did not soon give vent to he would burst his bladder.
Passing over abruptly into a rather grander manner, squinting
over Archie's head at nothing in particular, Dick drawled :
" There were several things that had to be fixed up—you
know I've let March Park. I had to see Mr. Rogers about that,
there are a lot of other things that have to be settled. He'll be
here in a moment—it's a bore, he's stopping to lunch.—I hope
you don't mind ! "
Archie smiled nicely once and dismissed with a swift harsh
gesture the family lawyer—the family seat, the castle of March,
rented to rich Jews, and the rest of this nonsense, turning restlessly
towards the windows.
" I thought you might have got lost " said Dick then, com
pelled to pursue him a little across the room : " did you find your
way—without too much difficulty ? "
Archie turned to his host with a theatrical roughness and
replied in a croaking voice full of gutturals, which he was at no
pains to disguise, ill-assorted with the feminine gold of the crimped
head and the insignificance of the body :
" Yes quite all right. I know my way about here, you know "
aggressively Arch barked, while backing away from his pursuer.
46 APES OF GOD
" I've not been here in years " (Dick smiled at the locution in
years) " but I've come all round here with my elder brother
Isidore, I used to help him carry his box—you know his goods.
He hawked all round these areas. I came with him."
He must be popular and in present company he had struck
the popular note, of what all of his race ought to be, the Dickens-
Jew of Our Mutual Friend, a myth he freely hated. It had a strong
appeal for the historic sense of his host. For his part Arch enjoyed
himself in the bitter-sweet of its comic revival—Positively last
appearance !
" Oh really ! " chuckled richly the happy dupe of this stock-
figure of Old Comedy very broad-minded, socially as also intel
lectually. " How absurd ! Used you to sell much ? "
" Not so bad " grinned Arch, with a still more thick-tongued
croak, in perfect character, fixing a fierce eye upon this comic-cut
of a capitalist.
" I wonder if you ever came here ! "
" What here ? "
" Yes to Number Six. That would have been most awfully
strange—I suppose you don't remember ! "
Arch barks, with a small short cough of half-rabid waggish-
ness, the militant slum-Jew in excelsis.
" It's a long time. Yes I think we did."
Amused eyes of broad-minded patronage play down upon
him steadily.
" What did you sell ? "
Matey, from on high, this lordly sportsman certainly gives
proof of an intelligent interest in the small commerce of the
gutter, which is charming and Archie chuckles, pleased to
accommodate, and Dick laughs to put him at his ease.
" My brother peddled tin wrist-watches and plate, in plush
cases—suitable for skivvies who well you know are making a home,
for their boy."
" No how sweet !—I'm sure Ethel had a nickel soup tureen ! "
Dick's two sunburnt fists rooted for sheer sport in the innards
of his bulky bags, and he hooted at the image of Ethel, the blond
english villager, standing in pained discomfort before her lady
ship, with her white frilled domestic comb of a she-lackey, spot
lessly bibbed and belted in muslin and black alpaca, with her
gentle foolish eyes : she was a standing joke second only to
 DICK 47
Birdie, but in some ways odder than Skelton the cook, from the
same Wiltshire hamlet.
" Who is Ethel ? " asked Archie with his cheapest mass-pro
duction grin, for the part of the Sham-Yid.
But as to a Who's-Who of the staff, Dick was not the proper
quarter .
" Oh " crashed the affable heir-apparent, " Ethel is a house
maid."
"Oh. A housemaid!" echoes Arch, slow and blank and
glotzaugenisch but just short of squinting. He waits and then he
says, not to be backward, " Yes that's right, we did sell a set of
posh nickel-plate to a girl—it may have been next door. It's a
long time."
" How long ? "
Arch wrinkled up the dry skin of his brow and stuttered
grinning :
" How long ? Yes how long ! " he suffered a minute attack
ofhysteria, it would have been better to stamp and scream. Then
frowning heavily to adjust his mind to a topic depending on
arithmetic. " Let's see ! How long was it ! " he asked with a
teasing beady eye, a catch-me-if-you-can confusion. "Where are
we now ? " stuttered he—this needs thinking out ! " It's nineteen-
twenty six, I'm twenty isn't that right, or is it twenty-two—I don't
know. When was it—my blooming memory's gone—I'm young
to have lost my memory ! " He spluttered over the aphasia with
idiot-mirth—of course the Fool of the Gutter. " Three years—
no four ! Yes four, that's right, four. It was four."
" I want a new wrist-watch ! " after enjoying the joke that
never came Lord Dick jauntily declared, looking down where
the left watch-bearing paw betrayed its presence, by occasional
movements, in the plastic of the mauve bags. " Now if your
brother were only on the prowl today we might do business !"
Archie laughed most heartily—he made his eyes shine
obligingly, as he gazed into the foolface, with the pleased glitter
expected, at the thought of gain. He shook his head.—After
considering for a moment, Arch looked archly up, with a very
ponderous candour, and in the most sinister growling guttural he
had yet employed he repudiated his blood relation absolutely.
" I wouldn't recommend you to go to my brother ! "
" Why ? " the bantering contralto query sounded honest Dick's
48 APES OF GOD
deprecation of this attitude to a blood-relation—even when a
brother—and even if a pedlar, who (agreed) is perhaps not over
particular.
" He's a robber—no although he is my brother. I couldn't
not honestly recommend him."
In grating monotone the repudiation was repeated. This was
taking a solemn turn—so pleasantly it had been meant, but the
famous business-instinct of the Perl-and-Potash order had taken
it at the foot of the letter.
Steadfastly Archie Margolin, own brother to Isidore, stared at
Gentleman Dick, till that gent felt a guilty party—he shuffled
before this complex scrutiny.
" I couldn't not to be fair, recommend my brother, not to
you ! " Arch repeated, with impressive dullness, throwing in a
handful of nots for local slum-colour.
" I'm sorry to hear that ! " objected Dick heartily, and began
grinding the millstone of his outsize foot-wear in heavy Charleston
practice.
" It's true " remarked Arch still more impressively to the dis
comforted Dick. " It's too true Dick, he's what you'd call awful
Dick, is my brother Isidore, he's a proper old shark ! "
" A shark ? "
" He sells tin watches to poor kids like Ethel, the old Skylark
—I mean Shylock—that aren't worth no not sixpence, for half-a-
quid. He's some lad is Isidore not half! No. / couldn't recom
mend him ! " Arch wound up passionately. As though half
asleep he went on repeating that he couldn't recommend his brother
Isidore—not to his friend Richard-the-lion-hearted—no, not
Isidore.
" Well I'm sorry to hear Archie you're not able to recommend
your brother " said Dick yawning with stiff upper-lip stretched
down over the food-hole, like a polite hand—whije he Char-
lestoned grandly, in a steady stationary sunset-rolling, of great
ships vibrating in the hearts of oceans, " Because I might have
bought a wrist-watch off him."
Archie shook his head with idiot-sadness, from side to side.
" I couldn't recommend him not Isidore " he reaffirmed
almost with an ethical passion of sober emphasis, and almost
shrieking desperately : " No really.—Here ! " The smallish
mongol-yellow face of the Margolin was clouded with a flush and
 DICK 49
frown of prophetic buffoonery. He swelled himself up with wind
in the chest and threatened in jest, with his small eyes, the gigantic
gollywog before him—disintegrating beneath the tom-toms of
Tennessee.
" Here ! " Arch shouted again in ragtime bluster, at the
grinning latterday dickensian Dick. " Here Dick ! Why dont
you protect your people downstairs in the coal-hole you know the
staff, against robbers like my brother. His wrist-watches never
go ! I would if I was you—no straight I would ! "
Dick collected himself, he addressed himself to this jewish
crossword-puzzle in servant-management. How make this little
Jew understand ! What a picture—Dick interviewing the cook
and warning her against his guest's brother's spurious electro
plate !—he laughed in leisurely puzzlement to himself choosing
the words of the answer as he scratched the polished ink-blue
stubble of his great cleft chin.
" Well Archie " said he then, in caressing tones of almost
paternal moderation : " I am afraid they wouldn't listen to
me."
" Perhaps they wouldn't " Archie admitted, dropping his
prophet-mask, as he looked over impartially—not to be outdone
in chivalry—at Dick. " Perhaps you are right ! "
With a flourish of generosity he gave this trick to Dick and
turned half away, with the gesture of Charlot-triste—biting a lip.
" I am quite sure they wouldn't. So long as you don't inter
fere with them " Dick laid it down, condescending but emphatic,
en connaissance de cause, for this enquiring young outcast " they don't
mind what you do ! Servants are very queer people—you have
to know how to take them or they resent it and will do nothing
for you."
" I suppose you do—I suppose they are " Arch followed,
vaguely spouting into the air, in mock-grand-manner, wilfully a
long-way-after the master Richard, to the manner born.
" Yes they are indeed " Dick vaguely drawled, imitating his
guest's too witty counterfeit.
" We all are ! " exclaimed Archie in his usual voice with a
beaming grin.
" We all are " assented Dick with dramatic hushed sobriety.
Philosophy had passed between them.
Archie, with a swift movement of his small limbs, went to a
§o APES OF GOD
cabinet, and, opening it, removed an old and crusted mesopo-
tamian riderless pony, and held it in his hand.
" Rather jolly isn't it ? " Dick said watching him with a
lightly-drawn smile. Hush ! The instincts of the race probably
at work—he was valuing !—Dick continued to observe him with a
smiling impassible attention.
Archie looked up, proposing to make some remark before
replacing the object : detecting the drift of the attentive amuse
ment, he smiled broadly, in a flash, patting comically the
statuette.
" A nice little gee-gee ! " he said. " A good little gee-gee,
and no mistake ! What did you pay for it Dick ? "
A flash of gratified astuteness lit up the honest face of that
acute observer, and Dick laughed easily as he answered :
" Ah that I can't tell you Archie ! The house is not mine—
it was not I who bought it ! "
Margolin thrust it back into the case.
A gong began to boom.
" Oh there's a gong. I wonder what that's for ! " Dick cried
testily, " This house is full of gongs. It's like a Bayswater board
ing house—that's for lunch I expect."
They listened to the gong : it died away in a pale roar in
some distant passage-way.
" I wonder what on earth's happened to Mr. Rogers ! "
Dick moved crossly towards the door—the lawyer threatened to
interfere between the inner man and its expectation of succulent
meat-dishes.
They went into the hall and found Horace Zagreus talking in
a low voice to the lawyer. Just behind him like a military servant
stood Boleyn.
" That's how it stands. I will ring you up tomorrow morning "
Zagreus said to the lawyer, leaving him precipitately as he saw
Dick approaching.
" Horace, meet Mr. Margolin ! " exclaimed Dick facetiously.
Archie veiled his eyes and gave a limp hand to the imposing
figure. (What was a thracian god doing in this galere ?) Horace
Zagreus had moved rapidly away.
" Horace is a most extraordinary person ! " Dick was saying
crossly to Archie Margolin, as they made their way towards the
luncheon. " In his time he's done everything I should think.
 DICK 5i
When he was at Oxford, I've heard, everyone thought he was
going to do wonders."
" That must have been a long time ago " said Arch.
" I suppose it was " Dick agreed loftily and abstractedly.
" He is a failure, no doubt."
" What did he fail in ? "
" Oh—just a failure :—as a matter of fact he was a surveyor
by profession. He's as deaf as a post ! "
Archie looked after the two quickly moving figures, who had
reached the front door.
" What has made him deaf? " he asked.
" He was born so, I believe."
" Is that your family-lawyer, Dick ? "
" Who ? the old boy going in—there ? Yes that's Mr.
Rogers ! " Dick laughed heartily at the bowed respectable back
of the Law.
* ♦ *
" What was his name—Margolin ? " muttered Horace Zagreus
to Daniel Boleyn as they were on the steps, looking back into the
open hall.
Dan nodded his head.
They retired in impeccable time and perfect order, with the
same swift tread, along the short semicircular carriage-drive.
" I rather liked him ! " Horace remarked fiercely. " I wonder
where Dick collected him ? I expect he has some designs on our
relative's pocket—good luck to him !—most people have ! "
Outside the gate stood the Bugatti. As they passed it Mr.
Zagreus gave it a smiling side-glance, remarking to Daniel :
" There's that old baby's latest toy : "
Daniel gave a startled look at the machine, and looked hastily
away again.
*' The Bugatti ! "
Horace Zagreus laughed as he named it, passing his hand
over his moustache, helping it to its upward flourish.
They turned into the wide thoroughfare, running beside the
dirty lawns of the Park. Mr. Zagreus drew a large scaled envelope
out of his breast pocket. At that moment his eye fell upon an
approaching figure. He quickly thrust the envelope back again.
Taking Daniel's arm, he turned them into the road, his eye
calculating, left—right. He headed them diagonally across the
52 APES OF GOD
closing jaws of traffic, bearing towards the less swift of the two
approaching extremities. As they mounted the opposite pave
ment he sighed.
" What—is the lapis manalis off this morning ? That's the
second ghost I've seen."
He placed his hand in his breast-pocket. About to draw the
sealed envelope out once more, suddenly a few yards ahead the
figure he had believed they had successfully avoided stepped out
of a rift in the moving mass of vehicles, on to the pavement in
front of them. Sternly fixing his eyes upon the grinning face,
Horace Zagreus bore down upon it, his arm through that of
Boleyn, but his body a little in advance, covering to some extent
that of his protege.
" Hallo Horace ! I thought I recognized you ! " and a hand
stopped him as they were abreast.
Mr. Zagreus released Daniel, thrusting him behind him as he
did so : then facing about, his face still very stern and expression
less, stood looking down at the figure that had stopped him.
" Well and what then Francis ? " he asked.
" Oh nothing," replied Francis.
Raggedly framed eyes full of an ageing blue were stuck per
functorily in a tanned face, of small and blunted features. It was
somewhat puffed and flushed beneath the thinning tan. Francis
was a man of forty or just under that, an unnecessary moustache,
of withered sandy stubble, suggested a convention for which the
face was unsuited. Exposed to the penetrating stare of the
impeccable Zagreus (like a worm confronting its Setebos, with an
insolent " You are responsible for me ! " in its eyes) the figure
addressed as Francis basked in the disapproving attention he had
drawn upon himself.
" How have you been getting on all these years Zagreus ? "
" Much the same, thank you. How have you been getting on,
Francis ? "
" Not too badly, pretty well, in fact. I'm off to the West
Indies again this week."
" Doing well ? "
" Not so badly."
He signalled a stream of offensive messages from his small
extinct expressive lamps, into the big face of the powerful Sphinx,
which did not move a muscle.—Some of the human dirt must
 DICK 53
surely get in, and interfere with the stately brooding. (The same
face ! Embalmed in his beastly money ! He must be sixty ifa day ! )
" You haven't changed ! " Francis belched out from his com
pressed grin.
Zagreus drew in a long draught of air up his extremely hand
some equine nostril, his eyes rolling wildly like a horse's for a
moment, as though he were about to rush away in terror.
" Still as interested as ever in the young, I see " Francis
remarked, in a confidential undertone, glancing round the
obstruction of his friend's shoulders, to where Daniel stood.
" Yes, you have observed correctly."
" You old succubus ! Let's have a look at your latest suffix ! "
Francis cried, raising his voice, and suddenly moving forward in
the direction of Daniel. " Your latest suffix I suppose ! " he called
out, grinning ferociously in Dan's face : " your favourite word,
do you remember ? "
Horace Zagreus interposed himself quickly between them,
like a hen-bird shielding her young.
" I'm in a very great hurry Francis : so I'm afraid I must
leave you now. That's your direction, Francis, isn't it ? " he said,
taking his hand, and holding his old friend firmly before him,
with the grip of a blacksmith.
" Yes. But aren't you going to ask to see me ? "
" Ask to see you ? "
" Yes. Don't you want to meet me ? "
" What do you mean Francis ? "
" You understand I think Horace. Don't you remem
ber ?"
Throwing a depth of insulting sly sex-appeal into the strength-
less eyes and shapeless pipe-sucking lips, beneath the harsh faded
ginger stubble, Francis squeezed the athletic hand with his fleshy
fingers.
" Well goodbye ! " Horace exclaimed hastily.
" Is that all ? "
As a ghostly reminder of the old days were a pair of spotless
white spats.
" Run away Francis, like a good boy ! " said Horace firmly as
he turned away, while, strong in the emanations of the unhealthy
days of long-ago, the old companion's claim to recognition for
things dead and gone, thrust on him its cruel caricature.
54 APES OF GOD
Rejoining Boleyn, Horace Zagreus swept away at a gallop.
Once he turned his head : he discerned the mean genteel figure
of Francis Dallas (his legs straddled in a middle-class, a middle-
aged, jauntiness, in white spats and exotic sub-tropical wide
awake, a pseudo-topee) looking after him, standing at the spot at
which he had left him.
For some time he said nothing to Daniel, hurrying him for
ward at breakneck speed.
" That is an awful man ! " at last he remarked.
He thrust his hand roughly for the third time into his breast
pocket : he drew out the sealed envelope. Daniel Boleyn, striding
beside him, watched his actions with anguish. Holding the heavy
yellow envelope before him he seemed to be acquainting himself
with its weight, while with his wide abstracted eye he dangled, in
the air, pros against cons. After that, in a very measured way, he
replaced it in his pocket. Dan turned his head away, flushing
angrily and biting his lips.
They had been nearing one of the principal gates of the Park.
As they reached it Mr. Zagreus stopped. He stood in front of
Dan, in the full frowning splendour of his handsome presence,
one hand, thrust under his jacket, caught stiffly on his slender
hip. ,
" Dan, the unexpected encounter with that disgusting person
has thoroughly upset me. So goodbye. I will write to you ! "
Turning upon his heel, he left Daniel Boleyn at the Park gate,
staring after him open-mouthed, with twitching lips.
In the remote distance two white specks were visible. They
were the spats of Francis, who still was standing upon the empty
pavement, where he had been said goodbye to.
For at least five minutes Daniel stood by the gate of Hyde
Park at which he had been left. Horace Zagreus had long since
disappeared, into one of the many openings of streets that led
away from the precincts of the Park. At length he turned, and
entered the gates.
It was a Saturday afternoon. A considerable number of
couples, of boys with their girls, were stretched upon the grass,
the faces glued together. Daniel Boleyn stepped out upon the
dirty field of grass, and advanced aimlessly among these swooning
pairs, who lay quite still, as though struck dead, locked in a public
preliminary to hymen. Coming upon an unoccupied space, he
 DICK 55
flung himself down upon the ground, and, burying his face in an
arm despairingly thrown up, he burst into tears.
" His latest suffix—his latest suffix ! " he lisped and blubbed
at once, without thought or meaning, with misery undisguised-
all among the frankly clipped and lip-locked sonny-boys ami
honey-sticks.
PART n.

THE VIRGIN
MATTHEW PLUNKETT picked up the thing, that was a
round pale shell. The table was strewn with stones and
shells upon a sand-buff napkin of cotton. Does shell-
making express a primitive mode of excretion ? Or not ? He
swung his head up. The impressive displacement (on the
pattern of the heavy uprising from the pond-foam of the skull of
a seal, with Old-Bill moustache, leaden with water, as exhibited
at the Zoo) released the pinch of neck-flesh which had been
wedged between the stud and shirt-band. With self-possession
Matthew dropped his chin deftly again into its place. He fixed a
large moody eye upon the shell. It was just a rotted punctured
husk. Head lazily rolled to one side he considered it—with staring
swimming eyes and moist pink muzzle, pulpily extended—plum
locked in plum.
The clock struck in a tower in the damp air to his north, out
of sight, in a square near Euston. Sighing Matthew lowered the
shell down upon the table, swung at the end of a drooped, limp,
swan-wristed hand. This white-jacketed ossature, playing the
crane, deposited it softly until it rested flanked by two stones and
a scallop. He rubbed his eyes—that was the hour to eat. It had
struck.
He sighed and stood up.
Go I must !
Tempting to continue, the idle apprentice, among the twisted
relics of little life—cartonnages of molluscs, an orchestra of whis
pering toy-trumpets, corkscrew-curls, stars and. thimbles. In
sympathy with the waves—detached from the glassy Evolution—it
would be pleasant to grope keenly among a handful of old natural
puzzles, a few scraps of a feast of reason of Eminent Victorian
giants, along with for his proper count a floating notion or two,
of the dejected present. But no it is a case of Go I must !—go he
must now where he would find his midday snack, washed down
with a Pilsner (to be said with a blink, nasally as well, as though
you had a cold) for companionship.
Generally Betty came just before three. But it had been some
times earlier : return he must. He yaw-yaw-yawned with the
6o APES OF GOD
blank bellow of the great felines, behind their bars at the scheduled
feeding-hour (smelling the slaughtered meat for their consump
tion and sighting the figures of the keepers, moving to be their
waiters, at their public table d'hote, watched by herds of blanched
apes, who had confined them) he roared—disparting and shutting
his jaws, licking his lips, baying and, with his teeth, grinding, then
again baying, while he stretched the elastic of his muscles elevat
ing his arms with clenched fists, in heavy reproduction of the
plastic of the Greek. Then he carried one of his exhausted hands
to his head, and scratched it, between two sandy bushes, somewhat
sun-bleached.
Next the dummy-beach, the shell-sprinkled buff napkin of the
table, and short of his second, and third, work-benches (which
bore jolly retorts, a Wimshurst Machine, contraptions that could
be heirlooms inherited from Boyle, the gas-king of the history of
physics, bottles and a saw) there was a space, in which he vaguely
moved with hesitation for a time. The medium-sized-boy's
clumsy body, of the elderly-looking student in untidy tweeds, got
simply lost, in the centre of his room.
" He who hesitates is lost ! " Betty's favourite words of doom
rang in his ears however. He grasped together manfully his
dispersed volition. He must not be late, she would not tarry, not
she the wench ! He pushed forward obedient to the shop-girl
catch-word, towards the exit. With a heavy-weight, certainly
fifteen-stone, gesture, he at once wrenched it open, reshutting it
behind him with a frank angry bang.
Frowning he planted his feet with burly resolution upon the
planks of the landing and the scrap of mat and stamped as he
descended, tugging at the banister-rails like a muscular harpist
and clearing his throat, bucolically. There was a great muscular
insistence upon the heel, in his tread, the door passed, and the
unmistakable brutal presence of shoe-irons. A live man and no
mistake was upon the stairs ! He trod them as a cock treads its
hen-folk but more so. The down-trodden public floor-boards
squeaked and clucked.
The Bloomsbury square with its museum of much-etched, and
then untidily painted, victorian trees, untidily posing, sluttish and
sly, came to life (at Matthew Plunkett's emergence as he stepped
boldly out) with a terrible explosion, between the wheels of a
Shell-van full of petrol-tins, nosing its way round the railings.
 THE VIRGIN 61
Vans simply farted and passed on he thought, as he jumped up a
little, as though he were shot, and his pulse clanged in his heart,
upon the second step. SHELL IS SO DIFFERENT !
He glanced up at the plaque for Hazlitt on Number Twenty-
Nine—beneath which broken-hearted milkmen, with love quite
dismayed, still yodelled hours before the last phantoms of the
century-before-last of Enlightenment, and of Illumination, were
up at all . Meanwhile a cat would make its way from the basement
of the Stephen Skenes' towards the area of some Clives (even the
cats were catty, in this Catfish Row of the victorian hinterland)
where it considered the milk might be pushed over or, if not,
tampered with by an intelligent domesticated Tom—since the
Clives rose late, breakfasting generally at noon, so the deposits left
by the representatives of the several trades, by appointment, to
these shabby Bloomsbury potentates, were in the habit of collecting
—for they were as a rule rich middle-aged sluggish students and
dispensed with chars. " Young Woodley," who lived in a small
room, shared by two monogamous male menages, came out at
six in shorts and sandals to run round the Zoo, but he was an
exception and not allowed to touch the milk, although he charred
for both—he went back to bed, from which they liked to pull him
when they rose, with a hollow spank—Aschenkottel that he was !—
or Va done ! as Bulwer Bell would frenchily splutter, or Fi done :
fainitmt !—as he approached him in his brocaded dressing-gown,
with his little cane. But now the last milkman of this auroral
ballet had long yodelled himself out of the square. It had struck
one, in the tower at Euston. Roger Bulwer had breakfasted and
taken in his victorian wig of a long haired " great man " from the
window-sill, as a signal to Bloomsbury : the circus was awake.
Coming out into the public-air, Matthew examined fiercely
that physical image, heavy with calf-love, that was his favourite
photograph of himself in his mental album. Before it disappeared
the lovesick face grew appreciably infantile, from freudian calf
love to Songs of Innocence of Blake being but a step, and it took
it before the axe fell.
Head-on Matthew collided with incomplete surprise with the
railings : he might never learn to get round that corner—it was
the curb. That was inhumanly lofty, whereas the boots used to
scale it were outsize, although his feet were much smaller, in fact
standard-average, so he was that is to say too small for his boots.
62 APES OF GOD
But it was a short-cut, every advantage must be taken of the
accidents of the terrain, time pressed. It would be a serious
matter if Betty—in short, he must be there and not allow her—
in effect !
In case the Stephen Skenes were looking, Matthew thrust his
hands brutally into his trouser-pockets and assumed an expression
of aggressive imbecility, half scowling tramp-comedian, half baby-
boy. It was a rhythmic tramp-tramp-tramp, with every third step
or so a stumble, that took him to the end of the square. As he
passed beneath the windows of the Skenes he loudly smacked his
lips, as he thought of course of the Pilsner, hoping it was cold.
Without manufactured ice my word (now there was no real ice
any longer) what a different place the world would be ! Matthew
turned the corner into Biddenden Street without raising his head,
stumbling for form's sake. He was stopped by a tall and loitering
figure, that of Dan.
* * *
To be always so affected by this shape of Dante-young—for-
ever rising up in his path without notice like a black ghost—he
recognized that his limbs had shaken like a lover's though for a
twelvemonth he had got over it fortunately : but he had been
quite unprepared.
With a huffy heave of the bowed studious shoulders Matthew
came to rest. There was nothing for it, stop he must. He sent
over a preliminary glance of disgust. That tall composure, all-
too-well known, it was indecent—as though really one had
nothing better to do than to be at the beck and call of Boleyn,
when one must without fail get back—there must be no muddle
not this time !—and probably he wanted to be taken back and
talked to—it looked like it, or he was expecting Matthew to go
somewhere it was quite likely—well (thinking of Betty, using her
dialect) he was unlucky !
He turned up a hostile face to Dan.
" Hullo Dan ! "
" Hullo."
That was it : " hullo "—that's all. Thought as much !
Daniel Boleyn looked at the pavement and blushed. Oh god,
would he never stop blushing—even if he was only nineteen !
Give him the slip, it was the only way—must positively be brutal,
it was no use—make him see it was most inconvenient.
 THE VIRGIN 63
" What's brought you over here, I thought you were in Ire
land," in his manner advertising loudly that the wish was own
father to the thought and he wished Old Erin that had bred him
had kept him.
Dan shook his head.
Andrew gazed at the tall melting glowing young debutante,
fixed in a stock-still confusion, standing suffused with a hot
maidenly bloom.
Had one come up (lout that one recognized one was) and
dropped a brick—come out with a hearty spanking sex-epithet
as an instance, of the real said-roundly, brawny and bollocky,
brew—arriving foul-mouthed in the presence of this beastly
virgin—with the savage hiccup bred of a black Pilsner—then one
would have understood ! One would have apologized. One
would have been in the wrong. One would have felt sorry. One
would have blushed too !
With the manliest possible directness he squared up to the
hundred-per-cent adolescent blushing sphinx, towering in front
of him foot on foot. In vain : for veiled and silent it stood impos
sibly where it had stopped, beyond question in no hurry, to move,
or to answer.
God god ! (blasphemous Bloomsbury he cried) in a passion of
dark prayer, as he awaited the pleasure of this obstacle in his
path. He did nothing but glare over, biting his lips, at this
downcast madonna-face, sensitively pained lips, blushing cheeks.
Almighty heavenly Papa shatter this virgin—Oh Merciful
Destroyer as well as Cruel Creator ! Oh for a real common or
garden brick and no nonsense, to pick up and hurl at it, and
smash it outright himself, if God hesitated to deal in that way
with one of His precious creations.
Dan would never look up, he would not he knew that for
certain, there was no chance at all—he would stare down forever
if necessary, with his beastly blush confound him, it was hopeless !
" Will you come up for a moment ? " Matthew asked in a tone
of the most heavily-taxed restraint—he could see nothing for it
but that, so he supposed they must after all go up, he made his
voice convey, and was silent.
After a moment he spoke again.
" I am extremely sorry but I have to go somewhere, I must
not be late. It is essential."
64 APES OF GOD
Dan did not move.
The mystery of a huge body not yet born or thought of when
he was a student of twenty drove him into a sullen frowning,
counting on his fingers the stupid summers, more or less—up and
down. The prestige of the " under-twenties " was too great by
half for him, he never would be able to say " bo " to an Under-
Twenty, however large his boots, he knew—not with enough con
viction, or without stammering, to be noticed, his training had
too strong a hold—but with the worse grace in the world he
growled out :
" Well let us go back for a moment, won't you ? I am sure you
must have a great deal to tell me."
There was a spell in which the two, vis-a-vis, stood both staring
hard at the pavement—this was the most ticklish passage of all,
where tempers are generally lost, Matthew kept a very tight
hold on himself.
" I don't want to come up."
Dan's voice was low, of course, strangled with emotion.
" No ? It's just as you like."
Vicious and cross was no longer what Matthew was—this was
awful !—he was beside himself out and out. Technically a smile
it was, since the teeth were visible and the eyes in a blaze of
derison affected to laughter, as a dark half-cousin, with which
promptly he proceeded to contemplate the blushing virgin
colossus—but it was frankly hideous, like painted masks of battle.
He would not give him his eyes—not he ! the contemptible little
sneak—to do battle with his bucolic pair, of true fighting blue—
he would hang his head till doomsday, rather than face the music
of those masterful glances that would tell him soon enough the
sort of figure that he cut, in one pair of eyes, at all events.
Word for word too if you please—he " had not wanted," thank
you all the same !—word for word—this precious sainte nitouche
—it's all the young oaf had learnt to say ! A year ago—then some
meaning might possibly have attached. (Matthew recalled the
occasion.) As dead as mutton was his love beyond recall : that
would not wash today ! Also (Matthew flattened the plum-lips,
into the ruthless-cruel line of an old bulldog-sultan's—supplicated
by a discarded odalisk, desiring to be taken back)—a year had
not improved Dan's appearance !
Betty, ever-present maternal form, though so slight beside the
 THE VIRGIN 65
masculine vastness beneath his eyes, bore down upon him at this
point—he witnessed, in anguished fancy, her self-possessed arrival
at his house-door, but he not there to receive her : he had been
prevented from getting back by Dan. It would be fatal—Zulu
Blades forever on the sharp look-out. The door upon the second
door opened, Zulu stood there—where he lay in wait, generally,
behind it. Betty hesitated—then she passed in ! He saw it all.
Shaking roughly the vault of his bookworm shoulders, of the
studious-husky, Matthew took one heavy striding step. At the
same time he remarked with great force out of his twisted mouth
in profile, by way of farewell,
" I'm sorry I'm afraid I must go ! "
Dan looked half-up, with a gesture of alarm or surprise.
Matthew stopped. Dan moved round a few degrees towards
him.
" Well " very roughly indeed, with a surly jerk, " would you
like to come up ? "
Assent was indicated very simply by Dan, in instantaneous
action—by stepping namely with great promptness past Matthew,
making without more ado for the corner, and turning briskly into
the square.
" Unspeakable beast ! This is too much ! " It was the speech
of the speechless-with-indignation. Purple with elderly passion
(in an impromptu imitation of his father at the height of the old
monkey's extremest rage) with the salute of a fellow-flush but of
rage under-hatches, he threw himself bodily about : with Dan a
pace ahead, they went down the square, over the ground just
laboriously covered, on the outward journey, in a rapid proces
sion, towards his house-door. He was upon Dan's heel all the
way—halting, with the bucolic inhibition cramping his style to
prevent him from drawing abreast. Dan strode with the stiff gait
of a bearskinned Palace sentry, went straight to his objective
without looking back—the house-door namely of Matthew, with
Plunkett on a piece of paper, fastened with two drawing-pins—
where he stopped dead, drawn up rigid, heels together at the
attention, presenting buttocks in good order to the street.
The little foot in Matthew's clodhopper tingled, the toes
clenched with rage. They ached to drive good yeoman shoe-
leather against Dan's trouser-seat. Coming up roughly upon the
door-step, a key-bunch torn from a hip pocket, this robot had to
 66 APES OF GOD
be man-handled—he was pushed aside—even to get at the lock
at all. Matthew let him in. Straight as a die, head high, he
passed plumb into the opening.
They thundered together up the staircase—Matthew's ascent
threatened every board in the building, but Dan leapt up from
step to step sometimes missing one, and the romantic stairway
shook. It was no good, the boards were pre-Palmerston : he
would trample this Bloomsbury house down finally—really he
was against it, no Bloomsbury at heart, he would break it up with
his tolstoian heels—long live the simple workman !
On the third Moor a person of very mixed race, and probably
f low and confused antecedents, came out of a room, in his Summit
shirt-sleeves—he was smiling slightly. This was Zulu Blades.
Silently he observed the pair of them. Dan's host-in-spite-of-
himself's look of black annoyance became a grin of insane hate.
Dan went in swiftly, upon the turning of the handle. Matthew
followed and flung-lo the heavy panelled door, with a formidable
crash. All the little shells danced to see such sport upon the
napkin of cotton, as also the neglected laboratory furniture.
Now for a confrontation at least, his blood was up as never
before : he turned towering with rage bluntly upon his young
visitor.
/ " You ungrateful little beast you ! " he panted up at him,
very purple, in a strong vixenish shriek " can't you see—must you
: always be so beastly selfish ! You treat me like a paper-bag—
J you wanted—I won't stand for it ! Find somebody else ! It's not
for nothing— ! If I did starve myself for a fortnight to buy you a
great-coat you needed and a suit of pyjamas because you told me
at night out of poverty you went naked in bed " (he stopped to
laugh bitterly—a hard laugh). "Pyjamas!" (He gave a sneering
snort over the night-suit that was chocolate, with vivid spots of
geranium). " I'd see you damned first before I did it—I'm
through with you—I suppose you think—there's nothing like
having a good opinion of yourself. I don't love you a fraction of !
You're nothing but a little cheap beast—there's no occasion for
you to smile—I didn't ask you to come ! You poison the air of
this room, the sooner you hop it the better as far as I'm concerned
—why did I bring you up ? / wish I hadn't now ! " (in a dashing
luscious lisp he spat in hot singsong complaint). " You've grown
particularly ugly as well let me tell you in case you've overlooked
 THE VIRGIN 67
it—I thought I better put you wise on that not unimportant point
—as you evidently haven't remarked it yourself ! " (a scoffed
sneer was aimed at the whole six-foot of melting adolescence).
" Your face has appreciably coarsened—it's a puzzle to me where
my eyes were, in my head, what one could ever have seen in !
I fail to—really—no ! It certainly can't have been your intelligence! "
Winding up out of breath Matthew snorted. He leant upon the
work-table, his shoulders doubly bowed, as if with a double
burden, coughing.
Dan was before the door, not moving a muscle, he stood erect,
chin-out, palms on thigh-sides, as if attending the super-prussian
commando. But his eyes were in the corner of the tin-soldier
head, on the opposite side to that of his fiendish friend, startled
and averted.
The host's eyes turned away, affecting rapid loss of interest,
as he coughed.
Then, with a gulp, back shot the head, armed to the teeth,
fanged for the attack.
" I hate you ! I detest you ! I abominate you ! " it spat—
plump plump, plump the enraged feuilletonist, of the lowbrow-
highbrow purple-passion, dropped his hates, bomb by bomb—
spitting over his work-table at his towering ex-would-be-mistress,
drawn up before his door : and the pseudo-sentry instinctively
raised his hand to ward off this cowardly bombardment as best
he might.
" You may laugh 1 " hissed Matthew fleshing him with a white
eye.
" Are you mad Matthew ! " Dan whispered. " I am not
laughing ! Can't you see ! "
" I don't care if you are ! " Matthew shouted in savage devil-
may-care, jauntily and as was to be expected turned on his heel.
" This is too awful ! " whispered in still fainter accents Dan
from the doorway, the lower of his rose-red grecian lips alone
slightly moving, to compose the tremulous whisper. The sentry
manifested signs distinctly of an unstarching, as the hot shafts
went home (attacked on duty), though still making the most of
his stature, his eyes still strictly averted, in a permanent Eyes-
right. But Matthew flung himself about in a trice, teeth-bared,
as he heard it.
" Awful. What ? You're right, it is, awful it—you are—and
68 APES OF GOD
I'm glad you know it. At last. Thank god ! You disgusting
little cry-baby ! "
A muscular spasm was set up about a group of ribs, upon his
left side, and his eyes swam with a sickly dizziness, and Matthew
sat down hastily. Clutching at his heart, his eyes frowned upon
the floor-boards—he sat still.
Dan the sentry went to pieces (although he had not turned his
head) in sympathy with his superior. In sympathy he turned his
back, looking at a print ofa galaxy of Victorian boxers, surrounded
by tophatted patrons of the game, pinned beyond the door. As
there was no sound, after a long pause Dan continued to revolve,
and was shortly with pained dreaminess facing Matthew, but not
point-blank—with a respectful dreamy obliquity. He gazed half-
down upon the invalid posture of his host, with a look equally
compounded of surprise and compassion.
" Do you feel ill Matthew ? " Dan whispered, hazarding a
gentle approach, under the circumstances.
He stepped softly forward, though a little sideways, looking
across the work-table at the asbestos of the gas-stove.
" Can I do anything Matthew ? "
Without raising his eyes Matthew waved him away, exclaim
ing—the rough male struck-down but unwilling to be pitied by
wifey :
" Nothing except you can take yourself off as soon as you
like ! "
Pain at this unkind rebuff left its mark upon the face of Dan.
A manner of expectant rigour a little electrified the limp
trunk, sunk in nervous overthrow beside the table. Matthew held
his breath. He rolled an expectant eye. Then with an abrupt
tremor from stem to stern, he was delivered of a large dull hiccup,
worthy of a better man.
Immediately he straightened himself in the chair, the face
cleared, he rose briskly. He stamped over to the window, with
the archaic gait of Gaffer Giles. The window was overthrown
and forced down, with the utmost brutality, quivering and bang
ing it fell. He stepped back frowning from it, as a man might
who had just put a steer upon its back, in one jolly jujitsu of
cattle-raising fists, red in the gills but with a brow still pallid.
The lips advanced, in a threat to flower, alluringly bud-
bursting, he quitted the window. He turned about in the room,
 THE VIRGIN 69
a bull in its own china-shop, passing in burly bafflement from
spot to spot, questing after something mislaid (only the nature of
which he had forgotten) with abrupt animal actions, of pseudo-
rooting and scratching.
" Matthew ! "
A voice fluted, low in the scale, in supplication and melted
the silence—in that part of it near the instrument of the lips though
elsewhere it was as though he had not spoken. •
" Oh are you still there ? "
A whisper, " Yes."
The humble beauty was still at the table-side ; occasionally he
wafted a glance of the most pensive casual reproach in the direc
tion of the restlessly-moving Matthew.
" Have you anything to say by chance ? " Matthew asked,
turning his head towards his visitor, but sending his eye down
slantwise beneath the table, where was Dan's neat black leather
extremity. Dan of course had nothing whatever to say.
" You must have come up for something ! "
No : Dan took up a book and turned it over- upon its back as
gently as Matthew had thrown down the window harshly. ,
The clock, in the tower at Euston, struck the half-hour.
" I can stop here no longer ! " Matthew exclaimed in the midst
of the chime in a raging voice.
" I have something to ask you ! " Dan shyly muttered, picking
up the book and still more softly reversing it.
" What is it ? " snapped Matthew who had passed into Old-
Man Plunkett whom he took after, out of fatigue. His fingers
pressed the back of a sheet of stout foolscap. His attention was
aroused. Lifting it up he brought to light a miniature pencil
mounted in gun-metal. It was the object that had been hiding
so it was the end of the chase. At the foot of the foolscap sheet he
wrote, in large infant-script :
" Back almost at once. Matthew."
This he tore off, three square inches of paper.
" Well ? "
Dan had his hand upon the bedroom door. A rather brighter
look had come into his face and, in speaking, with the faintest
possible smile he looked towards Matthew.
" May— 1 leave the room ! "
The hush of the class-room, following a Please Sir ! bracketed
7o APES OF GOD
with some super-simplicity, fell on them in minute-long eclipse,
while Dan, blushing and incontinent, fingered the door-handle.
Old Man Plunkett positively skipped with rage, as far as his
junior's massive footwear permitted, in the impersonation.
" Leave the room—no you may not ! " he thundered from the
window, glaring across the littered tables.
The young puppy was going too far for Old Man Plunkett,
what next !
" Is it out of the question ? " asked Dan faintly.
Matthew glared speechless across at him for a weighty instant,
taken aback, almost parting from his parent in the fever of the
novel emotion.
" Yes ! "
Matthew's voice was quite quiet and short, he kept a puzzled
wary eye flashing up.
Dan dropped his hand off the handle, and withdrew from the
neighbourhood of the bedroom-door. With head bowed, with a
guilty expression, representative of a beaten hound, tail tucked
between its slinking hind-quarters, he went.
" I thought you had something to ask me ? "
The voice now used by Matthew was almost casual.
Dan took up his wide-brimmed hat and revolved it sun-wise
turning with sheepish looks, upon his stomach, picking with his
finger-nails at the hatter's stitches.
Matthew watched him beneath discoloured brows, the flush
spreading from the gills upward. Two plumes of grizzled-blond
whiskered his cheek-bones, in front of the ears, and, above, the
sandy curliness suggested in picturesque wildness the restless
scratching fingers of the student.
" Well ! "
" Well " said Dan suddenly " I know you don't care but I am
so terribly unhappy ! "
Dan's mouth began to give way, in an alarming wobble,
whereas at the same time his wide-open eyes of nigger-brown took
on a shade of moister velvet.
" What is it now ? " Matthew demanded, in sullen tones of the
male confronted with the extremities of the feminine nature.
The meat-red surfaces of the lips of the disturbing visitor con
tinued to quake. The eyes shone with an illumination that the
host recognized immediately as that of love, in a word. There
 THE VIRGIN 7«
was such a hush in the room as precedes the first howl of the
unchained elements.
" Unhappy ! " blustered Matthew. (How we men are at a
disadvantage, when the fair sex get steam up with the water-cart
my word !).
Dan drove his teeth into the quivering jelly of his lips.
" What is the cause, if I may ask ? " Matthew sneered over at
his guest.
A stormy pallor gained the whole of Dan's countenance. The
howl broke from him as he flung himself upon the nearest work
bench bodily, rocking the Wimshurst Machine as he fell and send
ing flying a bottle of Nitrate of Soda, labelled Phosphate of Lime.
The hellenic patent of nasal perfection, the flawless nose of him,
flattened itself to nigger squabness, upon the boards of the work
bench, while his arm that was flattened as well went entirely
about the dark curled head, a muscular belt fitting the skull. The
youthful prowess-promising shoulders heaved slowly : the lips in a
prolonged wail gave forth, upon the first volume of escaping
wind, the sound " Zag," and upon the second the more continuous
complaint of " rooooooce ! "
" What's that, Zag-rooce ! ? What ! you mean to tell me "
Matthew screamed " that you actually came here in order to
inform me of that ! It was for that that you have made me miss
my—you have upset my plans—really !—to be your confidante—
Horace Zagreus too no really—and you come here and throw
yourself about my room—you have broken my bottle ! can't you
see what you've done ! Pick it up ! I'll make you pay !—This is
too much ! get off my work-table ! Do you hear ? Take your
nose out of my test-tubes at once you great selfish oaf—you noisy
ox—you little beast you ! This is positively the last time you put
your nose inside this place on any pretext. I'll give Mrs. Cochrane
orders to say I'm not at home—I shall be out—do you hear ? I
wish they'd keep you in Dublin ! I shall write to Stephen ! "
Stephen Boleyn his Dublin cousin should hear from him about
this son of his, he would certainly write to Stephen, in Dublin,
and tell him to keep his precious offspring a little more at home,
or find him suitable work, or send him to a colony for a little while,
to make a man of him with a little cow-punching, or tea-planting
or gand-dancing—ifhe did not—he would warn him—there would
be the devil to pay, he would say nothing more. But have him
 7a APES OF GOD
up in his rooms he would not ! Hp might be a relation—and he
did feel responsible for him while he was there : but he was not
his beastly nanny. He would not tolerate such a domestic burden
as this, it should not in any case be at large—if Stephen couldn't
afford to keep it—and that was probably why he was here—he
should be frank about it. Out of sight out of mind. Probably
Stephen thought once out of Ireland it could shift for itself and
whore its way round Europe for all he cared, bad luck to him—
so Iqng as he was left in peace ! That was all very well. He
should not have had children, if he was not prepared. He would
write and tell him so too. In any case he would not play the
father to this waif and stray, he must go and howl himself into
someone else's good graces ! Perhaps old Horace would keep
him, that might be the solution but have him round there at all
hours of the day and night he would not—he was frankly sick of
the sight.
Matthew moved crossly hither and thither, in quest of some
thing or other, whatever it was, he did not care, ruminating the
most striking phrases in the cross letter to Stephen : he found his
hat, where it had fallen beneath a table. It was that. He put it
on his head. Dan remained, the better half of his body shored
up on the central work-bench, occasionally shattered by a sob.
Matthew, hat on head, the slip of paper with the message grasped
in his hand, stood over him in passing, gazing down with the
robustest contempt.
" Well are you going ? " he asked at last.
Dan shook all over but said nothing.
" I am going now ! " said the host very roughly to the back
of the dejected head of profuse black curls. " But I shall be back
in half an hour and I want this room ! I shall expect you to have
left it by then— I hope you hear me. And don't come back ! "
At these pile-driven words of harsh dismissal the figure upon
the table shook from head to foot. Matthew made his way with
an unnecessary degree of noise to his door, and as Dan heard him
reach it he wrenched up his head, in wild-eyed forlorn appeal.
" Matthew ! " he called out, in a most moving voice of last-
hour entreaty.
Putting his head again into the room, Matthew watched him
for a moment, with cruellest scrutiny, as if he had been a big
shell, imported for research.
 THE VIRGIN 73
" What ? "
" I did not mean to offend you " Dan with difficulty remarked,
brushing the tears from his cheeks, " by mentioning Zagreus—I
am sorry Matthew ! Why are you all so unkind ! Zagreus hates
me—hates me!"
He howled out hates me and flung himself back even more
violently than before, upon the work-bench, with a childish roar
of involuntary complaint.
" I shall expect you to be out of here by the time I get back ! "
Matthew shouted into the room. " Can you hear ? Wipe your
eyes and go home. You can have a good cry there. This is not
your home, it is not the place to do that in !—Also pick up my
bottle do you mind ? I shall send in a bill to your father for any
thing you break."
He slammed the door behind him, leaving Dan in the same
position.
» • •
The Camden Distillery met him before he had been out long,
there it was, he had been composing his letter to Stephen, frown
ing and slouching his way hurriedly along to the Distillery. He
drew up— the great pub was across the road, apart from the
baptist chapel, at the Mews corner, where its lavatories ran back
under the whitewashed arch, up to the first motor lock-ups.
Lightly like a gas-balloon his mind had brought him there through
the clouds, and he stood smacking a wet beer-drinking lip, as he
grasped the situation, come to earth, with a cough.
Standing upon the edge of the pavement, blinking over at the
Distillery, the traffic did not stop. He looked up west to see how
much there was to come. But there was a sharp explosion. That
van again ! Like a bad penny, cracking off as it went, the thing
had turned up. It had rushed past him with its bomb. SHELL
IS SO DIFFERENT ! He grinned after it, it was a thing that
was a music-hall turn, the clown-van. He and the clown-van
played peep-bo in Bloomsbury, each had a distinct role who could
doubt. The thing had recognised him immediately : it went
petarding into the next street, tail up. What a van !
* * *
Within the Distillery he was driven sideways by the lunch-
hour rush. It came in behind him—it was One. The place was,
yes, to capacity—he would be drowned if he did not swim in the
74 APES OF GOD
swirl of these fluid bodies. Above the herd of shoulders he looked
over at his regular place. That was near the street-entrance but
there was a long glass-passage. He lowered his head. With eyes
averted from the nearest body, he thrust it aside and advanced.
Outsize boots to the fore, his hands feeling biggish and capable,
he started rush-tactics. He dealt similarly with the next body.
It jumped as if in protest but melted away when firmly attacked.
Beyond that with all those fixed between him and that position,
at Violet's end, he fought, under cover of the stampede, as he
had with number one. He bored a path.
The ground regained, along the side of the glass-passage, he
entered by main force the rank of drinkers, wedged in a half-
circle of perhaps fifty units about the central counter.
To get himself seen through the port-hole of cut-glass, swung
upon a pivot, he bent, moving the revolving shutter with his
handy manly jaw. His arms were pinned to his sides. Within,
the strapping staff of tapsters, trousered and skirted, but all
athletic, plunged up and down. They worked at a great pitch
of intense business—politely cannoning with their loaded trays :
parts of each came and went as he blinked sheepishly but keenly
in. Hundreds of throats competed, there were those that
signalled, some broke into laughter, or chaff, on all hands. In
a circle of swarming bars, from the Saloon to the Bottles and
Jugs, this latter-day London beer-hall had the beefy roar of a
bear-pit. A spittoon for a footstool, Matthew had one foot lifted,
the other stood in black malt-wet sawdust.
Softly he called " Violet " into the peep-hole. Violet's flying
hams, the headlong stomach he spotted as hers, were visible, as
she charged down the bar with a Baby Polly a Black and White
and two Watneys, but followed and crossed by the elastic centres
of colleagues.
He bellowed at the hole with a frowning smirk : " Vire-
lett ! "
At his side a man started. He could feel the next body turning
upon him. As part of the same system his own trunk revolved,
as well, a little. A breath of Cheddar and rank Bitter fanned the
chest and chin of Matthew. An eye of point-blank animal
scrutiny came to life at the side of his head, with the smell of
the Cheddar, looking hard at his tell-tale mutton-chops ; with
difficulty it ascended, in raw amazement, to his dove-grey slouch
 THE VIRGIN 75
hat. It dragged itself all over Matthew's face, backwards and
forwards, the fishy slug—he felt its dampness.
There was another turn of the screw. He allowed himself to
be revolved half-left, until a magnified jaw, upon the opposite
side, came into action, a half-inch from his profile. As the teeth
shattered a luncheon-biscuit, a mild cerulean eye was dragged
open by the rumination, into a startled cow's sidelong stare, and
slid shut.
Still eyed up and down by a face nearer than was nice or at
all human, where to be a man was to be distant, as is usually the
case, he mused down upon the counter at a sprig of mustard and
cress, and at an embossed sheet of water, the splashings of a jug.
He buried a smirk from the intrusive eye to the right. It must
throw a pale disk of light, no doubt, upon his neck.
At last it had enough ! There was an abrupt movement, the
body could be felt revolving back. He went back with it. They
were as-you-were.
The publican's plastron, and gold hunter clock-cable, were
featured in the cut-glass and mahogany gap.
" What's it for you sir ? Is anyone attending to you ? "
To get in touch better the man bent down and showed a brown
jewish eye and fat eyelid.
Matthew blinked into the opening twice. The publican could
see his lips. He thrust them out : he blurted faintly :
" A P-p-pilsner ! " The nasal stammer, modelled upon the
effects of a severe catarrh, melted in the hubbub.
" Sir ? "
Matthew cleared his throat, he blinked with the deeper and
more owlish ceremony of the regulation shyness. Violently in
his direction the massive right-hand cog began to revolve. He
stuttered faintly in panic at the publican's decorated belly, the
timepiece massively anchored in its embonpoint :
" A P-p-pilsner ! "
He grew red. He was being geared round by his absconding
neighbour, independent of his will. But now he was threatened
with complete reversal. Settling down into his trusty stogies, he
-seized the counter-edge with both fists. He was able to arrest the
movement. In stricken emphasis of his lips' fastidious percussion,
as if with a deadly cold in the head, he bellowed into the bar :
" Pilsner—a pilsner please ! "
76 APES OF GOD
" A Lager Beer ? A Lager Beer here Miss ! "
A great strain was put upon his wrists. The body to the right
was resolved to go, it was a serious moment, his bull-dog grit was
at the breaking-point.
" Sorry old man ! It ain't 'arf a tight fit. Blokes like you and
me takes up a tidy bit of room, don't we mister? What, did I
tread ? Pm sorry old man ! "
" Not at all ! There's nothing like leather."
" Ah you're right."
The man began violently turning back.
" Are you returning ? " stuttered Matthew.
" I don't seem to be able to drag myself away does I old sport,
not from you ! "
He seized a pipe upon the counter. He again proceeded to
revolve, in the direction for departure. He placed a boot squarely
upon one of Matthew's.
" Was that you again old man ? I'm sorry."
" Not a bit."
" We're a couple of outsizes down below I reckon."
" We seem to be."
" Well cheery ho—sorry I can't stop and all that."
" The pleasure is mine " Matthew sneered : he let go of the
counter.
" Gently does it ! " said the man.
That body went, a much smaller one was substituted : Mat
thew turned completely about, for the final evacuation.
Matthew felt forty round the chest, his neck had a pugilist's
amplitude, in his heroic footwear the puny toes puffed themselves
out with grown-up pride, and on the return journey the toe-cap,
out of control, blundered into his neighbour. With a husky-
stutter he growled " sorry," a man amongst men, and cleared his
throat with gusto, hoicking deep down with the roughest there,
and shooting at the spittoon.
As the bar came round again the Lager was present, and the
centre of the body of Violet appeared between the counter and
the shuttered partition. Her smile came down to signal and her
eyes peered out.
" Good morning. Will that be all you require ? "
" Ah Violet ! Thank you " he swaggered gruffly, frowning.
" No. I want two—I want two ham-sandwiches if you don't mind
 THE VIRGIN 77
—two. And—Violet!—I want one shrimp—one portion. Shrimp!
Portion ! "
" Shrimp ? "
" Shrimp—yes please."
The British bar-shrimp was brought upon its finger of damp
toast, from its circular glass-case.
" It's a fine day ! " said Matthew, very bluff and surprised, to
the Violet.
" Yes " Violet agreed " if it only keeps fine ! "
" That's it ! " said he, examining a handful of silver as though
the pieces had been cowrie-shells : he became absorbed and his
eyes began staring and his mouth pouting—since always in order
to think he returned to the wet milky pout, the vacant stare, of
the teething infant.
" I hope it will " she remarked—" softly " as she would say,
tender and arch, to evoke the personality of an important sheik,
standing by, helmeted in the gutter, with his quivering pillion.
" I hope so too " he insisted.
She was hit full in 'the buttock by a rushing body. She drew
in her muscular hinny, and over her shoulder she discharged a
scented simper that was both sensitive and sweet after the rushing
body. In the dispatch of their respective duties bodies must, in
the intemperance of their involuntary motions, genteelly collide,
that being one of the laws of nature which ladylike bodies spent
their time circumventing, alas with incomplete success.
Matthew raised a half-crown from his overflowing palm, and
put it down upon the counter. Violet took it, sweetly smiling, and
made of the return of the change an action that seemed to remove
all the filth from lucre.
Brutally Matthew chopped the shrimp and the finger of toast
in two with one crash of his ivory-bristling jaw. The half that fell
back into his mouth he swallowed. The half that remained in his
fingers he regarded with astonishment. After a moment he
pushed it into his mouth, and swallowed it, too. Raising the
Pilsner heartily to the same place, his tongue laid down like a
drugget for its reception, and so into the Red Lane, he washed
down the bisected shrimp and its severed raft of damp toast.
The hand of the pub-clock, as he watched it, suddenly gave a
convulsive jump. Abandoned as he had been to a mesmeric
staring, when it jumped it hit his head up, and he started vio
 78 APES OF GOD
lently. Four minutes had elapsed. Hastily hashing up the rest
of the sandwich, in bucolic crunching bites, he wolfed it swiftly
down, pursued it with Pilsner, and smacked both lips heartily
twice.
The luncheon-rush was already past, the glass passage was
dark with departing people. Matthew looked round him appre
hensively : his eyes returned to the clock. At that moment the
heavy black sword that was its minute-hand leapt again : up it
went, like the sword of a robot executioner, by inches, until it
should get aloft to its maximum, when it would be two o'clock,
when it would be ready to fall : and he had the disquieting mental
pictures associated with the name of Zulu Blades. But Matthew
hurriedly left the Distillery, before the sword of the minute-hand
should have cut the number twelve in two.
* * *
Betty had not been there : the paper slip marked " Betty "
was still pinned beside the bell. Matthew sweating freely, after
his return at top-speed, tore it off, and put his hand with it into
his jacket-pocket.
i. In the hall he removed a letter from the box upon the door,
-separating it from two envelopes to the address of Zulu Blades.
',Both these were in pale blue papers, they scented the letter-box.
'He frowned and sneered, as he dropped them back.
Up the stairs, one at a time, he took his lusty amazon land-
girl boots, his tired little trotters as red as lobsters, in their monster
cases, after the recent gallops. During the ascent he beguiled the
time with topical reflections. In the main they were concerned
with Zulu Blades. The man's enterprising nature gave Matthew
no peace day or night—Blades was the " black beast," an evil
neighbour : what with his upstart disrespect as well for his
metropolitan betters', since he had brought the hearty habits of
the african out-stations into their midst, here. His skill with
women was natural, it was true he roped them in like steers, he
must be working off ten years' solitary confinement in the Veldt.
A fruity laugh broke apropos from a feminine throat just as
| Matthew passed that dangerous door upon the left—they all went
in by that one, and they came out by the other. Betty's voice had
not that volcanic sound, rich and stomachy, but he walked on
| tiptoe. A second lusher wallop of laughter—the peculiar women
I the fellow roped in—a third broke and stopped—no doubt she
 THE VIRGIN 79
was kissed by Zulu at that minute, so that accounted. The dis
gusting beast had been telling her one of his fruity yarns as usual
which made them so noisy—if only he would change his methods
—or tickling her armpits—nothing if not primitive. Sometimes
they laughed till they wetted themselves : they probably found
the stories remarkably funny but he didn't. Dirty colonial—
they're all the same ! Orestrylians, Africanders, Kanucks—what
an empire !
He passed the second-floor doors slowly, his ears pricked : as
he withdrew upwards towards his garret-suite, he heard a rushing
and pig-squeaking from a different quarter of Blades' flat —
doubtless the sleeping apartment, he'd got her on the run and
she'd gone in there : the obscene quadroon or whatever he was,
was in pursuit, from room to room he was hot on the scent the
great hearty short-winded sheik—the fat beast's puffing could be
heard or was it the hunted doe's ?—-I don't know. The fellow's
hands were full for the time being, that was the main thing.—He
slammed his door, in a manner that should convey his annoyance,
charged with contempt : and he stamped over their head for five
minutes like a wild ass, hoping to put Zulu off his stroke.
After walking about noisily between his work-tables, Matthew
sat gently down in the chair before the shells and began thinking
of shell-making and excretion. At random he took up the shell
ofthe pearly Nautilus. Then he surveyed the miniature landscape.
He lay down on the beach, kicking his heels, it was a midsummer
holiday, he was 'the callow schoolboy—today was a holiday.
Fixing his eyes in big^ subaqucous__Bloomsbury stare he soon was
sufficiently mesmerized : they were directed upon the landscape,
rather than upon the specimens.
This was a scene, for his intelligence, resembling a section of
seaboard—for were there not shells and stones in considerable
numbers and where are there shells except upon a coast ?—a
scientific landscape, for the cliffs of books upon biology massed at
the extremity of the table in stratifications were reminiscent of the
geologic book-plate, and the fancied sheep—in his landscapes
there were always some head of sheep, for preference at lambing-
time—upon their polished summits : and in his mind's eye a
victorian valley, beyond but occult (though none the less actual)
behind the books, as that might be, trodden by bearded Guards
men of Ouida, but in leggings and trappings of buckrammed
8o APES OF GOD
gamekeepers, a shot-gun tucked up under the hirsute arm-pit, on
their way to the houses of the maidens, in the parsonages.—But
aloft the metropolitan sky, contemporary (but for that none the
more actual) arranged in indistinct cockades—like the vertex, the
tops of the panaches, of a festal procession—traversed the speckled
fog of the window-dust—the Bloomsbury room as well held every
where these romantic deposits", dust was even in his hair and of
course nostrils.
But upon the pane a cloud and an insect approached each
other, travelling in that gloomy transparency of glass—prota-
gonistic, powers of the earth and air : the latter was climbing and
turning, the measured rapprochement was effected with a dizzy
slipping, on the part of the animal. He observed these move
ments, awaiting frowning the collision, gazing into the mysterious
shadow of Time, dark with " events," examining this most
proximate exemplar breathlessly, and stealthily, while he held
neglected the shell in idle suspense above the other specimens.
Then he replaced it quickly and took up a new one, without
looking at it, though he was conscious of the movement of his
fingers, like the legs of a crustacean.
Stealthily without stirring he withdrew his eyes from the cliffs
of Old England, the volumes of biology ; a shade of cunning
entered the lowered face. He directed it upon the insect and the
cumulus. The event was imminent, the cumulus had made
head-way, and the insect, although it always came back, seemed
moving its path in the direction of the cloud.
A violent ring, in the passage outside the door, brought him
to his feet with staring eyes, and with burly strides he proceeded
as quickly as he could outside. It was the finger of Betty that had
touched the button. He disappeared through the open door and
the insect merged with the cumulus upon the Bloomsbury pane.
* * *
Betty very much breezed in with bow-legged, bantam strut,
welcoming herself with' a matter-of-fact smile. She occupied the
room, peeling off prettily her great coat, tessellated black and
green, as she came through the door. Matthew followed upon
her heels—musing and absent-minded, smirking to himself. He
was the clownish Gudgeon of Regency prints, member of the
silly sex—falling for a Petticoat. He took for granted the small
visitor ahead of him ; his eyes ran before him on the floor-boards,
 THE VIRGIN 81
like two scuttling rats in leash, drawing him along, the fairy giant
of a Bloomsbury pantomime.
Betty Bligh was short and slight, to the point of being the doll-
woman. This was an all-puppet cast. In her features as well
as in stature Miss Bligh was the iour^foot-ten adult-tot in toto,
stunted at the mark of her fifteenth summer, with ears and nose
of a waxen smallness. No extrovert jaw-lines or dominant eye-
glint whatever, that Matthew could detect. Betty's scale was
propitious—he had taken the precaution to measure her, unheeled,
against his door-post. The mark was upon it, quite low down.
She satisfied the canon of the Analyst /
Betty Bligh was the opposite of a big masculine sweetheart,
and there was nothing outwardly real or discomforting. The flow
of the libido from him to her would not be disturbed or frustrated
by surplus escapes of imperfectly introverted libido in her. She
was the woman of the magical prescription. The scale was O.K.
The insects were fairies—it was only bulk that made the human
world, and he must be a Gulliver in Lilliput. Frumpfsusan had
spoken.
Scale was of the essence ! All else being equal—the jewish
witch-doctor's face had smiled broadly, naturally who wouldn't,
as he had counselled—" No overmatching."
" Scale my dear boy " Dr. Frumpfsusan chose his words with
understanding—the idea behind the my child of the catholic father
in this Analytical confessional was not neglected : the doctor
smiled serenely into the calf-like face, of puffed and faded english
boyishness—he laid the flattering hand of eld upon the sensitive
forearm (anything the witch-doctor did not know about flattering
where the age-complex of a prosperous patient was in question,
was material merely for the trash-bin, it was certain) " scale my
dear boy " Dr._£rumpfsusan of Zurich had announced " is too
often disregardedby us! For~successfu1 extroversion you must
dominate the scene—you must contrive a Lilliput. That is the first
condition. For that truly uppish self-feeling, which you will find
essential for a free flow of libido through the tap, you must choose
your friends small ! "
The imposing black-bearded Analyst had extended a mighty
hand full of mental power at a certain level above the carpet of
the consulting-room of the clinic : and it had been, as nearly as
Matthew could compute, four-feet-ten-inches that he had sketched
8a APES OF GOD
in the atmosphere. This (as measured by Matthew at her first
visit) was exactly the height of Betty Bligh.
" It is of great importance my dear lad " (the subtle physician
had proceeded on the soothing lines of Mother Siegel, with a rare
magnetic eye worthy of what the Roman called Chaldean) " believe
me, you cannot choose your lady-friend too small. For you Matthew
the woman must be well below the average height—else—— ! "
There was a menace in the soft withdrawal as the physician
gently turned away, as if from the spectacle of some disaster—
if an average-sized woman that is were mistakenly employed !
Now Matthew he told him (the third party they had met
there, the two detached intellects to dissect) was a civilised man. He
was a modern man, von diesem ^eitalter, nicht wahr ?—was it not on
that account indeed that Matthew had sought his advice in the
first instance and had the intensely original idea of submitting
himself to Analysis, yes ? But what was the diagnostic of the
truly civilised person ? " To be prepared, was it not, to discuss
himself, to have himself discussed, with a freedom quite staggering
to the mind of the uneducated ? The modern man whether of
Bloomsbury Baltimore or Berlin has vanquished vanity—he
offers himself to his own inspection as the worm he turns out to
be. If he is vain at all, and it must be conceded that self-love is
hard to kill, it is about his humility. His own Vernichtung is his
greatest pride the laying bare of the nullity, the Nichtigkeit, that
is the " self" at the heart of energy, (which is merely the doctrine
of Xt. that " he who humbleth himself shall be exalted " ! Be modest,
protest you are nobody, a biological bagatelle and hi presto ! you
will get top-marks, and be given authority, that is the idea—it is
the christian strategy. If taken too far it is highly unsuccessful ?
Of course—but we are assuming you are not a Christian for

" In effect then my dear young friend " exclaimed the Analy
tical Uncle-of-the-children's-hour—a more oleaginous Uncle at
every moment in his Zurich consulting-den, to the little latterday
british Tom Thumb, come all the way from London Town to ask
big Wise Man Frumpf of the Ancient East, beard and all, why
funny little Matthew sucked his thumb so much and why he
dreamed of snakes, the little introvert—" you must say to your
self—von Haus aus, verstanden ? from the outset of your Kampf (and
all your fighting glands must be called up) that must be your
 THE VIRGIN 83
strategy that you must be modest in your ambitions, because your
powers are not considerable enough to warrant—at the outset."
Good-boy Bloomsbury listened with glee, modestest exhibi
tionist he felt like a pea-nut, which would do its best, do its little
damnedest, and he was amused by the doctor, they laughed at
Matthew easily together (he was a funny homunculus), fixing his
handicap.
" There is a talmudic saying " smiled Dr. Frumpfsusan
frumpishly and jewishly (old style) with a wise old eye, " as
follows. In choosing a friend, ascend a step. In choosing a wife,
descend a step. When Froggie-would-a-wooing-go, when
Froggie is you, my dear boy, he must step down, as many steps as
there are beneath him—even unto the last ! To be frank with
yourself Matthew, and that is the essence of Analysis, an animated
doll is all, as things stand at present if they may be said to stand
at all, you can really hope to take-on. So I say to you—it is
impossible to choose your baby-girl too small."
And they had another hearty giggle together, to put this
matter of absolute modesty upon the right footing. Human
vanity must be kept under at all costs. So far they had got on
capitally.
But the Psycho-analyst gave him a taste of his metal, it was
time he showed this earth-worm he would not be trifled with !
Enough of this giggling !
" Nungut ! " growled der Herr Doktor Dingsda heartily (very
altdeutsch and very up-stage) : " You will follow my programme,
yes, upon your return to Blumensbury ? Are we agreed upon
that point, sir ? "
" I swear to keep your commandments " exclaimed Matthew
fervently " as I am a child of Christ and an inheritor ."
" Enough ! " the doctor cut him short and put his name in
the register, as a regular patient. " For preliminary examination
(extroverting one Bloomsbury, sent me by my trusted agent
Alan X., Coptic Street, W.C.) fifty guineas."
" That will be one thousand and fifty Swiss marks."
The doctor flung himself back in his chair. He put his fingers,
grown fat in subnormal-pulse-palping and after that complex-
catching, into his black beard—put his head upon one side, and
bit his principal hang-nail, while Matthew made out the cheque.
" It is worth it ! " said Matthew as he handed it to him.
&4 APES OF GOD
" It is worth it if you do what I tell you ! " Dr. Frumpfsusan
thundered, with a furibond eye-roll, placing the cheque carefully
in a drawer of his desk.
" I shall be most careful to take full advantage of all your
advice " Matthew replied.
" Ausgezeichnet ! " crashed the doctor, banging the drawer
in, and turning the key.
After that the mollified specialist threw in a further short
lecture, and his new patient was all ears.
" One of the most common and one of the least understood
complexes " he sententiously remarked, " is what I call the scale-
complex. It is upon that conviction that I have been acting.
What I refer to is not a matter of inches. It is a psycho-physical
Minderwertigkeitsgefiihl ! " He paused to contemplate his fifty-
guinea piece of complexity.
" Many men with small noses have it " he then went on. " A
sketchy body will do it. Narrow shoulders plus a pasty face—
such things tend to go in pairs. Any combination of things that
takes with it a sensation of physical meanness and unimportance.
Glasses. Going to the Zoo and looking too long at the lions.
Hairlessness. Beady eyes. Small-scale pudenda. Palpitation of
the heart. Spatulate hands. Prolonged constipation. Rabbit
teeth. You see what I mean ? "
Matthew saw what the celebrated Analyst meant and he
looked suitably guilty, and as small as possible, much smaller than
could be strictly necessary but he was zealous where it was
smallness that was in question.
" The best of us, my boy, have one or more of these small-
nesses, hence potential scale-inferiority-complexes. We all feel
small sometimes, then we go to the nearest Analyst. Ich tu's ja
auch ! Selbstverstandlich ! Ich komme eben von einem Kol-
legen, der, wie ich, Spezialarzt ist ! " Frumpfsusan sought to
appear small to his client. " A collection of such smallnesses—it is
that, however, that crystallizes the complex, that it is that sends
us haggard and blubbering to the nearest clinic of the Analyst !
—Many small-nosed men have large feet. Das .ist also ein
bedeutungsvolle Ausgleichung ! It is the combination that ."
" Naturlich ! " remarked Matthew, with his best Bloomsbury
blink.
" On the other hand, small nose, small feet, and small pudenda
 THE VIRGIN 85
—that is a fatal combination ! A virulent scale-complex of
psychical-inferiority is inevitable."
" Nariirlich ! " assented Matthew more faintly.
" But the more closely we examine these things, the more we
discover that it is not the physical so much that matters. Again :
inferiority-feeling may result from an actual superiority ! The
handicap of genius, isn't it ? you see that can make inferiority-
feeling."
" Is it able to ? "
" It is a matter of common observation," pursued the Analyst. .
" The self-feeling bears no relation, amongst quite normal men
and women, to physical fact. The nature of their particular
physique, is not that the last thing of which they think ? Look,
an intensely ill-favoured woman she will frequently behave as
if she were very attractive. No one is surprised—for they in
their turn are they not beauties too ? stunted puny men, to
turn to men,, do they not possess the assurance of a champion
athlete ? Well then, all these people have the sensations of being
what they are not : whatever happens, a something more favour
able than the facts isn't it ! This is the rule of the normal
average."
" That is indeed so."
" For them we have to manufacture inferiority, if we desire to
see it ! "
" I suppose that is so."
" What is the secret of these normal people ? "
" That I cannot guess ! "
" Ah ! "
" Do you know ? "
" But that it is our business to find out ! "
The Analyst took it easy for a moment after his orgy of exposi
tion and contemplated Matthew full of the utmost self-satisfaction
possible.
" That perfectly normal capacity to—well that is—to falsify
nature, to one's own personal advantage, isn't it—that is what I
am able to do for you. That is what, Matthew, I shall do for
you!"
" You will earn my life-long gratitude ! "
" I shall ! "
" You certainly will."
86 APES OF GOD
" It is not their secret, it is Nature's, that we have surprised."
" I guessed something of the sort ! "
There was another pause in which they both relished the great
resources of Analysis, staring out of the window at a Turnier in
progress organised for resident patients, on the tennis-courts
beyond the bathing-brook.
This was all very well, but little Bloomsbury would have his
little joke and make Big-man Analyst giggle on the other side of
his chops if he could before he left him—there was no mistaking
his intention, he was as mischievous as mischievous.
" But please Doctor Frumpfsusan " piped little Bloomsbury,
in a little sly stammer, " are you amongst the normal or wouldn't
you say that ? "
" How do you mean Matthew ? "
" In your Kampf with nature, no minderfertigkeits-feeling has
hampered—I only ask in admiration at."
" It is natural."
" What you say is remarkably true. But like Galvani with the
cooking-frog, Newton with -the falling apple, has your scale-
complex discovery had an origin in ?"
Dr. Frumpfsusan allowed his lips to flower contemptuously
extroverted meatily in the depths of his cryptic Analytic beard.
" I am a Jew " exclaimed the worthy doctor with considerable
truculence. " When I possess such a first-class source of ' in
feriority ' as that, in the eyes of my fellow-men, what need have I
of any other ? Does it not put all and any in the shade at once ?
It does I think ! It has secured me against all the inferiority-
complexes to which flesh is heir ! I am a Jew. I am immune."
" I see ! That is really very fortunate for you."
" I think so."
" You cannot supply me homeopathically with such a counter-
complex as that, to eclipse all other complexes ? "
" No."
Matthew felt as crushed as if Moses had put one of the stones
of the Decalogue, or all the Decalogue together upon him, and
sat on it.
But what was perhaps quite the best money's worth of the
trip in its way, an invaluable counsel he had taken to heart for
keeps, without thinking about it, was connected with deportment.
Body was mind's big brother really. It followed the other fellow's
 THE VIRGIN 87
lead. The first-born, the biggest-waxed, the imposing elder, was
Body. When a person's down in the blousiest blues of the dumps,
all he has to do we all know that is to affect a jaunty demeanour,
adopt an elastic step and avoid a brooding droop. The effect is
electrical. Once big-fellow-Body is up, the little spirits will
follow it, like Mary's little lamb—they will be high-spirits, in no
time, once the body is cock-a-hoop. " Upon that simple old prin
ciple however you must model your deportment my dear boy,"
the fulminating Frumpfsusan had counselled, " upon the (often
I admit ridiculous) deportment of the Extrovert. Take the
burliest for your model—take me if you like !—Study the male !
Get under his skin ! If you succeed in catching his physical atti
tudes, my lad, you will soon find that you are doing the things
he does. Also ! Gib acht !—with your mate—for that purpose
as I have shown she must be petite—be rough ! Be tough Matthew !
A foot or eighteen inches advantage will help wonderfully—you
have no idea what a difference ! Stick at no extrovert absurdity,
in the pursuit of your object, however much you have to laugh !
Sie mussen doch lachen—jawohl ! das weiss ich schon, aber das
macht nichts aus ! Also fort ! Um Gottes Willen, scien Sie doch ein
bischen Ubermensch !—Then another expedient—you will find
it of the greatest use. Learn how to bully ! It is a golden rule in all
these cases. Swagger, like a true-blue Casanova ofSeingalt, you can
afford it—but see you pick them petite " to this Doctor Frumpfsusan
ever returned " there is nothing so depressing as the sensation of
having strayed into a cathedral. Overmatching would be fatal ! "
Today was the day, it was to be the great experiment. Zulu
Blades was to be put in the shade. So Matthew now went
swaggering rockily in like a rustic torero, upon the heel of his
midget-bull.
Betty was equal to the occasion. She had come in with the
perfect animal assurance to be expected of a puppet, it led her to
strike her feet down as if the earth were ringing steel, that sounded.
Upon her bony bobbed blond head, was an old black wide
awake, copied from the Virginian Planter upon the " Gems "
packets, borrowed from a Chelsea academician in a large studio,
full of old hats, suitable for planters. She had a scarlet scarf, as
worn by Isopel Berners, suitable for a prosperous canal-amazon :
she wore homespun suggestive of a bookworm, and carried in her
hand a book.
88 APES OF GOD
Matthew took the book from the girl's hand, with a rough
buccaneering gesture almost snatching. It was the Hard-boiled
Virgin. He gazed—with wide eyes of vacant critical blue, quizzing
and frowning, the smirk left to wrinkle wryly the twisting mouth—
at the book. He poured down upon it the amused gazing of the
Bloomsbury grimace and correctly lisped :
" I-i-i-is that a " short pause " — a new book ? "
Betty looked suspiciously at the grinning Bloomsbury with a
hard Wigan what-is-the-joke-now air about her.
" No " she said cautiously " I don't think so. Tommy Sill-
mans gave it to me to read, have you read it Matthew ? Why do
you ask Matthew ? "
She flung the black hat down upon the shells and gave her
curls a vigorous doggish shake-up, sturdy and bow-legged though
diminutive. Then the bold-eyed round-buttocked small-boy's
body vaulted backwards slap up on a table-top that was ever so
high up, in sitting posture, dangling the little plover's-egg home
spun doll-leggies brightly to and fro.
" Why do you ask Matthew? " she repeated, shaking her corn-
red shock up on high.
Matthew stared down at the Hard Boiled Virgin, his head on
one side, wryly smirking.
" I don't know " said he.
" What do you mean Matthew ? " asked the straightforward
doll bluntly, with more than a suspicion of Liverpool in the tones
of her high-pitched drawling.
" What—hard-boiled was. Is it the egg ? " The dull-thinking
interval of the Bloomsbury malin. " Or is it the virgin ? It can't
be a cooking egg. It must be the virgin ! "
" Oh you are potty Matthew of course it's the virgin ! "
" I thought it was."
" It's an american word. Haven't you ever heard hard-boiled
said ? It's american."
" Is it ? "
She nodded.
" Great day ! " she exclaimed " didn't you know that
Matthew ? "
She imitated the american accent and chewed the gum of the
U.S.A. for local music-hall colouring.
He watched her chewing. The grinding of her grenadine
 THE VIRGIN 89
tinted lips was what he watched, her small painted beak was
sucking the imaginary juices of transatlantic trees : he took up a
burlier attitude before her, bluff sailor-fashion and a little
threatening. Then he smacked his own lips slightly twice, while
he watched hers closely.
" What did you say ? " he asked suddenly.
" When just now do you mean Matthew ? "
" Yes."
" Great Day ? That's what MacCorquodale used to say,
Great Day, to me ! " she squawked back at him and squealed the
little weeny " me."
" MacCorquodale, what is that, is that american too ? "
" Which Matthew ? "
" MacCorquodale."
" It's a boy ! You're swanking Matthew you do understand ! "
" I am not really Betty. I am very stupid ! "
" You mean I am."
Matthew extended a tapering hand as slowly as possible till it
lay, in mid-air, off her left car, immobile for a moment : then
moving it in he began smoothing the tiny curls of his dollie. At
the full distance of his stiffly extended arm he persevered in this
solemn exercise, while with a portentous concentration he stared
at her, daft and abstracted, as if she were a shell, or the flax that
he fingered had grown elsewhere and not on the head of a person.
Up and down, in a sawing movement, the hand passed in
mysterious astonished caress.
" Are you trying to send me to sleep Matthew ? You are
potty ! " Betty shook up the flax for him, so that it would be
nicer to stroke.
Matthew frowned. He did not welcome movement at such a
juncture. He allowed his finger-tips to assemble upon her nuque.
Then he grasped her convulsively, still held at arm's-length : he
hooked her, after the manner of an apache dance-number.
" Why are you looking at me like that Matthew ? " Betty
asked, slightly annoyed.
" I don't know " said Matthew, frowning again, to discourage
such risky interruptions.
Her nuque was as cold as tempered steel and excessively hard.
Matthew breathed very deeply. He took one cart-horse stride to
the front which brought him up against the table. The sham
9° APES OF GOD
gum-chewing lips grinned up at this funny boy. With both hands
he seized her head, holding it in his palms like an orangoutang
which had possessed itself of a coconut, and preparatory to break
ing it, held it chest-high, to delect itself with its intact and hairy
roundness, like that of an animal-head. He gazed fiercely down
into her eyes. The passive baby-girl gazed back, a little inquisi
tive.
The constipation of his senses so far held stoutly out, as dead
as mutton. In impotent steadfastness he hunted in her face for
something that was not there at all it seemed : as time passed his
veins swelled in his head with the effort. There is absolutely
nothing there !—that was the painful thought. But at last he
seemed to have struck something. There was a spark at least.
He felt a distinct vibration, in the recalcitrant depths of his
person. Something was not quite as it formerly was or he was
very much mistaken. In portentous slow-movement of gruelling
close-up, his lips forced out to forestall the contact, he approached
the rose-bud mouth beneath by the fatal sinking of his head down
upon hers. With awful slowness the four lips met. He closed in
lower down at the contact. He experienced a second spark.
Now really flushed with triumph, he introduced a hand
beneath her jumper. He felt her delicate toy-spine, as cool as
alabaster, as neat as the couplings of a small boy's locomotive.
There was a distinct vibration throughout or in many distinct
parts of his person.
The bookworm shoulders rolled above the ravishing toy-girl,
like impending seas above a pygmy skiff: in hooligan hardiness
he clutched the little skull, he had the sensation of great knees
sticking out, giant toe-tendons clenching in the rough work-man's
footwear : many flattering indications of a probable event were
distinctly signalled, as he thought, sluggish but sure, from the
most improbable centres—there was really a palpable stir, if not
in the true sense a bustle. Betty at that moment when his eyes
first fell upon her a trimestre since was to be his true helpmeet
something had told him : a really natural dawn of love was at
hand, beyond question—the sun's red and swollen rim was
visible, low down in the atmosphere, the tip of the fiery Phoebus,
pushing up over the chilly horizon. Soon the entire valley would
be flooded with his bounteous rays.
In every way reinforced in the conviction that the Great Day
 THE VIRGIN
had sounded and the hour of triumph struck—with still the hieratic
stiffness of limb that had characterised all his movements since
Betty had first started gum-sucking, and he had surprised a
change in the direction of the tide of his libido, and had noted
with delight that it was turning outward, with an impulse that
could only be described as extroverted—he drew back a half-step.
His eyes measured Betty Bligh perching upon the table as a husky
furniture-remover sizes up a half-ton travelling-trunk. Knotting
the muscles of his shoulders and forearms, conferring upon him
self the stoop of the larger apes, he stepped forward and moved
to the right. He picked Betty Bligh up from the table as though
she had been a half-ton feather. He staggered back a step with
Betty Bligh in his arms.
" Whatever are you doing now Matthew ? Oh you are
potty " Betty said. In hurried strides he bore her towards the
bedroom-door. He flattened her against the wall, pushing
desperately against her as though he were preventing the wall from
falling, while he turned the handle of the door.
" Matthew have you gone potty ! You're hurting ! " high up
on the wall Betty protested, with what wind she had left.
The door came open, he caught his little Humpty Dumpty
dexterously in a shaky armful, and he passed with her fiercely
into the bedroom upon staggering legs.
Bent over his burden, his eyes almost closed, he had but one
thought—that of his inner libidinous tides, of their imminent out
breaks : so he was startled out of his wits by a full-blooded scream,
such as could not have issued from Betty Bligh. He came to a
standstill—the sluggish metaphoric tide froze and then turned
back—at the same time he raised his flushed and blinking face
up at the room.
Lo there upon his bed in wild-eyed alarm, preparing to spring
off it, blushing to the roots of his hair, was Daniel Boleyn.
Matthew simply dropped Betty—all that was about to be
between them was over now in any case. He advanced empty-
handed to the bed-side, one stiff outstretched finger denouncing
its present occupant outright :
" What are you doing here ! " he thundered at the intruder.
At point-blank range he pointed his whole stiff arm sharpened
into one finger-tip at the bed-crasher, straight at the guilty head.
" Didn't I tell you to go ! "
 APES OF GOD
Dan shrank from the stiff"finger, he eagerly nodded.
" What are you doing here ! "
" But I had nowhere to go ! " Dan muttered, edging away.
" Didn't I tell you to make yourself scarce ! "
Dan gasped, and said,
" I went to sleep ! "
" What right had you to use my bed. What right had you to
come in here ! "
" I wanted to leave the ! "—he got no farther—that he
should not be allowed to say !—a roar from the chest of Old Man
Plunkett cut him short.
As Matthew, blue to the lips with ungovernable wrath, charged
down upon him, Dan slipped with the rapidity of a lizard to one
side : he smartly hurdled over the foot of the bed, which possessed
a small brass rail, then shot in a black mass through the open
door. In the neighbouring room he vacillated a moment then
vanished as he heard the bay of Matthew coming in his direction.
There was on Matthew's side a momentary argument with the
pillow and bolster, Matthew struck out at both. With a snarl
after that he turned and rushed over the prostrate form of Betty,
who moaned upon the floor rubbing the homespun knee-cap.
At the stair-head, from which he was just able to catch sight
of the black perspective of an arm below and hear the last thunder
of retreat on the last flight of stairs, he drew up, shouting down,
to kill his head,
" Never let me see your face again ! I'll knock you down you
unutterable little sneak ! U-u-u-ugh ! "
Zulu Blades came through his door in his shirt-sleeves, out
on to the landing, hands stuck in pockets, and, looking up the
staircase, contemplated Matthew with irony. The discoloured
face hung over the banisters, and inverted, returned the neck-
stretching scrutiny, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.
" Is anything wrong ? " asked Zulu.
Matthew withdrew, in three raging strides, the bang of his
door blending with the laughter of the preposterous so-called
Zulu.
* * *
Dan rushed out haggard and hatless into the street. He
panted like a stricken doe. He gazed wild-eyed and dishevelled
to right and to left, he started as if pursued, he cast a look of swan
 THE VIRGIN 93
necked alarm over his shoulder—finally he drooped upon the
curb-stone, staring at the gutter. A policeman, with the ominous
waddle of The Force, passed him eyeing him up and down, from
under the beak of his helmet. Two flat hands like a pair of limp
white gloves stuck under his belt (one upon his left waist-line, the
other upon his right) he proceeded on his beat—but throwing his
eyes backwards, over his shoulder, at each slow rolling step. As
the distance increased a slight rotation was required at the same
time as a lateral roll, in order to keep his man under observation.
At length Dan started to walk away, he continued for two
miles and he came to the house on Sharratt Hill, in the neigh
bourhood of Chalk Farm, in which Melanie Blackwell lived.
Chains of goods' trucks rattled past the foot of the garden. As he
reached the garden entrance to the studio an Express, screaming,
tore the air as it rushed past, causing the dirty gully to quiver and
reverberate. Melanie was bringing her dogs out.
" Dan ! " she exclaimed, naming him, as though spotted
dramatically and nicknamed in a breath. He blushed deeply.
They walked in the garden together.
" Bromo will not love the noisy trains " Melanie said :
" Bromo never changes, nothing is skin-deep with him is it
darling Bromo ! Sweet Bromo ! " She clingingly caressed the
shaggy trunk. " He can't suppress it he knows that, he has tried
to hasn't he. Now he just shuts his eyes—what a wise dog you
are Bromo darling—and so beautiful ! "
Dan considered the hairy beauty of Bromo with a burning
blush.
" Where have you been ? " the quiet question was accom
panied by the fine tired irony of lifted eyebrows.
Dan looked down at the animal sniffing its way from spot to
spot more attentively, and did not answer her.
The dog's hair had the impeccable white curl of its breed,
with the comic limbs that endeared it to Taf/«--readers and
Bonzo-lovers from Balham to the Bund. Melanie moved away
and plucked a number of twigs from a rose-bush.
" It is a difficult matter " said she in sing-song, milady in her
garden, " to prevent these roses from going wild again." She
ceased to include her four silent companions any more in her
wandering discourse. The smallest of the three white dogs quickly
cocked up a fluffy hind-leg and watered the rose.
94 APES OF GOD
" I'm sure I should go wild too if I were not interfered with "
Melanie remarked. " But I am not a rose ! " she smiled the
pained-coy smile of sentiment.
Bromo growled, as he wandered, at the buffer-kissing of the
goods' trucks in the ill-smelling gully at his back.
" Bromo-darling ! " Melanie complained. " Where are you
going then and all ? "
Bromo was going towards the road, out of earshot of the
insulting trucks.
Dan raised in a stately way a single hand, and he removed
with intense difficulty one dead twig. Melanie continued on
neighbouring bushes her unhurried gardening, Dan turned away
from the plant he had touched as if shutting it completely out of
his mind. He waved the opposite hand lazily at the departing
Bromo.
Melanie went into the studio, Bromo, Rabs, Bluff' and Dan
followed at her heels.
The studio was damp. It was full of brushwood and logwood
for a large open fireplace. Baskets for Bromo, Rabs and Bluff
were at the sides of the chimneypiece. On the canvases appeared
in different parts of the room, two upon easels, slick poster-land
scapes of Riviera type, garish and geometric.
" Are you coming to Azay-le-Promis next week ? "
Dan shook his head.
" Why not ? "
Stealthily Dan let himself down upon a very low settee. It had
wild-animal rugs and square cushions of scarlet leather. He
looked hard at Bluff, the elderly bitch.
" You are a strange young man ! " Melanie said, who had
lighted a cigarette. Her thin body was in an elegant pullover.
" What is there to stop here for in London for any young man ?
You would be better in Azay-le-Promis."
She considered with theatrical irony the problem of " the
young man."
" Have you made the arrangements you hoped to with
Matthew Plunkett ? I expected you yesterday."
Dan shook his head. A deep blush stole over his face at the
name of Matthew. What he had been called upon to witness at
the last, at Matthew's, came back to him of course. The circum
stances of his sudden withdrawal were all too fresh : Matthew
 THE VIRGIN 95
breaking into that awful bedroom with a strange young woman in
his arms, the thud of the shameful human burden upon the floor,
Matthew's extraordinary unkindness—his blows, his narrow escape,
driven from the bed where he had been resting—for he had been
so hopelessly out of sorts and still was. But he could not rest
here ! Oh where should he go ?
Dan buried his face in his hands. These peculiarly unsuitable
events of such terribly recent occurrence were far too pictorial ;
like stopping one's ears he stopped his eyes—not to see such goings
on any more.
" What is the matter now Daniel ? " Melanie wailed a little,
her voice becoming more egregiously irish, for she came from St.
Louis of an immigrant galician family who were tailors, who had
taken a fancy to the name of O'Konolly—becoming bigorras. Her
husband's estate had been in Tyrone (they had met in Chicago
when he was attache at Washington and he had fallen in love at
first sight with the beautiful irish-american girl) and in Tyrone
she had lived and hunted : but Mr. Shaun Blackwell was dead
some years.
" Ach ! what is ut than Danieldarling ! " Melanie began
miserably keening at him. " Haven't ye been able to get the
help ye had counted on at all ! "
And sure he hadn't, his downcast head and bust answered as
plainly as possible, while Melanie continued to address her dis
tressed enquiries to the eyes hiding, under the hands, shut against
the brutal doings of Matthew.
" Well Danieldarling but what are ye going to do now—with
no place to go to and all me poor child—go somewhere ye must.
It's a fact is it ye've got no money left ; poor Stephen has none to
give you I know that."
Daniel blushed in his hands at the crude mention of money.
Then Mrs. Melanie Blackwell went back to the holidays.
" Out at Azay-le-Promis " said she with a slight inhalation :
" you could do as you liked : I'm out working all day." She
glanced at a dazzling landscape of Azay-le-Promis. " You
could stop there as long as it suited you—till I come back next
year if you wanted. There's no one there would interfere with
you. You could pass your days just as you pleased—it really is
quite pleasant. You've never been to France. Why don't you
do that ?—Come along now Danieldarling and don't be so coy and
 96 APES OF GOD
all ! You need a mother you know you're such a great baby—I
declare it's not safe at all for ye to be at large in this wicked city if
I heard ye'd been run over Danhoney I'd never forgive missilf an'
all ! Why don't you come with me next week to Azay Dan—to
Azay ! "
Dan remained in his corner—he was that big black oyster—he
would not come open, however much the sirens fluted over celtic
airs to it.
Melanie moved to a low stool some feet nearer to Dan.
" Com-mon now Dan " she cried—her voice extended to a
gamut of irish no longer confined to Erin—it crossed the Atlantic
and back in its passion. " Say you'll come to Azay-le-Promis
Dan like a good sensible person—do now Dan Honey ! "
Dan moved his feet, to show the refusal was flat—but she
would not take no, not at least from the feet, and persisted.
" What is there against it ? I can't understand. You're not
afraid of me by any chance are you now—is that it ? Why I'm
sure almost old enough to be your own mother. Haven't I grey
hairs and all, yes haven't you noticed ? Ah yes ! " she nodded
very bitter-sweet and wistful indeed, though he could not see her
pointing at her black straight hair, parted in the centre. She con
tinued to move her head mournfully up and down. The thin arch
of the eyebrows pathetically ascended the delicate terraces of the
peculiarjutting brow—lined like an actress's from many grimaces,
actually due with Melanie to the elasticity of her daily pathos.
" They are there ! Every morning I pull out several. See—there
is a large white hair Daniel ! Let that be your chaperone ! "
In lengthening incantation she pursued the human-tin-open
ing, with iron resolve—to force this shut-up gallant ajar—
impossible to blush unseen any longer it must be ! She watched
the red ears with a runic anguish, clearing her throat.
" With me at Azay-le-Promis " she chanted " you will be safer
Danieldarling than ye will be in these parts. What did I tell
Stephen that I'd take you under my wing. ' Whhhhing is ut? '
said he, ' you'll have your work cut out ! ' he said—he knew
what he was talking about—that I can see now ! " She nodded
at the obstreperous fledgeling, archly maternal.
Melanie rose from the stool by the open fender, casting a few
spirited twigs upon the fire forlornly, in a manner that made
the open fireplace look more than ever like a stage-scene.
 THE VIRGIN 97
She sat down again upon the sister settee to that occupied by
Daniel.
" What have you after all to keep you here Dan ? You have
no friends except Matthew." But at the name Matthew Dan
crushed his face still more closely into the embraces of his hands.
He would have looked up even—but he felt Melanie might
easily be able to catch sight, in the dark mirror of his eyes, of that
equivocal picture : Matthew would be seen driving him from his
bed in order to—but no ! his fancy should not be allowed to pro
tract that offensive spectacle !
" What other friends have you, to whom you can turn ? "
Dan listened, he began turning—turning to friends to whom
he could turn. Convulsively to himself he simpered. At this Dan
opened painfully his hands—his flower-like face burst out of this
convex bud, cleft in the centre where the edges abutted. Or it
might have been an event like suddenly disparting shutters, in
the Spanish East—heavy peepholes for a secluded beauty—and
there as they parted was her solemn face !
Dan looked at Melanie with a grave enquiring blush.
" You have no one to whom you can turn."
As the phrase recurred there was unearthly lightning in the
depths of his black celtic eyes : Daniel turned away his head,
snapping his fingers at Bromo. He knew that if she used it again
he should laugh outright, he could not help that—the too physical
idiom it was that tickled his fancy : for he had always moved
everywhere with - the silence of a spirit, speech now and then
had this effect upon the mind of Dan.
In mock-hibernian whine, very trailing and melancholic,
Melanie's voice struck up again. In profile he sat quite still
to listen.
" Horace Zagreus is in London I am told. You have not seen
him Dan I suppose ? "
But Dan nodded—yes he had.
" You have seen him. Horace Zagreus ? I did not know
that."
Dan gulped and his distress was evident, but he had seen him.
" I did not know you had been seeing Horace " said Melanie
with offended slowness. Dan nodded, a dumb^j^w^M .' at her.
He had been seeing Horace, yes ! (It was a monster lisp, if it
had been spoken.)
98 APES OF GOD
"But ifyou have been seeing Horace—that is a pity ! " Melanie
was annoyed with Daniel. At first she looked away from him.
" He is not a fit friend for you Daniel ! Horace is all right,
but as regards young men Horace is really impossible that is the
trouble, he cannot help that of course. I am sorry for Horace.
I reproach myself very much for having let you meet Horace—it
can do you no good to frequent Horace Zagreus. I hope you
will take my advice in that and see Horace as little as possible."
An expression replete with reproach collected in the face of
the poor human dumb animal, with the speaking eyes of lustrous
brown. He gazed at Mrs. Melanie Blackwell in a dense appeal,
refusing to listen. If I could only speak (his beautiful brown eyes
cried out) I could tell you how you wrong him, with your words !
" Dan honey is it possible ! I suppose it is, perhaps you really
don't know what I mean about Horace ? I confess that had not
occurred to me—of course but I should have said to myself that
a great simple irish school-boy like yourself fresh from the sanc
tuaries, the sheltered places of the catholic mind, would not
understand what it meant at all."
Dan opened his lovely eyes to their widest extent to express
the far-flung circumference of his utter ignorance.
" Dan you are so incredibly helpless ! I had better tell you at
once. Horace Zagreus has a very bad reputation. He is not a
suitable friend for any young man, let alone one like you who
does not know how to take care of himself more than a baby at
the breast."
Dan blushed deeply at this metaphor.
" You really have never heard—none of those peculiar men
have ever with such a beautiful young man as you—well tried
Dandarling to show you their feelings at all—is it possible ? "
The black and foggy rain of average London weather com
menced to strike the high pent-window, and its percussion filled
the studio with a sharp rattling. It grew dark. Dan looked up
at the roof in alarmed enquiry.
" It is raining " said Melanie, glancing up too.
Upon this Dan again considered the window, in renewed
astonishment—as if rain were a substance unknown in the
sanctuaries of the sheltered catholic mind.
" Oh Melanie ! " Dan exclaimed suddenly, clutching at the
hair of the rug upon the divan.
 THE VIRGIN 99
" What is it then Dandarling ! "
Melanie leant forward with eagerness, her eyes fixed upon the
delectable boy.
" I am so unspeakably unhappy ! "
His mouth commenced to wobble wildly—the word " un
happy " never trod it but it left it quaking. He bit his lip
extremely hard to secure a measure of composure.
" Tell me Dan-darling what it is ! " Mrs. Blackwell panted in
her broken irish, as she rose to her feet in business-like prepara
tion for suitable action. She filled her face with a smoke-screen
of sentiment—her two capable eyes measured the path with
unction to the delectable body of the incredibly helpless boy-in-
distress (no longer luckily in the catholic sanctuaries, safe from
the vampires of this earth).
" Zagreus ! " Dan uttered the name and stopped, wrestling
with both of his emotional lips together at once. Melanie stood
still and frowned. She fixed her eye in cold enquiry upon the
disintegrating adolescent sphinx.
" He is so horribly unkind to me—oh Melanie he does not
appear to love me " (a long pause of the tautest description)
" at all ! "
Dan almost shouted this and flung himself at full length upon
the settee, against whose hairy surface he pressed his face, moist
with a flurry of hectic tears.
Mrs. Blackwell thought she would sit down again—she went
back and sat as before upon her divan : it was plain that she had
met with something in the nature of a facer.
She collected herself with a cigarette.
" Oh ! " she said at last. " I did not know things had gone
as far as that. I have made I see a small mistake ! "
A muffled demonstration of distress from Dan.
" Well ! " she said.
" Boo-ooooo " murmured Dan.
" Yes " she said " I understand of course. It is most unfor
tunate.—It's my fault just the same."
There was consolation in the guilt and that it was through her.
" So that's it ! " she then remarked.
" Yes ! " cried Dan, raising the back of his head into the air
two inches " Yes " he nodded convulsively at the settee, while his
tears dropped upon it " that's " (he gulped) " it ! "
 10o APES OF GOD
" Oh ! " said Melanie " I am very sorry ! Under the circum
stances I don't see what I can do ! I am de trop here I can see."
She signalled to Bromo. With a grunt Bromo got up and,
stretching, came over slowly to her side.
" Yes darling I said I would comb you and I had forgotten."
Dan groaned.
Melanie turned towards him, a sharpish turn, driving some of
the cigarette smoke streaming from the nostril into her eye.
" I don't know what I am expected to say Dan—ought I to be
sympathetic ? I wish you'd tell me. What is a poor girl to do ?
I wonder what Horace has done to distress you so much. Horace
is a dirty old beast anyway. I shall tell him so when I see
him."
There was a muffled wail of protest from Dan, at dirty old
beast.
" And you're just as bad ! " Melanie exclaimed. " Yes you !
I wish you'd sit up and take notice and try and behave like a
sensible being Mr. Boleyn ! You deserve a good spanking ! "
Mr. Boleyn released a howl of pain at the word spanking and
he slightly squirmed upon the settee at the thought of a spank.
" Yes what you want is a thorough caning on that big bold
bottom of yours young man and then to be put to bed like a
naughty child ! That is all that you are ! "
Dan was silent. Dan did not like direct references to the
dimensions of his body. For himself Dan was always small-boy's-
size and there was an end of it.
If he caught sight of his head protruding above a crowd of
people, he hurried away and hid, with an attack of inferiority-
feeling. Sometimes this might last upwards of a half-hour, before
he could return.
" Did you hear what I said ? "—it was the voice of the mar
tinet in Melanie. Dan thought of the secluded villa among the
olives of Azay-le-Promis and he shuddered.
" Did you hear what I said young man ! " Melanie said
" young man " with such utter unction that it summoned to the
palate more saliva than " peaches," and the young man could
hear her breathing a little thick and clotted.
" You ought to be ashamed of yourself young man ! "
She was working herself up ! Dan rapidly calculated the
distance across the front of the fireplace and the prospects of
 THE VIRGIN 101
escape—his retreat to the door was cut off. He might, in feverish
reflection he decided, hit her with a canvas : if he got it well
down from over-head (in spite of her superiority in height, as he
felt it to be) her head would no doubt go through it. Like a
circus-dog stuck in a hoop with paper too thick for the trick, she
would be out of action, for good, for she could not do much with
one of the canvases for a collar—at any rate not bite, only bark.
Something appeared to have occurred to relieve the tension
for she breathed less hard : she was smoking furiously.
" It is Horace is most to blame ! " he heard her say. " Why
can't he leave young men alone ! " Young men had as before upon
the lips of the chatelaine of the neighbourhood of Azay-le-
Promis the dangerous unction of peaches, of such verbal money-
value as " Young Men in Love," on any play-bill or dust-cover,
punctuated with the responsive chop-licking of hot-blooded
spinsters—imaginary or in fact best-buyers.
" Horace has no right to interfere with my guests ! " she called
out, as if Horace were within ear-shot.
" I'll get through to the old devil and give him a piece of my
mind ! " she vociferated and sprang up.
Melanie and Dan sprang up at the same moment, both as if
shot, both with eyes pugnaciously shining. Melanie directed
her steps, without paying attention to the agitated form of the
resurrected young-man-in-love, towards the telephone.
" Please Mel-an-eee ! " Dan exclaimed now with clasped
anguished hands, pursuing her across the studio in a series of
attitudes of progressive supplication, as they both converged
upon the instrument. Bromo thought it best to bark, monoto
nously argumentative, at their strained attitudes, commanding
them to unbend.
" What is his number ? "
She stood beside the installation, Dan halted behind her, his
hands locked before him, his eyes slightly cast up—the perfect
model for Salvator Rosa, melting beneath chocolate skies,
bedewed with colossal tears of high-lit crystal.
" Oh I have it here " she said and took from a drawer an
address-book.
" Please ! " Dan called to her with all the high-pitched inten
sity of his high-lisping stilted grief.
" Go and sit down now Dan do ! "
 APES OF GOD
" Please do not telephone about me to Horace Zagreus, I
shall never forgive you if you do so ! "
" Do you think I'm going to allow Horace to use my house !
—-go and sit down Dan like a good boy, do as I tell you—I'll settle
with Horace. He's gone too far—with anyone else except you I
shouldn't have minded so much."
Dan swayed for a moment, wringing his snow-white plaster
fists, subtended in the modest attitude ofstatues, before him : then
as Melanie took down the receiver, he burst out in a melting
torrent of tenor-sweet tear-swept complaint :
" Oh why are you so unkind ! Oh why are you so unkind ! "
Rapidly stepping across the parquet of the studio he rushed at
the settee. There he awaited, the victim of this sacrifice (in
posture convenient for execution) the blow that was about to fall.
He might even surprise the angry accents of the god, out of the
machine.
" Cremorne double O one O ! Double O one O."
It was the fatal number that he heard, he recognised it. He
gave vent to his feelings in occasional desolate sounds.
" Is that Horace ? This is Mel-an-ee, yes Mell-lan-eee ! "
It was indeed—Dan writhed in silence. Oh this woman, this
fiend in human shape, this preposterous busy-body !
" Horace I have a bone to pick with you ! "
A staccato muttering came from the instrument. Those were
the very vibrations of Zagreus !
" Yes I know all about that ! " yapped Melanie Blackwell
boorishly back. Dan could have slapped her. " No it is not that
as it happens."
She was again interrupted.
" Yes yes I am sure that is just as you say Horace but I have
a bone to pick—a bone, you idiot ! Can't you hear me ? Where
is your ear-trumpet ? But you are not so deaf as all that ! "
She was pulled up, there was the waxing of a contradictory
rattle. As she listened her foot tapped out a morse tattoo upon
the parquet.
" I don't want to hear about that " she suddenly barked back
into the belled mouth for the message, from which she removed
her hand she had used as a stopper. " I don't—want—to—hear !
—Can you hear what I say ? No I have said I don't want to.
Daniel Boleyn is here. What ? Daniel—Boleyn. Yes. The poor
 THE VIRGIN 1o3
young man is in a fearful state of mind. What ? Awful state of
mind ! What have you been doing to him, you old wretch ?
Yes ! He is here. What have you been up to—yes I mean it ! "
There was another interval, of a staccato jabber, while several
times her mouth made a dart for the transmitter but withdrew
again—she bit her lips.
" He may be all that " she said. " He may be. All that."
" Oh please Melanie do tell me what he has said ! " Dan
exclaimed, stretched out still in an anxious coil.
" That's what I expected ! " called Melanie. " What do you
say ? Hallo ! Are you there ? Hallo ! "
She shook the instrument. '
" Hallo ! "
Melanie waited.
" Hallo ! "
Her body relaxed, she hung up the receiver.
" He has rung off ! He's deafer than ever ! It is impossible
to telephone to him ! " She returned to the fireplace with the
gait of a tenderfooted seaside bather ascending to her tent,
heavy-limbed as well after the buoyant seawater. She sat down.
Dan choked. At length he contrived to whisper, writhing a
little in anticipation.
" What did he say—was I mentioned ? "
She gave him a lofty quizzical look before she replied, in her
best sham-irish :
" Ach he said you were the tiresomest young man that he had
ever met this many a day and hoped he'd never see you again ! "
She observed the blow fall, as she rattled the words out, with
watchful relish—when she had finished she lay back to await the
result with eyes half-closed, her lotus-eating glance skimming the
slender surfaces from bust to knee—Dan visible in perspective
beyond, transfixed with the shafts, unable to move.
When the howl of the stricken lover broke at last from the
lips of Dan, and he rolled over out of sight, as if shot, upon his
capacious divan, Melanie sniffed unpleasantly. She sat up and
lighted a cigarette without looking at the casualty. Then she
stretched back again, her head burrowing in a cushion. Face
roofward, she blew smoke-rings up through her nose.
There was an intermittent disturbance. When silence reigned
once more, Melanie sat up.
104 APES OF GOD
" Well there's another romance ended " she said harshly.
" How do you feel ? Be a man Dan darling ! You're only a man
once ! "
She rose and went over to the side of his divan. When she
touched him he was quite limp.
" Get up Dan and come with me ! I have something toshow you."
She shook him. He appeared quite inanimate. Next she
rolled him over on his back : the entire six-foot-three of peach-
fed, top-drawer, long-legged manhood gaped, a little pale,
beneath her. The lips were open, the eyes were slightly rolled
up as with a half-woken dog. The hair was a mass of tumbling
locks, one great black tongue of hair licked the whitened cheek of
the massive mask of Dante-Young.
She stood back : she blew a few rings oftobacco-smoke through
her nostrils and gently inhaled, her thin shoulders drawn up
square and high.
" Dan in your present condition you can't go out, you don't
want to do you ? You might get run over then what should we
do ? I will write and tell your father he had better send for you.
Come into the house now. I have to go out. But you can go up
and he down. The room you had before is not occupied, you
can go up there."
There was no visible impression to denote that he had heard.
" I suppose I shall have to carry you " she said. She suited
the action to the words at once.
Seizing him suddenly around the shoulders roughly, she
dragged him into a sitting posture. He threatened to fall forward,
but she kept him upright while she scolded :
" No ! Not drop back ! No ! You must come with me. You
must come with me ! Not drop down ! "
Dan suffered himself to be urged to his feet : with an arm
about his waist, and a hand upon his bicep, Melanie led him out
of the studio, followed by Rabs, Bromo and Bluff.
As they approached the main entrance to the house, coming
up the path connecting the street and garden, they met a small
man, standing just inside the gate, his shoulders shrugged up, a
ring of tobacco smoke issuing from his nose, who observed their
approach with irony.
" Michael, Daniel here is not very well, I am going upstairs
with him, to show him where he can lie and rest for a while. Will
 THE VIRGIN to5
you take Bromo and Bluff out for a little run like a darling and
come back here after that Michael ? Thank you so much, you
are a darling Michael ! Rabs is not just himself today. Martha
will take care of you darling. Oh Michael—I may be out. Wait
for me. Thank you."
Michael went in with them, he stood aside, his shoulders up
lifted. This distortion went with an air of deeply and subtly
inhaling some delectable fume. Ironical and silent, tobacco-
smoke stealing from his nostrils, he allowed them to pass.
He took two dog-leads from the hall table, and, bending
languidly down over Bromo and Bluff, attached them under their
chests and over their heads.
Slowly Melanie and Daniel went up the staircase, followed
by Martha the french bonne silently in her felt slippers, who had
come up from the basement after they had entered.

* * *
Dan still sat upon the edge of the bed in the room assigned
him. His head was a chaos of hair, while his eyes looked out
with a wild gravity at the blank wall before him. Books, writing-
material, a sitting-room beyond : these were very comfortable
quarters, for a fatigued young man. The door opened. Martha
passed him with towels ; she returned, without recognition of the
sad immobile visitor, with her mechanical tread, and sallow mongol
peasant-headpiece, and once more Daniel sat alone. He looked
round with stealth in the direction in which Martha had dis
appeared, then turned his head back, to scrutinise the floor. The
door opened. He hung his blood-red nether lip.
Melanie entered. She was in hat and coat. She sat down
upon a leather sofa, facing the bed, in front of Dan.
" I think you should lie down Dan " she said. " Should you
not lie down Dan. You have had a very trying experience my
poor darling, you must be in some great need of rest I should
say!"
Dan stared before him in a most stupid manner, which invited
the belief that he was in need of a long and refreshing sleep.
" I think you need to rest, Dandarling " repeated Melanie
in monotonous accents, that were calculated to attack with
drowsiness any man already fatigued, and in need of rest. In
io6 APES OF GOD
the face of Dan the fatigue then deepened, moment by moment—
it was certain that Dan required a mental detente so to speak,
that only sleep could give, in a really comfortable bed, upon
which at that time he sat in fact, but which he did not enter.
Why?
" After a long rest Dan which you are wanting you will feel
better. Why do you not lie down Daniel and forget what has
happened ? When you have slept that will pass off. That will
pass off when you have rested a little ! "
M elanie dragged those weary drugged accents one by one out
of her thin languid body, while she dragged it gently along the
sofa, nearer to her haggard guest. Her keening head was
stretched out in painful fellow-weariness, her lips distilled as she
advanced the honey-dew or poppy-drops of her sham-Erse.
Dan sighed with bated breath, in sympathy, involuntarily.
His nose began very gently to bleed. He brushed away a pale
crimson smear from his lip.
" My poor Daniel " Melanie Blackwell sighed at that. " See !
you are not yourself at all my poor honey, there is blood on your
mouth my little sugarstick—let me wipe it away for you Dan-
darling ! "
And having dragged her cat's body the length of the sofa, she
launched it in a melting movement that was a running crouch,
towards him, and she alighted upon the divan-bed, with a head
slowly nodding above him, in a mimicry of commiseration,
heavier-lidded at every instant, as she drew near to the point at
which they might melt into one. With a handkerchief in her
white-gloved hand she was wiping the discoloured portion of his
lips. She did not remove her gloves, lest she might alarm him,
but now she began to unbutton slowly his jacket, crooning hyp
notically in his ear and nodding heavily and sadly with her head,
her drugged senses smoothing the way, as they rocked her slug
gishly, to effect this sultry capture.
" Take off your jacket Dandarling, you will be easier without
your jacket, you cannot lie down in it you know honey, and you
are too tired aren't you and all, to use your precious fingers just
now—rest is all that you can do and you have not the strength
to address yourself to ut, my poor wild black lily ! "
With a dazzling white-kid-skinned hand she brushed back the
savagery of his hair into ordered heaps, a coal-black sculpture,
 THE VIRGIN 107
with a rhythmical motion, while he closed his eyes, he blushing
deeply. She undid his waistcoat : his hand ran after hers and
disputed with the other every button until they were all unfas
tened. The shirt too lost its stud, and there were finger-fights
over its small mother-of-pearl buttons. But he was left with a
shirt to his back after all though she had pulled at it too, somewhat.
All the time she had been talking at him to keep him from getting
too alarmed and restive, too conscious and shy.
" You're only a child Dandarling aren't you now but a big
baby, I'll be your nursemaid this time honey and put you to
Bye-Bye, I know how to do that—no let Melanie do this for you,
silly—don't be contrairy ! You must be undressed and all else
you can't get to sleep you know : let me pull off this jacket it
will make you more easy : and the little waisty ! Oh it is a tight
little waisty and all—there, it's stuck on the little shoulder-
boulders ! but off she comes, yes that's come nicely ! That
wasn't difficult was it now, come off with those big manly braces—
no over the shoulder ! That's right—now the other ! Things
that way are more simple, that's a big improvement : you can
lay down your beautiful tired head on the pillow honey, it's
all over."
There was nothing to be done. Against this army of maternal
fingers marching against his modesty as if it had been his chastity,
one could but blush and blush and blush. Soon big baby-fellow
would be as nude and naked as if this woman had just brought
him into the world out of her very self and all, that was it—
he was so helpless. It was the trick of the mothering tnat was
being his undoing. Oh he was so terribly conscious of the nude
pieces I—How she hurt him with her gloved fingers !
But now they were lying down side by side like mother and
new-born infant and she held him—she had got his head down
upon the pillow and her head had come there too if you please.
Melanie's mouth had certainly come up on to his mouth suddenly,
in some manner, this was unpleasant but it scarcely mattered.
His head rolled away, to escape these attentions. The other
mouth came after him as if it had been hungry.
Beat off her hands he must—she was abusing ! He did not
like the warm breath of this woman—he would dress and leave
this place at once ! This house of ill-fame ! Melanie was going
too far there were limits. To no purpose to push—she was as
io8 APES OF GOD
strong as a boa-constrictor the devil take her as he would for the
wild woman she was ! No that he would not allow !
" What are you doing ? " he asked as he gave the woman with
her eyes shut, who had covered him with her overcoat, a hard
push. Melanie did not answer, but strained her head sadly
towards his, smiling with a drunken sadness. .
" Is this hospitality ? " he panted with a wealth of indignant
reproach, in the low silver of his voice of a conscientious objector.
" Is it aisier ye are and all Dan dear, are ye feelin much
better ? " The panting mock-irish went on at his ear-drum.
Was Melanie mad entirely or what was it ! Was she not going to
leave now surely ? It was his fault he should not have stopped
there then this could never have happened. There was a spell
of gruelling no-pleasure for anybody in this confused encounter
an uphill crescendo—he fought off with baffled little nos ! and
reallys ! the mechanical fury of kid-gloved slogging : the white
kid-skinned instrument had got through all defences. Oh this
woman was without mercy ! The burglar of his electricity mean
time got shocks from the handle of the machine and she shuddered
at her mad devotions, her blind head stretched out in keening
prayer.
A painful throbbing filled Dan's body at these unaccustomed
contacts : shortly, there were icy needles that tore a passage.
He was jumping clean out of his skin he was with alarmed sensa
tions ! Almost he shot his bolt of terror in one agony after another.
" Stop ! " he insisted in rich tones of righteous anguish : but
Melanie was not after stopping—she was after going right on to the
bitter-sweet end of it, and it would be an explosion if she did for
he would plainly burst with shame, in one big banging red blush
—the virgin victim.
Off with your lips the harlot-woman ! Off with the sticky
and shameless mouth of you !—his disgust knew no bounds, he
spat on the pillow. He heaved up the desecrated head of him
out of reach of her lips, the whore of Babylon, in a grimace of
disgusted protest that pleased her—the sad sensual kid-gloved
harpy she was, and she smiled wanly. The small earnest face was
all intent up under the lea of his quivering jaw, and sweating :
he noted now at fever-pitch the veins in the lotus-eating eyelids
and desired to vomit upon the whole machine, so fell and rhythmic
and untiring. He was about to cat—in a moment he would be
 THE VIRGIN log
retching. And then his entire body fell down and gaped, it was
sunk in a hot wallow of new shame—the thought of it ! But had
he, then, been sick or what, that there was this pulsing agony ?
It was the biggest blush of all ! Dan shook her off, it was enough
—he lay back with his eyes shut fast, unmolested, for she seemed
to have risen—in darkness he collected his shattered senses that
had given way beneath the strain. M^lanie kid-gloved as ever
was stroking, it now seemed, his brow, with the hard kid-skinned
fingers.
" Is it better that ye're feeling now stretched out upon your '
bed and all, is it not better honey ! "
Dan could not trust himself to express his feelings. He was
uncertain what they might be. He knew that some were at best
too violent to be decently uttered. Also he was too lazy really far
too heavy and absolutely sleepy—it was no use to attempt to
move a muscle. Just now he would not he thought move a
muscle.—But was this hospitality ? It was his one thought—
Was this hospitality ?
" Dandarling now you'll be after sleeping won't you honey !
Go to sleep Dannie. Go fast to sleep my little Dannie ! "
Melanie was leaving the bed, his prayer had been answered,
this woman was going. But was this—but was this—but was
this Hospit— ! Instantly almost Dan was soundly sleeping.
part m.

THE ENCYCLICAL
 DAN took out of his pocket Melanie's five-pound-note that
she had left upon the mantelpiece with a message. He
handed it to the lodging-house keeper, and the lodging-
house keeper went downstairs and came back with the change,
that was two pounds ten. At the same time, wiping her hands
upon her apron first, she held out a great sealed letter that was
heavy, and must come from a Firm.
Dan took it and compelled the powerful envelope to enter his
jacket-pocket, bent in an elastic arc. It made a hollow in his
clothes, on the side of him. An empty goitre of a pocket it was,
as if implemented with whalebone to puff out the hip.
Pictures of unexpected fortune violently seized upon his fancy,
without resistance. Clem and Pat his two first cousins had to be
got rid of on the same day in a boating accident, it was a sudden
squawl—his uncle Brian Macdonnell, their father, about the same
time met his fate from decrepitude in County Down : he had a
weak spot for Dan as was notorious. Clement and Patrick drowned
in the lugger and out of the way the property was his. This letter
when opened would say " You are the heir." He would be a
landowner and go to Down and back, riches at his disposal now
—instead of this poverty !
The nearest Tube station for Hampstead was there round the
corner its salmon tower dominating the gardens. He started off
smartly with a will : the books in the suit-case caused it to be a
good load, he was not a strong boy : at the end of a few steps he
slacked down at once. As he slowly carried the weight along,
his arm was a tired pendulum—hurled the case along a little at
each return and he got forward, but as best he could.
As he crossed the street he was bound to recollect the counsel
ing of Melanie, about crossing the street. The escape from
Sharratt Hill on this attractive morning, to go for his suit-case,
had not taken place without his roundly being scolded in mock-
irish for his absent-mindedness and all : sure and he was not
safe to be let out ofher sight in the streets unaccompanied, should
she get Michael to go along with him to keep an eye open ? No,
not for the moment then : he was indeed a very careless young
"3
n4 APESOFGOD
man, he was a young man who ought not to be allowed out by
himself but it was so hard to know how for the best : a young
man he was, that was a young man he was—but what was the use,
her good counsels were lost on him : there were nineteen chances
to one he'd get lost if he did not stick to the centres like Piccadilly,
on no account must he go to Richmond or out to Pinner, he must
not dream of crossing the big bridges across the rivers, there was
a tide in the Estuary, the North Sea, and the Atlantic, and there
were some Tubes that were worse than confusing, they led
straight out into the wilderness right off the map into deserts of
country—would he be sure to ask a porter ?—if he met with an
accident what should she say to her old friend Stephen ? She
did not know she was sure. But he would promise not to grow
inattentive ? or to dawdle too much ? Never to talk to strangers !
The men were worse than the women ! He thought he had
promised it was difficult to remember—at all events he had given
her to understand. He never talked to strange men, emphatically.
If he were run over ! The likelihood ! There were however
accidents : young men fell every day, they were found under
taxis, many young men succumb to omnibuses, and young men
fell to large drays, there were statistics available. So he would be
picked up suffering from grave lesions and surgical shock and
then dying before the ambulance came, for the policeman to find
the sealed-up letter upon his person and would open it to detect
the identity of the strange young man. " This poor young man
has just come into a considerable estate ! " the good London
Bobbie would confide to the passengers in the street and gaping
loafers, gloating at accidents. " He knew nothing about it
though, poor young chap ! Yet perhaps it was just as well that
he should not have learnt of his good fortune sealed up in his
pocket from the solicitors of the defunct, one Brian Macdonnell."
In the Tube was where he opened the sealed envelope. He
drew out a number of typewritten sheets. There was no will at
all after all : what was it ?
Reading at random he spelt out some phrases. They were
full of mystery.
" The supreme judge is constantly absent a
successful partizan."
" The finding of the supreme judge would automatically
dissolve us all into limbo."
 THE ENCYCLICAL 115
Legal matter of some description. But his eye caught the
word " encyclical."
As he was thinking did it come from a priest he saw it was
addressed to Horace Zagreus. The strangest coincidence. A
personal letter from His Holiness to Horace. But he put it away.
He blushed very much for a big blond man was observing him.
• * *

When he was back at the house at Sharratt Hill he drew out

the envelope. He was sitting in the large leather chair at the time
by the window. Michael, the russian drug-pimp had Zagreus not
said—cocaine—was smoking a cigarette at the gate. His shoulders
were drawn up. He inhaled, supercilious seemingly, with Bromo
or Bluff upon a lead. The Slave of the Dog—like the Slave of
the Lamp, and a drug-pimp, a peculiar person. On his way to
the Vet Michael was. Dan looked down at him and he wondered
how old now Michael was—he had said he was thirty-nine. That
was impossible : it was the age of his father, Stephen Boleyn, he
had evidently mis-heard ; thirty he might be. He had large
estates from which he had to fly from his peasants. Mr. Zagreus
had said, " He is a bolshevik." That was not possible. He was a
penniless landowner, as he Daniel Boleyn hoped one day that he
might be—now if that wasn't irish !
Upon the floor was a folded white sheet of paper. Dan
regarded it in silence, determined not to make the first move. It
had dropped from oh somewhere—there was not the energy in
Dan to pick up anything just now, he looked down on it thought
fully, thinking he might sneeze.
Now Dan turned to the encyclical, or the advertisement—he
avoided the name at the top naturally. His heart was sore, it
hungered for Horace, but he had to suppress such private
emotions knowing his limitations. Nothing betrayed the reason
for the dispatch of this official whatever-it-was, a bulletin for
some vote. It was probably a public meeting. He lighted a
cigarette, imitating the inhaling of the Russian Michael. His
shoulders rose towards his ears and thereupon he became a russian
fugitive who had had oh thousands ofhair s-breadth escapes.
The high shoulders of the exiled Michael moved up the road
above the walls of the villa-gardens, leading Bromo, or Bluff.
 n6 APES OF GOD
Exaggerated distances in a lotus-land were what the quietism,
or indolence, of Michael expressed—in which one led dogs up
and down appointed paths in residential districts. Dogs were de
rigueur—it was a mere convention that did not affect the mind's
creature-comforts, as it moved idly, in the prearranged paths,
grass or asphalt, nor did it matter when the Vet kept them for a
week for treatment, there were others. Dogs were lost souls.
Their leads led into one's everyday pocket.
With a straight shoulder-line risen some inches, Daniel watched
Michael. He went over the bridge. He was out of sight. Dan
stopped staring and dropped down his shoulders with a run. He
had not noticed they had got up it was a fact though, their
descent was a surprise.
Sinking into the corner, he reached over the leather bulwark
of the chair a lazily fishing arm to it and picked up the white
sheet of paper from the floor. He unfolded it, but no sooner had
the sheet come open than he was stunned with feelings that
whirled round and round like hot Catherine Wheels in his
middle.
The paper was a letter from Mr. Zagreus. It was to Dear Dan.
Horace had written ! The Son of the Morning shouted for joy,
this letter was manna ! He was on his feet at Dear Dan in a bound
as if it had been a word of command from High Heaven. He
could not sit still with such a thing in his hand it was impossible.
He gazed at it blushing with new life. He dropped back into the
chair, overcome with a faintness : he had to wait for some
minutes while his heart beat a tattoo, before he could look at it.
Then tears burst from his eyes. They dried quickly on his red-
hot cheeks.—A moment after he was able to read it.
This was a letter in duplicate. It was marked C.63o7. It was
dated Thursday. He read it and reread it, again and again. And
it was written as follows.

Dear Dan. You must excuse me for so hurriedly leaving

you today at the gate of Hyde Park. I was upset by the
meeting with that very rude fellow, who accosted me. You
may have remarked that I drew from my pocket, just before
that, a sealed letter. It had been my intention to hand it you
before we parted.
The letter I had in my pocket was the enclosure that I
 THE ENCYCLICAL
now subjoin. It contained an invitation, the material part of
which I now reproduce. This then is what I have to say.
You are nineteen and just come up to London and have
not yet found your feet. " People are in general what they
are made, by education and company, from fifteen to five-
and-twenty " Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son. You are
approaching the meridian of that period. Things are critical.
Will you place yourself in my hands ? If you consent, I will
acquit myself to the best of my ability of this task—to do for
you what was done for me. If so late in life that system of
enlightenment could be so effectively carried through on my
behalf, all the more should it be able to accomplish that for
you, and put you on the right track for good.
The society you are now entering you must understand or
perish : I mean your mind. / believe absolutely in your genius.
You are a child of the Moon, when I first set eyes on you I
knew it, you possess the virtus vegetandi. I solicit the privilege
of being your gardener at this crisis, oh delicate moon-
flower. Have I your permission ? Please give me your
answer without delay, there is no time to be lost.
As to the document that accompanies this, show it to no
one. Several years ago I received it, it is written by a man
who is in everything my master—I am nothing, he is every
thing. It speaks for itself. In it he describes what he then
undertook to do. He was successful I rejoice to say : I will
(not as he could but to the best of my power) perform in your
case a similar service.
Telephone to me as soon as you get this.
Adieu.
Horace Zagreus.
Having read every word of this message a dozen times
through Dan rose. He was dazed with his happiness and the
joy of the letter. Slowly he rubbed his eyes. He took up with a
reverential carefulness the typewritten pages that accompanied
it. He read slowly the following document, from start to
finish.
u8 APES OF GOD

Extract from encyclical addressed to Mr. Zagreus

IN my review of this society, especially with regard to its>
reaction upon art, I rather insist upon than seek to slur over
the fact that I am a party. But it is from amongst the parties
that the acting judge is ultimately chosen. Where else should
you get him from ? The supreme judge is constantly absent.
What we call a judge is a successful partizan. It is on account of
the superior percentage of truth in the composition of your glosses
that your statement is erected into a standard. And ' Of an
opinion which is no longer doubted, the evidence ceases to be
examined.' The finding of the supreme judge would automatic
ally dissolve us all into limbo. Some—who are upon the outside
limit of the gaussian law of error—we instinctively admire most,
not least. We feel I think that they are most alive. But you
cannot " be alive " and adjudicate.—There is no universal con
sent upon the subjects of which I am treating. The novelty of any
time enables people to pretend that they are existing in the state
of society that in fact they have superseded. (It is an old political
expedient to pretend to be what you have destroyed.) They will
pretend that their abuses are old abuses and that only their
reforms are new.—Things however that I have put forward as
facts—not as fair comment—will be verified by you in due course.
Fortunately there no one can balk the truth of my evidence.
The dreams of the economist-utopist in a sense are already
realized, upon a small scale, today. In that respect the society of
the future is already with us. He could study, in its full working
effect, one of his favourite and most attractive theories, and upon
a considerable scale : namely that of Everyman possessed of
leisure and means to enjoy the delectations of Art (when Par
nassus becomes a recreation ground of unlimited extent and the
humblest citizen is an amateur of some or of all the arts).
The economic reformer is not himself usually an amateur of
any art. ' He knows what he likes ' perhaps. If you suggested
that his taste invited improvement he would be indignant. He
is an economist and at figures he is good.—He is generally a poor
observer of the life around him—else he would often remark his
favourite schemes in effective operation in current life (upon a
miniature scale), and this in many instances would discourage him.
For example. Any art-school containing a hundred students,
could demonstrate for him what happens when a hundred people,
chosen for their talent, devote all their time to the prosecution of one
art. Their subsequent professional career (upon the walls of the
Royal Academy or in the illustrated journals) he would be forced
to conclude was not encouraging for his enthusiastic picture of a.
universal cultured amateurism upon the Western super-demo
cratic pattern.
 THE ENCYCLICAL "9
But better perhaps than that, our speculative economist could
be shown to-day, in full flower, a society of people with ample
means and leisure—living in full contact with art and artists—in
the only modern city traditionally famous for the exploits of the
intelligence. He could not ask for a better test. He could not
receive a more discouraging answer !
The traditional " Bohemia " has changed radically since the
War. The reason is this. Everyone able to afford to do so has
become a " bohemian." This is the term still employed by the
more naif of the transformed majority. But of course traditionally
that person was called a " bohemian " who could not afford to
be anything else. The tramp, or the cynic by choice, upon a vast
scale, constitutes a novel type.
Paris where there are incomparably more people living on
familiar (and naturally contemptuous) terms with Art than any
where else, is in reality a very large club for the well-to-do. The
well-off find the studio-cafe society the only one in which they are
free to live as they choose. It is unnecessary to say that these large
groups of people, numbering many thousands, are not .for the
most part occupied in any pursuit more exacting than that of
paying calls, and acting as clients to the Paris night resorts. A
floating population of very young students lends the necessary air
of" bohemian " illusion and juvenility to these large idle cosmo
politan settlements. They provide constant human currents and
freshets in which the more hardened old sinners can fish.
It would be unnecessary to give these " bohemian " popula
tions a second thought if they were merely engaged in amusing
themselves to the extent that their incomes allow them, and if
they exercised no influence upon the creation of art. Why a
closer and less benevolent scrutiny is required, is because wherever
an individual, through the ages, has had leisure and money to
spare, he has relied upon the artist to supplement his wits with
the resources of a more serious study than he is prepared to devote,
himself, to anything. He has relied upon the artist to provide
that significant apparatus of intelligence and beauty, which makes
the pleasures of the wealthy less empty than they otherwise
would be.
But these numerous bohemian populations, notably in Paris,
are no exception to this rule. For (living in studios and cafes and
in consequence identified for the uninitiated with the traditional
world of the ' Vie de Boheme ') although they do not for the most
part paint or write or compose music themselves, yet they find the
art that is being produced in their neighbourhood a source of
stimulating tittle-tattle. And the intellectual gladiators engaged
in such occupations become a sort of perpetual game-of-ninepins
for the malice or conceit of their disauvrement.
Painting—that art that depends more upon spatial conditions
 12o APES OF GOD
than any other art—is as might be expected heavily handicapped,
to start with, by the mere fact of these hordes occupying the studios
that were intended in the first place, it is to be assumed, for
painters. Another difficulty is this. When fresh ' studios ' are
built it is usually upon such a sumptuous scale that no genuine
' struggling artist ' can afford to rent them. They are built upon
this scale because the landlord is quite aware that the last person
likely to occupy them is an artist. Still another point is that the
affluence of his pseudo-artist tenants is not lost upon the landlord,
and studio-rents in consequence rise daily.
Again since the people of whom we are talking are always
ostensibly ' poor,' the small pokier studios (which might other
wise be left for a painter) are taken by them. It is so ' quaint,'
' attractive,' and it is such ' fun ' to rough it.—Still, art it would
seem is a tenacious flower. So in a few back-rooms at the top of
small hotels, or in chilly ill-lit shacks just holding together, that
sprawl against each other in some damp courtyard, an occasional
artist succeeds in painting a picture, or modelling a piece of clay.
Sometimes, in some very inconvenient corner of the town—over
looked by, or too far out for the New Bohemians—a real studio
falls to the lot of a painter. For painters (although they have not
got them) are always thinking and talking about studios. And so
occasionally, owing to the persistence of this obsession, they get
on the track of some derelict garage that is falling vacant—for
some reason forgotten by the sleuths and agents of the wealthy
Bohemian.—It is in reality still very much the squalor of Henri
Murger for the real painter.
These conditions, upon a different scale, are reproduced in
London and probably in other cities.
But again, if such were the only misdemeanours of our pros
perous friends, we should not need to say very much about them
—although they would still serve as sardonic paradigms for our
speculative economist—for no opportunity is denied them of
occupying their time in the most elevated pursuits as he would
have them do, and yet towards which they display a most
consistent shyness.
But there is a more active type. And it is with him that I have
principally to deal. All that remains to be considered is this active
minority—and how the whole of this immense and costly aping,
by the idlest of the rich, of the artist's life has affected, and is
likely to affect, the occasional apparition of genius.
Being born in a stable does not make you a horse. But living
in a studio produces in some persons a feeling that they should
dabble and daub a little. Again, possessing independent means
(a rarer thing every day) and in your native conventional milieu
life growing less and less accommodating, should you by some
chance always have possessed a certain " high-brow " proclivity—
 THE ENCYCLICAL i2t
have had a taste for music, for instance—you are apt to go and
live in Paris or Italy. The exchange doubles your income—the
amenities of life are of a "pre-war " character. But Paris still
rings with the activities of THE ARTIST. It is still the centre
of" civilization " as much as ever. You become an amateur, in
the sense that you must be able to talk about what other people
are always discussing.
My information upon these subjects is quite first-hand. You
may think that the picture I draw is unfair (ifyou like ' ferocious ')
or that my sources of information are interested and unfriendly.
You must judge for yourself when you visit Paris, or know
London better. The fact is, then, that all these masses of Gossip-
mad, vulgar, pseudo-artist, good-timers—the very freedom and
excess usually of whose life implies a considerable total of money,
concentrated in the upkeep of this costly ' bohemian ' life—are
the last people, as every artist will tell you, from whom support
for any art can be expected. They are as vulgar as any of their
more simple-hearted and simply ostentatious nouveau riche first
cousins—usually as illiterate, more insolent and vindictive where
their betters are concerned, and a hundred times as damaging, in
their influence, to every form of creative thought.
They are more damaging for the very reason that they are identified, in
the mind ofthe public, with art and with intelligence. Their influence is
brought to bear invariably in the propagation of the second-rate
—for that does not challenge their conceit, and it fraternizes with
the fundamental vulgarity with which they have not parted, in
their new surroundings. Yet the indications of their favour are
considered as direct tips from the stable, as oracles of inside
information. They are thefriends, the bosom friends of art. And
their opinions are invested with the authority of this intimacy.
Unlike most friends, however (whose malignities are often illu
minating) theirs seldom bear any relation to the original. They
are the unpaying guests of the house of art : the crowd of thriving
valets who adopt the livery of this noble but now decayed establish
ment, pour se donner un air—to mock, in their absence, its masters.
If you enquire how it is that these people come to play this
role, I should say that there are two main reasons. The first is
this : that in the case of a genuine ' amateur,' or collector of
pictures or more generally, any habitual " supporter of the arts "
—like the classical patrons of the renaissance, the great patrons of
Turner and Gainsborough or the French Kings—he will have a
personal interest—if it is only an economic one, or one of prestige
—in the things with which his name and personality are associated.
An opinion can be changed every week, but not a substantial
possession, to which your judgment is pinned. And such " ama
teurs " as these were the only people, formerly, who had a per
sonal entree to the world of art, or any personal interest in it.
122 APES OF GOD
The legions of contemporary " amateurs," with rare exceptions,
have no such interests. For they are careful not to involve
themselves economically in a thing they can get as much out of
as they require without spending a pennypiece.
The second cause (and this applies to a much smaller number
of such people—only indeed, to the very cream and elite of them)
is that some (born with a happy or unhappy knack not possessed
by their less talented fellows) produce a little art themselves—
more than the inconsequent daubing and dabbing we have
noticed, but less than the " real thing." And with this class you
come to the Ape of God proper. For with these unwonted and
unnecessary labours, and the amour-propre associated with their
results, envy steps in. The complication of their malevolence that
ensues is curious to watch. But it redoubles, in the natural course
of things, the fervour of their caprice or ill-will to the " profes
sional activities of the effective artist—that rare man born for
an exacting intellectual task, and devoting his life unsparingly to it.
There I think you have the two main causes of this atmosphere
of restlessness, insecurity and defamation—in which books paint
ing or music of a serious sort is produced today. For this vast
array of troublesome " supers " that swarm all over the stage are
a far more noisy and presumptuous fraternity than the gallants
who insisted upon invading the Elizabethan Stage—sitting among
the actors, to display in that way their personalities to the best
advantage, and whose stupid and insolent chatter was such a
source of irritation to the players, apart from their inconvenient
presence upon the boards when a play was in progress.
It is as regards this second active category of amateurs, these
productive " apes," that I may be useful to you. I can point them
out to you, and find means for you to be among them—appre
ciate the truth of what I have described, and draw your own
conclusions. In a little artificial world of carefully fostered self-
esteem I will show you a pseudo-Proust. I shall be able to intro
duce you, among a family of " great poets," (each of them upon
a little frail biographical family pedestal) where all the exultations
of labour, a passionate experience, and probably a straitened life,
issuing in works of great creative art, are thinly parodied, at great
expense. The general rabble that collects under the equivocal
banner of ART—the " crowd " in as exact a sense as any other
easily-swayed, brutal, readily-stampeded, collection of human
beings—I will leave you to examine where you like.
I will here insert a necessary caution : namely that I am not
identifying poverty with genuine artistic success, or riches with
its opposite. Cezanne and Manet for example were wealthy
men, as much as Van Gogh or Ingres were without fortune.
Montaigne had money, Villon had not ; and so on. You Zagreus
have money. But that will not condemn you to futility, any more
 THE ENCYCLICAL 123
than would poverty, if only because you are an " original "
(excuse me). It is to what I have called the Apes of God that I
am drawing your attention—those prosperous mountebanks' who alter
nately imitate and mock at and traduce those figures they at once admire
and hate. And bringing against such individuals and their pro
ductions all the artillery of the female, or hfatcxual tongue, will
abuse the object of their envy one day, and imitate him the next :
will attempt to identify themselves with him in people's minds,
but in the same breath attempt to belittle him—to lessen if
possible the disadvantage for them that this neighbourhood will
reveal. I will make them parade before you in their borrowed
plumes like mannequins, spouting their trite tags, and you shall
judge if my account is true.
So far I have spoken principally of Paris. But the same
conditions can be studied upon the spot—in Chelsea, Bloomsbury,
and Mayfair. In England for a very long time this sort of
societification of art has been in progress. It is even possible that
the English were the first in the field with this Ape art-type.
The notorious amateurism of the anglo-saxon mind makes this
doubly likely. In Bloomsbury it takes the form of a select and
snobbish club. Its foundation-members consisted of monied
middleclass descendants of victorian literary splendour. Where
they approximate to the citizens of this new cosmopolitan
Bohemia is in their substitution of money for talent as a quali
fication for membership. Private-means is the almost invariable
rule. In their discouragement of too much unconservative
originality they are very strong. The tone of " society " (of a
spurious donnish social elegance) prevails among them. Where
they have always differed has been in their all without exception
being Apes of God. That is the first point. All are " geniuses,"
before whose creations the other members of the Club, in an
invariable ritual, must swoon with appreciation. There is an
other rather curious way in which they differ—namely in their
dress. For whereas the new Bohemian is generally as ' mondain '
and smart, if a little fantastic, as he or she can be, this little
phalanstery of apes ofgod went the length of actually dressing the
part of the penniless genius." In this way they presented the
curious spectacle of a lot of men and women, possessed of hand
some bank balances, drifting and moping about in the untidiest
fashion. This rather scandalous shabbiness it was, besides a
queer exaggeration of speech (bringing to one's mind the sounds
associated with the spasms of a rough Channel passage) that cut
them off from the outside world—also perhaps their freakish
literal interpretation of the august aloof originals.—They yield to
none, however (and in that provide an instructive analogy) in
their organized hatred of living " genius." Even they have made
a sort of cult of the amateur—the child artist—and in short any
 i24 APES OF GOD
imperfectly equipped person. Naturally they exercise their
influence in the interests of what is virtually their club. A certain
network of not very remunerative patronage extends over out
siders who are not too important. In their headquarters in
Bloomsbury it would be possible to visit them. But altogether
too many Apes and wealthy " intelligentsia " have come on the
scene for them to have maintained their unique position. I think
you can disregard them. Bloomsbury is really only what is called
old Bloomsbury', which is very moribund—the bloom is gone.
To sum up what I have said : By adopting the life of the artist
I the rich have not learnt more about art, and they respect it less.
With their more irresponsible " bohemian " life they have left
behind their " responsibilities "—a little culture among the rest.
Indeed they are almost as crudely ignorant as is the traditional
painter. Besides—living in cafes, studios and " artistic " flats—
they are all " artists " in a sense themselves. They have made
the great discovery that every one wielding brush or pen is not a
" genius," any more than they are. But they have absorbed a
good deal of the envy of those who are not " geniuses " for those
who are (having in a sense placed themselves upon the same
level)—and the contempt of those who are, for those who are
not. The result is that they abominate good art as much as bad
artists do, and have as much contempt for bad art as have good
artists ! There is more indifference to and often hatred of every
form of art in these pseudo-artistic circles—in the studios, in
short, now mostly occupied by them—than in all the rest of the
world put together. How does this affect the " good " art ?
I The patron having come to live more or less in the artist's studio—
that has not been found to answer any better for one sort of artist
than for the other.
As to the class of well-to-do people who say " Why should I
not write a book of verses or paint a picture ? I could not do it
worse than so and so, whose profession it is. Also I have more
time than the poet so and so, or the painter so and so, to write or
to paint—as they have to make money." These people are not
likely to be of very much use to the art of which they become not
a supporter but an exponent. For who ever heard of one artist
helping another, his competitor ? Except such rare people as
exist as well among the wealthy as among the poor.
When you consider that the whole of the graphic and plastic
arts at least have in the past been sustained upon the structure of
stable wealth and seigneurial or burgess ostentation, of those
people who (such as are left) have metamorphosed themselves
into a sort of ever-swelling tribe of mock-artists, then the distress
of an artist who is not rich, especially whose gifts are not specta
cular, is easy to understand. But there are many valuable artists
 THE ENCYCLICAL
in every period who are without money, and whose talent is not
immediately obvious.
Without going further into this, I have laid bare for you the
present predicament of art. I have given an outline of the present
dispositions of its natural audience—showing how the decline in
their wealth, culture and sense of responsibility has brought down
with it those intellectual activities that depended upon it.
Naturally individuals of finer stamp and pattern always are to
be found. But the great majority not supported by any personal
interior life perfectly account for the extreme disarray that you
will witness.
To return to what I began by saying as to being a party. I
am not in agreement with the current belief in a strained " imper
sonality " as the secret of artistic success. Nor can I see the sense
of pretending—as it must be a pretence, and a thin one, too—
that in my account to you of what I have seen I can be impartial
and omniscient. That would be in the nature of a bluff or a
blasphemy. There can only be one judge, and I am not he.
I am not a judge but a party. All I can claim is that my cause
is not an idle one—that I appeal less to passion than to reason.
The flourishing and bombastic role that you may sometimes see
me in, that is an effect of chance. Or it is a caricature of some
constant figure in the audience, rather than what I am (in any
sense) myself. Or, to make myself clearer, it is my opposite.

To be an artist now he had always wished thought Dan to

himself, meditating about all this—he had never been able to
afford a brush and he supposed the pigment and plaster casts, as
they were so poor in Dublin but now Mr. Zagreus had made him
the offer to be an artist—he absolutely believed in his genius
(what artists had) he had written to him. And he would take a
great studio for him in the Paris Latin Quarter, Dan was simply as
exultant as a swan and his throat half-burst with rapture : he
sprang to his feet : he plunged out of his apartment, the letter
and the manuscript flourished in his fist, and he burst headlong
into Mrs. Blackwell's studio in the garden.
The dogs Bromo, Bluff and Rabs sprang up and barked
intruder ! one after the other. Melanie in an overall sat upon a
high star-punctured tabouret. She was painting a bright picture,
full of the Warm South, with a bright volcanic blush, parched
stucco farm-shacks, plages and so on. There was a puff-puff,
t36 APES OF GOD
off-stage, and a great clock to time the light and shade, and the
ellipse of the distant partridge-tent.
Dan stood panting at some distance. The tall boy swayed
giddily, his expression all radiant with new-born hope and the
sacred fire of the genius that one living creature at least believed
in.—His own father had never said—it had been left to a total
stranger to discover !
" Melanie ! " in ponderous lisping rapture he articulated her
name to call her attention.
" Dandarling ! " . she exclaimed sentimentally, folding her
hands in her lap with the brushes.
" Can you teach me how to paint pictures in oils oh do please
say yes ! "
" What on earth for ! " Melanie was thoroughly astonished.
But she put down her brushes then she mocked the notion : " To
paint is it ! But you're crazy entirely—what are you after want
ing to paint for Dan-honey, tell me that now for the love of Mike
—that is a most dangerous risky occupation that I could never
bear to think of you pursuing without someone there with you at
all events—ye'd be wiping the white lead off of the fingers into
the dear great brown eyes of ye, or be jazers ye'd be after sucking
your thumb that was all blue and Prussiany and poisoned entirely !
No Dan-darling don't you be putting that great novel burden
upon me poor weak fiminine shoulders honey—I should never
have a day's peace and all ! "
The transports of Daniel Boleyn fell to zero while Melanie
was speaking, and doubt succeeded to his exaltation. Perhaps,
thought Dan, he would never paint in oils after all—Zagreus
could not be expected to take him up unless he had first shown
his mettle with the brush, his poem though traditional
" Cynthia do not spoil my hair,
Harp-tongued tigress—Cynthia "
and cetera of which Mr. Zagreus was so fond and had kept a
copy, would give no guarantee of genius—oil-painters and the
sopranos of the Opera had it, he did not think poets were like
that. He must steal some of these paints here of Mrs. Black-
well's, but where oh where perform the Oil that was necessary ?
And without one of those sticks with a ball on the end that he
had watched Melanie holding, to rest on, sighting her brush, with
 THE ENCYCLICAL »«7
erect little finger he would be lost. For he was positive his hand
would never do it without a rest or be sufficiently steady to draw
in oils—paint. Oh dear !
He lifted up a pearl-pale hand. He looked at it and he saw it
steadily and saw it whole. It was as firm as a rock !
He dropped it sighing to his side. Ah yes, but in the heat of
creation it would tremble like an aspen ! He knew it only too
well. His hand was not reliable and could not be depended on
in the crisis, the falterer. It defeated its own ends.
Dan had become very melancholy now. He was perplexed.
" Melanie ! " he said in a sad plaintive accent.
" Yes Dan-darling " said Melanie " what is it ? "
"What is the Ape?"
" The ape ? "
" The Ape of God"
" The ape of what?"
" Of God, Melanie " said Dan in a sinking voice, at the word
" God " veiling his lustrous swimming honest-to-goodness eyes of
Abie's irish rose.
" Are ye mad entirely today Dan-honey ? Oh what has
happened ! " She got quickly down now from off the great stool,
extremely concerned. " Has anything happened Dandarling to
cause ye to wander in ye reason, that ye come bursting in here
with such strange questions and all 1 "
Dan blushed and simply gazed hopelessly at the floor. Less
and less did he comprehend what was expected of him or how he
could become an oil-painter there was no time.
With her face for keening and her eyelids growing more
caressingly heavy at every moment, Melanie began to glide towards
him, wailing miserably as she approached :
" Strong f the am and weak f the head as they say in Liverpool
Dan. That's where it comes in—the least thing upsets the dear
wandering mind of ye and makes ye talk in that wild manner—it's
for that Dannie that I'm so unaisy when ye go out at all child in
the great public streets. For if one of those great brutes of police
got hold of ye they'd not understand. Mightn't they spirit ye
away to some place of confinement and we should never any of
us see ye again ! "
Now she stood beside him dwarfed by the great wild statue
of a young man that he was. And reaching up her hand to his
ia8 APES OF GOD
head, its passage over his body having the gesture of the hands of
the hypnotist, over the person of an entranced medium, she brushed
back the shog of unstemmed wobbling locks that had tumbled upon
his forehead—at the time he rushed from his room with his news.
" And what is that honey that ye've got hold of so stiff and
tight in your little fist there now ? Is there something confined
in it—have ye brought it to show me ! "
She reached up her tough dry lips, her neck stuck out in
yearning keen. She kissed him upon the chin, while her hand
closed in upon his where the letter and document were.
Dan handed her the letter, and the document.
Frowning as she uncovered both, she said :
"What is this ? Horace Zagreus—may ill-luck be in his road ! "
Melanie went over quickly to her usual settee and Dan to
the second, the red-cushioned one, and they sat down.
" Is it he that has told you to paint, is that it then ? He's
only laughing at you Dannie, can't you see that darling—Horace
has kissed the Blarney Stone and everything to him is a joke
that is all ! He's pulling your leg my poor angel ! "
She started to read the manuscript.
" Have you seen him ? " she said as she read.
Dan shook his head.
" I told you a lie yesterday Daniel do you know—Horace
never said anything about you, I made that up. It was necessary
to save you from his clutches bad luck to him. He'd ruin you
if he could. I am responsible."
Dan almost looked angry, as he frowned with pain, for she had
opened the wound of yesterday. As there was no stir she quitted
her reading for a moment and said :
" You must not be vexed—a white lie it was only you poor
helpless baby, you should thank me for it so you should ! "
She returned to the document. For five minutes she read on
without remark. The smoke of her cigarette poured from her
nostrils upon the paper at intervals.
" Ah Ape of God ! Now I see what that was—Ape of God ! "
she sneered, scornful and weary. She discharged two frail nose-
blasts of blue scented smoke at the offensive page. Again the
attentive reading went on in silence.
" What does all this mean for mercy's sake ! " she muttered.
" I've never been within a hen's race of such nonsense ! "
 THE ENCYCLICAL
She put down the manuscript upon the settee beside her as
she finished it and looked across at Dan with a hint of a suspicious
challenge. But his expression conveyed nothing but that he was
conscious ofbeing born to paint in oils and that yet he might never
do so owing to circumstances over which he had no control.
" Have you read this ? " she asked him.
Dan nodded sadly—certainly. It had been read by him, yes.
" Horace has gone mad ! " she exclaimed. " I do really think
he is not quite in his right senses. I had heard he had become
peculiar lately. Here is the proof of it."
Almost weeping, Dan whispered,
" He says he believes in me and will take me a studio."
" Where does he say that ? "
She opened the letter. Still frowning she read it through with
a quick capable eye.
" I can't see that anywhere. Where does he say that ? " she
repeated, looking up at him.
Dan made a helpless gesture towards the manuscript, and
towards the letter.
" You must have dreamed that Dan—that is not what he
says at all. He has sent you a tirade about all of us by that
charlatan Pierpoint."
Dan looked puzzled.
" You have not heard of Pierpoint ? No one ever sees him
now—he has shut himself up for some reason. Pierpoint is a
painter turned philosopher. He says he wants a studio, but as he
never paints I can't see what he wants one for. He models himself
upon Whistler:"
Dan rolled his lovely eyes.
" I do so wish that I had a studio Melanie ! " he murmured
wistfully and then was quiet.
Melanie put her head out to keen and she filled her face with
the drowsiness of the Twilight of the Gael.
" And what Dan should you be after wanting a studio for
now Honeystick ? "
There was no answer from the-genius-without-a-studio, except
for a dumb appeal for a studio. Melanie sighed. She looked
about her, with the contempt bred of familiarity with much
studios.
" I suppose Pierpoint would call me an Ape " she said. " Yes
 APES OF GOD
I am an Ape of God all right, according to this." She slightly
lifted the manuscript.
Dan opened his eyes wide and examined her closely.
" Yes I am an Ape of God " she droned wearily over at him,
showing her teeth, nodding her head up and down, ah-yessing
poetically.
Dan scrutinised her still more closely.
" I have money, Pierpoint would say far more than is good
for me. I do nothing with it of any service to—whatever it is he
thinks. I have a studio ! Though for thinking I have no great
turn, I paint to amuse myself. So you see. I am afraid I am an
Ape of God ! "
Dan looked hard at the Ape, then looked away in embarrass
ment.
Melanie sighed and smiled but cast off this burden of apehood,
and then she proceeded.
" What idea has Horace been putting into your young head
Dan—has he been at his blarney with you, telling you you're a
grand pictor ignotus is it—do you think you would like to be an
artist now because of some nonsense of Horace—it's some practical
joke that he's played on you, and you've believed him to the
nines. I think it's all flattery, he hopes he will get you in his power
by that, ill luck be in his road ! I could wring the neck of him ! "
Dan nodded his head violently.
" You wish to paint do you mean ? "
Dan nodded his head with greater vehemence.
" Come with me to Azay-le-Promis ! I should love to teach
you how to paint Dandarling ! Or perhaps you would teach
me.
Immediately Dan grew distracted and sad. He was Horace
Zagreus's especial genius and not the genius of Melanie. He got
up and walked swiftly to the door, eyeing her paints and brushes
as he passed them. He frowned upon the studio in toto.
" Where are you going Dandarling ? " Melanie exclaimed
with anxiety.
He had gone with the determined gait with which he strode
beside his master—when they should go out to meet the Apes,
upon their escapades.
He was going to Horace Zagreus, who believed in his genius !
BE NOT TOO FINICAL
_
 FROM Dan to Beersheba, he had not faltered. Hiliman had
met him at high-noon. There had been three visits before
tea had come round, a dinner with Orchard Bassett and
Hedges, at the Shanghai in Greek Street, and so to the Old Vic.
The Merchant of Venice was a nightmare. That had been his
pound of flesh. He withdrew to the lavatory for two long periods.
The second time he had gone to sleep with his head between his
hands. The last act he had spent being counted out—what had
this week of plays to do with the matter ?
He had met three hundred and sixty Apes since Tuesday, and
since last Saturday he had only seen Horace Zagreus once and
he had hardly spoken to him, except to say " Well ? "
V. !1 !
He had left the Old Vic in a stupor. But with the tread of a
gladiator he had passed out into the Borough High Street. No
one would have guessed. Bassett was with him. And then a
long night-party, with fifty persons some dressed as beach-
Pierrots. He had conversed with several, escaped from five
determined women, two of whom were quite young—hidden in a
garden latrine, crouched behind a rolled-up mattress, noted the
presence of many minor Apes, and left more dead than alive at
three in the morning. And even then before retiring for the
night he had made up his log, in ink, by candlelight.
Two kindly Apes had escorted him home, the night before
that, which was Thursday night. The Apes are kind, he had said
in his heart, but at the door one of them had taken a liberty. He
had pushed him over (for he was drunk) by accident. Three
policemen had arrived and the second Ape had decamped. The
one that was upon the ground and who had expectorated at him
from that position, had been carried off. But he appeared in
mollify the constables, for in the distance he had observed them
release him. In a taxi he had seen him finally depart from the
neighbourhood, and he believed he noticed one of the night-
police waving a handkerchief but about that he could not be
sure. He might have been menacing his assailant, or just blowing
his nose. The street-lamp was not bright enough.
133
 134 APES OF GOD
This loneliness was terrible !
Dan lay and yawned upon his spartan pallet. His feet were
so sore he was reluctant to rise. Three weeks of this already, he
was but a wreck ! He was a shadow of himself. At the prospect
of the six weeks in store, he stared in despair at this ominous cell,
chosen for him to banish comfort and enable the Ape-hunter to
lay down his tired body merely and keep it hard and well, when
not absent at the chase. There was a punch-ball beyond the table.
But Mr. Zagreus believed in him utterly. You are a genius! he
had said last week as he had been showing him his log in which
he had written out something like this only better : " Met Monty
Hampton. He is an Ape. He is rich. He has thirteen studios.
Bronze medallist Salon d'Automne. Has whipped three greek boys
to death." He knew he had invented the studios in order to
please Mr. Zagreus but that was nothing, the greek boys were
accurate as far as they went, but that was Michael Beck. The
muddle was not his in the first instance. Willie Service had
pointed him out as having—it was only afterwards he had found
it was not Hampton but Beck.—Tooting Beck—that reminded
him of—there was a rare Ape in that district. He had heard of
him from Willie. He had a chicken farm and he called him the
" butter and egg merchant "—he wrote verse, and was very
rich, he had persecuted eight young penniless poets one mortally,
he was reputed to know more firemen than any one in the West
(end, that is), and to be in hiding really, hence Tooting. He had
caused three fires in Clapham. He was rich and incendiary. He
had many houses and was of american origin. He had heard of
this Ape through Willie, who was on his track. The butter-and-egg-
merchant-Ape—it would look well in the log he felt certain.—But
such were merely the idle dreams of a busy sleuth before he put
his sore feet to the floor and took up the day's routine. The
coffee was cold, but he could hot it up on the gas-ring in the
saucepan. From one glazed eye he had seen Mrs. Phillips put
what looked like two letters beside his plate. He rose and had a
pyjama-stalk for a match to light the gas fire and the gas-ring.
His feet were sore—and his bones ached—then he took some
vaseline and rubbed it between his toes. He put on his overcoat.
The coffee-pot was next emptied into the nickel saucepan and
the gas-ring began to hot up the coffee.
A book belonging to the small library supplied for his special
 BE NOT TOO FINICAL 135
use by Mr. Zagreus was open beside his bed. It was one of the
fifteen " livres de chevet " especially recommended. He took it
up and read the following lines, upon a page marked for his
attention.
The rough Hippolitus was Phaedra's care ;
And Venus thought the rude Adonis fair.
Be not too Finical ; but yet be clean ;
And wear well-fashion'd Cloaths, like other Men.
Let not your teeth be yellow, or be foul ;
Nor in wide Shoes your Feet too loosely roul.
Of a black Muzzel, and long Beard beware ;
And let a skilful Barber cut your Hair :
Your Nailes be pick'd from filth, and even par'd ;
Nor let your nasty Nostrils bud with Beard.
Cure your unsav'ry Breath, gargle your Throat,
And free your Arm-pits from the Ram and Goat.
If he had pondered once, he had pondered a hundred times
upon this enigmatical passage, or one with such a cruel ambi
guity, brought to his attention by Horace Zagreus. The tears
stood in his eyes as he gazed at the page, with its beastly injunc
tions.
Why oh why should he be treated in this way by Horace ?
He had had a horrid dream when he had first come upon this
hideous page in which a black and white kid nestled in the left
and right pits of his arms which were enormous as though they
had been children of the Ore, deposited in Cyclopean bird's-nests,
with a rank stink. His nostrils, which had not the suspicion of a
bristle, seemed in his nightmare to be obstructed with an inky
undergrowth. His fingernails were charged with a moist packing
of opaque foulness, in mad mourning, at which he had picked and
picked, as he had been ordered. For was it not written in that
dreadful treatise that, though to avoid the Finical was quite
essential, yet you at all cost must be clean ? And in his anguished
sleep he laboured to rid himself of his goats and rams—to blow
his nose lest his nostrils should be called nasty—and to excavate
the foul deposits of both finger and toe nail.
" Cure your unsav'ry Breath, gargle your Throat ! "
As he came to this abominable line he flung the book away
from him in a passion. Oh why did Horaee Zagreus hate him so
 t36 APES OF GOD
much ! Oh why did he love Horace—and it was himself was in-
need of his kindness—when Horace did nothing but insult him !
Dan sat down to the table. The striated lemon-white wood
was spotless, as scrubbed by Mrs. Phillips the house-char.
The first letter had a foreign stamp. He stuck his finger into
it, he tore at it with this hook, he removed its kernel—a wide
sheet of blue folded paper, headed Villa Saint-Genest. Azay-le-
Promis. B. du R. from Melanie Blackwell. He read.

Dan darling. I am so anxious about you darling. Why don't

you write me a word at least as you promised you would to say
you are alive? Have you perhaps moved? The room here is
waiting for you when you want it. I have written to Horace to
say what I think of him. I know it is no use my saying anything
more at the present moment. When your infatuation is over and
you have found him out come out here at once.—Send me a
wire. Melanie.

The coffee boiled, Dan put down the letter from Azay-le-
Promis, and when he returned he took up the long typewritten
envelope, that contained his instructions for the day. He ripped
its head quickly up and unsheathed the* familiar broadsheet,
which was shorter than yesterday's. He read.

HERE ARE YOUR ORDERS FOR THE DAY.

After your usual exercises please report at one sharp at the
house of Ratner. He will occupy your attention till 3.3o. At
3-3o tell Ratner you have an engagement. Go by tube to
Kensington (ask your way very civilly of any decent-lookingpolice
man, but check what he says by consulting a second). So you
will reach Grotian Walk at approximately 4 o'clock. There you
will find my relative Dick Whittingdon, to whom I have repre
sented you as a young man very interested in painting.
Leave Dick as near five as possible. Walk smartly down Hurst
Gardens and present yourself at B. flat. Valetta Mansions, Yar
mouth Place. Mrs. Farnham will be at home for tea. There you
will find Mr. Arthur Wildsmith, whom you have already met. It
is a first-class monkey-house. You will enjoy yourself.—Do not
stop too long at Mrs. Farnham's however. Hurry due south and a
Miss Stella Ansell an awfully nice girl will be waiting for you in
her studio—No. 3, Lynes Studios, Piddinghoe Row. When you
have examined Stella, return to your room. As it is saturday
 BE NOT TOO FINICAL
night you can make up your diary, it may be in arrears. So to
bed.
N.B. as to the Apes to be visited.
Julius Ratner whom you have not met is a true enlighten
ment. He is my favourite paradigm for a certain class of rather
obscure Apes. Pierpoint used him as an illustration, when I had
my course, and it was through him 1 met Ratner. At the time of
my invitation I received a report 01 him from Pierpoint. I will
use it for your instruction.
R.'s career opened not long before the War when he emerged
from the East End, with Freud for his Talmud and amongst what
the cafe-world of the time offered he manoeuvred sexually up and
down. During the War he went away. That over, like thousands
more he marched out upon what was left of life, painfully anxious
to make up for lost time. A promised land (purified by bloodshed
and war debts) lay stretching to the horizon. Julius married a
big carrotty anglish intelligentsia. Thereupon he had dough. He
settled down to be a gentleman and to forget the ghetto.
They lived in married intellectualist sin in Chelsea. But one
fine day this buxom heiress marched off to Rome with a lover.
Julius was left in the soup. The blow was bitter. The world
had, as far as R. was concerned, been purified in vain (with blood
and debts) and made safe for democracy to no object. Thousands
of R.'s who had not shot their bolts swarmed all about him., R.
at thirty odd (putting the clock back to twenty-five thereabouts
for the purpose) took too-late-for-success or even to stand a dog's
chance to homosexual intrigue. —But he made money in the book-
business. He paid two old men at this time to take an interest
in him. One of the old men cheated and went off with a forte
somme. He chased him to Vienna and had the law of him.
Generally these tardy efforts overstrained the psychic resources of
Julius. He went to a mental hospital. These events he inclined
to discuss with all comers, with his own glosses. He paraded a
hundred simultaneous complexes and was happy after a fashion,
weaving an ingenious web of cheap glamour—with a spider that
w:as Eros, and himself the little gilded fly. Women he would
approach with deferential circumspection, his head on one side,
and, with the profit derived from his trading in second-hand books,
he set himself up tant bien que mal. But Ratner had lost the land
flowing with milk and honey : he knew it would never spon
taneously drip. He was sad for good, but in a drab practical,
indeed rather lousy manner.
Pedagogue of his own complexes, Ratner's knowingness is of
a good old fashioned garrulous order. Of the type he represents
he is ancien regime. He should give you a good lunch, he pays
everybody unobtrusively to let him unburden himself to them,
138 APES OF GOD
and explain the unpleasant mysteries of his sex-life. Do not
omit to feel some compassion—such as you would experience, it
may be, if you met a dung-beetle and it had just had what it
believed to be the last ball of excrement in the world taken away
from it. He is a valuable specimen of the Ape of God.
Dick Whittingdon (do not confuse him with the Lord Mayor
of London) is another thing altogether—he is the authentic Ape,
the world's prize Ape, I am ashamed to say. (I have to show him
to you—I apologize for this member of my family). Where
Ratner is intelligent in a sort of misbegotten way Dick is a mere
fool. There are one or two points of contact. He is parted from
a wife ; a considerable property he inherited shortly after the
War, March Park, opened to him superficially, from the other
extremity of the social scale, the land of milk and honey of
Shiebertum. But he was not only too old as he regretfully decided
but far too clumsy and not very clever (as well as bald and
rheumatic) to become an Oxford-voiced fairy-prince. So Dick
Whittingdon cast around for some recognized vice that might
compensate for this social handicap. The pornographic litera
ture of the camp and barracks (and for Dick the horizon of Letters
was more or less that) suggested a solution. So he is a noted
amateur flagellant. Whip in hand, Dick Whittingdon faces the
world. It is the birch-rod of the decrepit gallant, in the old
love-books, that gives the poor man a face, and enables him to
hold up his head in a universe of dogmatic perversion.
Do not forget to ask to see his whips !
Next week I will accompany you myself to several choice
places.
Adieu.
Horace Zagreus.

After the signature came a few further instructions, scribbled

in pencil.
Of all this Dan retained nothing at all as he ended, except the
concluding sentence—" Next week I will accompany you my
self"—made him feel quite giddy with joy. He stood up, swayed,
and sat down, his eyes were swimming with ecstasy.
The door knocked, there were two knocks, Willie Service
entered slowly. He was dressed in a hairy lounge suit of silver-
blond, and pale suede brogues and felt hat to match. He was
extremely attractive with a slight dark moustache. He went
over to Dan and attempted to salute him goodmorning facetiously
upon the cheek. Dan furiously blushing repulsed him and left the
 BE NOT TOO FINICAL 139
table, with precipitation, a piece of toast in his hand. He un
obtrusively drew his overcoat closely about him to dissimulate the
erotic splendours of his night-suit.
In a sleek falsetto Willie began in the heavy Berlin lisp :
" Also es war niemand da ?—No sign of the newt ? "
Dan showed it was in the negative, while he stuck the toast
into his blushing head, and avoided by means of a graceful series
of retreating and compensating forward steps, a clot of marmalade,
which pitched down from his raft of toast.
" I thought as much " said Willie.
Dan smiled sheepishly, in heavy clownish mastication revolving
the round O of the sheepish smile, a greedy boy.
Willie Service gave the punching ball a smart cuff and the
ball darted at him through the air. But he side-stepped, puffing
a laugh at it as it sped back.
" The top of this house smells like a distillery " he said.
" It's Mrs. Phillips " said Dan.
" I know. Why don't you ask for a room lower down ? "
Dan looked at him gravely, munching.
" I used to live up here " said Willie. " There is an odour of
whisky for half an hour in the passage after Mrs. Phillips has
scrubbed up here." He sniffed at the door. " That is not the
case when she scrubs lower down."
Dan reached over for his cup of cold coffee.
" I used to be sickened by a stench of Scotch " said Willie
" when she brought in the breakfast, when I lived up here."
Dan put down his cup.
" That is because she is so short-winded " Willie Service said
severely. " Now I am downstairs that does not happen. I can
only suppose that downstairs there she is not so short-winded. At
the top of the house she is always puffed."
Dan gazed at him very seriously indeed, head-on and chin
lowered.
Willie Service went round the table to him, Dan retreating.
Willie attempted to throw his arm around his waist.
" You old man's darling ! " he said laughing, going away
again. " When are we going after the old egg-and-butter man ?
He is very furtive ! I saw him in the distance yesterday, but he
turned into somebody else and when I got up with him he had
become my aunt Susan Service."
i4o APESOFGOD
He squared up to the ball and, staring it out, approached
his gripped-up jutting jaw till their skins touched. He turned
about.
" Well. I must go after the newt " he said and left the room
slowly.
PART V.

THE SPLIT* MAN

WOKEN by Mrs. Lochorc, Ratner thought he saw the sun
through the window of milled glass in the room at the
back, into which he looked from his big cheaply damasked
love-nest in the front one. That was not so, it was a mirage, as
he perceived when the charwoman pulled back the curtains,
hauling upon the leaded rope. The tesserae of glazed bricks/and
the windows, he could see were wet, and the air was its habitual
grey. This coarse dirty light, with the withdrawal of the curtain,
exploded in the bedroom. It struck the hard red face of the
char.
He saw himself, Julius Ratner (" Joo " during early days in
Whitechapel, that had been spelt in joke at times, by some grim
hearty, "Jew "—but disarming winsome plain british " Jimmie "
was preferred by him) he saw Jimmiejulius plunged once more
into a sort of eternal flash-light photograph, when God—the
abrahamic fire-god of Mr. Zagreus—with the sunrise, every
morning, began shooting the world. The god turned the handle
quickly or slowly : very slowly at first—the God of Abraham was
a tired god, although still fairly jealous. In this bath of unplea
sant light Ratner lay blinking, rattish and cross, at being recalled
to effort—not being a blue-eyed Son of the Morning as he per
fectly well understood. But he was nevertheless, in his real-life
feuilleton, the hero discovered upon his for-publicity-purposes
much-loved-in bed. It was a sad story. It was a very dreary
bitter little plot. This highbrow-sub-sheik of the slum had been
the triste-est Tristan tricked out in the dirtiest second-hand
operatic wardrobe—the shoddiest Don Giovanni—the most
ludicrous Young Lochinvar—the most squalid Sorel, he had
been the most unprepossessing sham Ratnerskolnikoff without
the glamour of poverty of the Russian (because of his healthy
business sense) —he had been the Judas without the kiss (for no
fairly intelligent Christ would ever trust him) with a grim apocry
phal lech for a Magdelen—he was the Childe Harold without
the Byron collar, and worse, sans genius—the Childe Roland
without the Dark Tower, or corpse-like Adolphe, a Manfred or
a Zara, risen again, but who could only half-live—the eternal
141
t44 APES OF GOD
imitation-person in a word, whose ambition led him to burgle all
the books of Western romance to steal their heroes' expensive
outfits for his musty shop—the split-man of another tale.
And now the morning eye-glue of ycllow-lidded, sleek-
necked Joo, was attacked by the tear-glands which he had. This
was but a desiccated trickle because Joo was a parched wilder
ness of an organism so much more colloid than aquatic. But still
a few gouts gushed in the yellow rock and his mouth held that
taste of dry decay that was the invariable accompaniment for
Rather of waking, presage of the disappointments of a gastric
order ensuing upon the coffee.
Julius Ratner did not rise in solitude, he came to life to act at
once. He was not without his audience. Every morning he was
accustomed to make his bow, bashfully to incline his head and
then skip out of sight, with white teeth bared (ivories that figured
in income-tax returns as necessary business exes like Guinnesses and
taxis) demonstrating the eternal youth that goes with cabotinage—
proverbial stoicism of the great calling of Make-believe. Then
every morning Joo had his gallery, because one Lochore is much
like another. House Full would not be just bluff. Lochores are
only abstractions, they are called " gods " and that is probably
the reason. They are not personal—forJoo gods were that, and the
anonymous Masses.—Mrs. Lochore, in this first blaze of light, at
the beginning of each new day (undeniably the blinding light
out of God's belly) was always there in her place.—Mrs. Lochore
was paid for her regular attendance.
But it was a woman's eye, the char's represented the Publicum
—even that idiot-swarm that clotted the Artists' Entrance of the
theatre, to mob its matinee-idol. Her kind was that unnumbered
sheep. He was but an inferior and rather dirty Star—a glow in the
worm but of low magnitude, now cast for oldish parts, yet as
Jimmiejulius as late as the Battle of Mons he had played juvenile-
lead, and it must be a treat for the widow of the night-watchman
Lochore (with the grand name, that took with it something
gallant and fierce, the remote foaming at the prows of piratic
canoes, and all the physical splendours of Scotland), to be in the
same apartment as a half-awake Star (whatever the age in
light-years or the paltry magnitude) every morning, which was
better than the stage-door (though this was figurative since
Ratner had never in fact trod the boards at all, though a born
 THE SPLIT-MAN i45
Variety Pro—dance-turn—very musical—with comic relief with
moist-eyed bathetics upon the trumpet-viol) —and then empty the
stellar slops !
After a prostrate spell of sudden inanition, too sluggish to
want to come-to-life at all (habits of hibernation in the serpent-
blood) Mr. Ratner was ready. He brought to mind his cold. A
low harsh rattle from the direction of his pillow surprised Mrs.
Lochore. Mr. Ratner had had a slight temperature—appre- ,
hensivc, she remembered her wages which were good with a twinge
under the corn-plaster—she looked over towards the bed :
apathetic but preoccupied, she bustled round the wash-hand
stand. She saw him out of the corner of her eye moving his neck
a little, circumspectly like a snake, and swallowing. The large
rugged thyroid cartilage travelled up and down the front of his
throat. She poured the discoloured water of the wash-hand basin
into the service slop-pail.
" The cold's not gone has it Mr. Ratner sir. It's a bitter wind
this morning, you should be careful and see you don't get a worst
one sir. These winds we're having is very treacherous."
The papers said daily, pneumonia was very prevalent, and
the wind was very treacherous. She read of all the deaths from
colds.
" I know Mrs. Lochore. But that's so dif-fi-cult " Joo whined
with condescension.
He analysed as usual some seemingly selected three or two-
syllable word.
" That's what you gentlemen always say you ' can't stop in '—
prevention's better than cure, if you didn't go out in this bitter
wind Mr. Ratner sir it'd be gone tomorrow " she whinnied back
at the whining invalid and coughed, to lend point to her
exordium.
" But I caant Mrs. Lochore I wish I could ! " Joo's plaintive
rusty pipe exploded. " I caant Mrs. Lochore stop in ! "
Oh shut up, she thought. Now why can't he for once the
old char perforce must reflect, deny himself to those outside just
for once ! " Oh I believe you could sir ! " cried she in a loud
tone.
" But I have to go and play TENNIS ! " hissed Joo while he
watched the rugged old bitch of the bull-dog-breed shake his
pretext roughly—before dropping it to reply, as she quickly did—
146 APES OF GOD
" Play tennis Mr. Ratner sir ! "
" Tennis ! " he nodded, his eyes alight. Tayern-neece was the
way Jimmiejulius pronounced this last word of his piteous cres
cendo. And the disgust of the old bondwoman, anticipated, was
reproduced in the prompter's voice.
Most mornings Jamesjulius put himself in a good morning
mood with this familiar crone and this was the way it was done.
At will he would press a few stops, from his recumbent position,
in the rickety instrument, and caused it to play
God save our Gracious Naughty Mr. Ratner sir ! Amen !
" Play tennis ! " char exclaimed again, but the dummy over
did well-nigh, in imitation of Ratner, the horror-struck part. To
the role of deep humble reproof she was too much to-the-manner-
born altogether. Too crude a volume ofindignant servility escaped
from Mrs. Lochore. It gave the effect of fooling-the-fooler. The
contrasted points of view showed up too stark. Julius frowned in
his yellow-soap-sculptured sleep as he lay back and heard it.
But the good woman knew it was up to her and was at a loss—she
thought he had meant it was an unsuitable time of the year
perhaps or he had no racket, or was tennis not his sport or too
hot work or what ?—for often they misunderstood each other and
her tennis was not his toyerniss, nor his gods her gods. But they
got on fine for all that and money spoke soft and sweet.
Reserve a court—Ratner made the note (speaking of tennis).
His mind that hated all physical games, of ball bat foot or club,
forgot he knew on purpose, he was never reminded. So he blocked
in this memo, in bold black cursive script up in his cock-loft on
top of everything else, where he could not neglect it.
" You'll go and run about and get hot and then you'll catch
another cold before you know where you are Mr. Ratner sir ! "
" No I shaaant Mrs. Lochore ! " Joo wailed in teasing gritty
growl, very pleased—very very Spoilt-boy at this, very Naughty-
man.
" Well I hope you don't sir, I'm sure I do Mr. Ratner ! "
" Thank you ever so much Mrs. Lochore, I won't run about
too much ! " He naughtily yapped.
" I shouldn't sir if I was you ! You'll pardon me for sayin' so
Mr. Ratner, but you want to be careful in these treacherous winds."
" Ah these treacherous winds ! " he chanted in mockery.
 THE SPLIT-MAN 147
Beneath the crafty swollen eyes of the salaried british bond
woman foster-mother, he cuddled his pillow openly. For two
pins he would pluck a pis-en-lit in his bed, under the old grog-
blossom nose of her he would. Becoming very siamese-kittenish
Joo cooed, with the runculation of the matutinal catarrh.
" Mrs. Lochore ! "
" Sir ? "
Mrs. Lochore put down the pail, standing wiping heavy
chapped domestic fists upon her canvas apron.
" Used you when you were young ever to feel you would like
to go away by yourself, and escape from all the young men you
knew, and ....!"
Joo stalled, making a long expressive sigh but before it ended
a cough came.
" Never see them again ! " completing his sentence, he pas
sionately wailed.
Mrs. Lochore leered at Mr. Ratner for a moment, and said :
" I wasn't so what you might call sought-after not as all that
Mr. Ratner sir ! "
" I expect you were Mrs. Lochore ! " Joo retorted in swift
sneering patronage, from the pillow.
" I daresay I had a young man or two like the rest " said Mrs.
Lochore. " We're only young once Mr. Ratner ! " she said.
" Didn't you ever feel Mrs. Lochore that you hated all your
young men and wished you could never see them again ! "
Jimmie insinuated from the pillow.
" All my young men—listen to you Mr. Ratner ! I don't think
I had scarcely so many as all that Mr. Ratner sir ! We wasn't
not so fast, time I was young, as what they are now you might
say."
" Do you think we are so dreadfully fast now Mrs. Lochore ! "
blared Joo at her at this, raising himself an eager inch from the -
pillow to give her a better view of tht young idea.
" I don't know sir " said she, who was unprepared : " I don't
think I ever thought much about it sir. I don't see why people
shouldn't amuse themselves," she sniffed with indifference.
" I wish I could go away and never come back ! " boomed
the tragic voice of Joo, in vibrant sotto voce, the martyr of the
fastness of the New Age.
Mrs. Lochore was put upon her mettle : she knew Mr. Ratner
148 APES OF GOD
sir had put her on her mettle. She knew what Mr. Ratner was
doing.
" If you goes on like that Mr. Ratner " and she eyed him like
a suicide boasting of his cowardly crime, " I shall think you ought
to see a doctor sir ! "
But he sneered back, with criminal eye, a cruel encourage
ment. So she responded,
" What have you got to be miserable about my dear sir, I
should say you was very lucky."
" But I dooo Mrs. Lochore— 1 want to leave all my present
life ! "
All his present lucky life, what others would be only too glad
etcetera and he disdained.
" You've bin working yourself too hard sir, that's where it is."
A reference on the part of the char to the book-shop, " working"
was, not to Julius's authorship, although upon the bedside table
lay the novel telling of an impossibly juvenile-minded and even
sickeningly sensitive Lothario's most grim attachments (only a
decade gone) to unworthy girls when the Peace was young, and
Joo was not plain Joo but juvenile-Joo you were to understand
and get-away-closer was the proud refrain, upon the Rummel-
platz of Easy Money, astride the post-war pigs-in-clover, galloping
round the jazz-organ at the heart of the blood-drab Circus of the
bloody Peace.
" Yes ! Hard work ! It is ! "
It is love, it is the woman loving, always loving the lucky and
so lovable " great baby " that all Ratners lovably are—it is to
keep up with the demands of passion, that makes the lives of
Young-Joos-in-Lovc so bitter-sweet and hard to bear, Oh willow-
waily oh ! and Hey nonny nonny !, till after a few decades they
drop being absolutely " young " in despair, because of the obliga
tions involved in the mere epithet (when a really able Jujube
avails himself of it too freely; but never again do they return to
be just plain Joo Jack or Jill : Young-J-in-L becomes just J-in-L
that's all, with L in lovely capitals.
" You can't burn the candle at both ends not for long sir ! "
" And in the middle too ! " wailed, very very naughty, old
Joo coyly—and he gave his bed-clothed person a horrid homo
sexual waggle.
'' A rest is what would do you good Mr. Ratner sir ! "
 THE SPLIT-MAN 149
" A rest Mrs. Lochore ? "
" Yes a rest Mr. Ratner sir ! "
Ratner directed his eyes through the open door and fixed
them upon his correspondence, where several letters lay, placed
by the char upon his morning papers.
" If only I didn't have to open those letters Mrs. Lochore ! "
" Well why do you sir ? I shouldn't sir, if I was you ! "
" 1 know ! " Jujubejimmie bleated hoarsely, with juvenile
pathos, tossing upon his pillow archly.
" But I suppose you 'as to, that's where it is sir ! "
" That's where it is ! " agreed Jujubejimmie, repeating with
conscious grin that made him look more bald-browed, with his
flushed sleek sinciput, the english idiom —which rose in the mouth
of Mrs. Lochore so pat a reflex.
" That's where it is ! " the char then echoed him.
" It isn't as though they weren't all awfully nice people of
whom 1 am most terribly fond ! "
Terribly fond—of a select entourage !
" It isn't as though you wasn't popular Mr. Ratner sir, no one
can say you isn't not popular sir."
" Well I don't know about popular Mrs. Lochore ! "
" It isn't as though you was without friends Mr. Ratner sir ! "
" Well I don't know about friends Mrs. Lochore—I wish I
were sometimes ! "
" Oh don't say that Mr. Ratner sir. It isn't every one has good
friends like you Mr. Ratner, not like you have Mr. Ratner ! "
" That's just the trouble Mrs. Lochore."
" I can't see that sir you'll pardon me for contradicting you,
you ought to be thankful Mr. Ratner sir that you has."
" So you say Mrs. Lochore ! "
" Well I'm sure I don't know. Most people would envy you I
think Mr. Ratner sir."
And Jujubejim lay still and softly sighed at that ! The climax of
this long complaint had come at last—of envy that sweet attendant
char had spoken. The word ENVY had sounded upon her lips.
" Lucky I should say you was Mr. Ratner ! "
And Jimmiejulius allowed a livid eye to steal in the direction
of the flattersome appropriate char. And then it stole back and
he put down over it its heavy yellow waxen lid.
" Very lucky ! " said Mrs. Lochore with a final flattei\ome

r
i5o APESOFGOD
bridle. And then she went out of the door into the passage with
the service slop-pail, full of the self-appointed, self-advertised,
self-published, self-loved, almost self-made Star's surface-dirt and
clouded urine.
But Julius Ratner had worked himself into a false frenzy, this
was sure the gas for the literary engine, the petrol for the me
chanical pegasus. The creative ferment was announced—no one
was more surprised than himself seeing that with the good Joo it
was a settled habit to treat his muse as a bad joke, as she was
right enough. And when she turned up (every time more preten
tiously not-of-this-earth, but of some spurious, borrowed, gim-
crack millennium, staged on the Rummelplatz of that polish
market or in that swabian dorf) he grinned from ear to ear. How
ever, with Mrs. Lochore Julius had got going with the great novel
lying upon the table which was so difficult to finish. He saw two
whole chapters, in which the hero had a wander-year. The
Childe Harold, the romantic, the i83o note had been struck : as
he vamped his big succulent pillow he squeezed out a lot of high-
flown matter—a fine frenzy, they were mad words, they cata
pulted, sly and slovenly, here and there. And this, as Mr. Zagreus
had whispered to Dan, was " the lowly Whitechapel Ape in
Excelsis " and, as he had added, then, " that is why you must go
one day—he is your proper quarry among others : for, though
one Ape is not unlike another Dan, yet the Ape of that ilk has
peculiarities not found in the Brit (and vice versa) and it is your
duty to acquaint yourself with these. In short you must spot
and note up how this apishness that knows no frontiers works out—
when it is the keen disillusioned mind of that great race instead
of the dull sentimental one of that other equally great, that is in
question." And then Horace had supplemented that by the
day's orders and it was seen that Mr. Zagreus set some store by
it for Dan ; and that he had learnt his lesson well and was fit to
pass it on to the boy, who could doubt ?
For now it was quite beyond question at all that since Mr.
Julius Ratner kept a highbrow bookshop, a certain Mr. R. was
able to sell his friend Joo's books—and because as well Jimjulius
was a publisher, Joo was luckily in a position to publish his par
ticular pal Ratner's novels and his poems—and on account of the
fortunate fact that J. Ratner & Co. were the Publishers and dis
tributors of a small high-brow review called simply Man X it was
 THE SPLIT-MAN
possible for Juliusjimmie to puff and fan that wan perishable
flame of the occasional works of his old friend Jimjulius. It was
a concatenation of circumstances such as every author whatever
must sigh for. J. Ratner & Co. made its money on the limited-
edition-ramp by printing in white-calf the Eighteenth Century
literature of gallantry, in translations from the Italian and the
french : so the hearty exploits of some legendary squarepusher
of the golden days of Europe, pre-Marx and pre-Bonaparte,
among other things became gold that was from time to time
judiciously laid out to appease Mr. J. R.'s personal vanity. The
literary book-merchant who had given his name to Ratner Ltd.
could help his blood-brother Julius. Such was the involved
interplay of business and the mildest of literary power-com
plexes indulged invariably in a gentlemanly manner.
For five minutes Joo was in those throes. Mrs. Lochore
returned with the pail. She moved about the two rooms and
from the sounds (for his eyes stood heavily-shuttered) he recognised
her whereabouts.
Flinging up a bare arm, that was fattish and swarthy, Joo
turned his face over upon the pillow, left cheek up, as if offering
it to a hostile hand. Joojulius relaxed his large distinctly moulded
sallow eyelids : like a letter left deliberately upon a table
containing something flattering to the recipient, just where the
inquisitive might surreptitiously acquaint themselves with the
contents, so Joo paraded a sham-slumber. This was that long
lying-in-state repeated every morning. His hand lay however
against a portion of uncovered scalp, where, in the centre (a bull's-
eye, seen vertically) hair was no longer to be encountered. " She
can't see " snarled Julius to himself about Mrs. Lochore, " she
hasn't got eyes but holes : " but as the ironic comfort of its heat
passed down his arm from the rudest of nude scalps, dark fancies
began suddenly chasing each other about his brain, like the
furious darting of urchins in a twilight slum.—He passed on
gradually to that kaleidoscopic perspective of his day, and the
events rushed back upon him as though from the volcano of an
uneasy memory.
First came the " Tayerness "—to book a court. Then came,
out of order, Miss Joan Persimmon, Truby-King-trained : at
tea-time that was to be settled, she would go down to Katherine
at once at Radcliffe if suitable. Next Dan appeared to him and
 •5» APES OF GOD
the sallow death mask upon the pillow frowned—Joo picked
their restaurant, the cheapest in Soho with vile wine : he savagely
tipped the waiter, spilled six coppers under a plate as he left, with
a curse upon each. He did not touch the ill-favoured dishes (he
had a sandwich beforehand in a pub) —so much for Daniel !
Next came the morning's business when he reached the shop.
At this thought the suprarenals discharged, the intestines regis
tered a hot vibration : the gonadal glands were affected—diges
tion, love, instincts of battle awoke as one man, in Ratner there
were no compartments. He saw into his small shop in Soho in
spirit—there he distinctly perceived a man in a new dark over
coat. It was the day before, for Julius looked before and after
both at once—there were no barriers whatever. This thick-
fingered gull (big feminine-jowled, soft and shaven) was bending
over a large white volume. He had seen him before (he could not
get his name out ofhim)—the fellow was weighing its pornographic
promise against his big cheque in his pocket. The large hearty
fool frowned, for the promised manure did not docilely present
itself, as he turned the pages, affecting to be highbrow.
Ratner (as he had done the day before) hesitates. Then with a
rattling sneer, meant to be soft (but coming out so harsh the
startled fool looked up at him) he bends forward and says to him,
looking down at the book :
" I was reading it again yesterday. It is an astonishing piece
of writing. But I confess I was horrified—I wondered how I
could ever have come to publish it ! The part where the—Where
is it ? " and he guides the customer with a sleuth-like index to the
satisfying spots one by one.—The cheque changes hands. (The
gull's name was Geoffrey Gainford.) The customer leaves.
Ratner rushes incontinent to the lavatory, calling as he goes to
Christopher Sholto-James, his youthful assistant, to replace him
lest in his absence some book-thief steps in and helps himself—
for last week ten pounds' worth of books had been taken.
Rows of books paraded before Ratner from afar televisionally
as he lay in his bed : the big money lay in those behind the glass
doors, their value made them almost move about, like living
things. There were conversations that would occur : " Mac-
quire, Belfast, wants two more. (That was of the special edition.)
He owes for the last " says Stacey, If he is not out. " Well what
of it ? " Stacey got his goat. Old Hugh Keene was to do the.
 THE SPLIT-MAN 153
notice in the Collector. " I'll see what can be done ! " Humph
humph ! I shouldn't count too much on the lousy old hack :
since he's quarrelled with the Dove lot—and so on. —Don't forget
next Wednesday. DON'T FORGET NEXT WEDNESDAY !
Julius yawned nervously.
" That is yesterday. I should worry ! "
The report of the gas-fire came from the next room. Mrs.
Lochore said, standing in the doorway ;
" The hot water is all ready sir."
She nodded towards the wash-hand stand.
" Oh thank you Mrs. Lochore " Ratner drawled without
opening his eyes.
A door closed softly. Mrs. Lochore had now gone.
Ratner released a drowsy glance of immense universal dis
affection, it vacantly occupied the bed-room. While staying-put
for inspection, the lying-in-state, that was consoling. The eyes of
Mrs. Lochore massaged him in his attitude of a Venetian Venus.
This was, however, only in his fancy for Mrs. Lochore scarcely
ever in fact looked at Ratner, but as his eyes were mostly shut
he could not see that, and he believed Mrs. Lochore did so con
tinually, he supposed she could not help herself—and so how the
position presented itself to Ratner was that the presence of two
such obedient eyes of " faithful-dog " order was necessary to
beauty-culture—no human hand did the skin such good (exorcising
wrinkles, driving fat out ofits disgusting strongholds—under chins—
also, with him, about the eyes, most terribly dripping or slipping
down from the top). A pair of honest stupid eyes—that was better
than a pair of the most electric hands ever possessed by expensive
masseur what what ! But now the eyes had gone off. It was the
signal for the removal of the actor's mask. Ratner sat up in bed.
Sluggishly the clothes were urged down—Ratner crawled
out. In skimpy pyjamas, of a quadrated pattern, so close-fitting
as to look like tartan trews—a small yellow figure, thick-necked,
grown fattish in the middle, Joo sat scratching his head. The
legs—flat like fishes in the direction of their movement—spread
now at right angles on the ridge of the mattress. His feet were
planted in the nap of the mosque-arch of his namazlich. The
imitation of the compass used to ascertain the direction of the
prophetic shrine was swivelled so as to place the holy city at
Moscow instead of Mecca—an accident this with gentleman-Joo.
154 APES OF GOD
Ratner went to the hot water can, he jadedly poured out the
water, frowning at the steam, scratching his neck.
He slid his hands into the water. He soaped the channel
between the muscles of the back of the neck, a hand limply hooked,
with a row of four fingertips. The head moved upon its atlas,
rubbing itself cat-like against the almost stationary fingers.
Travelling forward over the occipital bones pimples were
encountered. Working the antagonistic muscles framing the
thyroid shields, he gently and limply rocked his headpiece.
With a thick glass bottle containing a substance resembling
vaseline, Joo prepared to dress his scanty hair. Altaean Balm,
the name of this material, was applied here and there over the
scalp " well-rubbed-in." The royal arms surmounted the title
upon the label. How disgusting : " flesh is filthy ! " was his
vindictive comment as the heat from the scalp entered his fingers.
Then over the temporal bones his eyes and fingertips went seareh
ing for whiteness.
Ratner faced Juliojim in the glass : he gazed at this sphinx,
which he called self, or rather that others called that, not Ratner—
at all events it stood there whatever it was. Impossible to question
it. Anything but that could be interrogated, but one's self, from
that no one could get an answer, even for Julius it was a sort of
ape-like hideous alien. Lo, it preened itself, it came back and
smirked, arch and earnest were its several expressions—it attempted
to improve its mouth. It would defy itself, in the mirror, yet it
was it, all the time—best turn away ! Such as it was it was that in
which Ratner believed—a rat caught in its own rat trap, for he was
cowed and dull, he was yet attached to the fortunes of the rat-
self—where it went Ratner would go, Ratner would defend it to
the end—only over the dead body of Ratner would another
approach it to destroy it. And so on.
Examining steadily his terrible life-partner, doctoring his
mask—" You beast, you beast ! " darkly Joo thought, giving it
glance for glance—how well it knew its deadly power ! Upon the
hard lines of pain, the age-indexes, nostril to mouth, the con
striction of the damp surface, the filling up of all hollows by that
foul yellow suet (the result of haemorrhoidal trouble, and cheap
mass-production intestines he was fond of reflecting with sharp-
thoughted Schadenfreude) he fixed a steely, glittering, feminine
eye. It was the scrutiny of a rival, woman against woman. And it
 THE SPLIT-MAN i55
said " hag ! " But frightened at its expression of murderous rage,
Julius began to change his tone. He went about to flatter it, in
the cheap words of this or that past bit of skirt—usually either a
Doreen, a Betty or an Eileen, a June, a Pauline or a Joan : JVo,
you're rather nice aren't you—rather a lamb ! you're rather sweet, I
think. Raather sweet ! he mouthed and mimicked. Doreen said
so, so that must be so ! A light venomous sneer detached itself
towards incarnate Doreen. You're just a great big baby really !
(again Doreen) —a diabolical grin of self-mocking craftiness for
the " great big baby ! "—He approached the disordered vertex
with a comb : the sneer changed the frown, in spite of itself, into
a grin of bitter coquetry : perhaps too it was as well not to look
at himself in the glass—think of Doreen or of Eileen, of Viola, or
of Violet and remain with his mask off. Therefore the bashful
smiling sneer remained upon his face. // was for Doreen. " Yes :
you're rather nice to know, aren't you ! " This time the offended
image appeared to require a great deal of soothing. " You're a
nice boy ! " Ratner coaxed it. Then he began addressing it as
though it were a dog ! " You are you know ! Come here I
want to tell you something ! " Ratner laughed. As he did so
he showed his fangs.
Beneath the mouth's straight overhanging line, lifted at the
corners as though with a snarl, the large teeth lay, more wolf
than rabbit. But the mouth had a shallow palate of the latter
breed, with these fierce tushes. The incisors and the gums
provided him with a flat and not a bow-front to his mouth.
His smiling was always restrained and unexpansive (which
fitted in with his sly habit of shrinking shamefaced bashful-
ness) for without being " toothy " it was this rabbit-gum that
thrust out the upper lip when he was smiling, and it inclined to
expose the tips of the two central teeth, like a properly " toothy "
person.
Next squatted Julius pyjama-clad at a high table, tapping at
his Portable Juventa pre-War model that rattled as he hit it (he
only used the stub and inkpot for swank—in private messages).
He stamped out swiftly, with few stops or caps, what had col
lected in his head while he swore to Mrs. Lochore that he would
prefer never to see all the young women again and give his whole
set the slip, his particular circle—and go away to live alone,
probably in a desert like Antony.
 APES OF GOD
Ratner types :
" Her face came from far away, it was a clouded autumn
night. Should he take up the question with her ? Why not ?
It had to come. Better now than when they were in the train.
The suspense would be intolerable.
Had his prose had any effect in muffling their passion ? He
doubted it. And yet !
Why, when he had wanted to explain the first time, his heart
bursting with sickening questions, had Alec moved away ? If he
had only stopped ! All might have been different !
v Let's be pals Alec, he had wanted to say, taking him by the
arm and leading him to the embrasure of the window, from
which could be seen the boa-constrictor of the black river. Let's
be real pals. A factory. Two freemasons. A cloud threatened
the tail of the serpent. A little child picked a forget-me-not.
She lifted a chalice. It was there. Epiphany. There were three
distinct vibrations.
The house reeled as the mob left the square. They were on
their way to the Prefect's house. The voting was heavy. It was
a new Chamber they were electing. The blind walls of the house
gave a sickening shiver. Rochester.
Why had Alec not listened ? If he could have spoken to him
in prose it might have made a difference. Who knows ? Every
thing might have been different ! The sickening years might
not have sped as they did like a series of red and white billiard
balls with a sickening thud into a big pendant pocket. Twenty-
six !
Look here Alec I owe you no grudge, all's fair in love and
war old man. I have staked all and lost. I am not difficult, I
don't think you can accuse me of that ! But I don't want the
love of Marjorie this side of Christmas, if we can come to an
understanding. Love is War. War is Love. Fate is fate.
Kismet.
Why did he dread to go into the canteen. Was he not alone ?
It was the old old question of mal-adjustment. You and the other
fellow. Dread. He would not enter because of this sickening
dread. Once inside all was different. What had possessed him
to allow this sickening loathing to take hold of him ? The
interior was comfortable. The walls sang with white light. It
was gas. What magic made all these people bury their sickening
faces in their plates and the great ehef passed by. What pass
word distorted the waitresses ? They were too new, he was
utterly exhausted and he looked up the next train in the cata
logue. It was Two Six. Budapest.
Why had Marjorie left him hanging on the railings ? A tide
of nauseous scourings with sickening drops of livid foam poured
over him, he made headway against it and he found the flood
 THE SPLIT-MAN '57
had subsided. He was free, but why had Marjorie not returned
or sent a telegram to say not good enough or better luck next
time, anything but Marjorie only, it was a sickening feeling.' This
was intolerable. It was the ravings of a lonely and forsaken
chapman. Marseilles.
How why and where ? Should he reach Marjorie if he was*
forced to return ? Had she really drowned herself ? For him ?
The sickening thought that it might be for him almost prevented
him from buying the ticket. The storm burst. He was over
whelmed with a tempest of tremendous jealousy, it turned his.
stomach and made up his mind that he must leave her neigh
bourhood for ever, this was final. Next time. Why could he not
away ? Why could he not hence ? Always frustration, always
struggle ! Life ! Why could he not strike his tent and depart
for good ? It was the best way. Was it not as easy to go as to
stay ? Not quite. He had forgotten the magnetic brown, darker
in the right eye, with an electric-blue spot in the left.
Yes but was not this a false start ? Who could say offhand ?
there was no track.
This piece of prose might help her to forget. Women never
knew till the day after next.
When he came out of the canteen he could hear the train
starting for the terminus. He would be there. He turned sharp
to the left. Two lampposts. A druggist's. Weed-killer.
In case !
The ticket must have a visa. Paul remembered the man had
told him second to the left and straight ahead. It was a large
building in a cheerful quarter of the village. There was a vitriolic
stench under the stairs. Who had been there ?
If she could hold him and have him. But no. The frustration
had left him too nearly unconscious. The spell had broken. The
question it was true was a fair one. If she could have him, she
would never return. But she should not. He would be too far.
He must put up with that. She had not notified him. Never
mind. All's fair in love and war. He wasn't grumbling. Better
luck next time. If he cast her off she would go off he could not
stop her, but he knew she would lure him back always lure him
back with the promise of the strange kiss in the Tube-tunnel. He
had no regrets.
Put in that way there were of course three alternatives.
Women always chose the last. Who do women love ? It is their
secret. He must leave all his sickening anguish to settle that.
Once he had bought his ticket and his visa he must never look
back. Whose fault ? His ? No no, she was in her heart of peace
the sole offender. Alec had always in his heart of hearts been
jealous. He was not in the picture, while Paul was as blame
less as Protection would allow, where a child was in question.
 158 APES OF GOD
There were three children. She had deceived them both.
Amberley.
Was Alec aware of it ? - He would never succumb because she
had deceived him, he knew Theodore had not intended to betray
them. Because she had forgotten that passage about the rock
against which the red waves lapped, that had spoilt everything.
Opposite was the creche. Gaily they entered it together, she
clung to his arm as though she were the child. Jaspar struck an
attitude in his cot, drawing his mouth down in an angry grimace
of hatred. A japanese warrior.
Why was it so easy to run on ? Why did he not "

Ratner stopped. He bluepcncilled Alec's heart oj hearts. Too

near to heart of peace, one heart too many so to speak. " Was
Alee aware of it ? " Ratner scowled at the question mark. " Why
was it so easy to run on ? " Ah why ? He scowled at that question
mark more heavily. " Why do women love?"—" Whose jault?
His ? "—" There was a vitriolic stench under the stairs. Who had been
there ? " Suddenly he saw nothing but question marks, in this
prose that had the property of muffling passion.
" Sickeningly " aware, he had suddenly grown, that he could
not proceed, not just at present, with this " sickening " composi
tion. With a remarkably bad-tempered jerk he plucked the
" sickening " foolscap sheet clean out of the machine. He stared
down at his prose with a hatred only accorded to persons and
generally denied to things.—But this was a personal prose !
The very vibration of the voice of the visible self Ratner had left
in the mirror droned from the violet-studded foolscap. He heard it
distinctly, up it came at him out of the paper just as the " sicken
ing " face had come at him out of the glass. That was the voice
of that person. Automatic writing, spirit-tapping this was as it
were, only he had seen the fingers and he knew the spook in
person. He had met him in the looking-glass.
He reread some passages of the message. Now was not that
just how that would write if it wrote ? It was the very accent !
The self seen in the glass, to be followed through thick and
thin, that all the same was one thing—this " prose " another. For
there was the Muse. Much in common, yes, but not the same
thing.
Jim's Muse and Jim were separate persons : two abstractions,
very sympathetic to each other, but strictly dual-personalities.
 THE SPLIT-MAN 159
The Muse-soul was nothing if not secondary to Julius Ratner,
quite a side-issue in fact.
This time Ratner certainly had been misled. It had seemed
to him distinctly that the Old Muse had wanted to excrete a little,
but it was a misunderstanding.
That deadly family-likeness of the creatures of his pen so that
a word written by him became immediately ratnerish and life
less, how was it ! That was the worst aspect of this composition,
referred to as " prose " of his, it had that look he knew at once :
the ratnerish thumb-marks never altered, it was an impact that
was soft and limp—not like the thumb of God upon Adam, as a
creative archetype—a novel something.
Oh this prose-voice ofJulius—auto-parley Ratner frankly ? He
nodded. Yes yes. All self. And freshness only comes he knew
from contact, when there were Not-seljs in touch, and things—not
nothing but feverish conscious people. Continuous Self—Con
tinuous Present : and where self is strong, why there art is weak
and that's all the world over ! And that was how the matter
stood at No. 5o Great Eustace Street, Bloomsbury, when Ratner
sat down to write.
A visitation of Ratner's Muse was nothing but a short uncri
tical spellancinothing elseT It was the brief power to be uncri-
tical. However, certainly he had been led to believe, in this
instance, that this was at hand. But it had turned out that that
was not the case, so tant pis. He got up.
Ratner did not move away. Rising brusquely to his feet he
held with his eye his most recent " prose." With hatred strictly
centripetal (in piscine flatness, with one large frowning ocular
disk), over the expanse of written matter which had been tapped
off to the dictation of his galloping brain, compelled to this faux-
naif inconsequence, his eye trampled, upon the paper. He identi
fied one by one those well-known ratnerish fingerprints. And
the sly frantic-eyed old hack-highbrow daimon—not the Muse
of a jaux-ndij for nothing !—had given him the dirty slip ! Here
he had been left face to face with this obscene diarrhoea of ill-
assorted vocables, upon the foolscap.
Ratner picked up the piece of paper with the tips of his fingers.
He examined it with the expression of a particularly squeamish
sanitary engineer now.
A page of idiot-questions. Did not this " prose " resort to
i Go APES OF GOD
continual impassioned asides ? It did. Of old with gnashing oi
milk-teeth bitterly, had not Joo recognized, with far-sighted
precocity, that this so-called prose (and it was far worse when it
was prosody) abounded in these signs of second-rateness ? Joo
had. To alter such vices would burn up more energy than, had
he possessed it, he would have cared to expend upon concocting-
a " prose ", thank you !—one without mechanical questions,
purged of cliches of the epileptic schools—without those thrilling
words in isoTaTionT^TEgTi-brow melodrama, and the rest of the
" sickening " tricks of the least ambitious, sham-experimental,
second-rate literary cabotinage—that would be to humbug self—
why he knew better uses for spare energy and such surplus power
(as he had not got) than to put to school a lazy old mule of a
Muse, to stop her asking rhetorical questions !
But a wave of especial pessimism traversed Ratner as he let
the stuff drop with a hideous shot-bird flutter of its foolscap,
upon the table. Oh how Joo boiled for a spell with militant low
brow " loathing," at all the powerful highbrow canons, in which
he could not make good now or ever, they were too dij-fi-adt !
Even the reason that those images of mal-de-mer occurred with
such " sickening " frequency was just because Joo knew too
" sickeningly " well what would be there upon the " sickening "
sheet when he had done with his mechanical table-rapping.
Now came another impulse of a disgust more absolute—from
a different, really an august, quarter. In Ratner the prophet the
third person of his triune self, awoke, with the well-known abrupt
ness of such occurrences. All of a sudden it was the authentic
thunder of the ethical rage of Israel, that imposed itself upon this
distant son. He was within an ace of crashing an indignant
biblical fist down upon the typewriting machine—mechanical
defenceless accomplice of his, in these improper activities. These
stolen hours, that should be spent more profitably from any point
of view. Afterwards, on looking back on it as they say, he wished
he had—but the time had passed almost at once. Within four
minutes of the first rising of the wind and pealing of the thunder,
Ratner had sunk again to the plane of Jimjulio. He was smirking
back in the glass, as large as life, in the teeth of the mosaic law—
as he doctored the crater left by a blackhead and inspected a
yellow fang, to rescue it from tartar, that encrustation of saliva.
While it lasted it was impressive. The nerve in Ye Olde Stumpe
 THE SPLIT-MAN 161
asserted itself with powerful pang. That bitter Conscience that
was so uneasy, that made the earlyjewish nation into the theologic
people, with a strong good-and-bad bee in its bonnet—caused
them to make canons of conduct in short for the entire Western
Earth for a period, up to last century—pricked this penultimate
Ratner, the last of the pure pre-War Jews as it were—one who
had crossed the Red Sea, emerged at the Armistice, but who
lacked faith and believed he had not crossed it after all or some
thing.
To perceive the unrighteous waste involved in the manufac
ture of a forgery of sorts, but one that could take no one in—it
was that that had come upon him, it was that to which he had
come !
Lord have Mercy upon us !
An article strictly desired by nobody was turned out in this
den of Ratner, at considerable pains, at considerable cost !
Vanity oj Vanities, All is Mx !
It had come to this, this is what His Ratnership had come to !
Lord have mercy upon us !
Upon a precious vellum, upon a fair sheet of Dutch-Mould-
made !
Oh Vanity oj Vanities !
One worthy of a better lot of words, sensibly assembled—one
designed by its Maker for a document of great worth !
Lord have Mercy, Amen !
A parchment that might serve as the repository of this or of
that—of a valuable tract against Woman's Suffrage, on behalf
of Wages for Wives, for White-slaving—in favour of Polygamy,
Polyandry, and Monogamy—of a five-quid vellum version of the
Song of Songs—of a treatise upon a tribe of significant cannibals—
of a pamphlet upon the Neuroses of the Analerotic !
Good Lord Deliver Us I
Yes, man alive, a lousy limited edition of an intellectually-
fraudulent book that no one could sell, that no one would want !
Save us, Oh Lord !
That would at last be remaindered, that would be sold as
pulp, that would be so still-born that it would never even have
the chance to die !
Good Lord Deliver us and assist us in this Day of Our Adversity !
Not even as honest-to-goodness bookstall hogwash, not as
 APES OF GOD
sale-worthy trash, not that even but of no earthly value what
ever, to God or to man—as low-lid fodder or high-brow bumph !
Lord have Mercy upon us !
Which a few penniless old friends must reluctantly purchase
perforce, out of their bitter pittance, and yawn through a few
pages before sleeping outright !
Intercedejor Us now, of thy Mercy Oh Lord. Amen.
A baffled shamefaced grinning bursting through the wrathful
mask, turned back upon himself in bitter sport. It stoned the
prophet in himself with rotten eggs and mocking his better-half
—the excitable Old Shepherd—Ratner swiftly left the bedroom,
directing his steps to the Morning Paper, and to Sanity (at a
price).
* * *

At tennis, after the court had been booked earlier as per

intention, by telephone to the club, Ratner with teeth-set de
feated his beautiful assistant, Kit Sholto-James (good for the old
'un !) as Kit being a discreet young man of no great parts who
knew his place, always allowed Ratner to do—and then Ratner
had a long relax at the bottom of his hot bath, as flat as an
alligator and quite still. At tea-time came the Truby-King-
trained smirking expert into the room upon the heels of Mrs.
Lochore—a nice fresh girl, Miss Persimmon—they came to terms
quickly and he engaged her. Jimjulius kissed Miss Persimmon
before she left as a matter of form—he attempted the usual
intimacy.
He was such a nice man and so gentlemanlike, he had said she
had lovely hair. He seemed a shy kind of man except you
<could tell from his eyes he was hot stuff ! Hands with a strong-
silent bedside-manner tenderly repulsed these advances, not at all
snubbing, the contrary.—He would have her that was evident—
when she brought the kid up to town—then the bright young
buxom Belfast body (labelled " Miss Persimmon " like a horse)
should from-the-waist-down receive his politest attention. (The
through-the-dress intimacies had prospered.) That was the
second nurse in a fortnight ! He bought Persimmon's third-class
ticket with a fierce sly smirk at her over his shoulder for the
benefit of the booking-office-clerk—a smug blaze of the coyest
 THE SPLIT-MAN 163
possible understanding-between-the-scxes (love having passed, lips
met, bodies duly having made, his and hers, the double backed
beast—in fully-clothed, blank-charge, informal rehearsal). At
the carriage-door he drove his yellow fang into her rose-red
Ulster lip in tender play (several there envied him, beyond
question)—he grinned in thick-throated triumph but turned away
his head, negligent and even so-to-say forgetful of his good-for
tune, and later Miss Persimmon waved her handkerchief in the
outgoing breeze along the side of the North-bound Express. He
did not respond, as soon as he saw it he turned on his heel.—It
had been eleven when he reached Colet Street—Sholto-James his
attractive mannequin took his lofty wasp-back down the shop,
in idle showmanship, followed by a Traveller, while three women
pored over an expensive book of vulgarly-selected verses for the
lettered Week-End public, whispering to each other about the
price. In the doorway he received a discreet ovation from the
char, Mrs. Dicksee. She was at work on the stairway amongst
some straw—she clucked at the master's silhouette against the
glare of the street, shouting that the wind was bitter. Sunny—
when Ratner reached the office behind the bookshop—transformed
her personality for the moment into a seaside en-fete, with girlish
indiscretion she welcomed her popular employer who was only
" a great big baby." Then the new jobbing stenographer, Fern
Hurwitz, a pretty young jewish girl, not to be outdone, even more
violently, but sombrely, glowed with glad welcome—while the
youthful Traveller who had followed Jimjulio in, smiled. With a
bashful smirk of the most deprecating modest rebuke man could
muster, Jimjulio passed in. The smile of the Traveller was not
lost upon James (as his grinning head moved quickly to left and
right to see on all hands the conquering hero come)—he took it
to betray an intelligible envy. He smiled in response, but he
frowned simultaneously : Such popularity—and with the ladies !
Seeds of scandal !—that would never do ! the frown said.
" Be quiet ! " said Jimmie hushing her transport with sheepish
flushing smirk—to the effusive Sunny. And the Traveller and he
went into the miniature office beyond.—The end of the day was
passed by Joo at a concert as the main feature. To that he took
(holding her in a fond close snuggle by the arm, that all and sundry
might guess they were probably sleeping-partners) the plain wife of
a celebrated novel-writing fakir. He held the hand of the wife of the
164 APES OF GOD
celebrated fakir in public as well as private, in the glooms of the
cinemas as in the vivid electricity of Shaftesbury Avenue. But
with the best will in the world to outrage the horrid fakir, more
than by mere hand-holding, the flesh (Ratner found alas) was
weak, was unworthy—finally he had to abandon all idea of earning
fully the coveted title " lover " or of making her in the absolute
" mistress "—after two cleverly dissimulated failures. So Jimjulio
confessed with great bashfulness that he had a venereal disease.
He had no disease, but when they went to his flat to kiss (as he had
to, worse-luck) Joo had received many extra pimples (of which the
wife of the woeful fakir had a great plenty, upon her chin and
forehead) because of this beastly obligation to clip and peck and
glue the lip. But Jimjulio was able and that was the main thing
to exult over the disgustingly celebrated fakirman. Fakir dripped
large bitter drops of unfakirlike uxoriousness over this person of
the weaker sex he had taken to his sentimental bosom. But Fakir
had been so proud and distant with Jimjulio. Drag in the mud
of gossip a little it is to be hoped, this objectionable fakir-fame,
Jimjulio or anyone could do—wound the too susceptible soul of
His Fakirdom. This Jimjulio not only could but would, and
he did—with the lowest archery of the dirtiest cupid, insult the
Sultan's bed, what !—the fool-fakir unable to object, being
impotent, or hating St. Antony's fire per se as much as Jimjulio
or rather more. This fastidious fakir was Julio's contemporary
and Joo had watched with matchless venom his rise to an arcane
renown. But that hateful effulgence should be utilised (via wifey)
to advertise Ratner and Co. By reserving a super-stall (once
even a box it had been, at the start—which Ratner converted into
a public love-nest, for the benefit of the fakir's highbrow public)
this was quite simple—so Jimjulio could get his own back and bite
his thumb at the Great, wreak vengeance upon fame and name,
make homosexual love to the rather attractive fakir by proxy (in
the person of this equally fakir-hating woman)—and this he would
do once or twice a week now—armed with disinfectants, of course,
for a boil more or less meant a good deal to Juliusjames R.
Half way through, into this bustling day of a Split Man,
stalked the tall and silent presence of Daniel Boleyn. A most
unwelcome interlude it was.
Going for the snack-lunch beforehand to the Beddington
Arms, Ratner found himself amongst business friends. They sat
 THE SPLIT-MAN
at a marble table—as it was a cafe within a pub and the Saloon
had tables. Principal amongst those there was Siegfried Victor,
though Hedgepinshot Mandeville Pickwort was a sharper man.
They were both Oxford-bred, half-mid-european men, and both
young. Ratncr was to publish their anthology of the Verse of the
Under-Thirties. Jimjulio would have liked to have a verse in, but
though most were over thirty they did not regard Ratner as a
writer in the running so would not draw the long bow for him
and get him in as a sham under-thirty at all, especially as he was
so old—but there was no reason to and they never discussed it.
On the other hand, the two editors found him an intelligent
publisher. Ratner was Victor's choice, it was he who knew him.
Siegfried Victor was a massive young man, even above six-foot,
and very broad shouldered, with a handsome nobly-proportioned
head upon a greek museum-model. With an expression of the most
stately implacable brooding serenity imaginable, Siegfried Victor
had all the appearance (as, an elbow upon the table, and a large
hand placed over his chin—occasionally it would pass beneath it
and twang the slack flesh of his throat - he sat and listened) of a
young patriarchal squireen, of a different caste in everything
from the six friends that sat with him. He had that air of sitting
in judgment, an informal pub-moot -upon anyone he attended
to, in turn, he passed a summary judgment - and now he sucked,
with a formidable owlishness, a bold black pipe. Hedgepinshot
Pickwort, who was a small bleached colourless blond, stared
before him. He sucked another pipe.
Ratner, with his craven smirk, his self-torturing mind—half-bald
lizard's stony head, that saurian skin, squalid stature—he was a rat
beside this empty aloof lion of a person : Poor pre-War Jew of the
People for better or worse was Ratner among other things (though
so gentlemanly and bashful) and he knew that Siegfried Victor
did not want to hear the catalogue of his complexes. Julius
belonged to a Lost Generation—to speak generationally, was not
he a member of a Lost Tribe ? He would go the way of the Elder
the Mediaeval Zion, with all his complex outfit intact.
Like a beautifully carved statue, a little over lifesize but of the
finest finish, Siegfried Victor sat and smoked. He wore his youth
with a certain heaviness, like a large sombre mantle of state.
Drawing judiciously at bis great pipe, with a disdainful detach
ment his eyes would run over Ratner as Ratner spoke. He sug
 APES OF GOD
gated in his presence perhaps a circassian commissar, an adminis
trator perhaps over a province as large as France. He had been
to Moscow on Film Work and there his bulldog pipe had been a
great success.
With his friend with the peculiar name he would bring out
the Anthology oj the Under Thirties, they were to be coeditors, and
with Ratner as the publisher. Also Ronald MacMark was there
and Joseph Workman, there was Maurice de Glehn and Bertram
Brown.
In the middle of the conversation Hedgepinshot Pickwort rose
with a sluggish stumble, he was dressed in a spotted and baggy
undergraduate get-up really, and he crawled out of the Beddington
Arms without speaking.
Hedgepinshot is rather a rare name and so is Pickwort, but he
was a poet and a picker up of words as he went no doubt, and
" pinshot " was a word Pickwort had picked up under a hedge
very likely, and Hedgepinshot carried on the " decadent " tradi
tion upon a tide of pallid very low-volted reactions, for what it
was worth, and was a very different man to Victor who was a
political poet of parts and a fair controversialist and a moderate
man, whereas Maurice de Glehn stooped so low as to imitate
Tristan Tzara. But Bertram Brown who was underfed and had
the face of a permanent victim of influenza, he had a brutal
bridling little pen—but he was under the influence of Pickwort,
which was a pity, but he did not follow Hedgepinshot out of
the pub and was quite nice to Ratner—who tried to tell
him about a complex, but Siegfried Victor nipped that in the
bud.
Siegfried Victor took no notice whatever of the withdrawal of
his coeditor Hedgepinshot. Nothing however could disturb or
surprise him. The matter was settled out of hand. Hedgepin-
shot's assent to terms had been indicated by his crawling stickily
away, as if his trouser-legs had been coated with webs of adhesive
glue, and a sort of bat-wings had compounded his two trailing
trousered Oxford limbs.
* * *

The lunch with Dan passed in savage silence, Ratner read the
paper part of the time. So far this was a meeting after Dan's own
 THE SPLIT- MAN 167
heart. Then Rattier improved in temper and thenceforth Dan
had a difficult time.
Much to Dan's alarm, Mr. Ratner began sketching in a few
witty strokes several of his more important Complexes. Dan
had never listened to such a repulsive recital and he hastily
swallowed his black coffee. But it had put his host in a good
humour and he was now in great form. He ordered Dan a
Zambaglione and he had one himself. He told Dan about
another Complex, a most diabolically unpleasant one, and Dan
shrank into his corner and only trembled and stammered when
Mr. Ratner solicited his opinion upon a dark point or two in one
of the more horrid of his intimate revelations, invariably connected
with the functions of sex and its painful and more musty " frus
trations."
Then for a short while Ratner settled down, one-man-to-
another-wise, to be confidentially improving in a more general
manner. Some of the more recondite Complexes of other people
were passed in review, with solemnest unction. Then he silently
watched Dan for some minutes with his small one-sided toma
hawk-disk of a yellow-suet face, with his large glaucous grey eye
(framed principally for the functions of measuring and watch
ing, watching and footruling and again watching—but always
fishily watchful above everything, this eye of the marine-bottoms
—at the end of its tentacles) .
" Zagreus " Mr. Ratner asserted unexpectedly, for that sub
ject had not come up so far, " Zagreus is a clear case of surplus
thyroid stimulation."
At the name " Zagreus " Dan looked up all boyish anticipa
tion, but at once he cast his eyes back upon the table-cloth when
he found that nothing was to follow, of a nature to interest him.
" I mean everything is enormously important to Horace."
He waited but Dan was sunk in a sombre day-dream pro
voked by the mere mention of Horace : as to what Dan understood
by important he offered no indication, he took no intense interest, as
did Ratner, in what was " important " at all—in the dull or the
exciting, in stimulus and its reverse.
" I daresay you have noticed how interested Horace is in
everything," Ratner softened his voice for the occasion, the
tenacity of his pedagogic purpose burning in him as with yellow
electricity.
168 APES OF GOD
" I wish I were like that ! " Joo whimsically wailed. " It is
enviable, don't you think it is ? To be able to regard everything
as terribly momentous, as Horace does, must be a very nice feeling
to have ! I wish I had it ! "
Ratner simulated a nice gentlemanly bashful brand of envy,
and he cast down his eyes. Then he raised them, and began
watching again the lovely downcast young head. He ground out
in sneering croak :
" One would scarcely know oneself, one would never be bored,
it must be won-der-ful ! "
Dan yawned slightly but involuntarily : he was extremely
susceptible to the word " bored."
" Horace has a thyroid surplus " then Ratner quite savagely
announced, and he turned his face round the other way and
watched Dan with the other eye.
No answer was received from Dan at all who showed no sign
that the word " thyroid " had stimulated him.
An idea occurred to Ratner as he turned over in his watchful
mind the baffling fact that progress had been slow. He said,
muffling his grin in a cloud of seductive frowning earnestness,
" You know what they say about thyroid ? "
Perhaps this young moron did not know about thyroid. And
sure enough Dan shook his head—he had not the least idea what
was said by them.
" It gives people who have thyroid-surplus that feeling of the
great importance of everything," Ratner instructed him, in owlish
pedagogy of a wiseacre wet-nurse.
Dan looked listlessly at the unimportant countenance of the
young Italian waiter, standing and gazing out of the window of
the restaurant—it would be jolly to have a surplice or whatever it
was. He had a pain in his stomach.
" There must be some explanation of Horace " Ratner pro
tested, with veiled indignation.
Dan showed no sign that he thought any explanation of
Horace was called for at all, or of anybody for that matter, and
(as he was annoyed) even if there had been (his unresponsive face
conveyed) Mr. Ratner would not be the person to provide it.
Ratner frowned a little nastily, at display of so little esprit de
corps, as between two people not relying upon the fictitious
stimulus ofa freakish hormone. He considered Dan for a moment,
 THE SPLIT-MAN 169
this hard nut to crack, because of its extreme softness. He
returned to the charge, he remarked impressively :
" Horace is an old man.—How old is he ? "
Dan simply looked quite blankly down at the table—was he
supposed to answer or was Mr. Ratner musing aloud and would
he reply to himself in due course ? Evidently the latter.
The ages of persons, outside the burning question as to whether
they were nineteen or twenty-one, left him completely indifferent
of course, when not merely confused. He thought Horace must
be a beautiful uncle—uncle-aged too.
" Sixty. Perhaps sixty-three or four." Ratner reckoned
negligently, gazing into the distance, down the time-vistas or up
and down the age-ladders. " You would not expect a man of
his years," said Ratner, " to be as interested in everything as a
boy fresh from school, as he is !—he gets dreadfully excited, it is
rather funny. There must be w reason " he suggested plain
tively, to the superlative youth before him, so sublimely age-blind.
But Dan had never known any man of such an age as that
mentioned (the age of grandfathers—a class of beings unrelated to
Horace or anyone he knew) —this was a question devoid of mean
ing, such as only Apes propounded probably, for the confusion of
men and gods—and of poor ignorant irish young-men, and he
had a dum head for figures and he wished Mr. Ratner would stop
doing sums and talking about Horace in this pointless way. He
did not quite like the way Mr. Ratner spoke about Horace, he
could not exactly say why — it was true that Horace took the
most tremendous interest, but he thought Mr. Ratner was sug
gesting Horace should be different to what he was in some way,
and not take any .interest, which was ridiculous. A perplexing
Ape ! He believed that he smelt—there was a smell.
" I'm sure it must be too much thyroid ! " said Ratner with a
rather bullying guttural emphasis, looking over the table nastily
at Dan now. " He always has been like that."
Dan blushed for he was not used to being pointedly fixed in
that way by another person's eye, he objected to it : the atmo
sphere (where eyes described their sly parabolas, or wandered
aimlessly, or made bee-lines for you) was public—that was quite
understood, no one could say anything (there was always the cat
that looked at the king) but he did not like it.
" Horace is an outstanding example " Ratner coughed a little
 APES OF GOD
asthmatically (he wished to arouse sympathy in himselffor him
self, by means of a little asthma) " an overdose of thyroid ! "
Thyroid—thyroid—Dan thought of thigh : at that he blushed
deeply. Thyrus occurred to him also tabloid or rhomboid—mathe
matics and medicine, those beastly subjects !
A sickly appearance of unhealthy human affection invaded the
face of Mr. Julius Ratner. Brotherly-love of a most " sickening "
order escaped from it—moistened it, expanded it.
" I have known Horace Zagreus for a long time ! " came out
a little haltingly at last, from this mask of unsightly benevolence.
" Horace is one of my oldest friends ! " and Ratner sneered at
himself as he said it, because of these strange human instincts
that would cause him to love so dearly, his oldest friend.
Dan believed something had not agreed with Mr. Ratner—
he looked so uncomfortable and as though he had a pain—and
Dan started to reflect that he had himself felt none too well after
the soup.
" I am terribly fond of Horace ! " Ratner burst out with a
croaking tremor.
Dan looked at him sharply. Fond of Horace ?
" I do not know anyone that I have so much actual affection
for as Horace ! " wailed Joo.
A cloud the size of a man's hand collected upon the brow of
Dan.—Why had Horace sent him to talk to this insinuating devil,
whom he hated more every minute !
Julius Ratner paused and examined Dan slowly : his words
at last it seemed were having considerable effect. He cleared away
as best he could the meaty altruism, the painful cloying varnish of
thick fellowship, the treacle of " old time's sake." which had been
called up for his recent declaration. An air of camaraderie, and
of complicity, took its place—its mark was Dan and he eyed his
young guest with an easy conversational manner.
" Horace is a most unusual man " he said. " He is very
strange in some ways."
Strange, thought Dan, indeed, when he sends me to listen to
this soporific Ape, whom, Dan thought indistinctly, must surely
be—what were those things ?—yes of course, be a Jew. But then
he remembered that, in his Day's Orders from Horace, something
had occurred about this particular Ape differing, in some respects,
from the pure Sassenach (who was called a Brit, was it, by
 THE SPLIT-MAN 171
Horace)—about his coming from the East, he thought it was, or
was it the East-End ? Was not that where those disbelieving people
dwelt ? Yes it was a point of the compass—East (not a country,
" The East," which was India). There was a barbarous jewish
horde, he thought he had heard, not far to the East of London
or Ireland. That was the East-End. It was " East End " Horace
had called it.—So (Dan concluded) he must be sitting with a Jew !
This was an uncomfortable novelty ! He looked up at that, and
he examined his host closely. He had never seen a Jew before—
and he hoped from the bottom of his great irish heart that he
might never see one again ! He looked away at once.
" In that respect Horace does not change " the Jew was
saying : " Horace has always wanted to be with young men ! "
Dan flushed with anger—at the thought of all these men Dan
frowned with cattish fury—this had got the goat of his arm-pit—
his breath blushed fire—he could wring all their necks—knock
the heads off them ! His muscles hardened, he became a young
man of steel.
" What did you say ? " asked Ratner bending forward, with a
light insolent grin, quizzing up into his face with an eye on
a hook.
Dan shrank back and shook his head violendy—to drive away
this foreign unbelieving devil who was getting nearer to him now,
the coaxing Ape !
" I thought you said something."
Dan gave the carafe of water a look of melting hatred.
" Horace Zagreus has not any idea " Joo unfolded his exclu
sive information, analytical and psychical, with the detached
familiarity of the expert gossiping quietly with an acquaintance,
" why he always goes about with young men. He always dots
as you know. If you asked him why he always went about with
young men I expect he wouldn't understand you. He doesn't
know that he does."
Horace always went about with young men ! Horace /—but Dan
refused to listen to the insinuations of this devil in human form
any longer !
" Horace believes—he is quite sincere, I know Horace very well
—that it is because of their ' genius ' that he always seeks out
young men of twenty, and takes them to theatres and to
cinemas."
178 APES OF GOD
Takes the young men to theatres and to cinemas ! Oh this
was a really horrid individual if ever there was one, thought Dan
—though he did believe (in the same way as Horace) in his genius,
it seemed : but he hoped very much that Mr. Ratner would not
begin cross-questioning him as he might do. He would then think
he was not so clever, after all, as he had at first believed, and as
Horace believed absolutely.
" He believes that every pretty boy of nineteen or twenty he
meets is a ' genius ' as he calls it ! " Ratner repeated.
He could not stand this person—Dan for some reason felt, in
spite of the fact that he spoke so much about his " genius," that
Mr. Ratner did not really and truly like him. He was beginning
to feel that Mr. Ratner in fact hated him.
" Horace has always been like that—his intentions have
always been strictly honourable " sneered Ratner " and he has
never lost his belief in ' genius ' —associated always with extreme
youth, and a pr6tty face ! Unfortunately, the type of beauty
which appeals to Horace you see is rather commonplace. The
result is Horace has never actually met with a ' genius,' which is
a pity. It might have opened his eyes if he had ! "
Dan had the impression that Mr. Ratner was spitting at him,
he appeared to detest him ! How he scoffed out his words—how
his eyes darted hatefully out at him !
" Horace has always repressed himself" in the strictest con
fidence Ratner assured Dan now—it was an exclusive, as it was a
superior, truth, that of Ratner.
Dan waited for something that he felt was coming, it was in
the air.
" Horace Zagreus is a man of the Nineties of course " Ratner
said. " He was an enemy of Oscar Wilde's. But even then he
probably always wanted to be with young men—to this day he
has not the least idea why that is."
Mr. Ratner was one of the worst Apes Dan had so far met.
There was a moment's pause, Ratner spied out his oppor
tunity.
" Horace is a repressed homosexual " in a rapid voice he
declared, stinging Dan quickly with his right eye. "Repressed."
Dan blushed, it was impossible to carry on a conversation
with this horrid man—he did not understand what these scientific
words meant, that people sometimes used, but however scientific
 THE SPLIT-MAN t73
they were not nice he knew. He reached down beneath the table
for his hat where it had fallen.
" Must you go ? " asked Ratner grinning, as he remarked the
nature of his movements.
Across the road there was a clock in a shop, it said half-past
three.—As Dan walked away from Mr. Julius Ratner he noted in
his mind, for his night-log : " A preposterous Ape—an unbelieving
eastern specimen. Should be in the Zoo I think."
PART VI.

APE * FLAGELLANT
THE servant stopped. Serving-men do not go straight in
without a decent irresolution, it was a luxury-shop : so he
drew up, he hesitated, he went in. Dreamy little pack-
animal, he received a pleasurable shamefaced sensation. It was
the chief show-girl of the shop-staff of the Malster Galleries that
gave it him, who hovered in lanky elegance near the entrance, in
wait for Kensington customers, to float before them, with
mesmeric hip, towards a parchment lampshade or a jacket-cover
wall-paper—and he looked pleasant in response to the sensation,
looking politely his best, as he removed his certified-driver's car-
cap with the same civil wobble of the body that served for the
foot-scrape upon the mat. Cowed by the discreet richness of
the bazaar he slunk up the twilit aisle. Going in among simi
larly-gendered cockney wage-earners, with whom he exchanged
underdog glances and covert amiabilities, he asked for his daily
pack. Stoutly secured, the picture-frames for Mr. Richard
Whittingdon were brought out to the patient discreet bareheaded
figure who took them up upon his shoulders, and he left slowly
by the side-entrance. There were seven gilt frames.
" Can you manage all right, mate ? " asked the aproned
carpenter who held the door open. The typical class-weakness
of the master descended upon the servant, the frames were not
a load for a gentleman's gentleman.
" Yurss ! " Cubbs blurted all polite derision, at such a com
pliment. " Ere, dont you go and forget them four, tomorrow
twelve. E wants 'urn sharp. E's orf dinner-time."
" E shall 'ave 'urn ! Withorf fail ! "
" That's the stuff ! "
As the servant entered Grotian Walk he perceived he was
followed by a tall young toff looking up at the studios.—" That's
im—what 'e was in conversation on the tellerphone over, yest-day.
K dont arf look soft."
* * *
Daniel found Grotian Walk without having to ask a police
man. He was very hot, it was approached only by hills.
'77
•78 APES OF GOD
On top it was mainly a terrace of bungalow dwellings, with
towering North-lights in top-heavy attics, pitched over rustic
cottages. There were tapering slits for the reception of can
vases, with small derricks fitted to their jambs. He fanned him
self with his felt-hat. Just before him moved with difficulty a
squab form, inured to hills, from whom sweat fell. Some beast-
of-burden of a lower order to be spotted at a glance, who bore a
load of picture-frames. Came to him a rosy grimy boy bearing
oil-jars from a gateway, and called to him :
" Ere Rich-erd Whiddindon where does 'e live mate ? It is
'ere aint it ? "
" Ah ! " Cubbs pants " where those 'ere cars is ! "
They all looked down Grotian Walk for Dan was with them
now, and Dan saw the Bugatti and he knew he was there, and
beyond it there was another Bugatti the same as the first. There
were two distinct Bugattis.
Outdistancing the loaded cattle Dan reached the first Bugatti
in some strides. Behind him he heard the rush of a van and
stepped aside. It drew up beyond the second Bugatti. Fortnum
and Mason was upon its sides. A liveried messenger went to the
rear and removed boxes from the van and they entered the gate
together. Cubbs now came in behind.
" Ere is that right—Major Wit-in-Tin ? "
Fortnum appealed to the lad with the oil-jars, who had them
on a sling like onion-sellers.
" Ah. First floor. Up them stain " said Cubbs, who breathed
heavily.
The second servant of Fortnum's put down a case within the
gate. The party, headed by the provision-merchant's messenger
engaged in the stair-case of clattering stone.
As they approached the landing a door opened and a large
figure in a paint-dappled smock with black-rimmed mandarin
spectacles for painting came out. It was " the World's Ape," and
Dan, preceded by the van-hand, waddling with his burden of
provisions, entered the Apery.
Dick, an artisan among artisans, went in with them, the
dirtiest workman there, chewing the cane tube of an underslung
chimney-pot briar.
" How are you ? Come in," he said to Boleyn, and when
they were all inside Dan fell among more people—inside the door
 APE-FLAGELLANT 179
was a messenger with a letter, gathered before a picture were
three members of the possessing class, one was a small bald
groom-like person in plus-fours—there was his wife, who rolled
jauntily beside him, puffing a cigarette—and there was the
midget polish lesbian, Bloggie, who sat in the largest chair upi;n
a model's-throne—she dominated two sucking doves, who
smoked in silence upon a divan beside the gas-stove, and watched
Bloggie, their fat flesh-yellow legs hanging down like four ripe
plantains, fcrruled in extremities of flowered gilt.
" We'll have tea Cubbs now " Dick said to the servant,
looking over at the window. " It's all right, I will undo
this."
" Very well sir " said Cubbs.
Dick signed the book that the belted page took from a military
pouch. He tore open a letter, he threw it down, beside the settee.
The bell rang in the kitchen where Cubbs was. The door had
remained half open. The reverberation of stolid feet came from
the stone staircase. Cubbs this time opened another door, from
the kitchen to stairs. A muttering came from the kitchen.
" How is Horace ? " Dick asked, as he cut the puissant thongs
that secured the picture-frames.
The frames were burnished ivory black and gilt, gilt and silver,
ones. He stood them against the wall where there were many
others, taking the largest over towards an easel, next to the one
before which the two people, husband and wife, were standing.
The horsy motorist, in giant scotch-checks, exclaimed, with
emphatic traces of trenchant Yorkshire, with a false nail-driving
heartiness :
" Damn good Dick ! Damn good ! "
He was looking at the picture upon the easel.
" I'm glad you like it " drawled Dick condescendingly, looking
at it too.
" Damn good ! "
Obese and smiling, with a face massaged to a floury pallor,
the small woman continued to roll beside her sporting mate,
with a jaunty assurance, cigarette-holder aloft in a pudgy stump
of a fist.
" Yes Dick I agree " she got out after a reluctant interval, as
Dick squinted at her ironically. " I should call that a jolly good
day's work Dick."
 i8o APES OF GOD
"Jolly good ! " husband echoed. " I'm not sure it's not the
best painting you've done Dick ! Damn good ! "
The Yorkshire brawn of the voice hammered in the hearty
epithets.
" I think it has something to be said for it ! " Dick agreed
with lofty modesty.
" It's jolly good Dick ! " exclaimed the seasoned connoisseur,
looking at husband. " Don't you agree Richard—Dick should
send that to the Six and Six, instead of the other one ? "
y^Thc studio echoed with their delighted Dicking, as the pair
f took it in turn- to Dick this rich coveted amateur, so haughtily
" county " (just the thing for their imperfect brand-new social-
life), conscious of all theTomming Dicking and Hailing that their
\ class-war-profiteered factory-wealth but lately-inherited, made
possible—proud of the presence of such as the noted lesbian (of
Gossip-column calibre) squatted in their rear—with whom they
would soon with luck be Bloggie and Jennie, shaken up like a
cocktail in the bowels of the Bugatti. Marvellous money that
turns everything into a pet-or-nick-name or a Dick-like something !
Who can deny it or forget that Bugatti calls to Bugatti!—so they
were the pleasedest pair they were (of small sporty swaggerersj
but oh mortally timid, behind soft flash summer-suitings and six-
cylinder-speed-prams—for oh, is not so much unexpected money so
\unreal and uncanny, when not possessed from the cradle up ? A
new proverb : A fortune in middleage—An eyrie in a bird-cage.
But Dick raked this preposterous Jenny with a cross glance.
" Oh do you think so ? "
This awful old bore of a wife of this rich mountebank marine-
painter, would stick to her stupid opinion and air her views as if
anyone wanted to hear them ! Small fat half-blind ex-cooks—
confused matrimonially with the legatees of rich manufacturers,
who were marine-painters, and however much socially a joke,
still with palettes upon their thumbs and with powerful Bugattis
--should be seen and not heard !
But the portentous old Jenny squared up at this. If she, the
artistic consort of a renowned millionaire marine-painter, must
praise, in the interests of social advancement, these attempts thai
were not bad (for a rich tyro) why it must be understood that she
would select. Beggars can't be choosers, but Britons never never
shall be anything but pickers ! You must like it or lump it !
 APE-FLAGELLANT i8i
The rugged spirit of the small midland yeoman was up in arms
—Jenny was nothing if not sturdy. The contentious bully of the
rustic pub came to life in her hardened arteries and matched
itself against the overbearing squirearch.
" Yes I do Dick ! "
This was a matter of principle.—And we have got a Bugatti !
" Don't you think so Richard ? "
Husband looked doubtful, the unprincipled flatterer. He
hoped something might occur to divert Jenny from this bone of
contention, which, once she got it between her jaws, there would
be no pulling her off it.
" Well I don't know Jenny ! " He shook his head.
The coffee-and-blue-scotch-checked Bugatti-Number-Two
(who was " Richard " to Bugatti-Number-Onc's " Dick ")
knitted his brows. It was the usual quandary—it was the
obstinacy of Jenny. She would lay down the law about pictures
because she had once played a piano in a Cinema for a living.
Everything else might be fair game for Jenny the law-giver, but
for painting she had not a mandate. No Jenny ! No Dick ! I
will not go with her, Dick, when it is pictures ! We're banded
against Jenny, Dick, when it is pictures !
" I don't know Jenny ! " husband said. Very serious con
sideration was called for, it was a moot point, off-hand it could
not be decided—no Jenny, not so easy as you suppose quite !—
though both you and Dick are right in a sense, for you are a
brilliant and superior pair I grant, and where one has to decide
between a matriarch and a squirearch—well it is no easy matter !
" I think the other one is better Richard ! " said Dick,
imperiously coaxing Richard with drowsy myopic smile, mean
ing that Old Jenny was above herself a little as usual and
Richard smiled back at Dick with a look that passed muster for a
vulgar wink—to protest that Old Jenny meant no harm but
would have her say, there was no denying.
But Jenny straddled obstinately on her two fat old pins, and
the angry army-and-county amateur knew the significance of
this attitude in Jenny and the bad blood mounted into his face—
while his north-country double, in the clownish check, turned
away his face to show Jenny she was going too far and (for he
had been a clerk in the Naval Reserve in the War) should haul
down her pennant and trim her sails according to her cloth, for
 APES OF GOD
they were on a lee-shore in spite of their bank-balance-ballast of
hard-fisted Halifax bullion.
" Well I don't care what you say—I maintain Dick that you
should send this to the Six and Six ! "
Richard felt a little hot at the thought of the lesbian sphinx
(of Gossip- column calibre) watching all this—but it was no
use, Jenny would not take a no for she was a great judge of
pictures.
" Oh you do ! Why Jenny ? Because Richard thinks ."
" I don't care a damn what Richard says, I maintain as I
always have the house is too red—yes it is too red Dick you
know it is ! "
You know it you naughty Dick !—a sudden arch softening that
promised a compromise was here—Jenny grew roguish.
Very pleased Richard laughed merrily with her, in anxious
encouragement.
" You maintain, Jenny ! You're always maintaining ! " but
Dick testily piped.
Richard associated himself at once with brother Dick, if it
must come to a mix-up.
" Yes Jenny you're ' maintaining ' again ! —Dick altered the
red, Jenny ! "
" I don't care " jauntily cries the wilful old Jenny, squaring
her jaw : it was clamped down upon the stem of the cigarette-
holder, caught between the only two teeth that had started life
in her head and not in another's, and she smiled most aggressive,
with the glittering false residue. " I think it's still too red. It's
far too red ! "
" I'm sorry you think I'm wrong Jenny ! " lightly and loftily
and fiercely sneered Dick, throwing up his head with eyes almost
closed to shut out this absurdity.
"Well Dick let's have them out side by side ! " the undaunted
voice of old Jenny rang out.
" Yes Dick ! " husband exclaimed to brother Dick, with a
fawning truculence. " Let's have it out and compare them ! "
Then Jenny would see, wouldn't she ? Let us confound Jenny :
Too red indeed !—don't listen to old Jenny Dick—you know what
Jenny is, you know my wife by this time surely !
With a manner of great seigneurial restraint, to honour this
little old girl (short-skirted once more by Fashion in her advanc
 APE-FLAGELLANT
ing years) grandly dawdling Dick goes over and drags out the
canvas in question. He fits upon it its guttering collar of costly
gilt, and then he plants it groggily upon the narrow shelf of the
easel and turns away to take a cigarette from the box upon the
mantelpiece.
" There you are Dick what did I say ! " the attractively self-
willed little Jenny is heard to exclaim, as she flings herself over
heavily in front of the picture, with a face of the maddest cross
pugnacity—and Richard after her, standing by to restrain her,
full of anxiety—and Dick turning from the mantelpiece coming
quickly up upon the heels of Richard, towering in the rear of
both of them angrily.
" What did I say ? You see—the red house spoils it. You
must admit Dick that the red house spoils it."
" I don't admit anything of the sort ! "
" I maintain it could not be that red ! "
" How do you mean Jenny—' could not be ' that red ! What
does it matter whether it could be or not ! " Dick peevishly pumps
out his argument, in spasms of rich-toned complaint.
" No Dick you can't have I maintain in a realistic pic
ture ."
" But it isn't realistic ! "
" res it is I "
" Really Jenny I don't think you."
" No Dick. I still maintain it's the wrong red, I'm sorry ! "
" Jenny is maintaining again Richard ! "
" Oh I know ! " brother Richard laughed helplessly to
f brother Dick.
The kindergarten was all alive with the dispute over the big
boy's oil-picture, with the Noah's Ark H for House that they all
knew he had squeezed out of the tube of vermilion, when left to
himself, just to be clever and steal a march, but only the little old
girl dared to speak up, and it was a ticklish moment. A thrill
went down the spine of Dan. Here if anywhere was the authentic
Ape-feeling to be encountered in the very atmosphere, and he
began composing his log. " Discovered Apes in bitter argument
over a masterpiece of Apish art. Expected from moment to moment these
higher Apes to fly at each other's throats. As far as I was able to
discover, a red brick dwelling the subject of this dispute."
But Jenny's raging voice was at it again hammer and tongs.
184 APESOFGOD
" You can't use that colour, in thal position—that's what I
maintain it's too hot. No Dick it's no use."
" No Jenny ! " exclaimed Dick, woundingly coaxing : " you
said yourself yesterday that it was not because it was too hot.
You said ' pure colour.' You said only beginnings I mean
beginners thought that to use pure colours—you distinctly said—
I'm positive—beginners."
" No Dick, hot was what I said ! No Dick ' hot ' I said."
Jenny grew waggish, wagging her old finger sexily at the six-
footer—rolling jauntily in his shadow, a tubby dinghy in a slow-
swell, husband would have seen it, with his old sea-sail's eye.
Dan blushing very deeply, had approached the scene of the
dispute. He gazed at the pictures. Richard turned to him, with
a dashing cringe, and carried his fingers towards his ears, smiling.
" When those two get together ! "
Looking at this man in alarm, as though a statuette had piped
up unexpectedly, Daniel withdrew into a corner near the door of
the kitchen.
With a solemn scowl of scorn the polish lesbian midget
squatted aloft upon the model's throne—she was dominating
her two sucking doves in attendance who sat like fat odalisks.
Her face was with twenty years' hard work as a polish lesbian,
with dyspepsia and cosmetics, yellowish—her eyes of an
obliquity roughly judeo-tartar. As silent as Dan, she modelled
herself upon the asiatic statuette, as seen through the eyes of the
Hollywood or West End Producer.
" No it's no use Dick ! " Jenny's voice rushed in again raucously
to the attack. " This is the better picture."
"Jenny you are ridiculous ! That's not the question. Yester
day you said the red was all right you said you were mistaken.
You've forgotten what you said ! " He flung down his cigarette.
" Now Dick ! " Jenny again was waggish. " Remember !
No Dick ! I was down on the red the moment I saw it."
" Down on the red ! Really you are absurd Jenny ! " in
exasperated accents Dick mocked her, the saliva collecting in his
mouth, producing the effect of his fiercely relishing a dish of lush
delicacies, as he champed his jaws up and down in impotent
excitement, like a nervous and short-sighted giant in a fairy tale.
" I shouldn't mind—if you only remembered. You might try and
remember ! "
 APE-FLAGELLANT i85
" Jenny is right Dick ! " Richard exclaimed in alarm, all of a
sudden. For he knew it was impossible to stand by and see the
memory of the law-giver attacked. Not one of those things that
were fair game—joke was a joke. Husband looked serious.
" Oh I'm glad you think so Richard ! I'm afraid I don't ! "
Dick gave Richard a very hard bright little rap with his eye
indeed—that's for you my fine fellow ! Darting his trunk round
to the fireplace he swooped and struck it low down with the
muzzle of his underslung pipe. A thimbleful of stiff ash shot
into the water-basin before the gas-fire. The chocolate-suede
feet flung out to right and left, Dick then went down the studio
towards the kitchen. As he went his person was quaked, from
chocolate-suede footwear to electrically-tanned occiput, by a
heavy hiccup. Its undulatory path ended in the back view of
his brown one-piece neck and head—which stood up starched
and stiff as the wave of the hiccup passed into space, and the
report sounded from his mouth.
Consternation entered into Jenny and Richard. As one person
they started to move after the offended figure, Dicking hard as
they went, in plaintive chirping.
" Dick ! I see what you meant Dick about the tree on the
left ! " cried Brother Richard.
" Oh really ! " muttered Dick as he drew away.
" Dick ! you're not offended are you ! Dick ! I'm not sure
after all ! I think the red."
The great man did not deign to turn but he called shortly :
" I'm going to see if the tea's ready ! "
Jenny and Richard fell astern—Jenny rolling squably but
rakishly in the wake of the departing full-rigged-ship, Richard
heaving to at her side. They both put their helms hard to port.
They began hailing each other, anxiously, in cowed undertone.
Dick drove into the kitchen, as if a battering ram had blun
dered in at the door, and it drew up upon meeting in its path the
form of Cubbs : bursting in the door he charged shortsightedly
half-way across to the spot upon which Cubbs stood. Cubbs, his
adenoidish mouth moistly half-open, and a dreamy masturbatory
eye of mild blue discreetly fixed in the far-away, only half-noticed
the entrance of the great studio-lord in the painter's smock. It
looked as if the too-civilised Cubbs, in a refinement of politeness,
affected to mistake Dick for a house-painter and decorator.
1 86 APES OF GOD
As, out of the fog that invested his short-sight (the two now
unspectacled dog-brown eyes, that could not see) the features of
Cubbs appeared, Dick was shattered by an involuntary hiccup.
It exploded in the face of Cubbs. During the recent argument a
big wind-pocket had been maturing and a real man's deep-
chested belch was the result.—But of proved steadiness under
fire, Cubbs did not blink. A little sentimentally he fixed his eye
—in a " Poor Tom "-Tommy's Tipperary stare—upon the long-
long trail a winding into the land of his dreams—just above the
right shoulder of acting-Major Dick Whittingdon. The Captain
was not the man to go to bed to be delivered of a belch !—and he
said loftily, staring stonily over the left shoulder of the servant,
" Is the tea ready ? "
" It won't be a moment now sir."
The servant continued to face his superior, suspended by his
susceptive glance from one spot in space—while the gentleman
blankly aimed a grand and expressionless stare at a similar
imaginary bull's-eye, in an opposite region of the same vacant-
ness. (Dick and Cubbs dwelt in the same vacuum.)
" Isn't the kettle boiling ? "
Dick was deeply shaken by another convulsion, but it spent
its force within, it was a dud.
"Just on sir."
" Bring it in as soon as it's ready."
Dick's bulk vacillated, it swung awkwardly about, he drove
back to the studio, passing through the door with a crash.
" Yes sir."
Dan had been forced to leave the chair by the door of the
kitchen. Upon the approach of Dick, his knees stuck out so far,
he discovered, into the fair-way, and he did not feel justified in
leaving them where Dick would have to pass. Upon that he
retired to the settee, which had been vacated by Bloggie's atten
dant sucking-doves, who had gone to lie upon the model's throne
near Bloggie's feet.
Jenny, rolling heavily, and with a considerable list (as she
was stronger on one pin than the other) came into port. After a
disappointing interchange with Richard (who was definitely out-
of-sorts and disposed to be critical), she had sheered off, and now
rolled in the offing. She eyed the occupant of the settee, and the
vacant place at his side, obviously making up her mind to drop
 APE-FLAGELLANT '87
her anchor. Her roving half-blind old piratic eye had noted a
lonely young man, sitting upon a settee. The young man looked
disconsolate she thought, and there was only one thing to do.
So Jenny sat down beside Dan in the most friendly way and
with a semi-maternal (young-for-a-motherly) camaraderie, cocked
a hail-fellow-well-met eye of understanding at the young chap's
face, and said to the poor young man, point-blank and pally,
" Are you a painter ? "
With an impulse he could not control Dan withdrew a couple
of pygmies' lengths on seeing this strange craft descend upon
him—so charged with jolly energy, so full of ballast and abundant
in the beam, so stricken with involuntary momentum, so inclined
to sag to starboard—and seeing her starboard was his port.
Jenny settled herself upon the settee, it began to oscillate with
a billowy movement that flung Dan about from side to side. He
was compelled to steady himself against the massive walls, which
backed this too elastic, distinctly choppy, surface.
" Don't you think Dick's last painting is good ? "
One question—a first, and perhaps a last—can always be
ignored. But at her second question Dan half-rose, in panic,
intending to leave the settee, for as she spoke she developed, he
remarked to his great alarm, rather more movement, as a battle
ship most probably does when it discharges its guns. Also she
exaggerated the angle of her inclination to starboard, when in
speech, and distinctly approached him across the quivering surface
of what was their common element in this position—while he
retreated, flung back against the circumscribing walls, padded
and sprung for such eventualities.
Dan did not rise however, for half-way he caught the eye of
a recumbent sucking-dove, so he clung on slowly. He shook his
head.
" A shy boy ! " thought Jenny. She continued to leer at him,
pleasant and open, rakishly maternal. Jenny was used, in hus
band's pictures, to the open spaces of the ocean. The bluff ways
of blue-eyed Jack Tar were her daily ship's-ration, and as a con
sequence she would hail a fellow and say well-met ! as soon as
look at him and all was frank and free on the ocean-wave of John
Buchanan, born i 880 and still going strong !
But Dick drove lazily back, kicking a few footballs with his
brown suede footwear to right and left, with Richard clinging to
 APES OF GOD
him like a Rugby forward, tackling very low, in a doubled-up
cringe indeed. Rakishly maternal still, old Jenny transferred her
merry eye to her sulky host. Then Cubbs brought in the tea,
and all partook. Dan had the greatest trouble with his tea-cup,
riding as hr was upon a perpetually agitated superficies.
The conversation languished in the studio as the tea, the
friandises, and the tiny sandwiches found their way into the
assembled stomachs. For Dick Whittingdon was no conversationalist
although highly argumentative when roused, and was distinctly
annoyed into the bargain. Richard held down Jenny as best he
could, whereas Bloggie never spoke at all, and Dan was much
the same, and there only remained the two attendant odalisks—
who were, both, heavy and coy dependent-creatures, half-sleep
ing like dogs, and they took their cue from their dumb goddess.
So it was an impasse.
Dan cast about for a way to go, for he was due at Yarmouth
Place. But just then one of Bloggie's team exclaimed in a deep
voice.
" Oh Mr. Whittingdon may we see your whips ! Would you
mind showing them to us ? "
And the other one immediately bayed, behind her :
" Do you mind terribly showing them ? Would it be a bore ? "
Dick rose. They all gdt up.
Do not forgtt to ask to see his whips ! Dan remembered : and
although he felt a little nervous, he thought he had better stop, in
fact he must for Horace had particularly enjoined him to do so
and he must not leave Mr. Whittingdon's house without having
seen his whips.
The party now headed towards the door by which Dan had
entered, led by Dick Whittingdon, and in silence they passed out
into the stone passage.
" Who lives there ? " whispered one of the two friends of
Bloggie to the other hoarsely, as they passed the door of a
studio.
" No one " the other replied.
" No one ? How very odd ! " said the first.
" Not at all ! " said the second.
" Don't you think so ? " said the first.
No one lives here, except Mr. Whittingdon " said the
second.
 APE-FLAGELLANT 189
" Aren't the other studios let ? " asked the first.
" No," said the second.
" Aren't they good studios ? " asked the first.
" Very good," said the second.
" Why aren't they let then ? " said the first.
" Because Mr. Whittingdon has rented them," said the
second.
" All of them ? " said the first.
" Yes the whole block " said the second.
" Oh " said the first.
Here was an Ape indeed! reflected Dan upon hearing this in
spite of himself as he walked at their side. He rented all the studios,
there must be quite ten studios—in this way the " world's Ape,"
it could easily be computed, must prevent ten geniuses from
having a roof over their genius, and must keep them in small
ill-lit rooms while he sat on all these valuable workshops in soli
tary egotistic state—and there was a splendid passage waiting, for
his evening's log !
The party entered the studio immediately above the one they
had just left. It was almost empty, except for a few large rocking-
horses, parallel bars, a miniature american bar, a dentist's chair,
and three settees. A red drugget led to a pair of steps : there
were piles of canvases against the wall beneath the window, a
hookah bottle or a narghile, and phials and glasses upon a table.
At one end stood a large black cupboard.
Collected in the middle of this studio, like a party in the charge
of a lecturer in the gallery of a museum, they waited, a little
huddled together. With well-pleased showmanship, all in dumb
show, Dick approached his black cupboard. Catching hold with
difficulty of the little metal process over its lock, he pulled it
open, after several tries with a peevish oath.
But Dan had grown increasingly alarmed. The greater
tenseness and mock-melodrama of the atmosphere of this sight
seeing party was most marked. They had settled that they would
go about this personally conducted tour, to see some whips, as if
they had been engaged in the business of a dark ritual, and the
clap-trap of their solemn huddled silence sent his blood cold and
Dan wished himself anywhere but where he was. He had begun
to eye askance this collection of people, with whom he had come
to inspect some objects, of a mysterious nature, it now seemed,
 APES OF GOD
though he had been told they were only " whips." Certainly a
whip was a dangerous plaything like a shotgun. But he had often
seen whips, especially in the country in Ireland, and his uncle
had a dog-whip which he had once cracked, when in high spirits.
But the attitude of these habitues of the Ape-world was disquiet
ing in the extreme, and he began to think that this time he had
got amongst a number of very dangerous Apes indeed.
As the doors of the cupboard, first sticking together, flew
violently open, striking Dick who staggered back crossly, old
Jenny uttered a hoarse squeak.
" Oh Dick you've got a new one haven't you ! What a beauty !
I'm sure I've never seen that before ! What is it ? "
" It is the thong of a Bokharan cow-herd," said Dick impres
sively, very big-boy-at-school. " It is made of goat-gut."
" Oh I think that's sweet Dick, don't you Richard ? " she
gruffly trilled, and Richard came in far down in the bass in assent.
The party in a compact body had approached the black
cupboard. Dan could not see what they were looking at, they
were in the way.
" I know a man who had a marvellous slave-whip ! " said one
of Bloggie's she-chaps.
" Arab ? " Dick asked with professional expert succinctness.
" I believe so."
" This is a most lovely one Dick ! " exclaimed Jenny, who had
hold of it.
There was a loud report. Everyone jumped except Dick who
was quite unconcerned. Jenny had cracked the cow-herd's whip
in sport.
To Dan's great horror Jenny was spying him out he could
see—and he lost no time, he went quickly in behind the two
friends of Bloggie, his heart beating, where he waited.
But he heard the voice of the old harpy in his ear almost at
once, for she had followed him. And holding out to him a stained
and reddish thing, that resembled a fat dead snake more than
anything, which had a sleek and sinuous waggle as it oscillated
restlessly in her hand, with a carved handle of oily wood, she
laughed, he thought, in a most significant threatening manner as
she said,
" Feel how heavy it is ! You wouldn't think it was made of
goat-gut would you ? "
 APE-FLAGELLANT 191
He was forced to grasp this horrid object, and, pale to the
lips, he held it for a moment, while it writhed in the air, until it
fell to the floor, where Jenny picked it up.
Richard took the thing from Jenny, he examined the carving
upon the handle, with frowning punctilio.
" Very nice isn't it Dick ? " he said, holding the thing up, the
carving, to Dick, with the air of understanding the craftsmanship—
his professional reserve had the thrill of all things deep. The
freemasonry of the arts has its cabbalisms—Richard used a certain
gesture.
But by this time Dan was beside himself with apprehension.
While Jenny had been bending down to pick up the whip, he
quickly removed himself to the opposite side of the group, where
he at once caught sight in one terrified glance of a perfect hedge
of birches, drover's whips, bamboos and martinets, within the
gaping inside of the great black cupboard. His eyes fixed at his
feet he stood before Mr. Whittingdon. Making a great effort, he
succeeded in muttering that he had to go to tea now, it was time
he went to tea.
" To tea ? " said Mr. Whittingdon.
" No " Dan said. But he did not remain (to make himself
intelligible) any longer in the presence of these startling people.
He could not without screaming have stopped a moment longer
in the neighbourhood of that awful black arsenal. With a swift
and muscular tread he reached the door. Rushing into the studio
below he seized his hat, and, without looking back, he descended
the loud stone stairway very much more quickly than he had
come up it.
-J
PART VII

PAMELA FARNHAM'S

TEA * PARTY
CLEMMIE RICHMOND went to see her friend Pamela
Famham. She found her in at tea-time, in her large Ken
sington flat. The servant preceded her into the hall.
Much music marreth men's manners. Clemmie's were bad, and
this might be accounted for by her calling. Mrs. Farnham
was found moving in the door of her sitting-room. She flung
herself at Clemmie, kissing effusively, her lips falling like a fore-
hammer upon her friend's slack cheeks, made more inert by her
cross passivity. Clemmie with chilly deliberation surrendered her
left cheek. Her large nose, which was like the Old Testament
female nose, " as the tower of Lebanon which looketh towards
Damascus," required a wide backward movement of the head as
it swung to present the right side for the ringing antistrophe. A
movement, epodic in intention, towards her jutting mouth, she
prevented, shaking herself free. For a moment to mark off this
lyrical event, in time and space, she stood and stared.
" You darling ! How nice of you to come ! You darling ! "
Mrs. Farnham's fervour, expressed in what was her epigraph
for all meetings with women, was again translating itself into
action. With mouth preparing to register, slightly moistening
her lips, arms rising, she again was starting towards Clemmie to
set on her with her lips.
Clemmie advanced, giving her a rough manly push. " Come
along Pamela, that's enough of it. I'm thirsty. Have you any
tea ? "
In the sitting-room a crimson glow from the shaded lamps
stained the apartment like a rosy infusion in a medicine. The
deceitful light lay like a spell over the small assembly.
Two visitors contended with fervour.
" He wanted to send it back. It is the third time they've
been given him . . ."
" How do they manage it ? Is it by lots . . . ? I didn't like
her myself."
The dozen self-conscious masks were so many indexes read by I
the incoming eye. Each one in turn caused Clemmie an appreciable '
astonishment. Like so many policemen standing in dark doorways j.
196 APES OF GOD
at night, alarming the night-passenger, they were coyly with
drawn. One face, turned up, watched her. Like a bouquet of
prudence and cleverness these heterogeneous realities were held in
place—she added her petal, she took her place in the bunch. To
theirs she added her particular silence, she proceeded stealthily
to hide herself among them, she sank her large nose down level
with their waiting heads.
Raids were made into the unanimous restraint by Mrs. Hollin-
drake or by the hostess. Mrs. Farnham went her round. One by
one she forced open the obstinate little mouth of each mollusc,
and then let it alone until its turn came round again.
Pamela Farnham, who had not followed the new arrival in
at once, but had gone on moving in the doorway, now entered.
Clemmie had not been spoken to or looked at, except for Mrs.
Hollindrake, as the hostess was awaited to remove the quarantine.
No one seemed pleased at its being removed, but bowed very
guardedly, with the exception of Novitsky.
" Let's see you don't know everybody here, do you? This is
Mr. Novitsky : Miss Richmond. This is Miss Dowsett, Lady
Briggs (she passed over Mrs. Hollindrake with a smile), Mr.
What's your name ? Nosworthy : Miss Brest : and that—
THAT is Jimmie ! (As you know.) Oh, I had forgotten Mr.
Wildsmith. (So sorry—you don't mind ?) But you know Arthur ?
Yes, of course you do. And—where are you ?—that is Sullivan
Walpole. I don't know that man's name there, but I think it is
Fishmyer. That is right, isn't it ? Yes Mr. Fishmyer."
Pamela's shagreened hand, its family of miniature faces cir
cumscribed with glittering rings, went under the lamp-shade
into the lighted area of the tea-tray, and poured out a cup of tea.
" You do take sugar, Clemmie darling ? "
It was one of Clemmie's privileges to take sugar.
Jimmie, with a pleasant abstraction, slowly passed the cup.
With the weather-beaten cheeks of an Old Salt, Pamela was
more than half another Jenny, but with a better social start—and
everyone knew that it was not maritime exposure that accounted
for her complexion. She was on the water-wagon, Clemmie had
heard that. She was annoyed, as she did not like liquor, to find
that the cakes all seemed to contain some, rum or curacpa.
" Do you think a man ought to marry, Clemmie ? We've
been discussing Peter's engagement. Isn't it dreadful ! I don't
 PAMELA FARNHAM'S TEA-PARTY. 197
know what all these young men want to get married for—you
won't, will you Jimmie ? I don't think I could bear that. Promise
me you won't go and get married, Jimmie ! Promise ! "
She clung to her old-woman's-darling with an incestuous
ardour that made Jimmie gasp. His bright cheeks mantled
pinkly, and his eyes shone with the roscid moisture that Mrs.
Farnham's hug had squeezed into them. His straight, rather
thin citron hair danced upon his brow. His mouth remained
open like an eternal plum, upon which he laid a few appropriate
words, like the remarks of Royalty in newspaper reports, as the
occasion required, a little faint and clipped.
" Of course I won't Pammie. Don't. You're hurting ! "
" Yes can't you see you're hurting him Pamela ? " said Mrs.
Hollindrake, bending forward severely with a wheeze.
" I would hurt him if I thought he was going to get married ! "
" I don't believe Jimmie will ever get married ! I can't see
him married poor darling, can you ? " Helen Dowsett said, her
voice fricative alert and soft, casting a warp round the boy with
her flattering eyes. The other two sturdy hens, Mrs. Hollindrake
and her bosom friend Pammie Farnham, bobbed about upon
the scented tide, all subtly pulling at the same object. Lady
Briggs sat upon a cushion, her back against the wall. With her
Clemmie, in an undertone, conversed.
Mr. Nosworthy had moved out of the inner circle. He had
directed himself to the side of Miss Brest. Mr. Sullivan Walpole,
and Mr. Fishmyer, who were together, became engaged in a
conversation with Novitsky.
" No, I can't ! Euh ! " (hugging again). " Let him just try
it " Pammie hissed through her teeth, some of the spittle coming
through at " try," seconding the occult activities that a limited
decorum prescribed.
Catching the withdrawing glint of Wildsmith's spectacles,
Mr. Farnham remembered and said :
" And what have you got to say about Marriage Mr. Wild-
smith ? I'm sure you never intend to get married."
" I haven't thought about it I'm afraid " Arthur Wildsmith
breathed with the offended detachment that never left him.
Whenever addressed he answered in a manner as though he
would say—" Why do you address me ? I am listening to you.
Please do not address me directly."
198 APES OF GOD
The presence of this museum official at the tea-party w.u
accounted for by a weakness he was assumed to feel for Jimmie,
though he never spoke, even more rarely than Jimmie, nor did
he ever look at the object of his passion. Jimmie did not speak
because " little boys should be seen and not heard." Wildsmith
preferred to be pressed to speak. Then he would answer with
a pretentious reluctance.
" Will you get married some day, Novitsky " asked the
hostess, eyeing the sort of vitruvian scroll that made a movement
outside the blank rhomb of her ceiling, and revolving her rings.
" Some day ! " Novitsky fanatically beamed and burned,
turning away from Fishmyer and Walpole towards the tea-table.
" I suppose we must make up our minds to do without you.
I think we can spare him, don't you Peggy ? " she asked Mrs.
Hollindrake. " Well, we'll try " she shook comfortably towards
him, to show how comfortable she would be without him. David
Novitsky continued to smile and burn holes in them with his
small luminous eyes.
If Wildsmith whose family name was Bernheim, suggestive of
impressionist pictures, was aloof, though impassibly attentive,
Novitsky was extremely attentive but with an all embracing
sociability. Fanatically unaloof, a constant stream of vitality
was wasted from his eyes. This outpouring clearly caused him a
strange pride, comparable to that of an urchin displaying the fine
parabola of his urine.
" Well, tell us why you will get married some day Novitsky.''
" Willingly ! " and he began at once with a bright dogmatism.
" I will tell you why ! I shall marry in order to be more com
fortable than I can be as a singleman." Signalman, as it sounded,
was a coquetry uselessly dispersed over his hardened old female
hearers. They cocked their horny ears with a wounding indulgence
to this Semitic trumpet. " To defend myself I must have a woman
—that is why I marry ! "
Adapting themselves to this peculiar loquacity which they had
provoked, the ageing ears (hungry for the last murmurs of an
early lisping life, as represented by Jimmie, and which this out
burst obstructed) lent themselves with an english patience.
Novitsky burnt them with his unnecessary furnace of cheap
russian primitivism.
" You will marry, Novitsky ."
 PAMELA FARNHAM'S TEA-PARTY 199
" I shall marry. Socially, a woman is necessary ! "
" Peggy ! " signals of ostentatious distress to pass Pammie an
ash tray.
" A man is fastidious—mentally ! " Masculine and mental,
he showed his teeth.
" A man . . ."
David Novitsky, as " a man," swelled and twisted with
importance.
" Life disgusts him ! "
" Jimmie, you look pale. Are you quite sure you are well ? "
Mrs. Farnham gazed at him with anxiety, wondering if what
they, hardened old edwardian sinners, were supporting, might
not be found too fatiguing for him. He gave her a slight reproving
frown. He fixed both eyes upon Novitsky, as though to distract
this concern, to discourage it by his stoicism. Pamela as hostess
should listen to what was being said. After all it had to be said.
" How is one to speak to a conventional person ? The man
is afraid—I don't know ! The woman is frightening ! " Novitsky
crouched down between his shoulders. " The wife knows every
thing—she is afraid of nothing. She enjoys all that the man
hates. She loves the carrion ! She loves, it-is-her-breath, the
society."
Mrs. Farnham gazed at Jimmie with admiration.
" She loves it at breakfast, luncheon, at supper—the hour
entlang she will be pleased it is ail one. She is for the man the
scavenger. It is her business. She represents him—in the
market-place, kitchen, the latrine."
" Jimmie ! " Mrs. Farnham who had been nestling whispered
hoarsely, at the same time overflowing protectively upon his
fragile adolescence. " Are you perfectly sure you—are quite comfort
able ? " He indicated by gestures of soft repulsion the nature of
her misunderstanding. He looked steadfastly at Novitsky. The
narrator had frowned and delivered himself with the force of a
mock invective. But now he beamed at those who had solicited
his opinion and the others who had not.
As the disorganisation was complete he stopped. Satisfied, his
actor's zest was appeased.
" Women are so useful aren't they in keeping other women at
a distance ? " Jimmie lisped at last.
Pamela leaped at him.
2Oo APES OF GOD
" How clever you are, Jimmie ! You've heard someone say
that ! You are so clever ! You oughtn't to talk about things you
don't understand. I must kiss you, you look so sweet ! "
The aged drink-puffed lips pressed the baby-red and the
breath of old carouse and the aridness of cigarettes blew round
the astute juvenile nostrils, that never defiled themselves except
indirectly with those things. The wild young blue eyes, with a
learned candour, vacillated beneath the caress.
Clemmie took a large chocolate in gilt paper, in the shape of
a bottle, from a plate, and crushed it partly, holding it to her
lips. At once a heavy perfumed stream poured out all over her
frock. It was full of liqueur.
She mopped this up with her handkerchief.
" Oh, what a pity Clemmie ! I hope it hasn't stained your
frock ? " Mrs. Farnham asked, grabbing at her dress.
" Yes, it's a pity. No it's nothing thank you."
Very angry with her imperfectly teetotal friend, Clemmie
prepared to go.
Novitsky glowed in the corner, watched by no one. But Mrs.
Farnham turned to him to forget the misbehaviour of the choco
lates.
" The sooner you get your hausfrau-scavenger-woman
Novitsky the better. Don't you agree with me, Peggy? that
the sooner Novitsky gets his hausfrau-scavenger-woman the
better ? "
Mrs. Hollindrake directed her gaze reluctantly at the squat,
broad-shouldered, bearded, grinning musician.
" I wonder if he knows how to select what he has described ?
It would be a pity if—if."
Novitsky had beamed at her almost to the breaking point, and
now degenerating into hysterical chuckles, he spluttered :
" You're right. You're verry right, Mrs. Hollin-derrake. I
don't know you know, I should have to find the woman first to
help me choose the woman. You're right ! ! It sounds eas-ee !
Mind I didn't say so. You think you know—we're devils !—for
ourselves we are. Once bitten twice shy is what they say ! Is that
right ?—You're right ! I shouldn't know ! "
He exploded at the idea of his own incompetence. So much
so that the women paid no further attention to him, considering
him temporarily put out of action by himself as it were. The
 PAMELA FARNHAM'S TEA-PARTY 2o1
Novitsky episode was at an end. Mr. Sullivan Walpole and Mr.
Fishmyer became again his confidantes.
This increasingly disgraceful scene had not been lost upon
Arthur Wildsmith, although he had not seemed to notice it. He
turned his head slightly towards the window-curtain a number of
times. But things did not mend. His grey goat-like face, with
its glimmering disgusted eyes behind the glasses, exuded as much
tired contempt as Novitsky's did benevolence. He had been the
nearest to his ex-co-religionist, and judeo-russian exuberance was
not the thing most calculated to appeal to him. He now rose with
negligent abruptness, his eyes vacantly filling the whole area of
his large glasses, and approached Mrs. Farnham. Muttering a
few words, his head turned away from her, he took her hand. As
he passed Jimmie his offended look deepened, his eye-brows rose
half an inch, and his eyes descended the full length of his cup-like
lids. Also his ears seemed to lie back against his head, like a
whipped dog's as he slunk by.
Various transformations of an alert coquetry also appeared to
occur inJimmie. He sat up, he lisped vivaciously to Mrs. Farnham,
his eyes abstractly playing upon the slinking form of his departing
admirer. At the door Wildsmith, with the delicious sensation of
having his tail between his legs, gave a wild blank turn of the head
towards the room (the bright blue eyes still playing on his shame
faced back, with the shrill little lisping throat turned so that its
enervating notes would reach his glued-down ears) then vanished.
" No-oo ! " Jimmie baaed, as though intending with his small
flirtatious pipe to pursue Wildsmith into the passage outside, " I
really never have had it done. At least only wer—w—once—a little.
I screamed so much they stopped. That was a long time ago—
when I was young. But I know I couldn't stand it now. I'm sure
I should die ! "
" Oh Jimmie ! Peggy what's to be done ! Jimmie hasn't
been vaccinated. You know what a lot of smallpox there is about.
But he says he won't be done."
"Nonsense. He'll have to be. I never heard of such a thing
—going about without being vaccinated."
Bringing his red mouth down to a feline point, and staring
with dazed hesitation into the distance (full of blood and lymph)
his hands folded in his lap, Jimmie baaed uncertainly. " Yes, I
know ! It's dread-ful ! "
202 APES OF GOD
The bell sounded, and soon a tall woman with a death's-head
with its rigid grin, large flat shoes, a flowered smicket of german
greens, with a Byron collar, came in followed by a sturdy young
husband, with a simple smirk upon his face.
Mrs. Farnham feeding this smiling pair with tea and cakes,
asked Clemmie if she was going to Victoria's (Lady Goring
Landon's that was) on the Saturday of that week.
" Yes I am playing there " said Clemmie shortly, getting up.
" You're not going, Clemmie ? " Pamela shrieked.
Clemmie stood over her, nodding her head, gazing down at
her darkly, and saying " YES ! " fingering the cloth of her dress
where the curacoa had stained it, with the tall stalking fingers.
The bell had been ringing. And now Pamela, looking towards
the door with alarm, said
" Whoever have we here ? My dear !"
A very tall young man indeed stood there with great severity
claiming attention.
Mrs. Farnham went over to him.
Gazing fixedly down at her, he said with a pedantic distinct
ness :
" My name is Daniel Boleyn."
" Oh yes of course : you are a friend of Arthur Wild-
smith's ? He's just gone. What a pity ! Well come and have
some tea."
Having made a few bows, Dan sat down with his knees
sticking up very high. A delicate veneer of solemnity appeared
so much a part of Dan's face that a smile must have broken it to
pieces. He began staring at everybody in a more serious way
than it seemed to them possible to look, but he was very afraid.
Mrs. Farnham had been seeing Clemmie out, and then Mr.
Sullivan Walpole and Mr. Fishmyer who were also leaving. On
returning she found her new guest negligently disposed, in a
series of spacious Zs, gazing with fixity at Jimmie.
Mrs. Farnham gave Daniel Boleyn a look of great suspicion.
Then she flung herself upon the settee by the side of her Jimmie,
saying to Boleyn,
" You don't know Jimmie, do you ? This is Jeem-mee !
That is Mr. Daniel Boleyn, a great friend of Arthur Wildsmith's."
She whispered hoarsely to Jimmie—" Be careful of that young
man ! " Jimmie looked at Dan with astonishment.
 PAMELA FARNHAM'S TEA-PARTY 2o3
" I'm not a great friend of Arthur Wildsmith's " Boleyn
suddenly said and everybody started.
He then added, very confused :
" I scarcely know him."
" Oh I thought you were a great friend of his."
Dan shook his head.
Dan stared darkly into his tea-cup, where he had seen two
strangers, and drank his tea like a machine.
" You are very young aren't you ? " said Mrs. Farnham.
" Arthur told me I think—what did Arthur say."
" How old are you Mr. Boleyn ? " Mrs. Hollindrake enquired.
Mrs. Farnham poured out more tea for the smiling pair, the
man and wife, who were engaged at the moment with Novitsky
and Miss Brest.
" Just nineteen."
" Why you are a CHILD ! You are younger than Jimmie ! "
she said incredulously.
" When were you born ? " Jimmie asked him.
The question had the ring of a challenge. Several heads
turned, expecting a minor episode. Dan gazed stolidly at Jim.
" I was nineteen two months ago " he said almost severely.
" Two months ago."
Mrs. Farnham had been listening to the curt dialogue of the
two youths with the face of ravished wonder of a bourgeois hostess,
in the presence of two typical pre-war noblemen, condescend
ing to discuss—pour ipater les bourgeois—the splendid details of
their pedigrees.—Now she would egg them on, to prolong the
treat.
" When were you nineteen, Jimmie ? " she asked coaxingly
" I am quite sure Jimmie you put on your age most shamelessly.
I don't believe you are a week over seventeen."
Daniel Boleyn was stirred to the marrow and almost pug
naciously awaited events—well-trained young eyes as it seemed J
noting those behaviorist processes so negligently exhibited.
The effigies of wax and ivory that the Duchess of Marlborough
had made of the dead poet (upon Congreve's death) or anything,
might have filled the blank behind that scrutiny. So unusually
active were Dan's piercing glances that he might have been
aptly remembering how that devoted Duchess had ordered the
feet of the wax effigy to be rubbed and blistered every morning
2o4 APES OF GOD
by the doctors—even as the gouty feet of the dying man had
been treated—and how the ivory one accompanied her every
where, standing upon her table. He might have been saying to
himself in effect that this appeared to be almost as unresponsive
a waxen doll for Mrs. Farnham, that was called Jimmie (but
rather that of a defunct abstraction in place of a personality), a
plaything for her nostalgic dotage. And as he looked at Jimmie
he might have been regarding one of those life-size dolls, with
mechanically revolving eyes, made for the children of the lien
or have been imagining, as their crooning mistress manipulated
them, a glimmer of waxen sensuality stealing out of their glassy
ocellation towards their possessor, soliciting an unnatural caress—
a veiled, mechanically-repeated ogle, the thickening of a brutal
coquetry in the squeak. Maturing in the bees-wax bosom, he
might then have conceived the voluptuous processes that would
perhaps be evolved by the ingenious doll, appropriate to its
puppet's condition.
Instead Dan was saying to himself that if the heat swelled his
feet much more he could not stand it—the tears were not far
off but he was resolved not to let that little beast on the settee,
who was twenty if he was a day, get away with that seventeen
and a week stuff !
Jimmie, like a child hesitating over its lesson, was saying with
bored obedience looking at Daniel Boleyn,
" I was, let me see, nineteen eight months ago."
" You are six months that big boy's senior ! " Mrs. Farnham
insisted roguishly. " No Jimmie you are not so much as that you
know you aren't."
" I spose I mussht pee yes six months more than him—you're
so good at counting Pammie " he replied.
Pammie-mammie : the love of babyhood, the return to the
womb, the corruption of the cradle—the severe eyes of Daniel
seemed to miss nothing of these far-flung analogies. Mrs. Farn
ham looked over at him with misgiving, at the face of Dante-
young. Dan was recalling a boy, Tart Pitshaw, who was his
senior. They had been caught both dressed as girls, and he was
biting his lip as the shoes pinched his feet to keep back the flushing
at the eyes.
" Have you just left school ? " suddenly he asked Jimmie
involuntarily.
 PAMELA FARNHAM'S TEA-PARTY 2o5
" Oh good gracious, no. Yee-ars ago ! I've been for two
years in the city." The ravishing assumption of the pomps of
seniority which caused Mrs. Farnham to melt in a silent transport
of fond mirth, was associated with a mask of bored resignation.
"And he's never been vaccinated yet? Nineteen and never
been," she burst out exultant.
" Not prop-er-ly ! " he sang archly, fluttering his cloudless
eyes, and trying to deepen by a shade the pink of his brazen
candour.
" Never been vaccinated ! " exclaimed Novitsky, frowning,
grinning, sheepish and bold, breaking into the conversation—the
plebeian roughness with the crudely affected incredulity took this
apparently simple hygienic issue by the throat.
" No " lisped Jimmie softly, sitting the whole time bolt upright,
like a child at his catechism, or a small Dresden Buddha.
Mrs. Farnham had been eyeing Dan with a more marked
suspicion. Suddenly she met an oppressive stare, intercepting it
as it was heavily directed upon Jimmie, with a mesmerised interest
—she felt her chick was in real danger.
" Is it true, Mr. Boleyn, that somebody has madeyou—that you
have been manufactured like the—Hoffman doll ? "
" No."
Dan did not display any signs of decomposition at this ques
tion, answering at once with heavy smoothness and brevity, and
blinking once at Jimmie.
(Am I somebody's doll ? Is that why I sit ? The doll of
Zagreus ! He blushed with pleasure at the novel thought.
Horace Zagreus's plaything—really !)
" I thought it must be " Mrs. Farnham sneered, casting
glances at him to discover what had happened to her dart. There
was no trace upon the surface except the faint vestiges of pleasure.
So it had passed magically into regions as to the nature of which
she found it impossible to guess. But, as she watched, with her
revolving glances, she knew he had been hit. The whole man
moved—broke up, as it were—the Zs straightened out, the whole
figure rose to its great height.
Dan came over to her, took her hand and went towards the
door.
" Mr. Boleyn ! You're not going ? I hope I haven't offended
you!"
2o6 APES OF GOD
In the passage, while he was putting on his coat, she repeated
her last question.
" I have an appointment—not be late " he muttered and left,
crouching beneath the flat-door.
" What a very peculiar young man ! " Pammie exclaimed, when
he had gone. " I'm sure there's something strange about him.
Didn't you think so, Dowwie ? He seems to be sleepwalking.
Arthur told me he was a sort of Trilby. But he said he was very
clever."
" My dear, I think it was naughty of you, to ask him " Miss
Dowsett began. She had been preparing to be nice to Boleyn
when he had suddenly left, and she felt it.
" Oh well then, people shouldn't tell one things about people
they are sending to one—if they don't want one to repeat them.
It's Arthur's fault. Besides, he didn't seem to mind—the young
man had an appointment."
" I think he was a nice young man " Helen Dowsett continued
to complain.
" A very nice young man " the voice of Pammie came back at
once with the words just as they had left the mouth of Helen,
whom her hostess eyed.
" My dear, most attractive I thought he was, why did you
drive him away ? " Helen was on the war-path as she rolled
over in her mind the gigantic young limbs of the departed Dan,
and rolled her slumbrous hips in pensive spasm.
" I ? I did not drive the young man away ! " said Pammie, a
little pale but grave, indicted for driving away the young—young
manning back with the best, teasing the ginger nap upon her
yellow deckled wrist.
" You were being horrid to him ! Somebody made that young
man, what did you say—I heard you say somebody did something
or other to him. You meant to be offensive, Pammie ! "
" Somebody had made him !—no—the young man himself
took no exception to what I said, did he Peggy, you heard what
we said."
" Yes " said Peggy.
" It is my opinion somebody has " Pammie hard-case that
she was muttered deliberately, under her breath.
" Who has ? " exclaimed Helen.
" I expect they have " lisped Jimmie to himself, not to join in
 PAMELA FARNHAM'S TEA-PARTY 2o7
but to send his faint aside to consort with Pammie's under the
surface, and start a contrapuntal whispering.
"Jimmie !':
" What a lovely idea ! " came up the languid voice from the
floor. All turned round and looked hard at " Snotty " Briggs.
" Who is supposed to be responsible for the young man
Pammie ? "
" The young man is a discovery of Horace Zagreus, Arthur
told me."
" He is supposed to be absolutely under the influence of
Horace Zagreus " Snotty was informed by Peggy.—The go-ahead
wife of the enobled actuary lay in Lido-slimming standard close-
up, upon several cushions, at Miss Dowsett's feet.
" Arthur Wildsmith, that young man who has just gone, told
me Daniel Boleyn was so attached to Horace Zagreus that he will
knock you down if you mention him uncivilly."
" I know " said Peggy. " Arthur said he did actually strike
him with his fist last week for saying he considered Zagreus mad."
" How sweet ! " the bass-viol on its back intoned in its deep
horizontal chest.
Fisticuffs, wrapped up in friendships for intellectual men,
reached the ears of Jimmie, he pricked them up. Tales broad
cast by Wildsmith too. Sides had to be taken. This was a man's
quarrel. Jimmie screamed, recoiling upon the settee.
" He's a liar ! " he boldly exploded, in vibrating falsetto,
referring to shamefaced susceptible Arthur Wildsmith fiercely.
"Jimmie! What next ! Jimm-ee ! "
" The language that young man uses ! "
" Never let me hear you use such language again young
man ! "
" You may not know it but it's unbecoming at your age ! "
Jimmie with great hardihood faced the motherly music, as
Oh-what-an-obstirute-child !
" Perhaps ! " he scornfully fluted and tossed his head, a very
Mary Mary-So-contrairy.
" What's that ! "
" Nothing Pammie ! "
" No I should think not ! "
" I'm sorry, Wildsmith is a liar ! That young man doesn't
look as though he could knock a fly down, I'm positive it's a lie ! "
2o8 APES OF GOD
Pamela Farnham and Peggy Hollindrake in the closest forma
tion descended upon Sonny - Boy - Jimmie, with enveloping
motherly glances. The dusty old pair of glede-birds, with united
wing, made, with sweeping, scandalised glances the little rebel
waxwork the centre of their predatory orbit. To detect any sign
of the muscular tension that might announce the first approaches
of adult violence, they were on the alert.
" What do you mean Jimmie ? " frowning Pammie eyed the
incipient male.
" What I say ! " and the voice of the audacious minion had
the coquettish rasp of the heel of a haughty beauty, stamped in
pretty passion crossly.
" I hope that young man wouldn't knock a fly down ! " then
shouted Peggy for the indignant pair of them.
" Knock down ! no I rather hope he wouldn't. I hope
nobody." With such breath as three bustling decades of bottle-
cracking, and a spell of suffrage-platforms, had left her, Pammie
wheezed.
" Little savage ! " Ma Hollindrake portentously bridled.
" Knock down indeed ! " What-nexting Pammie Farnham
raked him with the firewater of her fierce old edwardian eye.
" That's just what I said ! " Jimmie bleats, playing up in the
pertest style, to hold the centre of the stage, the true babe-hero
of nursery farce. The tireless old team of matrons plod hither and
thither, to catch retorts, in preposterous tit-for-tat.
" You shouldn't say such things ! " then Pam puffs out, to
draw once more the youthful fire.
" No ! " joins in the breathless Peggy " you should be more
careful what you say young man ! "
" A young man like you shouldn't talk like that ! " Helen
Dowsett tells him too, for there's nothing like old female leather,
and a male's a male for a' that, even in flapper-counterfeit, even
with no down in its waxen nostril—there is still the bristle in
the blood !
" What do you know about knocking down I should like to
know ! " Mrs. Farnham hoots.
" Knocking down indeed ! " comes the angry echo from the
tetchy hen called Hollindrake. The scrotum-skin of her withered
apple-of-Adam was distended for her fierce admonitory cluck.
" The young man's twice your size ! " from Mrs. Farnham.
 PAMELA FARNHAM'S TEA-PARTY 2o9
" I don't care ! " cried Jimmie-light-heart, as cool-eyed and
coarse-voiced as you please, in lovely effrontery.
Pammie and Peggy rise up as one man. The frilly barm-
cloth upon Pammie's bosom is gustily inflated. They shriek
together, as if asked to assist at a pogrom.
" Jimmmeee ! "
" You do terrify me Jimmie— I do wish you wouldn't be so
pugnacious—you are so inconsiderate ! " Pammie flung herself
back. She picked up and quaffed a gilt-edged Chartreuse super-
chocolate.
" You are the most thoughtless young man I've ever met ! "
Peggy scolded hoarsely.
" One of these days he will be getting into some fight I know
he will 1 " the hostess Sniffed and Peggy and Helen cast glances
of burning reproach upon the selfish Young Person. And they
all shuddered as they gazed at the soft thing that he still was—
at the thought of the great bully he soon must be. ' Snotty '
Briggs, even, stretched out at full length for fulsome columns of
Gossip or a possible Candid Camera, cast up from the floor a
languid glance of cross astonishment.
The boy-man crowed.
" I've put my foot in it !—All the same ! "
" Don't be absurd Jimmie. Of course that young man could
knock people down ! " Pammie told him quite cross and sharp now.
" No I'm positive that young man couldn't knock any people
-down. He couldn't knock a fly down ! " answered Jimmie, for the
occasion taking up a discarded accent—nasal and lancastrian.
" I have warned you Jimmie ! That is a very dangerous
young man.—I know ! "
" Oh do you ! "
" Yes. That's why I got rid of him, if you want to know."
Saying this, Pammie crossed eyes with Helen.
" It was because of what Arthur told me about him " she then
said. " The fact is I was afraid to have him in the place any
longer ! "
" Oh Pammie—I am so terribly glad you got rid of him when
you did ! If I had known I should have been simply terrified ! "
Peggy exclaimed at this.
" I know " replied Pammie. " He made a dead set at Jimmie !
The moment he came in he did."
21o APES OF GOD
'' The brute ! "
" I saw him looking at Jimmie as if ."
" The wretch ! "
" I was on tenterhooks ! "
" On what sort of hooks Pammie ? " enquired Jim.
" Be quiet," answered Pam.
" I shan't ! "
" He was giving Jimmie the most horrible looks, he didn't once
take his eyes off him ! "
" The despicable young cad ! "
" Yes. I gave him a look or two myself. He was quite
unmoved."
" What an unpleasant young man ! "
" Bosh ! " exclaimedJimmie, oldfashion'dly, broad and genially
Manchester now.
" Thank you Jimmie, I'm very obliged to you."
" He looked as though he were quite capable of knocking us
all down as soon as look at us ! " Peggy exclaimed. " I think he
was a most horrid young man ! "
" He couldn't knock me down ! "
Bracing his toy juffs, composing his doll-jaws for snarling
battle, the boastful Jimmie squared up (sitting) to a big bully
(also sitting) . He flung himself into boxing attitudes to a chorus
of hoarse female screams.
" Jiiiiiiiimeee ! "
" What an alarming young man ! " Snotty Briggs breathed
from the floor. " He is a fire-eater ! "
" Fire-eater ! " Peggy vociferated her pantomime-eyes upon
him. " Little ruffian I call him ! "
Mrs. Farnham swallowed in quick succession three of her
stiffest brandy-chocolates.
"Jimmie ! Let us understand one another ! "
" By all means Pammie ! "
" No. I am in earnest ! "
Panting, she blew the occult brandy in a fiery current over at
his face.
" So am I."
" I won't have you talking in that way."
" How ? "
" As you did just now."
 PAMELA FARNHAM'S TEA-PARTY an
" How was that ? "
" When you said that young man could not knock you down."
" Nor he could ! "
" Jimmie ! You understand ! I won't allow you ! You hear
me!"
" I could knock him down ! "
There was on all hands the sound of the heavy explosion of
matriarchal wrath. But the embittered baby piped with glee
and faced the fuming Frauenzimmertum.
" Well, you said that young man " said Jimmie " could knock
me down didn't you ! "
" If he did I'd tear his eyes out ! "
" Really ! " Snotty Briggs, dispassionate observer upon the
floor, released the detached exclamation.
" I'm sure you would Pammie ! " Peggy cried with heartiest
conviction.
" My dear— I'm positive she would ! " that, Helen, grinning
then confirmed.
" What a dangerous set of people you all are ! " was the
comment of Snotty, audessous de la mille—as she lay stock-still upon
her Lido-beach, to slim and tan, and puff the weed, through an
enobled hole in the squab proboscis.
" It's no use, Jimmie should not say such things " said Pammie.
" Of course he shouldn't " said Peggy.
" He upsets me most terribly. It is most unkind."
" He only does it to frighten us Pammie."
" I wish I were certain that was it ! "
" I'm sure it is Pammie—Jimmie's bark is worse than his
bite."
" Bow-wow ! " went the irrepressible Jimmie.
" Ah these women and their Pekineses ! " Ncvitsky's voice
smote into the pack, and they all turned round as if a stink-bomb
had crashed in their midst. The excited megaphone of Novitsky
had sounded uninterruptedly in the background, but they had
forgotten the existence of the Russian Jew except for Snotty
(making the best of both worlds, with one car impartially register
ing the bellowing behind her, while the other missed nothing in
the universe of JIM, beneath her eyes). The death's-head in the
green smicket, and the smiling fat young husband, also at this
point became actual once more, where they sat before Novitsky,
212 APES OF GOD
in passive cheerful inanity, while he broke new ground for them
with a furious pick. Behind them the faces of Miss Brest and
Mr. Nosworthy nodded together, in furious assent, upon a dim
settee.
" While the babies of the poor starve, these women with their
peach-fed pets ! Look at them ! They should be stoned into
sense ! Their bread should be branded ! Two ounces a person,
it is sufficient. They should be put to work—in silver-mine or as
old Jacktars, as cooks in Tramps, or upon canals—or to be given
a ferret for a pet and to be sent into the drain after the rat ! "
These women—took at them ! but at which women ! was written
upon all the women's faces together.
Jimmie let fly a high-pitched snigger, tickled by the scowl
upon the countenance of the excellent Pammie—whom he could
not help but see at that moment as an old Jacktar or Jackdaw,
or in the galley of a windjammer, introducing rum into all the
ship's-rations.
" What's this ? " growled Pam.
" Oh as usual ! We are too rich," said Peg.
" Who are ? " said Pam. " Who is he talking about ? "
Novitsky was as pleased as possible. In contrast to these
fiery words and this muscular hysterical trumpeting in broken
english, his face was fixed in an enveloping burning grin. The
grin tightened and reddened all his forward scalp. He looked
straight into the face of his hostess.
Pamela Farnham frowned — " these women with their
Pekineses "—mal-apropos or perhaps malicious—there was some
thing repugnant and bolshevik—this bore Novitsky—the man
aired his views—in and out of season—he returned her dislike—
but compound interest. Whom was he addressing ?
" They are past the teaching—they are too old ! " the thunder
was resumed. There were clouds ofrussian cigarette-smoke around
Sinai. " You want dog-whips for that sort of ladies with their
animals', not for their dogs—thefault is thefoolish human being ! "
The russian grin still burnt full upon the face of Pammie. But
the docile young husband as well was smiling, and halfat Pammie,
at the constant soft joke of life. His wife, good death's-head, in
her folk-dancing, raggle-taggle-gypsy-oh smicket, was grinning after
the manner of skulls, in spite of a thin layer of flesh, and she
looked at Pammie too, baring her white gums.
 PAMELA FARNHAM'S TEA-PARTY 2i3
" I know ! " said the death's-head. The jocund skull " knew "
that bread was scarce, that there were dogs and cats as pets, and
selfish burgesses, in corrupt cities—it agreed in bloodless sym
pathy. They were bohemian, she and her smiling yeoman-mate.
They had been to Albania in a caravan, and camped for preference
with vagrants.
" That's true," said the smiling husband.
" Yes ! " hissed Novitsky.
" What is Mister Novitsky talking about now ? " Pammie
demanded of the smicket, with impetuous gruffness.
" Oil—about women, Mrs. Farnham ! " the death's-head
replied, with a ghastly slyness.
" Oh ! Is that all."
" And their pets."
" Oh."
" Yes Mrs. Farnham. I was saying ."
" I don't want to hear what you were saying Novitsky,"
Pammie stopped him roughly. " I've heard it all before thank
you."
" The wild-wild-women ! " Helen Dowsett chanted, quoting
a war-song of those unforgettable halcyon feminine days of death
for half-the-world, and laughing. " My dear! Why stop him ! "
" You are a woman-hater," said Peggy. " But we know that
by heart ! "
" No you are wrong Mrs. Holleen Drake ! " burst out Novitsky
in grinning protest.
" Oh yes you are ! "
" But may I not defend myself? I love !"
" That is worse—far worse ! We'd rather you remained a
hater Novitsky ! " Pammie roared at him. " You are a good
hater—we will concede that to you Novitsky ! "
" You don't want me for a lover Mrs. Farnham ! "
" No ! " howled back the warlike Pammie, digging a set of
brand new teeth into a massive chocolate, with a kernel of
alcohol.
Jimmie rolled his mouth round in a big stuffed greedy O, and
crowed to see such sport.
The death's-head mildly grinned at the face where the slav
intensity was stretched to breaking point and threatened to burst
into a nigger-peal of diabolic mirth.
 APES OF GOD
" I think Mr. Novitsky would make a better hater than he
would a lover " quavered the mild Death.
" Yes," Peggy thought so too.
Novitsky gazed first at one face, then at the other, from one
possible ' lover ' to the other.
Snotty Briggs was growing bored. This was dangerous ground.
Her languid voice sounded a call to order, to snub the russian
chaos before things went any further.
" Tell me Pammie, who is Thug Rust—what was the name of
the person who was supposed to be the particular hero of that
young man ? "
" Do you mean Zagreus ? "
" I suppose so."
" Horace Zagreus, oh haven't you ever heard of Horace
Zagreus ? "
" I don't believe I have. Ought I to have ? "
" Ought—no, I shouldn't say you ought. Before the War he
was well known as a practical joker."
" Practical joker ? Is anybody—just practical joker ? "
" Yes a notorious practical joker. We knew him quite well—
that was years ago."
" Is he an interesting man ? "
" He once went off with our front-door, if you call that
interesting."
Novitsky trumpeted (full miniature brass-and-wind) apoca
lyptic messages. " In charge of babies !—mother-kitchens—the
food is spoiled ! Why should they be given tickets ? They are
not child-worthy. The Vitamin E should be forbidden ! They
should be sterile ! We want the sterile workers—we do not want
the children of these useless women ! "
" One of the best things Horace Zagreus did " said Helen
Dowsett " was with one of those tapes you see surveyors
using."
" I don't remember that—but I haven't seen him for years.
Horace Zagreus did one or two quite amusing stunts. You
remember how he dressed up as a Guards Officer and disarmed
the sentries at the Palace ? "
" Oh yes. That was one of his best known jokes wasn't it."
" Did he really disarm them ? " Snotty asked.
" Yes. He was in possession of the Palace for about ten
 PAMELA FARNHAM'S TEA-PARTY ai5
minutes. The idea was to show how easy it would be to kidnap
the King."
" How lovely ! " said Snotty.
" Something like the Captain of Koepernick " said Peggy.
" Yes, that was the idea."
" He sounds rather an interesting man " said Snotty.
" Yes " said Pammie " he was. But when he goes on doing
the same thing now ! "
" Does he still ? " Dowsett asked.
" They say he still is apt to remove your front door " said
Peggy.
" A rather awkward man to have about the place ! " said
Snotty.
" Most ! " said Dowsett.
" I find it rather boring ! "—Pammie yawned.
" I didn't imagine him that sort of man for some reason,"
Snotty said.
" He has become a New Thought crank hasn't he Pammie ? "
Peggy asked.
" So I've heard " the contemptuous Pam replied, " I have
not seen him for a donkey's years."
" I have heard Horace has gone high-brow " said Pam.
" Oh how boring ! " said Snot
" I am positive Horace is pulling people's legs. I am sure he
is not sincere." Pammie looked past Peggy at Novitsky, who was
speaking in a confidential voice to his deferentially grinning
listeners.
" Is he a charlatan ? " asked Snotty.
" I haven't seen him, as I said. Zagreus always has to be in
the limelight, he is incredibly vain. But he definitely has a
screw loose."
" I believe we are all a little mad " said Peggy dreamily.
" How original Peggy ! " said Jimmie.
There was a pause : the whisper of Novitsky was worse than
his bellow, it filled the room with a hoarse hiss.
" What was his trick, with that tape ? " Snotty asked Helen.
" I don't know Horace Zagreus you know " Helen answered.
" Oh don't you ? I thought you did " said Snotty.
" No. I have heard lots of stories, about his practical jokes."
" But what did he do with the tape ? " asked Snotty.
2l6 APES OF GOD
" He was a surveyor by profession, he lost his job I believe
because he was always playing the fool."
" When I knew him he was in the Diplomatic Service " said
Pammie.
" But he was a surveyor originally."
" I did not know that."
" But his rags are quite historic ! " said Helen.
" Not to me " said Snotty.
" I thought everyone had heard that story ! "
" No, not me " said Snotty Briggs.
" Well, once he was supposed to be measuring some site or
other. He hurried into the street with his tape measure or what
ever it is. Going up quickly to an old clubman who was just
coming out of a club "
" Horace always gives you the impression of being in a tearing
hurry as a matter of fact " said Pammie.
" He said to the clubman ' Here sir, take hold of this ! ' You can
imagine the man was rather surprised ! ' A measurement of the
utmost importance is in progress. Keep hold of this till you get
the signal. I shall be back in a moment ! ' The old boy was
so astonished he hung on to the end of it. Meantime Horace
Zagreus rushed away, paying out the tape."
" Oh, yes, I think I remember this story. But I have heard it
about somebody else " said Snotty.
" I have always heard it told as one of Horace Zagreus's
stunts " said Helen.
" Yes " said Pammie. " It was one of Horace's best-known
stunts."
" Anyhow, he dashed round the next corner, where he met
another man. He thrust the other end of the tape in this second
man's hand. ' Please hang on to this for a- moment, sir. There
is a measurement going on of the utmost importance, there is not
a minute to lose ! Hold this tight till you get the O.K. signal ! '
And then he hurried on and was soon out of sight. The two men
held the tape for hours I believe, and of course Horace did not
return ! He was seen no more that day ! "
" How sweet ! " said Snotty giving an appropriate mirthful
gurgle. " I was mistaken—it was another story I was thinking
of."
" Poor old Horace ! "
 PAMELA FARNHAM'S TEA-PARTY 217
" I think Horace Zagreus is the most crashing old bore ! "
said Jimmie.
" Some ofhisjokes were certainly strokes ofgenius," Helen said.
" For those that find practical jokes funny ! " snorted Jimmie.
" I think they are the most boring things in the world."
" Has Jimmie met him ? " Peggy asked.
" Have you met Horace Zagreus Jimmie ? " Pammie asked.
" Of course I have " said Jimmie.
" You never told meJimmie ! " Pammie looked at him severely.
" Ho ha ! " said Jimmie. " I don't tell you everything
Pammie ! "
" No. I think some of Horace Zagreus's jokes were really
brilliant " Helen said.
" Yes I know ! " Jimmie exclaimed peevish and impetuous.
" But you have to say over and over to yourself he once gave the end
of a tape to a man in a street, and so on—and in the end, even when
you've said that to yourself two or three times over, it simply
doesn't help you to bear up—he is such a crashing bore. At least
I think he is."
" But he has given up his stunts I suppose " said Helen " you
say you know him Jimmie. What is he like now ? He is a reli
gious crank I suppose ? Anyhow he's different."
" That's even worse ! " Jimmie would not have Dan's patron
at any price. Pammie began eyeing him with renewed anxiety.
" What sort of aged man is he ? " Snotty asked.
" Horace Zagreus must be at least sixty ! " Pammie said
" Is he as much as that ? " asked Snotty.
" He's an albino—it's impossible to tell," said Peggy.
" Rather more, he must be sixty-three " said Pammie.
" An albino ! How does he succeed in exercising such an
influence upon the young ? " Snotty enquired. " Is it as a
practical joker he carries weight ? "
" He carries no weight at all ! " said Jimmie loudly and
dogmatically.
" No it's this new cult. He goes in for magic " Peggy said.
" Exercises an influence ? Horace does not exercise any
influence, that I know of" Pammie replied, airy and sullen,
listening to the harsh buzzing of Novitsky's voice. " Except over
that young man. That young man was the first I've heard of
that he's exercised any influence over."
ai8 APES OF GOD
" Anyone could exercise an influence over him I should think ! "
Jimmie sneered with a tiny snort and a toss of the head.
" Jimmie ! "
" Well so they could ! "
" Now you are starting again ! Jimmie ! "
" I wish that young man were here still. I'd tell him to his
face what / think of Horace Zagreus, which is not much ! "
" I am thankful Pammie got rid of that young man when she
did " said Peggy with portentous nod. " I'm afraid you would
have no chance with a great big monster like that. He's quite
twice your size Jimmie."
" Perhaps ! " Jimmie remarked, with strong-dumb menace.
" Twice my size ? Perhaps ! "
" I do think Jimmie's most awfully plucky " exclaimed Helen.
" He really is twice his size. I am sure that young man would
kill Jimmie if he hit him ! "
" Helen ! will you please not make remarks like that ! "
Pammie cried. " If you encourage Jimmie I will never speak to
you again ! And I think what you said about killing Jimmie was
disgusting Helen ! What with one thing and the other, I shouldn't
be surprised if you drove me to drink ! "
" It wouldn't take much to drive you to drink Pammie ! "
Jimmie retorted, and Pammie hurled a liqueur chocolate at him,
which struck the wall—Jimmie ducking, nimble urchin, and dart
ing out his unruly member at his patroness, as he resumed the
upright position.
The bell rang in the flat-passage. Snotty Briggs rose from the
floor.
" That's Parnell I think ! " she said.
" Who is Parnell ? " asked Peggy.
" That is my chauffeur ! " said Snotty, bending forward to
wards her, her prominent profile developing a great rake, as she
stood stiffly, one black solemn owl-eye ambushed under the
hat-brim.
" What a divine name for a chauffeur ? "
" Yes isn't it ! He is related to Parnell I believe."
" How curious ! " said Helen.
As Snotty went towards the door with Pammie, Novitsky
came over grinning to the tea-table. The tea-party began to
come to an end.
PART VIII.

LESBIAN * APE
 DAN scudded down Launceston Place, a high wind smote
its acacia fernery, and he found his way to Ashburn Place,
which was up in arms. Two vagabond cripples had seized
a basement, into which they had fallen. This Place he descended
in quick strides passing to the other side of the road, averting his
head from the scene of disorder. Where Ashburn Place ended he
hesitated, and then entered Rosary Gardens. Leaving them
behind him, and passing over into Chelsea, he consulted his
pocket-map.
It was a long way to this spot from Mrs. Farnham's. He could
never have done it without the help of a pocket-atlas of London
and his natural map-craft. Policemen made him extremely shy.
He never spoke to them if he could help it, and avoided their eyes,
even, when crossing the tides of traffic. From experience he had
found that, on account of his self-consciousness, it was quite
impossible to understand their directions at all. Nothing but
confusion ensued from asking to be directed by one of these
helmeted young men in blue—whose proverbially kind eyes only
drew him in, under the cruel peaked eaves of their helmets, and
made him forgetful of his duty and feel so terribly hot and ashamed
too and only upset him in any case.
Dan went along a tunnel that was an arched way beneath
flats. And in the twilight he came to an empty terrace, upon one
side of which was a row of liver-umber, brick, geraniumed
cottages. Confronting them was a high and gloomy wall, it
filled the terrace with premature darkness. Above it Dan could
see the tops of the windows of formidable studios.—These were
the gardens he was to visit. A great nest of women Apes ! The
studios were secluded.
Turning into a paved court, out of the narrow terrace, there
was a row of wicket-gates, cottage-effect. He attempted in spite
of the misty dusk to read the numbers upon the small green studio
doors. He stopped at the third wicket-gate. He looked over it
for a little while, he was satisfied. Although the number was
blurred and might be five instead of three, he entered and knocked
upon the massive dolFs-house entrance.
■31
222 APES OF GOD
The door opened very suddenly. Dan at the moment was
collapsed, as if deflated, and crumpling at the left side. He had
forgotten he was there, about to put his head into the she-ape's
den, in a spasm of delicious reminiscence, and of anticipation.
Tomorrow Horace would be with him !
With alarm he glanced up. Before him stood a severe mascu
line figure. In general effect it was a bavarian youth-movement
elderly enthusiast. She was beyond question somewhat past
mark-of-mouth. But this was a woman, as in fact she had
appeared in the typed description. Of that he felt tolerably cer
tain, because of the indefinable something that could only be
described as " masculine." An heroic something or other in the
bold blue eye, that held an eyeglass, that reminded him of the
Old Guard or the Death-or-Glory-Boys, in the house of Mr. Brian
Macdonnell, secured for him certainty of the sex at least without
further worry. It was She. This was Miss Ansell.
She was wiry and alert with hennaed hair bristling, en-
brosse. In khaki-shorts, her hands were in their pockets, and her
bare sunburnt legs were all muscle and no nonsense at all. There
was something that reminded Dan of Dick Whittingdon, for she
was bald, he remarked with a deep blush, on the top of her head.
Only there the resemblance ended it seemed, for whereas Dick
was anxious, that was easy to see, to disguise his naked scalp, this
strong-minded person had a peculiar air of being proud of it all
the time (to be bald, like the ability to grow a moustache, was a
masculine monopoly). A march had been stolen, with her
masculine calvity. But a strawberry-pink pull-over was oddly
surmounted by a stiff Radcliffe-Hall collar, of antique masculine
cut—suggestive of the masculine hey-day, when men were men
starched-up and stiff as pokers, in their tandems and tilburys.
The bare brown feet were strapped into spartan sandals. A
cigarette-holder half a foot long protruded from a firm-set jaw.
It pointed at Dan, sparkling angrily as the breath was compressed
within its bore.
Daniel Boleyn stood simply rooted to the spot. He was frankly
dismayed, but could think of nothing to say to excuse himself for
having knocked at all. " The wrong door ! " he muttered in his
mind but he could not utter the apology. He was genuinely
sorry he had knocked—but he was quite unable to find his
tongue. Could this be Miss Ansell ? Surely he would have
 LESBIAN-APE 223
been warned in his morning duty-sheet. Not even Horace would
have been so inhumane as not to whisper a caveat ! Why had
he been sent to her ? He must have mistaken the number. What
was the number ? Was it five ? Was it three ? He had not
looked for some time at his instructions, though he was positive
three was the number. What a terrible oversight !—
They stood staring at each other for a momentous half-
minute, the woman with the utmost hostility.
" What are you staring at ! " at last she asked him, bold and
gruff, straight from the shoulder.
A shiver went down Dan's back as he heard this voice, but he
was incapable of moving a muscle.
She turned up a wrist-watch towards the sky.
" It's a bit late isn't it ? " She pointed out to him gruffly.
Dan blushed. It was late.
" Come in, if you're coming in ! "
She turned upon her heel and went back into a large lighted
studio, which he could perceive beyond. At least it was a studio,
even if the wrong one, and should he bolt she would be after him
like a flash of greased lightning he was positive and catch him
before he had gone far.
t But as she left him he did regain the use of his legs. Con
vulsively he stepped out and it was forward he was moving. He
followed the soldierly boy-scoutish fantosh into the artist's-studio,
slinking in the wake of its positive strut.
" Shut the door.! " she called over her shoulder at him, as
she receded.
Dan went back and, with the most anxious attention, he
closed the front door without making any noise whatever, as he
pushed it into its sleek solid oaken rabbets. Then anew he made
bis way into the lighted interior, and she faced him in the manner
that is indicated by the word roundly and by the word squarely.
There she stood, and avoiding her militant male eye he approached
her. Her dander was up.
" Who sent you ? Was it Borstie ? Was it Miss Lippeneott ? "
she demanded.
" Lip Got ! " Dan cooed, with blankest eyes, in Beach-la-Mar.
" Lippencott " she said with a dark puzzled scorn.
He was quite silent. However pressed for an answer, he would
have been quite unable to open his lips any more.
224 APES OF GOD
She quizzed the drooping six-foot-three of speechless man
hood. With vicious eye she wrenched off his four-foot of swaying
trouser-leg. She tore to shreds the massive pretences of the male
attire.
She snorted a sigh, as she saw the man quail at her glances.
" Well, let's have a look at you ! " she then ruggedly ex
claimed, as one chap to another. She jerked a thumb backwards,
towards a screen, beneath the balcony, which ran the entire
length of the long side of the place.
" You can undress there ! Look slippy ! "
At this Dan's knees in fact did shake. Had he had a tongue
in his head he would have told her then and there that she must
be mistaken. He was not an italian model (such as he had seen
leaving the studio of Melanie). There was some fearful mis
understanding. This was not Miss Ansell, he had been deceived.
It was quite a different kind of Ape, that dwelt in this lonely well,
to the one it had been Horace's wish he should visit.
But even as these words (which would not materialize) were
crying out inside his brain, he was assailed by a new doubt. If
this were after all Miss -Ansell ? Horace he said to himself would
not have sent him here upon a purposeless errand. There was
nothing purposeless about Horace. This was a noted Ape of
God no doubt. He had been dispatched to report upon her—he
must not leave empty-handed. It was not his place to call in
question the arrangements of Horace. Horace, it might very
well be, had intended him to pose as a nude italian model, to this
woman. For the ways of Horace were mysterious in the extreme.
Taken to its ultimatum and crisis, where would this not
perhaps lead ? The expressive eyes of this dewy colossus, this
maidenly great doe, rolled in panic—he saw the path that Horace
had, it might be, intended him to tread, but he balked it in one
sweeping squirm of lovely revulsion. He writhed, beneath her
insulting eyes. Musthl I ? his eye, in tender obsecration, asked.
Yesth ! her eye signalled in response, in beastly parody—hitting
every time below the belt.
In spite of the fact that his glances were downcast mainly,
Dan was yet present to every object, and he had immediately
observed with terror a large dog-whip upon the model's-throne.
Haunted as he was by the memory of the. Bokharan oxthong he
had been compelled to hold by that grinning old Jenny, the
 LESBIAN-APE 225
sight of this disciplinary instrument disturbed him extremely. In
fancy he could see himself naked, in full flight, before this little
hennaed white-collared huntress—her dog-thong cracking about
his girl-white surfaces, of Clydesdale proportions, as he rushed
round and round her artist's studio—till probably he would fall,
panting and exhausted, at her sandalled feet ! And vae victis of
course—there would be no quarter in this sanguinary munera.
For better or for worse, he must escape at once—he could not
go through with it, he had made up his mind—tomorrow he
must inform Horace that posing as a nude model was a thing he
was quite unable to do. Would Horace excuse him nude-posing
please, as a great concession ! It would be asking him to suffer
the tortures of the Damned ! Please Horace, do not ask me to
strip and nude-pose—not that! (It was not as though he were
beautiful, he added with a secret blush.)
" What are you doing may I ask ? " the horrid masculine
accents banged out at him ever so loud in the big hollow studio,
and caused him a fright-bang too—a discharge of Adrenalin.
" Look sharp ! I can't hang about here all night for you to
peel ! "
Oh how that dreadful word peel left him not only naked, but
skinless ! What, wrench off his putamen, in obedience to this
martinet ? Oh what a horrid errand was this, upon which Horace
had sent him !—if, that was, he had come to the right address.
What an anguishing thought—the real Ape he had been sent in
quest of might in fact all the time be expecting him with a glass
of sherry, in the studio opposite.
She had been lighting a cigarette, straddling her tiger-skinned
hearth, selecting a seasoned cigarette-holder, resembling a
Brissago, facing the mantelpiece. Catching sight (out of the
corner of her eye) of this maddening male professional lay-figure,
who had turned up to offer himself for posing-work, still in the
same place (posing as it were already where he stood) she wheeled
about in the most savage manner possible. Pointing to the
screen, she shouted :
" There you idiot—over there !—can't you see the bloody
thing ! Go over there and peel at once or I'll chuck you out of
the bloody studio neck and crop ! Yes I mean it ! I do believe
you're some beastly Fairy ! I don't know what possessed Borstie
to send a ghastly Fairy round here ! It's no use your making
226 APES OF GOD
sheep's eyes at me ! Either go in there and peel or else beat it !
Do you get me ! Jump to it ! "
As she said jump she jumped herself, and more dead than
alive Dan skipped as well. As she took a threatening step in his
direction he turned tail, he rushed quickly over straight at the
screen. Bolt upright behind it, his heart-rate trebled, he held
his breath and bit his lip, rolling frightened eyes. He strained
his ears to catch her movements. Oh—what he had gone through
for the sake of this man ! And did Horace return his devotion ?
He smiled wanly to himself, in the comparative darkness—no,
one would scarcely say Horace did, to judge from all he made
him suffer !
Dan became slowly aware that his was the opposite case to
that of the ostrich. He had achieved the occultation of his body,
but the luxuriant summit of his head must be visible above the
screen. So he made haste to crouch down, and in that position
he placed an eye to a crack, where two of the panels of the screen
met. With an intense alarm, he was able now to observe all the
movements of the threatening masculine person beyond, in her
sports-kit (dressed to kill, by sheer roughness, and to subdue all
the skirted kind) scraping a large palette with an ugly looking
jack-knife.
He saw her look up, stop scraping, and incline her head to
listen. Then she called out sharply.
" I say aren't you ready yet ? You take a long time to peel for
a man ! "
There was a pause in which, knife in hand, she listened.
" I don't believe you are peeling ! "
He saw her put down the palette upon the model's-throne,
next to the dog-whip. She retained, he observed abashed, the
long jack-knife in her hand.
In an instant Dan had wrenched off his jacket, torn from his
neck his collar and his tie. With hands all thumbs and all
a-flutter, he undid, and then in one continuous movement
dropped down, and kicked off, his man's long trousers—as if as a
symbol of capitulation to the militant feminine-male beyond.
Standing white, occult, and quite naked, his teeth chattering,
with his vest in one hand and limp shoe in the other, he awaited
the next move of the master-spirit—the boy-scout spinster mascu
line rake. But suddenly he was pulled up sharp with a vengeance,
 LESBIAN-APE 227
and put to work to think in earnest : he gazed, startled and guilty,
blushing unseen, quite lost in thought. Feverishly he turned over
in his mind a most knotty problem. It had not presented itself
to him before, in the midst of this breathless march of events.
Necessity proved herself once again, upon the spot, the
mother of invention, and he put down his shoe and seized the
limp empty arms of the thin cotton vest. He held it out, until the
square body of it hung like an apron before the midst of his
person. With the speed bred of a high sense of decorum, he had
passed the shoulder-line of the vest, rolled into a rude rope,
about his waist—securing it behind, at the summit ofthe buttocks,
in a large knot. Then he drew the apron that hung down
between his legs, and he incorporated its extremity in the large
bulging knot behind.
" Look here I've had about enough of this ! " came the now
familiar bark, from beyond the screen. " Are you coming out or
not ? Anyone would think you were a bloody woman ! "
The imperious tones of crashing command rang out upon the
air of this palatial well of stern bachelor loneliness, and they froze
his Hood.
Blushing a deeper red than any hefty big-handed Susannah
could ever compass—surprised by the most designing of Old Elders
that ever stepped upon painted canvas, Dan came out into the
obscene harsh light of the arc-lamp which hung above the
model's-throne.
He gave one dilated terrified glance at the woman standing
astride before her easel. Turning swiftly, he rushed back behind
the screen. There was a hoarse laugh from the haggard old
bachelor-girl in sports-shorts. But her voice pursued him scorn
fully over the screen, behind which once more he crouched :
" The world's coyest virgin what ! Well well well ! Come
out of that ! Come out and let's have a look at what all the fuss
is about ! I'm sure I don't know what the men are coming to ! "
Dan stood and shook behind the screen. Wildly he rolled his
eyes to himself in a great effort to decide what steps to take, in this
fearful emergency—what for a Pelman-brave would have been
Kinderspiel. But he simply shook with blank indecision.
" I say, cut this out old bean will you ? You've come to the
wrong shop ! " she raised her voice still more. (The wrong shop
indeed ! This could not be where Horace had sent him !)
228 APES OF GOD
" I shall absolutely lose my patience in two shakes of a donkey's
tail ! " the harpy's voice whipped him like a cat-o'-nine-tails. It
had grown ugly too. " Come out unless you want me to step
over there and drag you out by the ! Chuck all this jolly
rot and roll out, you dirty little sprucer, or I'll stick you up on
the jolly old throne myself ! "
Upon a terrified sudden impulse Dan came swiftly out from
behind the screen. He cast one glance of wild appeal at the
woman, and rushed up upon the model's-throne. There, blushing
down to his waist line—the " ram and goat " even, of the horrid
poetry, suffused with red, his solar plexus flushed, as if it had
been punched in boxing—he limply stood, his head turned in the
opposite direction from the watching slave-driving person, his
body drooped in profile.
" Good ! " she rapped at him. " Yes ! " she said, with her
painter's squint. " Not at all bad ! " she informed the nudity
before her, with hearty male patronage, as she ran over his
points, " you're quite muscular ! " she yawned.
The studio was extremely cold, when you were nude, and Dan
was beside himself with fear. He shivered without ceasing,
occasionally gulping.
" Model ! Turn round—do you mind ! I've had that view
of you long enough."
Slowly Dan moved, until the whole of his back was turned
towards her.
" No ! " the woman immediately bellowed, as she grasped
the manoeuvre. " No ! Not that way ! Turn round this way.
Not your back ! "
With a fresh spasm of deep-red bashfulness, Dan still more
slowly turned about, until he faced her. But he stood with
averted face, gazing away to his right flank. He held his chin
high, for beneath upon the floor of the throne was the dog-whip,
and he wished to forget its presence.
" What on earth have you got there ! " he heard her exclaim.
Dan was petrified. The hard white light poured down over
him, splitternaked and stark as your fist's-face, he could not move
a muscle. Oh, what obedience to Horace (if it were indeed
Horace who had planned this) had led him to ! In a pose of
hieratic stiffness, his head in profile, he awaited her attack. He
heard her brisk step and the rigor increased. Marching over
 LESBIAN- APE 229
with decision to the model's-throne, she did not hesitate a moment.
A half-scream, the first sound he had uttered since his entrance,
broke from the lips of Dan, as with careless hand she rudely
seized the coil of his cotton vest. Then, with a violent tug, she
dragged it clean off his shrinking person.
Standing beneath him, his vest in one hand, she fixed him
with a chilly masculine eye.
" Listen to me my dear man ! " she said : she waved a dis
dainful hand in his direction, " that is of no interest whatever to
me. Do you understand me ? Put your mind quite at rest ! It
would take a jolly sight more than the likes of you to vamp me !
Get me ? So don't let's have any more of this stuff ! You come
here to sit, not to try and seduce me anyway ! It's love's labour
lost ! See ? Spare yourself the derangement ! "
She threw down the vest upon a chair.
" Do you want to sit or not ? "
Dan violently nodded his head. He desired from the bottom
of his heart to sit down.
" Very well. Let's get on with the War then ! I shan't pay
you for the time you waste while you're trying to vamp me ! If
you want to sit—sit ! "
Dan again nodded his head, without looking at her, with
great vehemence. She was appeased.
" Very well ! " it became almost a tone of approval. " Here
get hold of this ! "
To his horror she snatched up the dog-whip and brandished it.
He retreated a step, his eyes fixed upon her in terror. She held
out to him the handle of the whip. He seized it, and his knees
knocking lightly together from mingled cold and dread of what
this fearful Ape might not require of him, he held it tightly at
his side.
" Take up an attitude like this will you ? "
Dan gave her askance one fleeting look of horror—for she had
thrown herself into an attitude replete with offence not to some
figure but to himself he felt.
" I want you for a figure of a roman soldier threatening Our
Saviour. No that whip ! "
Dan struck several attitudes. All were designed, as far as pos
sible, to minimize the immodesty ofthe glaring white crown-to-foot
exposure of his animal self. The towering milk-pink declivities
230 APES OF GOD
of the torso beneath the arc-light, the sectioning of the chest by
the upright black feather of body-hair, the long polished blanched
stalks of the legs, upon which the trunk oscillated, all moved hither
and thither. He threw his head into the scales, first to the left then
to the right. Full it is true of earth's old timid grace, as haunted
by the feminine irish chastity, he threatened an imaginary
Saviour with a whip. But at length the restless evasive bulk
fell into an accepted position.
" Stop like that ! "
Camped energetically, charcoal in hand, she dropped into a
watchful, pouncing attitude. She looked keenly from the white
surface of the body to the white surface of the paper, and back.
With difficulty Dan came to a halt.
" Can you keep that ? " she asked him.
His whip gave a weary upward waggle. His head sank, in
melancholy affirmative. For a few seconds he held himself quite
still. When he saw her eyes were upon her paper he moved
about, seeking a more comfortable arrangement for his twisted
nudity—one that might eventually lessen the immodesty.
Now a steady scratching began. A large sheet of paper was
fixed upon a board. Her legs wide apart, the busy artist stood
before her super-easel—thrusting out at arm's-length a stick of
charcoal, from time to time, while she squinted up the eye that
was not furnished with the eye-glass. She computed relative
distances, from one landmark to another, upon the person of her
sitter. She joined these major points, upon the paper before her,
with sweeping lines.
But for Dan the physical agony, in succession to the mental
agony, had now set in. His hips had become still more incon
veniently twisted, in order to remove away to the left the greater
part of his exposed person, and so present as far as possible an
offenceless edge-on object to the eye of the observer. On one
foot the heel was gracefully removed from the ground. The
other foot received the complete weight of a muscle-laden body
rising above two metres into the air.
The staccato rasp, flashed to and fro, of the brittle charcoal,
was incessant. A page was whisked off the board with as much
force as had been used to remove Dan's vest. It fell to the floor
and she stamped upon it as she returned to the attack, dashing dark
black lines here and there upon the new page.
 LESBIAN. APE
But Dan stood bathed in a cold perspiration. His face, from
having been a sunset crimson, had become a corpse-like white.
Then it became a most alarming pallid green. Holding stiffly at
arm's length the whip of the legionary, Dan swayed from side to
side, with more and more giddy abandon.
" Keep still can't you ! " the enraged employer of labour
shouted, from the easel. " I can't draw you if you roll about
like that ! "
Dan's last thought (before he fell) was of Horace. He had for
gotten that this might be the wrong studio altogether. All he
could say over and over again to himself was " Horace, why are
you always so unkind—why—so always—unkind!"
Dan reeled, slowly at first. His body with a loud report came
in contact with the floor of the model's throne. As his head struck
he had a sickly flash of consciousness, and his body turned over,
in a slight convulsion. Then he lay relaxed at last in a deep faint.
When Dan came-to there were two voices audible—one soft
and one hard. The hard one said,
" Of course I thought you sent him, Borstie. How can you be
so stupid ! "
The soft voice replied inaudibly, it was a muffled tinkle.
"With that? Thank you!"
There was a hoarse whispering, with a snorted laugh or two,
also a super-male chuckle, a bald ha-ha !
" A more useless piece of goods I've never met with."
" It is certainly a horrid sight."
" You're right. If it could only stand up on its legs ! "
" You don't propose to pay it for lying on its back do you ! "
" The trouble I had to get the animal to peel ! II s'est fait
prie ma chere."
" Isn't he a model ?—What does he come for ? "
" I think he thought he'd got a bonne poire. He tried to
vamp me ! "
"My dear! That!"
" Oh yes. He wanted me to undress him. He was most
averse to posing."
" Pah ! Turn it over ! I don't want to look at that any more ! "
Opening an eye slightly, Dan perceived a second younger
figure, that that possessed the softer voice, beside the first—but
dressed with recognized feminine elegance, with a breast visible
232 APESOFGOD
to the nipple, and with sun-kissed silken legs all-clear to the
tenderloin. Then a rough hand seized his shoulders and
attempted to roll him along the floor of the throne.
" Don't touch him—he might not like it, if he were conscious,"
the feminine voice remarked, solicitous for the safety of her mate.
The man-voice snorted defiance, and gave Dan another big
shake.
Dan's head and neck were wet with water. He made a slight
movement with his arm.
" He is coming round " said the slight voice. " My dear !
Loqk!"
" Model ! Do you feel better ? "
Dan was nearer the edge of the throne now : with an eel-like
agility born of shame and terror he rolled off, and as he did so he
sprang to his feet. The newcomer started back and uttered a
scream. Swiftly Dan regained the cover of the model's undress
ing screen. His " vanish " was accompanied by two loud shouts
of laughter from extraordinary woman No. i—who, at his bashful
exit, indulged in the coarsest mirth, pointing after him with her
cigarette-holder to her sweetheart, who tittered sneeringly as the
great white mass disappeared, like a rat into its hole.
With a violent head-ache, overwhelmed with shame, Dan got
his clothes on very quickly. But the vest remained in the hands
of the feminine enemy. When he was quite ready, standing in
his hiding-place he waited some minutes. He hoped that the
second woman might take herself off. But the terrible voice of
the first to bring him to his senses soon rang out.
" How much longer are you going to potter about in there ?
If I hadn't seen all you've got I should have thought you were a
woman. Hallo ! Come out ! I've had enough of your com
pany. Hop it ! Do you hear model ? "
Dan came out and went towards the door with averted head.
" Here. Here is a half-crown for you."
She intercepted him and thrust the money up into the occulted
palm of his trembling hand.
" Go and have a Scotch."
He held the half-crown in his hand, and he went on towards
the door.
" You don't appear satisfied. It's all you'll get ! It's a bloody
sight more than you deserve ! "
 LESBIAN-APE ass
She slammed the door upon him, as soon as he had passed out
into the garden.
Night had now fallen. In the lighted doorway of the opposite
studio stood a dark eminently feminine figure. As he went
through the wicket-gate he observed it making signs to him.
Without losing time he decamped at the double, but he heard
at his back in the darkness a tinkling voice.
" Is that Mr. Boleyn by any chance ? "
That was it ! Evidently that could be none other than Miss
Ansell, to whom he had been supposed to go after Yarmouth Place.
He had got into the wrong studio. Horace was not to blame ! He
did not look back but hastened away from this monstrous colony.
PART IX.

CHEZ LIONEL KEEN ESQ.

 MR. ZAGREUS stared at his imposing shadow moving
slightly upon Rein's door. He steadied himself against
this exenterated papier-mache1 self, dodging parallax as it
moved with the precision of its contingent nature—registering the
slightest breath of life disturbing the higher dimensional shape it
waited upon. On ne mesure pas les hommes d la toise ! Dan's shadow,
as well, waited upon him, not upon its original. Dan was there like
a shadow too, on and before the door. Were they inside the door
as well, in further projections ofstill less substance—their stationary
presences multiplied till they stretched out like a theatre queue ?
Was there anything after the shadow (as was there anything
behind the man) ? The queue of four might be multiplied to any
power within, from where still no sound issued. " We should
have brought camp stools " said Zagreus to the rest of the queue,
shifting from one foot to another as one man. He saw the horse,
black and primitive " like a pompeian fresco," that drew the
mortuary chariot from which Proust peeped. That processionary
fresco extended from Pompeii to Kein's door. " Lounge suit and
sporting kit "—" Of faultless cut and style "—with " Summit
Collars " and " the Profile of Youth " " accommodated " his
shadow. And so back to the modern environment, to the theatre
queue. The sun struck him with its hot shaft upon the back of the
neck. He shifted his hat. " My place in the sun," he muttered,
not expecting an echo—always the sun made him madder as he
knew.
The Keins were no doubt discrete to an upper angle of their
seemingly stone-deaf residence. They were blottis in a furnished
paralleloped with all required by the human worm for its needs.
Brushes, craters, pigments, tubes and files—duplicating mirrors
for'the multi-mask, powders and combs. As though with antennae,
with the blind head of the queue in this way composed, Zagreus
felt towards the couple manoeuvring in their secret upper-apart
ment. There they would be observing with conspiratorial glee
each other's obscenities—cheating time with professional unction.
" What's happened to Hassan ? " asked Mr. Zagreus, and his
shadow started at his voice, with the alacrity of the dependent
a37
238 APESOFGOD
responding to temper, and reached the bell-button. A very faint
tinkle below the street-level matched the action of the shadow's
arm. The Bellman listened to his summons, awaiting the tripping
fairy-footfall of Kern's butler.
" We're so early perhaps they won't let us in " Zagreus said.
" Ah I hear Hassan."
The door opened with a powerful silent caving-in. A tall
dark young figure in black alpaca smoking-jacket and black
melton trousers swayed slender and uncertain in the rush of sun
light, clinging to the handle of the swinging door—shooing away
the naughty rough sun, shading his eyes, entranced for a moment.
A sweet flicker of welcome was on his red lips and in his plum-
black eyes of great traditional feminine docility. But in a recol-
lective spasm he twisted to one side to make room, looking away
over his shoulder, effaced and distrait, and they entered. He
hurried nervously before them—still gracefully entranced, half
glancing at Mr. Zagreus under his fans of lashes. In the grating
deep cockney of the levanUne ghetto he lisped gushingly,
" I'll tell Mr. Kein you're here. Mrs. Kein isn't down yet.
Shall I take your hat ? " with awkward, bashful movements of
invitation towards their hats and coats.
Dan and Zagreus did not look at each other. This new person,
fluttering about them, called forth that discipline which, with
them, took the form of etiquette. Zagreus stared ahead of him.
A new person, judge for yourself, I will not interfere with so much as the
influence of a smile, was the formula understood. Up the stairs in
indian file—Hassan danced in front, the stolid tall young Dan
brought up the rear, while Mr. Zagreus shook his albino mane in
the middle. A troubling perfume appeared to stream back from
the alpaca-covered feminine haunches of the valet. Hassan would
pause politely as though stopping to brood, both feet together on
the same tread—a limp hand laid like a glove upon the banistei
rail—a reflective profile inclined towards the pair of trampling
visitors, poised above their mathematical ascent. Then he would
dance upwards again, with the case of a bird taking to its wings.
They were introduced into the ugly, dark drawing-room.
Hassan for form's sake examined it without curiosity to see if he
could espy his master or his mistress lurking behind the piano, or
imperfectly concealed beneath the settee. Satisfied that that was
not the case, he departed to search for them elsewhere, with
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ,. 239
nervous precipitation and a confidential flash of the profile—pale
and resigned, like a quickly turned mirror catching the light in
the direction of the guests, the eyes flying away with mechanical
shyness. His subsequent airy ascent of the staircase, three steps
at a time, without, resounded faintly in the room.
Mr. Zagreus had entered followed by Dan. He moved to the
fireplace, and stooping, pulled towards him the old iron-plate
fitting round the fire-box. " You see, mean old devil ! By
reducing the rate of combustion he reckons to save himself three
bob a day—yet at a moment's notice he can appear to have a
cheerful and expensive fire."
Withdrawing from the fireplace, he marched with a regularity
suggestive of a cadastral operation to a city of books—closely
packed and partly curtained, in three or four tiers against the
ground. Turning, he moved to a position between the large front
windows, where he scrutinized a painting hanging upon the shaded
intermediate wall. From thence he moved across the face of the
grand piano to a pile of music disposed in the angle of the wall
and of the instrument. When, circling the Grand, he had pro
ceeded diagonally the entire length of the room to the corner
(where a spiral stand in some dark alloy, representing a serpent,
sustained a cluster of electric bulbs), the investiture of the room
was complete. At that moment a voice reached them from the
direction of the garden beneath. Zagreus heard and disposed his
head to listen—his hps silently moved to the movements of a song.
Ich gehe nicht schnell, ich eile nicht
durch Dammergrau in der Liebe Land.
Zagreus flashed a signal to Dan.
" It is she ! " He listened, exclaiming as the romance sturdily
struggled through the thick, glittering window pane.
" Isch geh-heh nischt sch-shnell, Isch—Isch—isch!—Von welcher
Judengasse hast du diesen Accent gekriegt, liebe Isabel ? "
In ein mildes blaues Licht.
" Jor-Jor ! Du eilst gar nicht, bestimmt ! " he mocked
angrily, stepping to the window and gazing down. Thrusting
his fingers into the sash lifters, he heaved, arching his back. The
thick rail in which his fingers were hooked stood as though mor
ticed into the socket formed by the casting bead. At the third
24o APESOFGOD
spasm a slight movement occurred, the heavy sash began to
move upwards.
Zagreus stood back, looking about him. Passing his hand
behind the window he seized a pole-hook, and swinging the
ungainly lance across the window, guided its nozzle into the ring
of the top rail, hanging upon it then. Slowly the upper sash came
down towards him. He replaced the pole-hook, and seizing the
bottom sash underneath, forced it up a few more inches.
The song had now terminated upon the hissing " lissht." As
he took his hands away they were sticky, and he discovered smears
of black lead and tallow upon their under surface. He held them
up disgustedly to Dan.
" Li's filthy draught-proofing—anyone would think it mat
tered if the fresh air got in and played on his rotten old spine."
Turning his back upon the snake, he took a cigarette from his
case. He reached to a granite bob, bristling with pink-tipped
matches, and lighted it. Then lay back negligently against the
wall, his eyes fixed upon Dan, who was looking out of one of the
windows. Dan had reached the position behind the Grand.
Mechanically he had started visiting the spots recently vacated by
Zagreus, like a dog at successive lamp-posts. He turned to the
stacked music. He picked up the pieces at the top of the pile.
Wolf. Verborgenkeit.
Brahms. Lieder und Gesdnge.
Under that came Douze chansons. Duparc. Idly prizing up a
further sheaf—Pierrot Lunaire: Schonberg was uncovered. He
looked up across the Grand towards the still attentive Horace.
He smiled gently at his friend—who believed so utterly in his
genius—and he adjusted the music to its old position.
Zagreus pointed to the picture upon the wall above the piano.
Dan approached it, his eyes solemnly riveted upon the opaque
slices of drab pigment. It was cattle.
" De Segonzac ! " the name came across the room to him.
He looked slowly round. Mr. Zagreus pointed to another paint
ing to the right of the last. Dan moved steadily into position
before it. He remained some minutes his head tilted up. He
thought he could observe Laocoon with his two sons and accom
panying serpents, their various limbs and trunks organized into
something like galls of the cynips, in chilly colours. A conven
tionally distorted, antique, floridly-fringed head presided over the
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 241
congery of tubes, rolling like an ornate primitive ship upon its
side, the eyes dilated.
" Chirico ! " Horace shouted the name of the Italian master.
At the arrival of the name Dan again turned. The almighty
Horace waved his hand towards the table, upon which were
arranged a dozen literary reviews, and several new books, in their
dust coven.
Nouvelle Revue Francaise Dan read. The Princess and Other Tales.
D. H. Lawrence. He thought " sides of beef, erected nordic males,
advertisements for ladies' underwear "—words of his master,
that his master had got from his master. Always the shadow of
the mystery-man—the god-like Pierpoint, whom he hated !
A translation of Proust by Scott MoncrierF he was about to
pick up, when he sneezed unexpectedly, with cyclonic force.
Mr. Zagreus was uprooted, and was seen moving towards him,
through the tears that gushed into his eyes—the advancing figure
was heard exclaiming :
" Prosit !—Proust ? Come and have a look at old Lionel's
library."
Blowing his nose, Dan followed.
Horace Zagreus stood in front of the shelves examining the
titles. As he caught sight of one marked Varnish in June and an
other Mayfair. Six double 0. he pressed a lathe-like, soft-skinned,
index against them. Then, half turning to Dan, he remarked in a
low voice :
" You've got those haven't you ? I told Willie Service to get
them for you. It's suffocating stuff to have to read. When Pier-
point first made me read them I almost mutinied. I couldn't
believe it was necessary. But I've never regretted it—it's wonder
ful what you can get out of them ! "
His eyes shone innocently with the glamour of a young postu
lant, at the thought of this discipline.
" That one—no that—is a perfect one. That has all the names
on the backs of the characters. Its moralizing makes it tiring
reading. It's like old Lionel when he has got some bankrupt
young artist in a tight corner, and begins lecturing him on man's
duty to his fellows ! "
He gave a hearty easy laugh and Dan felt in the Seventh
Heaven—as they bent down together to read the titles upon the
backs of the volumes.
 APES OF GOD
" Mark Harlan—Lipstick-Lagoon. It's the companion to his
Stocking-Flesh—FUsh-on-Flame. It is almost too vulgar—Pierpoint
describes it as ' the last extremity of maudlin decay being feasted
upon by one of our most mettlesome, vulgarest conquerors.' It
is ghoulish, he calls it—because you see our Society is a cemetery.
It is a hairdresser's assistant romancing about a musical-comedy
Duchess—the expensive ways of her, the expensive flesh-silk stock
ings of her shop-girl outfit, her vulgar cranerie—or it is the last
pitiable success of the ancien regime, dressed up to look like new.
Pierpoint pointed out to me how near this was to its high-brow
mates—it should be read along with them. Listen—Proust is
not so far from Harlein ! I can show you ! " he whispered
eagerly, as one zealous novice to another. " There's dear old Li's
Primrose ! Oh I will show you that ! "
Horace Zagreus pulled out a mauve-backed book and set it
in his hand, turning the uncut pages.
" Look how his publishers turn it out ! He pays through the
nose for his simple pleasures, Li does. The machining is disgust
ing—it looks as though it's out of register, even, there : they
touch him for a good round sum, and get it printed in the Island
of Staffa, I should think, for a tenner. We'll get him to give you
a copy : 'a great admirer of his work !— The thought of meeting
him has filled you with alarm '—don't forget ! " Horace laughed
with glee (a fierce icelandic Puck, with Kaiser-moustache—but
made of the best bleached blond silk—gigantic albino). " You've
scarcely slept last night remember !—all because upon the
morrow you were to meet the author of Primrose ! Don't forget."
Dan shook his head gently and smiled the softest smile of most
gazelle-like roguery that ever wandered, like a shadow, over a sad
young countenance
Zagreus turned, expectant and leisurely, towards the door,
and it opened promptly. Mr. Lionel Kein appeared in the door
way, smiling like a very knowing polichinelle making his entrance.
Then, closing the door behind him with the action of a dog chasing
its tail, his thin legs flexing in his ample, striped, whip-cord
trousers, he advanced towards them with an alert dandified
energetic shuffle. He presented now the earnest mask of a beard
less, but military-moustachioed, spectacled Dr. Freud.
" How are you, Zagreus, my dear fellah ? " a throaty, rich-
clubman's voice : " Isabel will be down in a moment. I'm so
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 243
sorry to have been so long : I was only just told by that idiot
Hassan a moment ago that you were here." As he reached
Zagreus and took his hand—looking with solemn, black-eyed-
loyal-and-affectionate unction into his face, his jaw propped out—
his voice dropped to a hoarse sentimental whine : " How are
you, my dear fellah ! I'm so glad to see you. It's a long time
since we met ! "
" A long time ! " Horace Zagreus agreed.
" It must be a year," said Kein.
" Why that's true, Li, it must be. How are you, my dear old
shipmate ? It was so good of you to arrange that we should come
before the other guests. How are you ? "
Kein dilated a close-lipped, ragged, bristling muzzle, puckered
his eyes, gazing into his friend's, and nodded
" Quite well ! " (short, sharp and knowing).
" That's capital.—I've been in America."
" Which part ? "
" I believe it was principally in the north, there were a great
many extensive buildings and a considerable stir, but I really
forget."
Kein propped open his shallow jaws, and emitted a clattering
croak. The withering of the alveolar bed with age, in spite of
costly dentistry, left a shallow ranine muzzle. He now sketched
gestures of affectionate horseplay. He succeeded only in fixing his
hand upon his friend's arm in a precarious squeeze.
" You forget ! " he mimicked irr a long nasal wheedle (Oh !
you naughty, charming child, you ! You are a one ! a wilful
charming one—and damn-it-the-fellah-knows-it !) " How like
you ! The wanderlust of the Vikings, eh."
" A greek Viking " Zagreus mildly qualified his friend's
description.
" Well, weren't they Vikings ? " Kein blustered a little, as the
images of the sea-rover took shape for him. He felt, always sub
ject to the clown's limitations, a Viking ! His eyes almost became
china-blue.
Mr. Zagreus regarded him reflectively, as though mystified for
the moment.
" I thought we Greeks were more jewish than anything else."
Kein looked disgusted as the Viking was hurried away and
the Jew came in.
244 APESOFGOD
" Perhaps now, but I meant the old Greeks—the Greeks of
antiquity." He clicked to the final vocables neatly with satis
faction.
" Ah ! " Zagreus gazed at him.
Kein was still ruffled at the way the Viking had been handled.
He looked a little malevolently at this slippery friend, who dis
dained the Viking. He made an unseen signal to the discomfited
pirate not to go away altogether—hinting that his dismissal was
not final. Stop there my man ! We shall want you again in a
moment ! The spirit of the northern sea-wolf once more occupied
his consciousness. He breathed heavily and his moustache
bristled.
Kein shivered, his bones bending his black stiff-shouldered
jacket, and he looked quickly round towards the open window.
" I think we'd better have that closed—Isabel is not very well.
It seems a pity on a lovely day like this."
He went rapidly towards the window, Zagreus following him.
While Kein clung to the rail of the bottom sash, Zagreus took the
pole-hook and aimed it at the slot in the upper rail, then pushed.
Afterwards he assisted Kein with the lower sash.
" The damned things are so stiff I can never do anything with
them myself. Hassan is the only person in the house who can
manage them." Kein stood back cymballing delicately with his
hands to remove the dust. They returned towards Dan.
" So you've been to America," Kein said. " On business or
just for the trip ? "
" I beg your pardon ? "
" On business or just for a trip." Kein raised his voice, and
aimed the words at the ear of Horace.
" For no special reason ."
" Just in order to move about ? " (Viking-motif.) " That I
find difficult to understand. As I get older I find I want to move
about very little. But you always have been a wanderer."
" I always was a roving blade."
Kein smiled up at the large sea-rover handsomeness of his
guest—with the long gracefully-stamped lines, the healthy skin,
the flourishing mass of the albino hair, with its tinge' of citron—an
almost Polar pelt, and all the magnificent physical balance. His
friend ! (like my furcoat, or my alsatian).
" Do you know, Zagreus, my dear fellah " Kein said with
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 245
naif histrionic affection " what I've always thought of—how I've
thought of you always ? "
" I've not the least idea." Horace looked at him sideways
doubtfully.
" Well, I'll tell you. As a sort of—Baring. A Waring I mean."
" Not the banker ? "
" No, not the banker ! Browning's character. Waring."
Kein squared his jaw at the sensation of his daring frankness, and
at contact in imagination with the Trelawneys of this life.
" You incorrigible old flatterer ! " Mr. Zagreus exclaimed,
flinging out his hand, striking a considerable arc in its upward
movement, chopping it quickly down on Kein's shoulder. At the
same time he lowered his face till the large, grey ocellated discs
(suggesting in their blueness, their fixity, their boldness, the un
charted ocean to his vis-a-vis) with which he roguishly transfixed
Kein seemed drawing up the soul from the nadir, with artificial
shavian good-nature. Like an albino figure of a play of Shaw's,
Horace Zagreus struck his attitudes, but a figure like a more
delicate Shaw himself—if Shaw had been in fact a fierce albino,
and gone to school with Pierpoint at sixty.
" But why—come now, Li, let's see how a flatterer's mind
works—the task for a Hellene ! Why, Li, old boy, should you
imagine that I should fancy myself at all upon the quarter-deck
of a ship ? Why ? That is a careless piece of work it seems to
me! It's extremely wide of the mark. That's strange. I'm sure
it's well meant."
Kein gazed back imperturbably from his black toffee-eyes,
the Punch-grin fixed in painful lines upon his face. He received
sentence after sentence—spitted as he was with this prating
pirate's mocking eye, grappled with his mighty hand. But in his
chaldean, thought-reading gaze, he reflected in the black crystals of
his eyes the words of the other before they were spoken, examined
him before he was born god-like (but provincially god-like)
from the northern foam—indulgent, calmly smiling, looking
before and after, entrenched in his mystery—himself nothing, his
race everything. Wide of the mark ! Well meant !
Holding it back for some moments, Kein then released, evenly
and insinuatingly :
" Was I flattering you, do you think, Zagreus ? " Zagreus
removed his hand and laughed with good-natured appreciation.
246 APES OF GOD
" No I daresay you weren't, you impudent old whore ! "
Kein remained immobilized, floating over a fleet of treacherous
lickspittle insults, upon a tide of liquid eye-toffee.
" Dear me, if I were a flatterer, I should go differently to
work ! " Zagreus exclaimed, with a slight flourish. " Suppose I
were after you, Li, for instance. I know what I should say. I
should say—I should say—that you were a—a great ' psychologist '
—your own word for yourself, old fellow. ' A psychologist, as I
am '—so no invention required : I should invent very little if I
were a flatterer. I may say at once, I should just encourage
people to describe themselves, and use the description they seemed
most to relish."
This disappeared in the viscous urbanity of Kein's silence.
" However, I owe you a compliment, don't I ? I've always
regarded you, Li, as—can you guess ?—a perfect Proust-character !
How does that accommodate you ? "
" Very well ! " Kein replied with vehement rapidity, his eyes
flashing and darting. " Very well !—But Proust is a recent
acquaintance—you've known me much longer than Proust."
(Me. An old me, pre-Proust—Kein, your friend.)
" Well, then, upon the coming of Proust I said—' Ah, there is
Li's author ! ' A Li in search of an author ! " Horace added with
great joviality in a lower key.
" Six lies if you like ! " Kein retorted fiercely, his face chang
ing to its solemn mask. At the name of Proust he ran up his
state-flag. Proust, when he entered his soul, made him more
self-confident than the Viking, even. He was ready for anything
under that banner. He began to deliver himself with heroic em
phasis, with the full roulade and rattle of his most withering drawl
—like snarling drums set rolling to celebrate an arcane victory.
" I should certainly take it as a great compliment to be asso
ciated in your mind in any way at all with Marcel Proust. That
would be the way to flatter me if you wished to ! "
" I told you I could beat you at your own game " Zagreus
laughed—" How is Pierpoint ? " he enquired suddenly as if it
had just come into his mind.
The Punch-aplomb at this further name went back. Horeb
and the Forty Years was fully reinstated upon the old clubman's
flushed mask, serenely at bay, contemptuous of the " paltriness "
of his friend's weapons.
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. H7
" Very well, I believe. I have no reason to chink otherwise,"
Li drawled, with lofty blankness of expressionless eyes. " Very
well I should think."
" Very well ? "
" Very I should think."
" Do you see him now, Kein ? " Zagreus asked softly.
Kein screwed up his face in a sweet grin.
" I haven't seen him recently."
" No ? "
" Not very recently."
" Ah !—Money, I suppose ? " Horace enquired absent-
mindedly. " These beastly artists ! We rich men have to put
up with a great deal from those artist-fellows. They ."
" I don't know ifyou're a rich man, Zagreus," Kein exclaimed,
very upset. " I know I'm not.—I wish I were. If I were,
if ."
" Of course not, Li," said Zagreus soothingly. " I was only
speaking jokingly. Of course not Li ! "
He continued to gaze at his host, lost in thought, and to go
through the pretence of reflectively stroking his chin, and offering
all the other signs of a musing abstraction—while Kein stared
silently and resentfully back for a moment. Then he rested his
eyes upon Dan, then transferred them back upon Zagreus again.
—While this stringing and jockeying for position had been occur
ring, Dan had stood with his abashed fascinated gaze fastened
upon Kein, as though Kein were in actual fact Mr. Punch in the
flesh and Dan a small boy out with his nurse, who had chanced
upon this raree-show.
" Joking apart Li," Mr. Zagreus began sedately. " I am in
fact very interested in your reply. Li—no, it is joking apart. We
must have our little fun when we meet mustn't we, but it's
always I'm sure upon a footing of the friendliest goodhumour, is
it not, and there is one thing that no one would be able to say
about us, at all—that is that when we leave each other we do not
leave something behind us. Yes, our heart, a little—I agree, my
dear old chap ! I agree. Our heart !—but I was thinking at
the moment rather of our intelligence, Li. I never leave you, my
dear old friend, without the sensation that I am taking some
thing away that does not belong to me. Perhaps, however,
you only make me notice things that were there all the time,
 248 APES OF GOD
but which I had neglected—until contact with you revealed
them."
With extreme discretion Mr. Zagreus had dropped into
declamation. It was a monotonous muted reflection of his host's
colloquial pomp.
" I'm glad to hear that Horace. Well ? "
Kein was very short and not to be cajoled.
" Well Li—I was saying !—In reply to my clumsy compli
ment you asserted that to be a Proust-character ferait parfaite-
ment votre affaire—to break into the idioma of the Master in ques
tion. What flashed through my mind as you said that was this :
that in that case you would be one of the first notorious Proust-
characters to appreciate the honour. Am I wrong ? The originals
of the famous social figures in Proust's books are said to have been
highly displeased, and to have called Proust a cad or something
of that sort for using them so unceremoniously. Am I right ? "
Kein had grown redder as his irritability deepened. He had
moved towards the fireplace, and Zagreus had followed him.
With a very-well-I-will-answer-your-question pause, and an after-
dinner speech camping of the person, he began :
" Would I like to be one of Proust's characters—do I under
stand you Zagreus, that is your question ?—one of those who do
not receive very flattering treatment at his hands ? That is your
question ? I should consider it well worth the privilege " with the
deep tremolo of emotion and the rich assistance of catarrh " of
having known Proust, to be treated in any way by him that he
thought fit ! " (Applause amongst the angels, heard only by
the finer senses of Kein. He stands a moment a blessed martyr
transfixed with the arrows of Truth.) " I should know, however
little I liked it, that it was the truth about myself ! Perhaps not
the whole truth. But I should not complain. That I think is my
answer. If I were vainer than I am, perhaps then it would be
otherwise.' ' Having stagily snarled out with rapid unction the
conclusion of his riposte, looking at Dan significantly he said :
" Won't you and your friend sit down ? "
" Ah yes, I was forgetting to be sure—this is Mr. Boleyn,
whom I mentioned in my letter. He is a bio-chemist, he knows
an extraordinary amount for his age. I believe he is a genius !
He is only nineteen."
In his best-bred military clubman manner Kein shook hands
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 249
with Boleyn. Then, in a dragging tone of wheedling insinuation
—uncle Lionel at once—he exclaimed :
" Only nineteen ! " There was the croupy rattle of paternal
pathos. " Only nineteen : I wonder if you know how lucky you
are ! I don't expect you do ! I only wish I were double your age
my dear boy, yes double your age—I should be quite satisfied."
He drawled " quite satisfied," pitiful and nasal, with a senile
titubation of the tongue, exploiting the death-rattle—Pierrot
Vieux—poor Uncle Punch of the Children's Hour, the most
popular grown-up ever broadcast—the old pet of the Pan-nursery,
Nunky Li.
" Or treble, Li ! " laughed Horace Zagreus.
" No it's not quite so bad as that."
" I thought it was a little worse, Li ! "
" What is a bio-chemist ? " asked Kein, amused and dainty,
of the young staring giant.
" I haven't found out yet," Dan replied, looking at him
blankly, as though he had not recovered yet from the great
astonishment of meeting him, in the flesh—or perhaps of seeing
him come in at the door, instead of up though the floor. Screwing
his face towards Zagreus, Kein laughed appreciatively, at the
responsible party.
" And where do you study bio-chemistry ? " Kein wheedled
him, mouthing " bio-chemistry " in a sneering polished finick.
" Nowhere," answered Dan, playing up to him with lazy
indulgence, so encouraged by the presence of Horace, otherwise
he certainly could not have said Bo he knew.
Kein laughed with grateful heartiness.
" I mean at the moment," Dan added perfectly pert.
" Not for the present," Kein imitated, inexactly.
Seizing at an emotional escape, his desire to be " in right
relations " uppermost, religio—the traditional great escape—sug
gested the religious, the emotional exit to Li. He gazed at Dan
with the maternal tenderness of a hearty uncle : he looked
whimsically at Zagreus, who sat like a stuffed bird gazing glassily
sideways : his eyes returned with every sign of an impending
expansion to Dan.
" Well, you're a youngster " was thrown out with a
grating bluffness, rattled hoarsely with avuncular winds of wheezy
emotion. " You may take this from an old man—you've got a
25o APES OF GOD
good friend—I'm sure of that, I can tell you that—here—in (sob-
choke)—Horace Zagreus. And / know." With maudlin intensity
he went on—" I'm not a man who makes friends easily ! Zagreus
and I have been friends for—longer than you've been alive,
actually ! Isn't that so Zagreus ? I've never met a man to
whom I take off my hat—whom I respect—whose intelligence I
Fespect, as I do his. It's a great thing for you. You don't under
stand—you're too young ! Some day you will. You've been
watching us bickering—you think we're not good friends, I dare
say. That's our way—that's all ! We've always been like that,
Zagreus and I. But I'll tell you how—»"
The door opened, and Kein's elegant Judy entered, with a
smile of welcome advancing towards Zagreus.
" Hallo Zagreus ! Where have you been all this time ? " (A
jolly, a friendly, a sensible " brilliant-intelligence." A " beautiful
woman," of great breeding and charm.)
Horace Zagreus sprang up, he bent low over the chivalrous
emblem extended towards him, nestling its plump tentacles
caressingly in his own palm—settling and examining it for a
moment, then lifting it, with head reverently bowed, to his
mouth.
Isabel Kein, her handsome, brilliantly-painted mask, on high,
assumed a seat near the fireplace. She stuck one leg out with a
perfunctory roughness—feeling with her foot for a hassock, and
placing it upon it, flexing her other leg beneath her. She rested
her forearms upon the lateral scrolls of the arm-chair her trunk
erect and slightly advanced, talking meanwhile. The coils in the
upholstery beneath concertinaed under the familiar pressure—the
rows at the head crushed especially by the massive decline of the
legs, and the front portion of the roll permanently depressed. She
adjusted herself into these slight depressions. Two panels on her
black frock disguised the rotundances of the hips. A tippet of
mauve silk was round her shoulders. Except for vivacious and
intelligent movements of the head, she moved very little while
seated. The eagerly-disputed, ruthlessly-discouraged embon
point, though not excessive, would yet allow of no unpremedi
tated physical licence. It compelled her, in revenge for the fasting,
to be wary of spontaneous movement. Where she sat she had to
stop, to a great extent, without variety.
Mr. Zagreus watched her with admiration. Dan answered
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ..
the questions she occasionally addressed to him with his blank
astonishment—with which he still met Kein—modified for Mrs.
" And is Mr. Boleyn a friend of Marly's, did you say ? "
" No I am a friend of Martin's. You probably mistook the
name."
" Oh, Martin ? I don't know him," she said quickly—dis
missing Martin from her mind, and Marly with him, also Dan,
and turning to Horace Zagreus.
Kein sat silent nursing a soreness. The intermission of fresh
greetings had thrown him back into himself, where he did not
smooth out his ruffled spirits, but brooded against what had just
passed.
Isabel Kein's intelligent eyes, beside the usual domestic seismo
logy, took stock of Lionel's discomfort, her guests (the stupid,
pretentious boy, his noble patron, their old friend—always these
ridiculous boys !) and added her own particular pressure to what
she had found on her arrival, with aplomb and grace.
" I forgot to ask you, Li, after your—the work—books. I
suppose work is the right word ? We have here in young Boleyn
a great admirer ofyours. When I told him he was about to meet
the great author of ' Primrose ' and ' Frederick Aldous ' he was all
in a flutter, I don't believe he slept a wink last night for thinking
of what the morrow had in store."
A painful and resentful smile became fixed upon Kein's face
as he listened, sitting bent forward with his elbows on his knees,
half-looking at his two guests. He glanced at Dan, whose face
betrayed no emotion, except one of the deepest astonishment, as
before—without moving he stared before him.
" He's very shy," said Horace Zagreus, indicating Dan.
" You'd hardly think to look at him that he heard what we were
saying would you, but he takes it all in every word of it, nothing
escapes him, he is a genius ! He is probably suffering agonies of
shyness underneath that calm exterior at this moment. Still
waters run deep."
The eyes of Kein and Mrs. Kein kept in touch, commenting
upon this rapid speech, Kein's assuring hers that he was capable
of dealing with the situation, that he was quite indifferent—
hers flashing with the promise of her aplomb and resource, at
need.
" I'm afraid you'll get nothing out of him " said Zagreus, still
252 APESOFGOD
gazing at Dan. " I hardly think I ought to have mentioned his
admiration for your books. He will probably remain tongue-tied
now for the rest of the visit."
Very slowly Dan turned his head in the direction of Mr.
Zagreus and as their eyes met a faint smile of understanding, an
avowal, burst as it were upon his lips and in the gentle flash of an
eye, then disappeared—as though with its indolent explosion some
thing had consummated itself. The mask became fixed. Although
intelligent and aware, it was once more sedate.
" What did I tell you ! " exclaimed Zagreus. " He's positively
too shy to speak ! It is the shyness of true genius ! "
" There's no occasion, Zagreus, for your young friend to say
anything about what I write. If he enjoys it and understands it,
as you inform me that he does, so much the better. I'm very
glad. If not, he wouldn't be the only person. There's really
nothing to say "
" No you're always right Li—I suppose there isn't."
Boleyn's smile had held up Mrs. Kein, some dark blood had
sprung into her neck. Frowningly she arched its stumpy column
and glanced guardedly at her guests, making up her mind. (" Oh,
you old man's darling ! You—you " she left a boiling blank
in her mind for the things the young offender was). " Is Mr.
Boleyn always as shy as this ? " Mrs. Kein asked.
" Not always. It's only when he admires anyone very much that he
retires into his shell—so much as this ! "
" How curious. He exaggerates people's importance, I expect.
He's very young ."
" Yes, very very young ! " Mr. Zagreus leapt in, watching her
mouth, before she had said it.
" Yes " she nodded quickly and slightly interrupting herself,
" and he'll learn better no doubt," she panted a little through
her nostrils, as though each sentence had been supported by a
measured volume of breath expelled along with it—a negligent
rapid drop of the voice finishing what she had to say.
" Oh, I hope he won't lose his illusions ! " Horace looked
deeply distressed at the suggestion. Then he went on heartily,
squinting a little : " The way I look at it is that it's up to us—as
illusions—to do our best to prevent that happening. But you
seem to have thrived on the death of your illusions, Isabel—I've
never seen anyone look so well. I believe you murdered all yours
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 253
in your cradle, and have been living on their corpses ever
since ! "
" Perhaps I did," said Mrs. Kein brightly, pleased at the
metaphor. Horace Zagreus, the aristocratic albino, stately in
stature and a bright talker, she had always favoured.
" Li, on the other hand, has artificially preserved all he started
with, and he collects a dozen new ones every day. / am one of
his illusions, too, I've just discovered that—he described its
appearance to me. But when I tried to escape from that responsi
bility he was extremely upset—weren't you, Li ? "
" No. I have no illusions about you, Zagreus." Kein did not
change his position—he looked his illusion in the white of the eye.-
" Li is cross with me—Li is offended with his little illusion !
When you came in Isabel we were having an argument, I'm sorry
to say, about Proust. Shall we take it up where we dropped it ?
Yes let us Li. Born arbitrator that you are, you will be able to
clear up my difficulty.—Li here says that he wouldn't mind what
Proust wrote about him—or what figure he cut in his books, if
he could only be in them. He says he's such a devotee of Truth,
and that he recognises in Proust such a master of it—especially
of his, Li's, truth—that he would pose gladly for his pen. Any
portrait he would welcome, provided it was signed ' Proust.'
What is your attitude upon that question, Isabel ? "
Isabel was indulgent, airy and decisive.
" I feel like Lionel ! " she panted lightly. " But I don't mind
what happens to me in that way in any case. If I were con
sulted, I should say certainly—let me be dealt with by Proust,
sooner than anyone else I can think of. By all means ! "
Kein watched with smiling displeasure, inhaling his cigarette
deeply into his nervous crazy body.
Zagreus had thrust his head forward with a contradictory
expression. His face was knitted into a frown, and with that was
impounded a faint smile. This flashed out rigid and inexpressive
when he was interrupted or if his words appeared to have been
misunderstood, further explanation imposed upon him. The
rather painful frowning, which drew down his brows and wrinkled
the long wide-winged nostrib, never let go of the smile at all. It
lighted up merely with a flickering break the solemn mask with
its slight flush. Speaking he did not look at Mrs. Kein but past
her or through her. This gave the effect to this dialogue of a
254 APES OF GOD
telephone-conversation. During a retort or interruption, Zagreus
waited, as if unseen, and standing at the opening of a transmitter,
for the voice to stop—an answer building itself up in his head,
his lips already slightly moving. Dan glanced at Horace and at
his hosts from time to time—his feet were very painful.
" What first occurs to me Isabel is this—and excuse me. What
you say you feel is a conceited thing to feel—to some extent."
" How do you mean conceited ? "
Well, in the first place. The public mirror, the Proust—in
which people survey themselves so comfortably—can be an
indecent institution—can it not ? "
. " Indecent ? "
She knew her lips were watched by Horace for their lip-
language. She sculptured her replies with the scarlet plastic of
her smile.
" Yes, because it is so critical it makes people uncritical and
comfortable."
" I don't see that, I must say ! " Isabel laughed. " I think it
is very salutary, on the contrary. There's no obligation to look,
either."
" Is there not ? Why not then ? They are stuck up every
where. It is surely less trouble to have a look at them than to
avoid them."
" But I am interested in myself. Perhaps that however is
indecent ! Proust makes me more interested in myself—and in
other people."
"By ' interested in other people ' you mean maliciously
interested. Your interest in a person is in proportion to the power
you can exercise over him ? It is some combination of your power-
complex and your appetite for gossip that makes you so pleased
with such a writer as Proust ? "
" No, people interest me in every way. I am not malicious."
" But what generally is that interest, about which we hear so
much ? An ' appetite for people ' would describe it ? Your
' self-feeling ' grows fat upon the people you can intellectually
devour or dominate—in Fiction ? "
" Well, of course that may be so. I've never analysed the
effect of reading in that way. All I know is that I am
interested. I would rather be interested than bored, that's all
about it."
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 255
Zagreus paused, and, glancing at Kein, to see if he was saying
anything, resumed :
" How is it that no one ever sees himself in the public mirror—-
in official Fiction ? That is the essential point ofmy argument with
Li. Everybody gazes into the public mirror. No one sees himself !
What is the use of a mirror then if it reflects a World, always,
without the principal person—the Me ? Let us put it in this
way. You would not like to look into such a mirror and suddenly
find yourself there. Not so cunningly sucked in and eternally fixed
as happens with a master like Proust. Imagine your sensations if
you can ! I do not wish to be disobliging or rude—but flesh and
blood will not stand that ! "
" I believe I regard myselfjust as objectively as Proust could."
Isabel smiled, the reverse of nonplussed.
" Then why—how shall I put it—are you not different ? Please
excuse me—it is very important. Why do you never change, in
spite of that revelation ? You or anybody I mean of course."
Isabel airily tossed her head upwards, emitting a throaty
glockenspiel arpeggio to the left, then one to the right—six notes
on either side.
" Ah why not ! That I can't tell you. Why aren't you
different ? Or perhaps you are. You have changed lately, a
little."
" People feel themselves under the special protection of the
author when they read a satire on their circle—am I right ! "
Horace exclaimed with discipular unction. " It is always the
otherfellows (never them) that their accredited romancer is depict
ing, for their sport. Or is it that the Veneerings and the Ver-
durins read about themselves, see themselves right enough—and
are unabashed ? "
Horace Zagreus flung himself back for a moment staring
blankly at Li, to see if he was opening up. He was not. Then
Horace proceeded : " At all events nothing happens. It would
seem that it is impossible to devise anything sufficiently cruel for
the rhinoceros hides grown by a civilised man and a civilised
woman—along with the invulnerable conceit of a full stomach
and fat purse. The satirist merely seems to put them on their
mettle, according to that view. It is almost as if, when they
saw him approaching, they exclaimed : ' Here comes a good satirist !
We'll give him sofne sport. We are just the sort of animals he loves'
 APES OF GOD
Then the official satirist fills his pages with monsters and a
sprinkling of rather sentimental 'personnages sympathiques,' and
everybody is perfectly happy. The satirist is, of course, quite
as insensitive as his subjects, as a rule. Nothing really disgusts
him."
Isabel lifted her eyebrows, turned her head to the left and
performed a glockenspiel arpeggio, and airily tossing her curled-
out, hard, painted lips to the right, repeated her performance upon
that side, with defiant " happiness "—a creature of eternal Spring,
with the " conceit of a full stomach and fat purse."—Dan began
examining her with renewed and furtive surprise.
" But with Proust I feel that he sees things as I do," she
exclaimed with a parade of the obtusest complacency.
" Yes, I should imagine you do "
" I think so ! "
" I admire Proust very much."
" Thank you ! " gaily snapped Isabel.
An exultant rasping cackle came suddenly from the quarter of
Kein, towards whom they all three turned, Dan with an expres
sion of empty dismay. His good-humour was abruptly returning.
His Judy had been more than a match for their troublesome
visitor.
" Isabel has answered you better than I should have been
able to, Zagreus. What you say about the Verdurins and " he
rattled importantly in his throat, to patter out the latin glibly
" hoc genus omnes—that is perfectly true—they don't recognize
themselves "
" No, that as you say is perfectly true."
Mr. Zagreus now slewed his chair in the direction of Kein,
and he camped himself in front of him as he had in front of Mrs.
Kein. Fixing a glittering eye above Kein's shoulder, he transferred
the dialogue momentarily to the man—with the manner ofa person
interrogating an entranced medium, responses attended from a
great distance. As he caught the drift he would slightly animate
his smile and advance another well-placed question.
Kein gave a series of deep croaks and indicated Zagreus to
his wife with his cigarette-holder as a mock-insulting pointer.
He screwed his face up sweetly appreciative.
" It does am-muse me to see Horace settling himself for a
de-baate ! " he drawled with a sugary finick. * He reminds me
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 257
of the Ancient Mariner—with his skinny hand and glittering
eye."
" You knew Proust, Li ? " began Zagreus at once.
Kein shook his head—chin propped out, frog-mouth widely
set, eyes in eyes—steady tranquil smile at mast-head.
" What would you say Proust would have thought of you if he
had known you ? Would he have known he was in the presence
of a Proust-character ? "
" How can I say ? "
" No but what do you think ? "
" I should imagine that he would have known that he was
with someone who had a great admiration for him.—I should not
have disguised that fact ! "
" I'll bet you wouldn't ! "
Kein lowered his head, fidgeting, drawing deep breaths as he
inhaled his cigarette.
" You never saw Proust, Li, but ."
" You know, Zagreus, what a great admiration, we, Isabel
and I, both have for Proust's work."
" Well you didn't know him that is that and you wish you
had. Had you done so "
" I don't see what you're driving at Zagreus. What has that
got to do with what we are discussing at the moment ? "
" It might have a great deal."
" It might. But as we didn't know Marcel Proust—I only
wish we had" Li almost moaned.
" Well, we will abandon that."
" Your contention seems to be, Zagreus—if I understand at all
what you're driving at—that the use ofreal characters in fiction ."
" No that's not really it. What I really am trying to say is
that none of us are able in fact, in the matter of quite naked truth,
to support that magnifying glass, focussed upon us, any more than
the best complexion could support such examination. Were we
mercilessly transposed into Fiction, by the eye of a Swift, for
instance, the picture would be intolerable, both for Fiction and
for us. No more than there are ' good ' and ' bad ' people, are
there such people on the one hand as can pass over into a truly
inquisitorial Fiction with flying colours, and those who, upon
the other hand—so translated—are disgraced. Every individual
without exception is in that sense objectively unbearable."
258 APESOFGOD
"Yes. And what then ? "
" Well, first, I think, the real should not compete with crea
tions of Fiction. There should be two worlds, not one."
Kein sprang nervously a few inches this way and then that,
and precipitated himself in the path of the discourse of his friend.
" My dear Zagreus, excuse me ! But what you have just said
is word for word what Pierpoint said the last time you were both
here together—and about Proust—it was about Proust, if you
remember, that we were talking at the time ."
The frown disappeared entirely from the face of Mr. Zagreus,
and only the smile (but still held in leash by some other agency)
remained.
" Well, what of it ? " he asked.
" Nothing at all. Noticing merely that you were repeating
. You remember that we disagreed with Pierpoint—in his
attitude towards Proust, for whom both Isabel and myself ."
" Were the words the same, even ? I have a great respect for
Pierpoint's intelligence " Zagreus objected.
" You could not have more than I have, as you know—no one
could have more I assure you of that " (with angry fuming
precipitation).
Kein's face was decomposed and the maudlin-after-dinner
Kein competed with a less avowed, less formulated one, as to
which should supply the tone appropriate for Pierpoint.
" Well, I am but the instrument ! But the problem raised by
that extraordinary Pierpoint still remains," said Zagreus. " Could
it have been better raised—could it have been delivered and
argued with more fire and purpose ? " he exclaimed in a rather
menacing tone defending his broadcasting.
Kein yawned, tapped with his left foot upon the thick pile of
the rug, inhaled deeply.
" You and Li seem at cross-purposes," Isabel remarked.
" Pierpoint's views are not ours—nor yours ! When that con
versation you have been talking about occurred, it was you,
Zagreus, who contradicted Pierpoint—not Li or myself. Some of
the points you made were very good, I remember thinking at the
time."
" I only did that to give him the obstacle he required to
display his mind."
" I was under the impression at the time, that you made some
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 259
very good points. You have not always held the same views as
Pierpoint. I daresay you forget that."
" But of course I agreed with him—I agreed with everything
Pierpoint said. But Li and I are d'accord upon the subject of
Pierpoint, at least—don't take that away from us. Let's get on
with our argument. Li will be me—I will be Pierpoint !—I am
sorry Pierpoint is not here : I will take his place."
" I would much rather you would be yourself," Isabel sharply
objected.
" No no. I shall rouse old Li much more effectively by being
Pierpoint, that famous matador. You will see, Isabel, in the event.
Well, Li, what did that friend (that is not a word we use idly here,
is it,friend!) what did that friend say upon that lovely Spring after
noon ? We were talking of that sort of Fiction (what a thing to
discuss with the whole of nature spring-cleaning !) which derives
principally from Flaubert—' scientific,' ' objective,' Fiction :
That was the subject—am I right ? "
He leered at Lionel as he shouted Am I right. It was the
pierpointean exclamation in excelsis—am I RIGHT !
" Oddly enough that is our subject now ! Now as then, here
we are discussing a certain sort of Fiction. The Fiction we are
discussing pretends to approach its material with the detachment
of the chemist or of the surgeon. But in fact what happens is that,
as it is Fiction, not truth—art and not science—the work usually of
a writer for the salon and the tea-party (and not of a chemist in
his laboratory, absorbed in inventions destined to very different,
less personal ends) such ' science ' is of a superficial description.
The air of being ' scientific ' and the paraphernalia of ' detach
ment,' used by the average literary workman, result in some
thing the opposite of what you are led to anticipate. The Fiction
produced in this manner becomes more personal than ever before."
Horace paused, and passed his tongue over his lips, a trick
familiar to Kein—it was the personal trick of another person (not
present). Kein fidgeted, as though exposed or attacked by the
sudden silence.
" So we have had for some time, simultaneously, (i) a school
of unabashed personal Fiction, and (2) a universal cult of
' impersonality.' Strange, is it not ? You see, Li, a mask of
impersonality merety removes the obligation to be a little truly detached.
The writer like Jane Austen (her personality according to the
26o APES OF GOD
methods oF the time in full view) had that imposed upon her.
When the personality is in full view, the person has, in all
decency, to be a little impersonal or non-personal. The ' imper
sonality ' of science and ' objective ' observation is a wonderful patent
behind which the individual can indulge in a riot of personal egotism,
impossible to earlier writers, not provided with such a disguise.—How
does this pan out then, Li, in the average book of the average
fashionable high-brow fictionist ? "
At " fictionist," as though he were a man with a wet moustache
sucking and smacking in the moisture, Mr. Zagreus stopped, his
eye fixed upon Li, to effect a kiss-like inward whistle—by engulfing
the air in the neighbourhood of his moist tightly-closed lips.
Then, as though relishing a meal, he slightly lip-smacked and
swallowed twice. Having made this deliberate meal of air, and
washed it down with a little saliva, he proceeded without haste :
" Well then. The result is generally as follows. There super
venes asystem of heroesand villains, just the same as in the victorian
or french nineteenth-century romantic Fiction. What else, if you
give it a thought, could be expected ? For the more the average
person is invested with the signs and powers of a superhuman
impartiality, the more partisan—more partial and human, he is sure,
in fact, to be. Instinctively he uses the ' impersonality ' presented
him by natural science, or by popular superstition, rather (as he
uses everything else,) to be personal and partial with. In this
system the intellectual slur, or, worse, the social slur (the discip
linary voice of the pack—the values, defensive and offensive^ of the
writer's herd), is substituted for the old moral slur—that is the
Public Opinion, offensive and defensive, of humanity at large.
(Have I got the words right ?) In the place of Christendom—with
all its faults and cruelties—is substituted the salon. In place of the
life of the-world-at-large—of so-called public events, and of the
executive values of men's traditional ambitions—you get the values
of the woman's world of social life, and the Public Opinion of the
salon. In this system who become the villains, and who become
the heroes ? To start with, anything like a hero is a villain straight
off, and without appeal. For the atmosphere of the salon has been
adapted always to providing a place where the little can revenge
themselves upon the great. What is ' the great,' what is ' the
little ' ? But who is agreed upon that ? Nobody at all. What
however we are all of one mind about, is such rough working
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 261
measurements as serve our purpose. ' The great ' is the incalcul
able ; ' the small ' is the calculable and the safe. Such is ' Society.'
It is an organized pettiness—to use, Li, a favourite expression of
yours—or it is nothing. Society is a defensive organisation against
the incalculable. It is so constituted as to exclude and to banish
anything, or any person, likely to disturb its repose, to rout its
pretences, wound its vanity, or to demand energy or a new effort,
which it is determined not to make. ' The small ' is merely that
constant and stable, almost dead thing, which can be measured
and abstracted. ' The small ' is the abstract. ' The great ' is the
concrete. What we call ' great '—what we call ' great '—that is the
reality ! "
Horace Zagreus paused in his peroration, flashing his eyes all
over Kein (as if massaging him with a false and fiery preparation
prescribed by that Great Absentee, even the mighty Pierpoint).
—But chucking his head up quickly, muzzle-set, moustaches
bristling, eyes screwed up—" amused "—-Lionel regarded the
orator pugnaciously, until the words started coming again.
" Hero is a great, surging, primitive counter. Shall we concede
this colossal husk any reality at all—or can we, rather, in the epoch
of the Massenmensch ? Is it possible to imagine ' a hero ' ? Can we
place before our mind some thrilling shadow from a universe of
things not included within the catastropho-conservative philosophy
of the salon of the post-war time ? Whether that is possible or not,
this something we have despaired of—and so disbelieved in, and
banished from our environment—has been pictured under the
figure of a vast and wandering sea-bird. It is the albatros alight
ing upon the deck of the vessel, when heroism comes amongst us
—our laughter fiercely follows the winged intruder, as a stranger
is pursued with the barking of dogs in a suspicious countryside.
Democracy—at least we know what we mean when we use that
word—that at least we have no difficulty in picturing ! And the
salon—that is the stronghold of democracy, as democracy is
understood with us. But if a ' hero ' were surprised lurking
somewhere in that Leveller's Club (unusual as such an even
tuality must be), what then would occur? Upon the spot he
would take on (according to the salon code) a dark, a ridiculous,
a disreputable hue."
At this point Mr. Zagreus crouched slightly, to represent the
" hero " discovered in the gilded den of the Forty Thieves, of the
 262 APES OF GOD
contemporary social strongholds of the Shiebertum, the robbers
who came out of the Field of Armageddon—those victors with
their spoils.
" Fiction, as we call it, is indeed no misnomer, since it is gene
rally an untruthful picture. In its more high-brow forms it is in
fact the private news-sheet, the big ' Gossip '-book—the expansion
of a Society newspaper-paragraph—of the Reigning Order. And
the Reigning Order is the people with the pelf and the circle of
those they patronize, and today it is the High Bohemia of the
Ritzes and Rivieras. And the ' great novels ' of this time are
dramatised social news-sheets of that particular Social World."
Mr. Zagreus swept his eyes around the room in a swoop worthy
of a foraging kestrel beaked and spurred. . . .
" In that system of Fiction (namely that in which the gilded
herd of the Ritzes and Rivieras, of the luxurious studios of Paris
or of Berlin, find themselves depicted for seven-and-sixpence) the
villains of the piece, of course, are the people who displease the
accredited editor of Social-Gossip and of public opinion—or, in
other words, the author (the ' novelist ' and his friends). It is the
villains, only, who are treated ' objectively ' or rather whose por
trayal, however grossly false, could by any stretch of the imagina
tion be so termed. Ce sont eux qui payent lesfrais de la mithode scien-
tifique. The heroes of the story (or what used to be named in that
way) on the other hand, are the editor (the novelist, his patrons
and particular friends, those in favour with him, those with whom
he is in favour) . At the head of that dazzling elite is usually some
whimsical, half-apologetic, but very much sheltered and coddled
projection of himself, the editor (that is the fictionist). They, the
heroes, are not treated ' objectively ' ! Of that at least you can be
perfectly sure."
Zagreus paused, scouring his lips with his tongue, as though
it were an interlude of degustation in the midst of a hearty meal,
his eye still fixed upon Kein. In a moment he proceeded.
" Just as time is made for slaves, so scientific ' objectivity ' of
treatment is made for others—strangers to us, those not ' of us.' It
is clearly not made for ourselves. For the heroes (for the author, his
patrons and his friends) the most time-honoured, most subjective
romance is invoked, for their benefit. What is ' science ' for you,
that is not ' science ' for me. No no : here what is sauce for the
goose is not sauce for the gander. For the mythology here in
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 263
question is the monopoly of the social Trust which controls it.
So science, yes—science by all means ! On condition however
that it be inflexibly one-sided, conventionalized in every respect,
and used to blacken such types of men as are not persona grata to
the social consciousness of the moment.—Meantime, the present
ment of the hero-type, in this system of Fiction, is livened up with
a pinch of malice, naturally. Else, even among friends, the
magical advantages and predictability of success of the conven
tional, unmistakable, " sympathetic " type, would become a little
monotonous. The apparatus of " objectivity " (which the
modern fictionist is bound to parade) would be too transparent
to be satisfying. In consequence, carefully-sorted and innocuous
malice is administered to the hero, of a becoming shade. On no
account must he be confused with, or even suggest, the " hero " of
romantic type. The energy of a Karamazov, or even the success
ful human type of the order of a balzacian topdog, would transport
him at once into the category of villains. He would become un
Main bonhonvne upon the spot. Everything conspires to an, in
appearance, impartial distribution of ^qualifications. Only
some disqualifications are far more disagreeable than others—it is
in the manipulation of these desirable, and undesirable, traits,
that the successful editor of Society-Gossip, that is to say the
chosen fictionist of the Gossip-Column-World, the High-Bohemia
of the Ritzes and Rivieras, must excel. It is the neatness with
which this is done that assures the success of the ' serious '
Fiction-writer."
Mr. Zagreus paused, took a series of deep breaths, and turned
sharply in the direction of Isabel, fixing his eyes upon her red and
smiling lips, as if he expected these shortly to begin moving, in
response to what he was now about to say.
" The destinies of the ' best people,' in contemporary Fiction,
is very much what it is in real life. There is a great pretence of
egalitarian principles, there is an absence of ostentatious distinc
tions. The casts are so arranged (no undue Starring—in order
discreetly alphabetical) that the more innocent reader will dis
cover for himself (gratified at his astuteness) a difference between
A. B and C. ' I rather like So and So,' he or she will come to
say : ' I think he (or she) is rather sweet ! '—(Rather ' quaint,'
but one feels one would like to know him, or her) !—On the other
hand (all the herd-instinct, held in place with every cliche1 of the
264 APES OF GOD
moment, worked upon, excited and prepared for several pages),
the more innocent reader will suddenly come to a great decision
and will exclaim : ' What an objectionable bore (or cad) So and
So is ! I think the author's much too kind to him ! ' Or : ' What
an old bore that Lady X. must be ! How could people possibly go
to her dreary Lion-hunting parties.' Always in these books what
could be called the " Lion "-theme—or the anti-" Lion "-theme—will
be noticed recurring. It is a constant feature. For this is a jungle
from which all Lions are banished—lest democratic susceptibilities
be offended. And anyone who is noticed being kind to a ' Lion '
—much more any ' Lion-hunter '—has pretty quickly snob spat
at him—that is, superlatively, a sport that is not allowed ! For
in the High Bohemia of the Ritzes and Rivieras are we not
all ' artists '—all ' geniuses '—all ' Lions ' ? Was not the War
fought to that end—to make the World safe for Democracy, and
free of disturbing ' Lions ', for ever more ? It is the Paradise of
the Apes of God, we are to understand ! "
Mr. Zagreus rolls his eyes at this, as he mouths, over and over
again, the great leonine substantives. And he rolls his eyes
fauvesquely round at Kein. Then he continues, turning back
to Isabel :
" It is just ordinary, nice people who are hero and heroine.
And they are best seen when they are contrasted with ' Lions ',
but poor degraded ' Lions,' represented as underdogs, as ' villains,'
of this charivari. Heroes in contemporary fiction are specimens
of, so to speak, the quiet little great. And the traditional great un
doubtedly bring out their qualities—that quietness-even-to-sly
ness of them.—So, then, what is called ' Fiction ' is in large part
the private publicity-machinery of the ruling Society. A famous
Fiction writer (the sort who receives a few columns of ' search
ing ' and flattering appraisement of his latest arrangement of
current-Gossip in the ' serious ' reviews) exercises a good deal of
power. In fact he is a sort of editor, of the current news-and-
Gossip-sheet, for the select public of the High-bohemia of the
Ritzes and Rivieras."
M. Zagreus rolled the World of Ritzes and Rivieras around
his tongue, like an unctuous tenor.
" But, being an individual of some importance, the famous-
fictionist further will indulge his private rancours, and those of
his friends and backers. So another factor is added to the
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 265
falsification of these socio-literary processes.—Last of all, the
author of ' serious ' fiction in our present world, at his most
bitter, is not able to go far beneath the surface. Even the work
of Proust is almost entirely a matter of whether, when one of his
characters cuts another when meeting him in the company of a
third (of a somewhat different social grade) it was deliberate or
only half-deliberate—should be overlooked, or retaliated upon him.
Proust was nothing if not personal—all went straight out of life
into his pages. Was not Proust for years the Gossip-column writer
upon the staff of the Figaro ? Is it not as a Gossip-columnist that
he got his information ? He remained the high-priest of Gossip."
There was a restless movement of protest from the direction of
Lionel, and Isabel frowned above her smile.
" But Proust is the prince of this type of fictionist. Among
the smaller champions it is safe to say that they cannot or dare
not cut down to a region where all are equally naked before the
seat of Judgment. The ' truth ' if it were told (not that it can
be by more than one man in a generation or two) would bring
rushing down the whole house of cards, would it not—or do I
exaggerate ? The truth, even if it were available, could not be
applied technically to the villains of the piece. Obviously that
would involve the heroes as well in the disgrace of the villains—'
or else abruptly expose the fraud. Finally, then, the heroes and
heroines can only be sustained and held in position by means of
some sacrifice of objective truth where the villains are concerned.
Or rather the ' truth ' of the villains assorted with the " truth " of
the heroes, if it were not toned down, would be too glaringly
utilitarian and partisan. In cases where a more ambitious author
attempts to give the full weight of truth to those people on the one
side, about whose destinies he is indifferent, (while, naturally,
leaving those in whom he is interested, upon the other side, nursed
in a nimbus of romance, however disguised), the result is much less
satisfactory than that obtained in traditional drama or Fiction,
where the writer was not obliged to observe this pretence of
' reality.'—That these must be self-evident faults of all Fiction
which follows too closely some original—identifying itself with it,
mixing itself with it, contingent upon it—is what I advance.
What is the conclusion? That the world created by Art—
Fiction, Drama, Poetry etc.—must be sufficiently removed from
the real world so that no character from the one coirld under any
266 APES OF GOD
circumstances enter the other (the situation imagined by Piran
dello), without the anomaly being apparent at once."
Mr. Horace Zagreus, turning his head, looked very hard at
Mr. Lionel Kein, and Daniel Boleyn stared in amazement at
Isabel. Isabel frowned above her rigid smile.
" But there is a further, a supreme, reason, why these two '
worlds should not be fused into one. It is precisely that truth—
that any objective truth whatever—cannot exist in the midst of the
hot and immediate interests of ' real ' everyday social life—the
life of the Gossip-column, the fashionable studio, the freak-party.
The purest truth cannot be used for the purposes of such a life.
Used as a weapon only, it must lose its significance. The crea
tion resulting from such a mixture must daily become more
utilitarian. The works of literature resulting can be nothing but weapons
of the vanity—day-dreams of the too-concrete personal self, of the
Society-leader, the most eminent of Apes. Those works will be
contrivances only, and too simply, for the securing of ' power '
(in the ordinary, vulgar, nietzschean sense) —not instruments of
truth. How was it that the masterpieces of amorous-poetry—
Shakespeare or Petrarch—were invariably addressed not to a real
person—in order to claim the pound of flesh legally, by asthetic
right—but to a more or less fictitious personage, who could never
be materially possessed ? That Li, is my argument. That is all
I need say on this head."
The peroration had scarcely ended when the mocking applause
of the Keins broke out. Head on one side, face puckered to its
utmost of bantering combativity—hands held up like toy hands
in front of his face—clapping with little imitation blows, Kein
exclaimed " Bravo ! Bravo ! Couldn't have been better done !
Awfully good ! I congratulate you on your wonderful memory ! "
" Yes awfully good ! " Isabel panted, frowning and smiling.
" I think Horace would have made an excellent actor, at least he
would require no prompter with such a memory as he has got.
But you were once an actor, weren't you ? Astonishing ! "
" Yes wouldn't he—I have often thought of that. Anyone
would be taken in—I'm sure I forgot for the moment myself that
he was giving a recital. Ha ! Ha ! So like him, isn't it—every
word, like everything else about him, borrowed ! "
" I wish other things were as easy to borrow as words are,"
Horace Zagreus said, moulding Kein with a heavy eye.
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 267
" Yes, I daresay you do ! "
" Well there is the peroration ! But it was not all borrowed.
Did you notice ? " Zagreus asked Isabel with a pressing eager
ness.
" Yes " Lionel replied. " I don't seem to remember that part
about the poets ."
" No, that was mine ! I made that up—I wasn't sure if it
came in all right. Did you think ?"
" Absolutely all right my dear fellah."
" I thought it needed something there."
" It was the best part of the speech ! "
" No that is nonsense. But I do not think it spoilt the rest, at
least."
" You are too modest my dear Horace ! "
" At all events, there is our great and dear friend Pierpoint's
text—orally preserved, quite in the primitive manner."
" I think it is far more than that text—or any text my dear
fellah—deserves, I must say ! "
" A matter of opinion. How does it strike you at a second
hearing ? "
" Oh the same as the first time. I will yield to no one " Li
blustered and bristled, bloodshot and bulldog-jawed " —no one
whatever in my admiration for Pierpoint ! "
" It is wonderfully true I think ! And what a light it throws
upon your contention, Li—that you are eager and ready to take
your place, without alteration, in the universe of Fiction ! "
" I don't see how it affects what Lionel said " Isabel objected.
" When Lionel says that he would welcome the truth about
himself, he knows, as you do and as I do, that he is bluffing us.
The truth about anybody—to leave Li's especial variety out of
the question—any truth (that is, the kind of naked, ' scientific,'
truth that Li affects to love and welcome) is too horrible to con
template. Such things should not be mentioned in polite
society."
" Then why do you mention them ? Or are we not
' polite ' ? " asked Isabel.
" You are most polite Isabel. All I have been saying is that
no truth of that order of reality—and it is only that order of
reality that matters, ultimately—can make its appearance in
polite Fiction—the Fiction favoured by polite society. In the
268 APES OF GOD
nature of things, such Fiction does not deserve to be con
sidered seriously. It is a highly remunerated flattery—it is not
truth."
" I agree with you as regards most Fiction. But I do not
favour polite truth, that I am aware ! " Isabel smiled—over her
frown at him.
" No you favour the most brutal truth possible—provided it is
canalised and conventionalised, and that you are immune."
" I did not know that I was so unfair as that ! "
" That is not what I said."
" I thought it was."
" I did not say you knew."
" I see."
Isabel relaxed, frowning at Lionel.
" You know, Zagreus, in some ways, my dear fellah, you're
very naif ! " Kein full-stopped, inhaled deeply : blew out the
smoke which forked itself like a shot-out tongue from his mouth.
Should he go on ? Should he tell him—should he not ? He
would.
" You know I understand you so well, my dear Zagreus."
" You are a great psychologist," Zagreus mildly reminded
him.
Kein interrupted himself to smile his acknowledgments.
" And I am very easy to understand ! " added Horace more
mildly still.
" If I did not understand you so well, if I did not understand
you so well, I should be irritated with you sometimes my dear
Zagreus."
" It is evidently lucky for me that you are such an enthusiastic
' psychologist ' ! "
" When you quote Pierpoint to me my dear fellah " (Pause :
puff-puff—unhurried emission of smoke) " Pierpoint " (" Pier-
point " with two incisive carefully articulated panting smacks,
and the ghost of a derisive rumble in the throat) —" you had a
great admiration for Pierpoint ? " Long pause before the signi
ficant plunge. " I wonder if you understood Pierpoint as well as
I did—as we do—Isabel and I ? "
" I wonder ! " Isabel nodded and frowned.
" I am not a great psychologist " said Mr. Zagreus, hesi
tating, in search for what Kein required.
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ..
" You are so generous, my dear fellow, you bestow on people
things they don't possess—you really do—you always have, and
I've always loved you for it ! " (Unstinted tremolos and the
catarrhish collapses of belcanto.) " You know how fond Isabel and
I are of you—perhaps you don't know that ? It's true. And I
daresay you couldn't guess why ! "
" All right Li.—If you wouldn't think I was plagiarizing you—
this time—I should perhaps say that those words you have been
using about me I have heard you address to Pierpoint, sitting in
this very chair."
" Lionel ! " Mrs. Kein signalled towards the side of the fire
place. Kein sprang up, he staggered about. The fire, the
obstacle to combustion removed, had for some time been burning
brightly. Kein took a fan from its position upon a powder-stool
at the foot-end of the settee, and handed it to his wife, who held
it between herself and the inconsequent heat. She worked the
fan with an irritable movement, frowning at Zagreus.
Li sat down again. He ruminated, he spoke up.
" When you first met Pierpoint at our house ."
" I had already met him."
" Yes I know, but it was here first, my dear Horace, that you
got to know Pierpoint."
" No, I first got to know Pierpoint elsewhere, some time after
that."
" But I asked him here on purpose, and at your request."
" Actually it was your suggestion Li."
" Very well. However that may be, you met him."
" Undoubtedly I met Pierpoint."
Isabel and Li signalled to each other, there was indignation
in their glances. It was beneath their roof !—but Li had insisted
enough. (There was dignity to consider).
" I remarked at once that you had succumbed."
" Oh, how was that ? What does one look like when one
succumbs ? "
" I had expected it—I knew you would."
" That was an instance of psychological insight ! "
" You were not the first person to be impressed by Pierpoint :
Isabel there ."
" Leave me out of it Lionel ! "
" Very well I will leave you out of it Isabel—I quite under
 APES OF GOD
stand you ! You saw, Zagreus, in Pierpoint a very brilliant
young man indeed ."
" Young ? Very brilliant—m fact a very great genius ! "
" A young man ? A brilliant young man," the rich avuncular
roll returned—Lionel would not abandon his terminology.
'' Pierpont when you met him was not much over thirty—he is
the most brilliant talker that I know."
" I should not describe Pierpont as a talker."
" I really don't know Horace why you are so disposed, my
dear fellah, to dispute with me about any petty point ! " Li panted
testily, darting his head rapidly about.
" I am not at all, Li. Please go forward with what you have
to say."
" If you will not bicker with me, about everything."
" I apologise."
" A very brilliant man indeed, then—will that satisfy you ? "
" He may be described as brilliant I think."
" Exceedingly brilliant—and no one is more willing to con
cede that to him than I am—no one has more admiration for him
than we."
" No one ! " exclaimed Isabel martially.
" Isabel—although she doesn't want me to bring her into it "
Li worshipped Isabel for a moment in a tearful spasm—" she
who is so unlike you Zagreus in most things "
Isabel smiled and frowned at Horace.
" She has one thing in which she is like you—she is a hero-
worshipper ! "
Li worshipped the hero-worshipper for a moment, with his
puffed eyes.
" At heart " Li exclaimed, and his voice broke a little, guttur-
ally, at heart " she is every bit as much a hero-worshipper as you
are, Horace. She has that same generous nature that gives always
more than it receives—" (a drone at breaking-pitch of emotion
was set up)—" that makes her see swans where really there are
only crows ! "
There was a hush—in which Isabel joined—in which they all
bowed their heads—which lasted upwards of three minutes, in
order that they might salute the sacredness of the generosity of
Isabel.—Then they resumed the conversation at the point at
which the wild fowl had flown into it, as a metaphor.
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 271
" All her geese are swans ! " Li bellowed softly—worshipping
Isabel in the moistening of the voice and of the eye.
Mr. Zagreus turned to Isabel with an expression of mild
appeal, since she had been cited along with him. Isabel arched
her eyebrows ironically, and turning her head to the right per
formed a glockenspiel arpeggio, and then repeated it perfunctorily
to the left.
" She knows they are ! " his face puckered, sweet and coaxing,
Kein trumpeted softly towards his Judy.
" Is that swan Pierpoint now a crow ? " Zagreus enquired, in
a moment, harshly.
" Pierpoint will never be any different as far as we are con
cerned my dear fellah ! " the painful emphasis distorted Kein's
face. " From the first "
Kein looked up from his dark, turgid, toffee-dream at Hassan's
interruption—who had opened the door with a nervous sudden
ness announcing " Mr. and Mrs. Glasspool," with a throaty lisp
—when these people had passed him flinging himself daintily out
of the room, looking back over his shoulder like a dancer making
his exit.
The sun had gone in and it had become extremely dark.
There had been sounds that were renewed several times, noticed
by Mrs. Kein, who had coughed sharply to attract her husband's
attention. It was then that, with a surly embarrassment, the two
short people like high-brow tradesmen out-visiting, had been
escorted in by Hassan. Mrs. Kein had sprung up, assisted in this
ambitious movement by the catapulting of the rear coils of the
spring beneath her, had adjusted herself imperceptibly, taken a
step or two towards the new arrivals with the friendliest welcome
—slightly panting, a little superciliously, her words—throwing
them with negligent good-nature, full of abrupt stops.
Kein now addressed himself to making the shy surly little
newcomers at home. Hassan had been dispatched to bring a tray
of appetisers.
A greater volume of sound immediately rose from beneath,
and after a few feints and deceptions, materialized in four people.
It became still darker with increasing fog and storm. At length
nineteen persons were gathered in the obscurity of the long
apartment, with the fire flashing its lightnings at their feet, as if
struggling with them for the oxygen required by both—the
 APES OF GOD
matches for their cigarettes sporadically illuminating their faces, a
half-dozen cigarette-tips pricking the opaque atmosphere. Their
voices produced a booming volume of sound. Most began by
tuning-up the complicated round or sphenoid wind-instrument
they had brought with them, that is their respective headpieces —
in which the air trumpeted and vibrated in the darkness. But
the tumult increased. At length each guest (with the help of his
sinuses and with a possible auxiliary trumpet in the laryngeal
pouch, and the neatly-ranged teeth) got really started. Soon
all were working their bellows forcibly. When most in form, the
hard palate could be heard producing its deafening vibrations in
the buccal cavity. Eagerly they thrust their heads forward, and
launched their verbal symbolizations upon the puffs of deoxy-
dized air, in the direction of their neighbours. These responded—
broke across, out-trumpeted their opposites.
Isabel Kein conducted with a contemptuous smiling mastery
this discordant herd, she had negligently collected. If no sound
came from one of them (although he seemed to wish to trumpet,
but lacked perhaps aplomb) he would be dexterously stimulated
by his hostess. She would invite him to contribute to the general
orchestration. Politely she attended to what was said. A pleasant
musical laugh rose encouragingly from her lips, as the backward
guest, provoked by her, barked or sang pleasantries. The sensi
tive feminine instrumentalists bursting into slight spasms of con
ventionalized pleasure (their heads ringing agreeably with the
well-bred clatter of vocables and volleying reports of laughter)
showed a mobile energy.
The foggy day-time darkness deluging the room magnified the
din. Kein moved restlessly about, considering some of the loudest
and best-pleased of his guests obliquely (a novelist—a psycho
logist—upon the prowl) his face flushed with nervous dissatisfaction.
The door at last opened and the face of Hassan sought Mrs.
Kein's between the dark bodies and faces, signalling. Mrs. Kein
jumped up, and still talking to the nearest guests, she strode robustly
towards the door, moving her shoulders in time with her heavy
hips, and gathering a wrap about the convexities of her biceps, as
she went. Kein expressed his satisfaction to Mr. and Mrs. Glass-
pool that lunch was ready.
" I'm hungry !—damn hungry ! " Kein said.
The company moved towards the stairway, where, from a long
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. *73
rectangular expanse of window, a burst of dull light struck them,
and in a few minutes the dark smoky room, hemmed-in with fog,
was empty.
• * *

The herd ate and drank beneath the eyes of Mrs. Kein, who
drank water and ate a little toast. Such restraint in public as
regards nourishment was god-like and enhanced her arrogant
detachment towards her guests. Her brilliant handsome profile
was like a large ornate knife at the head ofthe table. A certain taint
of craft was suggested, in her face, by the massive receding expanse
of white forehead, from which the hair was pulled back—by the
vivacity of the great, too-conspicuously knowing eyes—the long
well-shaped piscine nose, like a metal fish.
With a ceremonious delicacy Dan did not look at the people
about him. Also he was intimidated : these were those picked for
him, among whom Mr. Zagreus had brought him. Until his
friend, therefore, drew his attention specifically to this one or
that, he felt it would be indecorous and inquisitive to be found
peering at them even had he dared. But his ears were full of
their trumpeting. He began to recognize their names—"Julian "
was the figure upon the left-hand side of his hostess : his own
neighbour, a girl named Ashmele, was Violet. The names of
Burrows, Keith and Homcastle—Jack, Eddie and Anthony accom
panying these names—were present to him. He detached a goblet
from the accompanying wine glass and tumbler in such a way
that the butler should have the largest receptacle conveniently
placed when he came, as he was thirsty. When it was filled with
a sparkling liquid he raised it to his lips and was surprised to find
it was cider. But as it contained a few filaments of fruit and a
taste of spice, fennel, lygistris, cloves, it must be cider-cup, he
concluded, swallowing it almost at a stroke.
Horace Zagreus appeared to be acquainted with his neigh
bour. This, Dan noticed before long, was one of the first two
humble arrivals, Mrs. Glasspool in fact.
" So you don't see him now ? " Zagreus was saying—to which
a thin resentful whine responded, and he gathered Pierpoint was
being discussed.
" Mr. Boleyn is a bio-chemist ! " announced a strident voice.
274 APESOFGOD
Returning a piece of plaice he had been peeling to his plate, Dan
turned to his left, where he met the smiling countenance of his
hostess, who (shouting above the tumult) pointed at him.
" Aren't you—isn't that what you are ? " Mrs. Kein hectored
and smiled. " My niece would like to know what a bio-chemist
is ! " With a nagging nasal incisiveness she indicated a shining
face at his side very like her own, but young—with the eyes
extremely close together, the black hair bobbed. Violet Ashmele.
" What is a bio-chemist ? " his neighbour asked Dan, in
sinuatingly, her attention withdrawn from a conversation else
where. " Is it something to do with life ? "
" It is a branch of chemistry."
" To do with life isn't it ? "
" I hardly know any chemistry."
" I think it is so interesting."
" My father is a bio-chemist."
" Is he really—how divine ! I've always wanted to mix
gases and play about with retorts—I know I should blow my
head off if I were turned loose in a laboratory. Are you terribly
fond of it ? "
" No."
"At school they used to give, us litmus-paper. What is it
turns red ? Oh don't tell me please—just a moment—I know—
when it's an acid it turns ifred, and what is it turns it blue again?
An alkali—that's it isn't it ? I used to enjoy stinks at school
more than anything else—a dear old man, he was called Doctor
Palliser, used to teach us. Do you know him ? "
Dan shook his head.
" He was a perfect darling."
Dan ventured to eat a piece offish.
" When are you starting ? "
" Starting ? " Dan was startled. Starting what ?—he looked
covertly at Horace Zagreus.
" To be a bio-chemist."
" I don't think I shall yet—I am an artist " added Dan con
vulsively. He had been about to say " a genius," but he said
" an «rtist." He blushed deeply and stole a glance at Horace
for he thought Horace would have heard and that he would tell
her that he was a genius, though in a way he hoped Horace
wouldn't.
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ,. 275
" An artist ! "
" Yes I'm too young to have done much ! " he added very
hastily.
" Of course—are you a student at the Royai Academy ? "
" No."
" How old are you ? "
" Only nineteen," he said, apologetically blushing.
" Really, only nineteen ! That is of course far too young to
have done very much. It must be most exciting ! Which do you
like best?"
" I don't know."
As Mrs. Glasspool was speaking to Kein, Zagreus turned his
head to the left, and examined Isabel's end of the table. Next to
her sat a figure new to Zagreus. He eyed him for a moment. An
old yellow-skinned coquette ! A Charlie Chaplin moustache
under a large carnal nose, thick lips ecclesiastically trimmed to an
ironic, ascetic peak. Isabel's new familiar ! This meditative guy
was picking up crumbs. These, when pressed, adhered to the tips
of his fingers. Daintily choosing among the tiny debris, his brown
eyes ironically glazed, he mused. From what could be heard,
Zagreus concluded that it must be in the wake of his friend's
Proust-interests that this man had entered their circle.
Kalman now was asserting ruggedly : " It makes me want to
laugh ! The angels weep—I laugh."
He had attracted the attention of Kein.
" What makes you want to laugh Kalman ? " Kein asked with
bantering sweetness.
" The eminent."
" The eminent ? And who are the em-mi-nent ? " Kein
enquired with finicky coaxing irony.
" He says Health and Youth are ' eminent.' They are solemn,
he thinks, just like dwarfs and cripples " somebody nearer to their
host than Kalman shouted in the direction of his ear.
" Wealth also makes me laugh " Kalman exclaimed, taking
no notice of Kein. " I see a money-bag !—All place and circum
stance, political or social, makes me laugh—it seems absurd to
me. It is a man become a thing. Instinctively I laugh at it. A
water-jug walking about would make me laugh—things are
always so solemn ! Wealth, Youth or Health, as things-in-them-
selves—by themselves cut off from the universe of Space and
276 APES OF GOD
Time—such things do make me want to laugh when I meet them
when I am out for a walk—have you ever met them ? I can't help
it ! Health as it stalks among Anglo-saxons. That is the funniest
in its way, it is terribly funny. It's sad, too—think of the foot
baller or police-constable.—Very sad ! "
" The laughing philosopher ! You do am-muse me Kalman !
Youth ! But you're only a baby yourself ! Ha ha ! Em-mi-
nence ! You do amuse me ! "
Kalman turned to Kein, beaming cherubically (clearing away
his deep beethovenesque frown—under his mass of chestertonian
curls) through his gold-rimmed spectacles.
" Not so young as all that," he said. " Young toyou Lionel—
never sir to you sir ! " he added with the heartiness of the travelling
salesman. " But I'm beyond the eminent stage, at any rate. I was
a bolshevik in my cradle, my granny tells me. It's my bolshevism
that makes me want to laugh always, it may be that ! " He shook
like Pantagruel, who ' laughed at everything.'
Sadofsky sitting opposite to him smiled.
" Oh God ! Oh Montreal ! " sighed Mr. Zagreus in his sleeve,
examining Kalman, at whom Dan was gazing in astonishment
across the imposing front of his erect and bristling master.
" So was I ! " vociferated Kein all of a sudden, administering
a rhetorical stage-blow with his fist to the luncheon-table. The
goblets and wine-glasses in his neighbourhood demivolted, gong-
ing and tinkling. " I always was an anarchist ! "
Kalman stared with pointed amusement at his wealthy and
wine-flushed host. He had the board now : his neighbours were
attending to him. Horty, the american novelist, his neighbour
but one to the right, thirty-two years old, had just put another
guest as though by accident in possession of a simple addition
sum. Its factors, points of reference in his " post-adolescence,"
when worked out, which could be done comfortably in the head,
described Horty as being at present round the age of twenty-four.
Horty was silent. He exchanged " dry " prim smiles with the
guest in possession of these figures, called Bolsom, whose preda
tory profile directed itself to the new centre of interest with a
flushing grin that made the hair withdraw an inch higher up the
sparsely covered head.
" I know a hard-working middle-aged journalist " began
Kalman, delighted with his success.
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. *77
" You know what ! " boomed Kein.
" He keeps a wife and large hungry family in considerable
style on sucking-up to the Young. His Youth-stuff he calls it—in
papers and magazines. ' Youth at the Helm ! ' or ' Bravo
Twenty-Five ! ' or ' When Youth Can—When Old age Does
Not Know ' are the sort of headings he gives his articles, you know
the sort of thing.—There's money in it ! "
" What does he make ? "
" More than I do !—He can write them with his eyes shut. The
old devil once offered to teach me the trick. He has practically
made a corner in a certain brand of flattery—very paying ! "
" What an old monster ! " said Mr. Glasspool, upon whom
the wine had already had a humanizing effect.
" Not at all ! A clever man ! He is particularly good at
devising schemes for the violent extinction, or the segregation in
penal-colonies, of men and women of his own age. He's won-
der-ful—he's very hot when he gets on to that ! "
" I know a man like that," said Keith.
" But he is marvellous ! " roared Kalman. " Only last week
he had a huge success with an article proposing a drastic revision
of Bernard Shaw's Every man overforty is a scoundrel."
" I believe I saw that ! " said Horty.
" By a most ingenious process of reasoning he showed that
this should now be altered so as to establish the birth of the black
guard, as he called it, at thirty-six."
" How lovely ! " Miss Ashmele exclaimed. " What a perfect
man ! "
" But why theer-tee-seex ? " asked Vemede sedately, at Kal-
man's side.
" I know, why thirty-six—that's what I asked him. But he's
not at all satisfied himself either—he contemplates shortly a
further reduction, for he says he notices that people are getting
to have a shabby worn-out look at thirty-one nowadays, and he
hopes soon to be able to stabilize ' scoundrelism ' at the thirty
milestone, with the electric chair or the Tarpeian Rock at thirty-
five—-five years of criminal life, that is—and then the law would
step in ! "
Kalman again paused—relaxed the string and it quacked
round him like catgut, on a dozen applauding lips.
" I think that's too divine ! " Horncastle exclaimed, exhibit
 APES OF GOD
ing himself effusively from the other end of the table, and imme
diately, in a lower voice, he enquired of his neighbour :
" Who is he talking about ? That shabby, worn-out look—I
recognize that don't you ! "
" Birth of the Blackguard ! Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! " Kein shared his
mirth with Kein. Horncastle's neighbour, with two spandrils of
pepper-and-salt hair, a moist perpetual smile giving his mouth
the official status of a sex-gland,—' the mouth of man is a dark
cavern ' guarded by a dragon's teeth (with Burrows small and
sharp) —supremely unrefractory he melted beneath Horncastle's
eyes—but did now know the personality involved in Kalman's
conversation. Kalman continued :
" His master-stroke, however, is to have taken women up into
his system."
" What a dangerous man your friend is," said Mrs. Keith.
" I believe he is " said Kalman.
" What does he say about us ? " said Mrs. Keith.
" Oh it was suggested to him in the following way. He keeps
his ears open. He heard somebody saying that all artists should
—without patents or gifts to hospitals—be recognized as noble.
This was enough for him ! This at once gave my friend his cue.
Women had always been his stumbling-block—they were the
weak spot in his system. He felt that they could not be treated on
the same radical footing as men. And yet they were not all
young. That was the great difficulty. But now he saw his way
out.—Why should not all women (for artist he substituted woman),
be recognized as young ! "
" I think that's a marvellous idea ! " said Mrs. Keith.
" Not bad is it ? " said Kalman.
" Your friend is a genius ! " said Sadofsky.
Genius!—Dan looked up angrily at the speaker. He
caught the eye of Zagreus, and blushing turned away his head.
The man was palpably an Ape—Zagreus had evidently re
marked it !
" For noble he substituted young ! " Kalman said.
" Your friend is an apostle of aristocracy ? " Raymond Bolsom
suggested.
" No—merely a business-man I think," Kalman replied. " He
argues that in mind women are in fact ' young,' whatever their
age. In consideration of that fact, why should not they share the
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 279
youthful privileges of their offspring, as is the due of their function
of perpetual nurse and companion to the young ? "
"I don't understand what he meant by women having
' young ' minds," objected Mrs. Keith ; " I should have
thought it was men if anybody !"
" Yes but that was his way of arguing."
" Yes."
" Naturally he did not neglect the other side of the equation
—suggested to him by the man who claimed that all artists
should be recognized as noble. It was only a step for him in any
case from the patent-of-youth-for-the-woman, to the daring and
popular proposal that all ' the young ' should be recognized as
noble. ' Every man is a poet in his youth ' he argued. But poets
—who are ' artists '—are, as we know, noble. Tommy is young.
Tommy is a poet. Therefore Tommy is noble."
" An excellent syllogism ! " blustered Kein, enjoying " syllo
gism," a bit of greek.
" Has he made allowance for the relinquishing of the title at
a certain age ? Would there again be only one title ? Or would
some very youthful people be dukes, and those approaching
thirty, say, be only knights ? " asked Mrs. Keith.
" At the thirties all Commoners—and at the forties Untouch
ables ! " buzzed Bolsom, (half-way between a knight and an
untouchable) with a sly hysterical glee.
" We did not discuss that," Kalman answered, with owlish
earnestness, " we have not discussed that. But he has I know
very extremist notions as to what is ' young ' and what is not—
few people here would satisfy the requirements of my friend, who
is a very full-blooded youth-snob indeed, especially as his bread-
and-butter depends upon it !—My friend is the cleverest man I
know ! " Kalman concluded with sententious brevity.
There was a silence at Kalman's end of the table, and Isabel's
voice was heard by itself, she was discussing her Zoo. " He's
very dull, at least I can get nothing out of him. Lionel likes him
—it's his theatre-interests. He has produced several things quite
intelligently I'm told."
As she felt the silence isolating her voice she raised it a little,
and her eyes played with a leisurely insolence in the direction of
Sadofsky, over to where he sat near Kein. Julian Hyde's sallow
mask, with its ironically peaked mouth, and one eyebrow drawn
a8o APES OF GOD
up as well to a whimsical vertex, was directed towards the guest
under discussion. Anthony Horncastle was exclaiming " No
really Jack ! I think that's too perfect ! ", and the hearty camara
derie of Mrs. Bolsom's laugh was replying to Horty's proud
american.
A loud clap of laughter burst from Kein's mouth, it rattled and
tossed for some moments along the table, until at the vocal source
it met a barrier of phlegm and ceased abruptly.
" Damn good ! What a good liar you are Kalman ! Very
amusing. ' Youth at the Helm ! ' Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! 'If Old
Age Could ! ' Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! I think that's damn good ! If I
thought such a person existed as your friend I should insist on
knowing him, Kalman. But you're such a liar ! Ha ! Ha !
Ha ! "
" Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! " Kalman echoed with hollow regularity,
beaming at him. " I'll bring him to see you if you like. But he
won't like you. He would regard you as the greatest scoundrel
unhung ! "
" So I am ! So I am ! " Kein croaked, throwing himself
about with gusto, and giving Keith, his right hand neighbour, a
playful buffet.
" Who was the person who said that all artists should be
noble ? " Keith in a faint toneless voice asked Kalman. " He has
a lot to answer for."
" Yes wasn't that good—I liked your friend's process of argu
ment ! " Kein exclaimed.
Elizabeth Brereton, sitting on Kein's left, kept her swarthy
russet fatness pinched and dimpled in a smile, never speaking,
but her rich voice joined in at the climaxes as though she were a
class of laughing-instrument.
" I don't know who the fellow was, except that he was irish, I
suppose " Kalman answered across the energetic face of Mrs. Keith.
" I wonder if he was the person in the story " Keith said.
" You must have heard it I expect, to whom James Joyce said he
could do nothing for him—because he had arrived at the period of
blackguardism ! "
" Yes who was that ? " said Mrs. Keith.
" If so, perhaps as he couldn't be young he thought he'd be
noble another way."
" What story was that ? " asked Kein, turning his ear towards
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. a8i
Keith, feeling he was losing something or might do so owing to
Keith's quiet delivery. His face became decorous at the name
James Joyce—one of the rugged eminences upon which Keith
wandered, securing for his personality the atmosphere of the hardy
mountaineer, with which his small freckled spectacled face was
mistily bathed. •
" Don't you know that story ? " Keith replied sluggishly and
unwillingly. His wife, observing his languor, lifted up the story
bodily upon her own brawny shoulders.
" Joyce as a young man of twenty " she said, " went to see
George Moore I think it was : when he found him he asked with
arrogance at once—' How old are you ? ' Moore replied " Well
if that interests you I am forty-three.' At that Joyce shook
his head, and said ' I'm afraid I can do nothing for you ! '—Isn't
that splendid ! " she exclaimed energetically. " What high-
spirits ! What gorgeous cheek ! I think that's worth all Ulysses
put together ! "
" You haven't got that quite right " Kalman said. " It
actually had more point to it than that. Joyce went to see Moore
or somebody—I don't believe it was Moore—to try and get him
to do something for him. The moment he entered the room he
saw from his face that he didn't intend to do anything for him.
It was then that, merely turning the tables upon him, he asked
him his age. When he heard it, he sadly shook his head—and
saying with mock pomposity, ' I fear I can do nothing for you ! '
left the room immediately."
" Oh was that it ? " asked Keith who had come to life doubt
fully, a little vexed.
" Damn clever " exclaimed Kein throatily, darting about
nervously in his chair. " Damn clever ! Joyce is very clever.—
See how well he's managed to get himself ."
" Yes that's irish—that's the Irish ! " Kalman shouted beam
ing, with a slight brogue (the MacAlmon in person in fact) and
great confidential intensity and mock eager-eyed. " My friend is
irish "—he added rapidly, as if clinching an argument.
" Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! your friend! " barked Kein.
Meeting the sea-roving eye of Horace Zagreus, which he had
been seeking, Kein shouted :
" Look at Zagreus ! as solemn as an owl ! Zagreus, there,
he is one of your friend's clients, Kalman ! He believes in Youth
282 APES OF GOD
more than anyone I know. Between ourselves—but never mind.
—He's an enthusiast in everything. I expect your story about
your friend displeases him."
" Did it ? " asked Kalman, looking across at Zagreus with cool
curiosity, as though he were a creature strayed from another
world, in which it was improbable that philosophy existed.
" What do you suggest, Li ? " asked Mr. Zagreus. " That I
should defend what Mr. Kalman calls ' eminent ' Youth, in
process of exploitation by his friend ? But what excuse should I
have—I should certainly be suspected of perversity if discovered
at such an enigmatic task."
" Perversity my dear Horace ? "
" I am afraid so. Still to please you Li I will try."
" I knew you would, my dear fellow."
" I can see you are an altruist, like me," Kalman said with a
deft grin.
" Without, however, your dislike for the ' eminent,' " Zagreus
corrected him.
" Oh it is the poor down-trodden ' eminent ' to whose rescue
you are going, is it ! That is indeed perverse."
" But you see I am not an altruist."
" Keep those two apart ! " Kein called out. " Once they
start they'll never stop."
" That is a mistake, you misrepresent me " Zagreus called
back to him, the deaf to the deaf. " Of my own accord it would
not have occurred to me to argue with Mr. Kalman at all."
" Then why do you ? " asked Kalman.
" I place friendship above everything—even above the
friend ! "
" How very extraordinary."
" Yes I know."
" Well ? " asked Kalman, quizzing and soft.
" Yes well ! " said Zagreus with a flourish. " What you meant
by ' eminent ', Mr. Kalman, I have not quite understood that—
perhaps you would favour me with a little enlightenment upon
the term ' eminent ' ? I cannot satisfy Kein's requirements until
I know what I am supposed to be arguing about."
" The socratic method ! " Kalman beamed. " I have a lovely
feeling—that I am in Athens ! "
" That is the idea " said Zagreus.
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 283
" Eminent ? Oh by that I understand pride—pride mani
fested by the object of a superstitious esteem." Kalman was
negligent, transferring his attention to the talk of those neighbours
whose interest he had lost.
" But there is a strange thing to describe as pride ! " Mr.
Zagreus bustled and flourished a little—in order to recapture, for
Kalman, the attention he coveted. " I do not call it pride when
people seek eminence in such impersonal, whosesale, communistic
ways. That I call humility."
" Indeed ! "
" Indeed I find I must do so—for what humbler thing, can you
tell me, could be imagined than pride in health ? Imagine going
about to flatter a baby by saying to it ' You are a baby ! ' or
making up to a clergyman by saying ' How wonderful it is of
you to have lungs ' or ' I do admire your remarkable intestines ! '
or to draw attention to any organ that all animals possess, note
that it works with average efficiency, and find nothing more
flattering to say to a man than to refer to his possession of it !
Would you not rather—if you possessed a little resource, and
wished to flatter—look for something in the individual not pos
sessed by other individuals ? So you would say, perhaps ' What
a quiet baby you are ! ' or to the clergyman ' How unlike 'the
average clergyman you are ! ' Yet it is true that in our demo
cratic society flattery does take the form of saying to people that
they are like other people—rather than unlike or possessing some
thing peculiarly their own. And the personal advantages that
are chosen to flatter them about are those that they share with
great crowds of other people. Such is ' eminence ', and the
accompanying flattery—the commodity exploited by your friend
—call it crowd-eminence, if you like, if you can guess what I mean
by that. So I can hardly believe you are sincere in saying that
you regard health-swank, or youth-advertisement, as a form of
pride—like pride of place or birth."
Kalman's face had grown displeased. Beethoven, the Jupiter
of music, was reinstated—he removed his horn spectacles, he wiped
them, and replaced them, fixing a reflective eye upon this antagonist.
" Yes." Pause. " Yes ! " he said, when Zagreus had stopped :
paused again and then said "Yes" once more, as though hesi
tating as to which weapon to take up to destroy Youth's champion
with. " You don't think I'm sincere ? "
284 APES OF GOD
The others were once more attending to what was in progress.
They had watched with satisfaction the slow and ominous removal
of Kalman's spectacles, like the navvy slowly divesting himself of
his coat.
" No " replied Zagreus quickly and airily, " but your insin
cerity makes no difference, as we are not discussing you. You
know no doubt well enough that the ' eminence ' that makes
you laugh is the last ditch of a ruined society, and is anything but
pride. That is really why you laugh at it."
" I can assure you 1 do not know—whatever it is I am supposed
to. In fact I don't know in the least what you're talking about.
And if you don't mind my saying so, I don't believe you do your
self."
Mr. Zagreus darted his eyes all round Kalman, as though his
antagonist had been a pin-cushion in which he was planting pins
with lightning rapidity.
" Well then, let's see if your obtuseness can be overcome in
this way. Let me know if you fail to recognize the landscape as I
go along."
" I'm sure I shall recognize nothing."
" Your ' eminences ' I suppose, unless I am quite at sea as to
what you mean, are the result of the break-up of social snobbery
into its component parts—am I right ? The old snobbery of
pride-of-race is broken up and is evenly distributed among the
crowd—is that not so ?—each getting his little bit in rotation.
Only those factors are retained and exalted which all alike, at some
time, can be sure of possessing. The old thrill and awe at the
noble-man is run into the more material animal moulds. The
noble animal—the ' noble savage '—is the successor of the noble
man. The street-arab or the young Apache is a ' sheik ' or a
chef de bande."
Kalman nodded condescendingly.
" Suppose " said Zagreus " a territorial magnate, of the old
type, who, as the result of extravagance, revolution, or what not,
loses possession after possession. A time would come when his
vanity would be forced back upon things that formerly he had
taken for granted, and never, perhaps, noticed. What is the last
thing (in a progressive collapse towards primitive conditions) of
which a man could boast ? Just to be alive. That would be the
last thing of all. It is the slave's thought—/ am alive. What a
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 285
consolation !—a consolation incomprehensible to Cato, who asked
himself why slaves went on living ! So with the snobberies that
Democracy has installed in place of the ' noble ' ones of Tradi
tion. Anything less conceited than they are, in the essence, it would
be impossible to imagine ! They are characterized almost without
exception by a pride in being not a person, but, as you have said,
in being a thing. And what can there be more humble than that
modest vanity ? So it is misplaced bolshevism on your part, or
else bolshevist perfidy, to pretend to interpret as pride, what is, in
fact, its opposite ! "
Kalman had relaxed into a b^oad proletarian, and " socratic "
grin-»-his teeth rising like ragged yellow rocks into view, the tawny
dusty amber of his spectacles, his hair, and his skin emitting a glow
of good-humour—the weapon that, as he listened, he decided it
would be best to choose.
" Gd on ! " he invited Zagreus with nods. " I haven't
recognized anything so far ! But it's very interesting. I'm both
insincere and perfidious : that much I've got."
" Well, I'll arrange it a little differently and spare your
sincerity. Shall we consider the baffling fact of revolutionary
eminence ? If bolshevism succeeds, it becomes ' eminent,' does
it not ? Would you regard it as consistent to become bolshevist
about bolshevism ? "
" To start with, I don't know what you mean by bolshevism."
" You used it in the first place quite loosely yourself to indicate
what most people mean by it."
" Yes, that is true, I did," said Kalman, as though glad, even,
to be able to concede a point to such a very contemptible anta
gonist-—and so make the argument a little less one-sided—not so
monotonous for those looking on. " But if we are going on using
it—then we seem to be in for a very deep debate indeed ! We
shall have to define it. I used it in talking to Kein, merely."
" If communism—will that do ?—succeeded " Horace Zagreus
then said, smiling, " in a sense it becomes ' eminent ' sure
enough, does it not ? But it becomes ' eminent ' all over—every
body is ' eminent ' in some way, simply because they are alive.
To be a human being, any human being at all, is to be ' eminent '
under communism. But that ' eminence ' would not make you
laugh, would it ? Because—although it might mean stagnation
and a mechanical hardening into this simple concept and that, like
286 APES OF GOD
so many things rather than people—it would not mean ' eminence '
in the old sense that caused you to be born, like Li there, a little
liberal, or, as he said, ' anarchist ' ? "
Kalman's face for some time had worn an abstracted and
somewhat puzzled expression. For a moment he said nothing
when Zagreus stopped. Then he looked up and said :
" I have had this argument before." He paused, looking over
at Kein. " I had this argument, in a rather different form, at
this very table with somebody—about three years ago wasn't it ? "
" Who was that."
" I don't know if you know him. Pierpoint is his name."
" I know him very well."
" Well I recall that we had this argument, almost word for
word—only it did not start in the same way."
A short interrupting bark oflaughter came from Kein. Towards
Kein Kalman looked—he scowled, and transferred a lowering face
of great displeasure from his host to Zagreus and back. Zagreus
was smiling broadly. Evidently he had been the victim of some
mystification—Kalman's displeasure became a formidable sulk.
" Yes you're quite right Kalman. Zagreus has been treating
us to impersonations of Pierpoint ever since he arrived."
" Oh I see ! "
" He has a double-personality. I don't believe he knows when
he's Pierpoint and when he's himself."
" Oh that's it ! Now I understand ! " Kalman's face un
ruffled with magical suddenness. That accounted for everything,
there was nothing more to be said. Zagreus looked at Kalman,
and then he looked at Kein, as though to see what further sparks
these two cronies would strike from each other—or what further
combination might result, from their contact, to him. Nothing
more occurring, he turned to Dan.
As he did so he found Isabel's eyes fixed smiling upon him.
Mr. Julian Hyde was saying
" Who is that ? "
But Isabel not replying yet, went on looking at Zagreus (as did
also Mr. Hyde over one lifted shoulder and under the pointed
arch of a quizzical brow—smiling from the privileged perspective
of the table-head under the segis of the hostess) .
" Who ? Horace Zagreus ? That is Horace Zagreus. I'd
forgotten you did not know Horace. I've known him " with lifted
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 287
laughing brows " —for a donkey's years ! Lionel has known him
still longer. He knew Zagreus long before we were married, and
that is seventeen years."
" Really ? "
Zagreus, imitating the confidential manner adopted at this
point by Isabel, said to Dan in a voice for his ear alone—
" I was using Pierpoint's methods. Those were the methods
of Pierpoint ! That is how he would have met that argument !
But of course what was said was nonsense enough. Pierpoint's
method, if I understand it, is always to expose his opponent's
argument without taking the least account of his own private
views. They would only hinder him—just as a personal emotion
on the part of an actor would interfere with the interpretation of
a part. Pierpoint would have said to himself—' Kalman is
looting between, or behind, the lines, having provoked a war.'
(Kalman is nothing if not bluff and honest : but I imagine he is
as fond of provoking conflicts and disputes as is Kein himself.)
Had he found himself dragged in, as I was, Pierpoint would have
pretended that the looter was a disguised enemy. Then he would
have proceeded to encircle him with flags of truce, from those
marked down as belligerents. Having made him return his
booty, he would have handed it over, like a conjurer, to the
lookers-on."
Horace expounded with an eager delight the steps in the
masterly manoeuvre that undoubtedly Pierpoint would have
employed, and Dan opened his eyes wide as he gazed at this
double-scene—side by side, the behaviour of the paradigm, and
the proceedings of the living-copy—the manoeuvre that should
have been and the manoeuvre that was.
" I have not achieved all that," said Horace, with a negligent
rhetorical flourish. " But in the absence of the master mind I
did what I could. That man Kalman is only earning his keep as
a clown. He was annoyed when I trotted Pierpoint out. He was
talking complete nonsense, as you saw. Whoever heard of Youth
without Health—if indeed without Wealth ! Youth without
Wealth !—think of slum-life and the crafty gutter-snipe. There
is no Youth there worth the name ! If the gutter-snipe started
exploiting his ' youngness ' it would if anything be on the model
of the beggar exploiting his blindness or his wooden-leg. In the
same way Health, as conceived by Kalman, is meaningless. The
 288 APES OF GOD
Health of the police-constable is not Health at all, that is in the
only way that has any significance—energy alone is health—the
health of a Hannibal or a Moses, for instance. Health as intended
by Kalman is ' thingness ' right enough ! It is vegetable bulk,
it is unconsciousness. Why call it Health ? I do not know ! Health
is never the stupid brawn of the lumbering police-constable, but
it is energy in any shape—am I not right ? An organism like that
of the russian novelist Dostoievski—shattered by terrible nervous
seizures, or that of Flaubert—another epileptic—-you must go to
them for Health. They arc colossally ' healthy ' I think—else how
account for the books of both these C.3 persons—these down-and-
outs in the matter of health ? "
Horace Zagreus drew a deep breath into his pair of A.i lungs
—in magnificent order, as fresh as the sweet strong bellows in a
dairymaid's buxom bosomish chest.
" No sir ! " exclaimed Mr. Zagreus. " Never is Health that
absurd thing Kalman affects to have met walking along for all
the world like Gogol's Nose, as solemn and full of itself as a
village beadle. As to eminence—but that is really a counter of the
agitator. Kalman is an agitator, with a clown's girl. Himself he
has of course no conviction one way or the other. It seems Pier-
point used to dispute with him. Ah but Pierpoint !—Pierpoint is
that compact dynamism of Health and of Youth, or whatever you
like to call them, upon which these people feed! That is why
Kein is so angry at Its removing Itself as It has done. The old Li
can no longer get at It poor devil, to nourish himself with It !
That makes him rage ! That is a bitter thought, he is very bitter
—all it is necessary to do is to say Pierpoint and he bristles did you
notice ? It is like a bottle of strychnine or phospherine getting up
and taking itself off—fountains of energy of that sort do not grow
on every tree—what a metaphor !—if one removes itself its world
withers—as primitive men felt their crops would be blighted when
the strength of their rulers declined. You I feel will be—are !—
one of those fountains of life ! " Zagreus boomed at Dan, in a sort
of ecstasy.
Dan sat without moving, staring attentively in front of him.
" You fountain of life ! " Zagreus repeated, in a voice of
thunder.
Those near Zagreus turned towards him quickly, searching
(with astonishment) for the object of his apostrophe. More like a
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ,. 289
stone-image still, frantically saluted by its primitive worshipper,
Dan stared inscrutably ahead of him, showing no sign of aware
ness or of life whatever. Hoor-aah ! he cried faintly to himself.
He had been called a Fountain of Life by Horace ! Over and over
again he repeated Fountain ofLife to himself, and he was so elated
at being called a Fountain of Life by Horace that he could not
move a muscle, it was almost painful.
" You are a geyser of young and beautiful life ! " roared Mr.
Zagreus quite beside himself with enthusiasm. " You are as
molten as the first gush of lava from a green volcano in an
american tropic ! " he exclaimed in rapture—couvant Dan with his
madly-maternal sea-bright eye, encircled by the thin line of tell
tale red of the bronzed albino.
From across the table, Vernede was observing them with a
demure understanding smile. Horry, interrupted by the sudden
electrical discharge in front—with pinched blue mirthless lip,
with that especial shade of intolerant raw superciliousness that
the traditional American calls " saturrical "—watched Horace
and Dan. Violet Ashmele, from her crafty slits, cast glances at
her neighbours as she sat—informing herself at each glance of new
points for her dossier, mechanical and at bottom as aimless as a
squirrel with its nuts and merely observation-habit.
Dan's face seemed a shell of mutton-fat over his faint dead
brain, that was pulled tight, to deaden this amorous assault. Jfo
one would have guessed that he was saying over and over again to
himself—" I am a Fountain of Life ! I am a Fountain of Life ! "
Nibbling a little, bread he stared over Vernede's left shoulder.
Zagreus appeared to remark that this outburst had attracted
attention.
" Li is a blood-sucker," he went on, but in a stage whisper, in
Dan's ear. " A blood-sucker ! He has aged a great deal since
he lost Pierpoint ! It's taken ten years off his life ! I thought by
disguising myself as Pierpoint that he might be deceived and
revive ! But Li's a crafty old bird and he disdained the bait.
Meantime I have made him very angry, as you see. Li does not
like being reminded of his loss."
" Well ! " with a wealth of finality Horty said to his neigh
bour Bolsom, who had been observing Zagreus and Dan with
him. " What do you make of them ? They're a queer pair,
anyway ! "
ago APESOFGOD
The white mutton-fat of Dan's face flushed up. A meek
minimum of tired life returned to his eyes. He stirred slightly,
as if relaxing from a trance and his eyes took the direction of
Horace, upon whom they rested for a moment.
" If I had been replying to Kalman," Dan said " I should
have answered differently."
" Kalman," Kein called (swaggering clubman and man's-
man). " Will you bring your friend next Sunday ? My nephew,
Tommy Ashmele, is coming. He is in the same line of business
as your friend. They would get on well ! "
" I'll see if I can get him. But he's a very practical man ! I
doubt if he'll come."
" But he must lunch out sometimes ! "
" Very rarely. He says there's no money in it."
Kein threw himself back, with a gesture of withdrawal and
discouragement.
" I knew he didn't exist ! "
" No, Li, there are such people, who think like that—really !
I know you don't know them." Kalman surveyed his neighbours.
The look of pleased naivete had not left his face, and he hurled
his replies at Kein's deaf ears, his eyes protruding from his head,
one fat shoulder thrust far over the table, with an optimistic effort.
Isabel and Mr. Julian Hyde, after the last outburst, were dis
cussing Zagreus, her voice reaching Horace with the most aggres
sive distinctness. She was speaking with her two eyes upon him,
occasionally turning slightly to Mr. Hyde, to whom her words
were ostensibly addressed.
" He is a sort of Roudine " she was saying.
" A Roudine ? " the incredulous drawling monotone of Hyde
responded. " What is that ? A Roudine ! "
" Oh don't you know—Tourguenev's book. Roudine is the
arch rati of Russian Literature. In Tourguenev's book he is
always turning up in new places—as soon as they find him out
in one, he moves on to some other part of the world, and begins
all over again. Wherever he is, he is always regarded as a genius
—somebody who is ' going to do something ' someday. He never
does anything, of course. He just goes on talking and talking. His
new friends admire him a great deal for a time. When they find
him out—he leaves. It is a very russian figure. Zagreus is not
quite like that—besides I must say I am very fond of Horace
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 29>
Zagreus—there is something very attractive about him. But he
is a rate. Zagreus is a disappointed man.—Then he always has
—well, boys. Boys he takes about with him—no one would object
to that, but he becomes demented on occasion—their presence
excites him so much, when he has one with him."
" Has he one now ? "
" I am sorry to say he has ! "
" How would you have replied ? " Zagreus asked Dan, hang
ing upon the words that did not come.
Oh ! Dan blushed very deeply for he had not expected that
this would go any further : Oh all that was expected of him
because he was a genius!—sometimes he wished that he wasn't
one at all—and he had really only thought one thing, that had
struck him—he knew he should not be able to say what he had
thought but he must try he supposed. Help ! Help !
" You had a plan you said "—he was again pressed eagerly by
the bright-eyed Zagreus.
" I thought—I thought " Dan muttered brokenly " that what
he said was that dead things were bad, and that persons were—all /
geniuses I "
" And did you not think that wrong ? " bellowed Horace in
his ear with rapture, forming already with his mobile, child-like,
sooth-saying lips, the big yes that must declare itself at any
moment now upon those of Dan. He eyed his oracle with the
most awed expectancy, all over the face—that beauty was irresis
tibly delphic. .
" Yes," said Dan, " it can't be true. A thing, a thing." He
strove and strove. Then he burst out " It cannot be a genius ! " I
" How perfectly you have expressed that—it is a criticism that
is worthy of Pierpoint himself ! " Horace Zagreus was trans
ported with triumph, and he raised his voice as he exclaimed :
" That is far better than I could have done ! "
But no one was paying any attention now—Kalman had again
secured the ear of the entire table, except for the super-detached
hostess and her official confidante for that luncheon-party.
" What Kalman said was, as you say, not entirely false "
Horace then said, in a calmer tone, " only it depended upon the
assumption as you showed with such wonderful insight that
' dead ' things were in themselves undesirable, or inferior, and
that persons (that is mobile things, able to come to conscious deci
 292 APES OF GOD
sions, move hither and thither for purposes of attack, or the
securing of individual satisfactions)—that persons were some
higher order of things.—It is that point that, with your unerring
eye you would have picked out for attack."
Zagreus stopped and he regarded with great attention for
some minutes his oracle. Even, he abandoned himself to an in
voluntary wistfulness, scanning the beautifully-moulded features of
the impassible boy that could not possibly lie—beauty is truth, truth
beauty. That once had been his favourite axiom—ever had he put it
in practice—so that never otherwise than emotionally had he been
able to apprehend truth. Never on the other hand could he
cease to believe with devoutness that the grecian profile (like the
camera) could not lie ! (His english blood it was, the Follett-
half, that caused Horace to feel in this fashion—from the cradle
up—about the Hellenic face-line.)
The hellenic profile blushed (full of the blushful hippocrene)
but it did not speak. Why should it ? With almost a sigh Horace
Zagreus spoke again—he spoke by proxy for the dumb line of the
nose and brow—for the praxitelean lips.
" That is how you would have replied. You would have
shown that his description was in one essential false. The im
portance, in his remarks, attached to people and to activity—that
is what you have questioned. His abstractions (though certainly
where they begin imitating people they may make you laugh a
little) would please me better than quantities of people. His
' WalkingJug,' for instance—say a Toby-jug. That would be a sort
of duck. I should not mind that. Why make everything into a
Toby-jug ?—My dear Dan, how I agree with you ! Pierpoint
could not have given him a better answer ! ' Health ' is a duck.
' Youth ' is a swan. ' Man ' is a Toby-jug ! Pierpoint once said
something like that—but I am not sure he has stated it with so
much force ! "
I But Dan was speedily congealing again into a thing—such as
men have invariably worshipped. And Mr. Zagreus, as though to
arrest the process (for he longed for his oracle to speak again) or
in order to benefit by his spasm of expansion before it was extinct,
I with great haste exclaimed :
" Dan look round for a moment at this lot for instance. Do
look at it ! What do you say to them ? I should like to hear
what you thought of them ! I should be curious to know ! "
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 293
Horace ran his eye invitingly along the row of heads in front,
like a stick along the railings. However Horry's voice fascinated
them for a moment as he said in conversation with Bolsom :
" I saw his Cosy A Saivy Par-ree"—with cross reluctance—no
much like !
" What did you think of it ? "
Horty made a haughty highschoolgirlish moue with his prim
button-mouth. Then he began laying down the literary law
straight-from-the-shoulder re Pirandello.
" Ow ! " he grumbled frowningly " Pirandello's arl right "
said he " He's not bad ! But he's only a fash-nable spook play
wright ! Ow ! That's grand geenyol that's about all that amounts
to ! His six old characters in search of their author when they
found him if they ever did wouldn't gain any. They'd be no more
alive than they were before ! All he can do is characters in search
of an author—if they weren't out looking for old Luigi—why they
wouldn't be much of a bunch. I guess it's only because they're
lost anyway ! "
" Sixteen characters in search of an author ! " vociferated Zagreus.
" Look at them ! They don't look very real, do they ? "
" No " said Dan, looking at them. " Not at all.'!
"It would be better to say sixteen characters in search of a
real author " said Horace " to replace the sixteen false-authors,
or the faux-auteurs that this lot probably are. All to a man, I'll
wager (like Pirandello's six characters) are characters of Fiction.
That they can claim right enough : for they have all been written
about in their own or their friend's books—upon that you may
rely. But of what Fiction ? It is a Fiction as dependent upon
reality—such a poor reality and so unreal—that they are neither
flesh nor fowl—they are fictional mongrel fads (that is Pierpoint's
expression). There they sit, neither one thing nor the other.
They are far worse off than if they had no author at all ! Happy
is the character without an author—with such ridiculous ' authors,'
or creators, as these ! "
He swept his predatory enthusiast-eye about the assembled
authors.
" All so-called ' real ' people, trying to find an author ! And
in despair—for a real author is none too easy to find—they have
all set-to to write about each other and themselves. (Mr. Horty
over there, no, the one with the fringe and side-whiskers, he must
 294 APES OF GOD
say some odd things about himself in his books ! Some sort of
harsh, pathetic, super-flapper, Middle West tart he becomes, I
I should fancy). You know how old Li represents himself! But
Li is at his best in representing Mrs. Li—that well-bred and
cultivated personage at the top of this table ! A much more
concrete and imposing situation is brought about, without super
natural machinery, by these semi-real people (got out of real life)
than by the personages imagined by Pirandello in his Six characters.
This one has the advantage of being the supreme contemporary
situation as well. Atime without art, we exist in a period without
art. So, a time without background—or shortly it will be that.
There, in front of us, they sit in two rows (we are in one)—the
people who have never been able to become Fiction. How portentously
they suffer for the want of a great artist to effect that immortal
translation—how they suffer ! So they cannot exactly be blamed
for their attempts at self-creation.—One of these fine days a real
creator will come along. What a sigh of utter relief there will be
j—when the Ape can cease from Aping, and the sham-artist lay
down his pen and brush and be at rest ! "
Mingled with his own words Horace Zagreus heard Isabel
remarking to Julian Hyde :
" —most of his life abroad—all over the place. He is very
restless. I don't think he's quite all there sometimes—it's in the
family I have been told—he is half a Follett—what ? half a
Follett, if that means anything to you."
Such things did mean something to Mr. Julian Hyde—a
Follett was always a Follett for him—he solemnly inclined his
head in sombre recognition of the Folletts.
" He has had sunstroke—he was in Panama or some country in
the tropics as a young man. Sometimes he is very peculiar indeed."
Zagreus looked at her as he talked to Dan : after a moment's
embrace of their four eyes, she turned her head back to Julian
Hyde and said, with her lips curving out, in a higher key :
, " Besides as you see he is an albino ! I always think there is
something the matter with people who are albinos—don't you
think so ? "
It was at this point that Mr. Zagreus, still deciphering the
messages of her brutally extended lips, threw into his discourse
the reference to their hostess as " that well-bred etc. person," that
was at the top of the table—that " cultivated " person.
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 295
" Most of his time however has been spent in Italy ! " Isabel
spoke slowly, through the nose a little, as if intending to deaden
the voice in that manner :—" the home of the english rate'—Italy.
In lots of little ways Zagreus is very like the Englishman-in
Italy-type—you know, the sort you find in the english colony in
Florence or Venice. They're a rum lot ! I think that species of
english exile is a very peculiar thing indeed. As a matter of fact
that's where Lionel first met him—in Venice. He used to be well
off. I believe he's not now."
Zagreus stared at Horry and Bolsom : Bolsom who was a
journalist, was saying—
" The last time I was over there I stayed with a friend, in a
diabolically noisy street. I hate Paris. I don't like the French."
" Neither do I," after a moment of discontented silence Horty
grumbled accommodatingly—with the weighty reluctance of some
body admitting to an unorthodoxy of some value.
" They're so rude," Bolsom said. " Also another thing is, the
English are not popular. I'm very fond of London, myself.
Sometimes it gets awful, but on the whole I like it better than any
other place."
Horty squirmed—movement of some sort required first—then
said—with a final gathering up of reservations, concessions, indif
ferences, into one ball of all possible factors, exhausting the subject
in a discontented but decisive affirmation.
" I like London ! " (Arl right ! I'll like London ! I like
you. ^r/-right ! /'// like London !)
Dan was eating rice, prunes and a little scroll of beaten cream.
Zagreus watched him. >
The theatre queue! He and this strange attendant standing
upon the other side of the wall at his back, outside the door of
the then silent Kein-mansion, ringing for admission. The sun J,. AV"'
was upon his neck—the same sun, or another, that had struck him, Z7
the young bematist, swinging a plumb-bob, in the plantations t '
where the De Castro factory now stood— Para a day's journey on
the river-steamer. A long offset was about to be taken. A big
Portuguese workman was lazily nursing a cross-staff. Isabel had
reminded him !
The pompeian funerary chariot—the shadow so much older
than the original—and the little peering jewish face, now defunct
—from a wall in Pompeii to Kein's door. The theatre-queue had
296 APES OF GOD
come to life, now : here, all about him, in solid ranks, it chattered
and ate. He had imagined a queue. But here it must be—less and
less resembling the original—shadows upon the walls of Pompeii,
of Paris, the hot andean plains—a horrible family of shadows.
An ape-herd, all projections of himself, or he of them, or another—
gathered from everywhere, swarming in after him, or collected
to await him. Their plangent personalities, stuck up in opposite
rows, behaved as though they were meeting for the first time (as
indeed they might be) and had little connection. (Roudine. That
was a nice discovery !) Or the queue had started acting—for want
of an author, as he had just said—after a fashion. When their eyes
met his ifwas always himself, in some form, at some time. The
intensity of this truth, like a piercing light, often compelled him
to turn his head away from people, as he might from the image
in a mirror. He lifted up his head—he would look these appari
tions in the mirror-like depths of their eyes ! A life-time of these
machines—he knew them by their factory marks : it was not a
task beyond his powers to take their " movements " out of their
cases—-it was a human task—that great mechanic Pierpoint had
been his master. But he who was " fey " disdained it—he dis
missed those phantasies now and fixed his frowning eye upon
Isabel. He might be irritated or irritate himself into assuming
his place more fully in a relaxing reality—at all costs he must fly
this tension ! An immediate interest be taken in these relation
ships ! Make the most of Isabel's manifest desire to insult—put it
to himself ! Remember albino—remember albino !
He heard the name of Pierpoint : all those present having
been picked dry, or merely sniffed at and put down, by Hyde and
Mrs. Kein, it was the turn of the absent.
Isabel shrugged her shoulders.
" He's socially impossible. It is impossible—with him it is
really no use. Such people should be locked up somewhere and
made to write."
" I do so agree with that " said Mr. Hyde : " it applies to all
' creative ' writers, and oomposers."
" Composers most of all ! "
" Yes—there ought in fact to be a Zoo where all the Bee-
thovens, Mozarts and so on could be shut up. We could go
and take them buns of a Sunday afternoon, or watch them fed !—
The question of food is most important. There are many works
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 297
of art that we should understand far better than we do if we' could
watch their author at feeding-time—in a genius-house, at a Zoo."
Depressing her long equine head over her hunched shoulder
blades, and tilting up her chin, the eyebrows rising and receding
to a point—in the manner of hair flushed back by the wind on the
head of a running nymph—Isabel performed an arpeggio this time
to the front—the ripple of the glockenspiel.
" In any case they are all brutes," Mr. Hyde proceeded. " I
have never known a man of genius who could tell one piece of
food from another. All wines taste the same to them—I don't
believe, even, they can tell one woman from another ! They
seem only made for one thing—they should not be mistaken for
human beings. They should all be in a Zoo."
" I don't know about that—not perhaps all. Some I think
could be allowed to remain at large."
" Of course—but very few indeed. Proust was hardly in that
sense a man of genius—he was the voice of civilized people, he
could have been anybody. He was not one of those creatures in
league with Nature, almost against Man "
" No, he certainly was not that."
" But what sort of man is what's-his-name—Pierpoint ? Is he
a gentleman ? "
" If you mean—well, he belongs to a well-known welsh family
I believe—on his mother's side he is irish. He says he's the Duke
of Munster or something of that sort—but all Irishmen say that.
One of his relatives was convicted of embezzlement the other day—
you may remember perhaps, in the Gilpin case. Yes I suppose
you'd call him a gentleman."
" That's all I meant—the question of their private means is
also important."
" Private means—what a delightful expression ! No he has not
got that. That is why he sees so much of Zagreus."
" Is Zagreus the financier ? "
" Financier ! that is a strange title for poor Horace Zagreus
—but I believe—yes, Horace is said to be always trying to lay his
hands on money—to give to Pierpoint !
" He keeps him ? "
" Practically."
" That is very interesting."
" Pierpoint is a very brilliant creature, there's no question
ag8 APES OF GOD
about that. I can quite understand anyone wishing to help him
—but I should not like to have to keep him."
" He is perhaps an expensive pet."
" Pierpoint is altogether unbalanced. At times he will do the
most extraordinary things. We, of course, were very fond of him
—Lionel was extremely good to him—too good really. There's
one thing I can say—Pierpoint will never have a truer friend than
Lionel was to him—and still is ! It's peculiar, but Lionel won't
hear one word against him, even now," she panted lightly, frowning.
From the other end of the table came Mrs. Glasspool's voice
in the nasal whine of intellectually-transformed shop-girl english :
" I shouldn't mind if he were only honest. He has no sense of
personal honour."
" He calls himself a writer : but he cannot even write
eengleesh ! " Jean Vernede broke in, his distended eyes darting
from one pleased angry face to the other, bringing hisvquota of
animus. Kein's face however averted itself from him, with an
expression of annoyance.
"Pierpoint is what we call in Scotland 'a puir wee '"
What Pierpoint would be called in Scotland according to Mrs.
Keith, was obscured as Miss Brereton's dimpled smile of a
giantess broke through into the gurgling deep of her laughter.
Mr. Keith lay back with one arm over the back of his chair,
smoking, with half-closed eyes—" detached ", faintly smiling,
freckled, spectacled.
Kein sitting like a mute—overwhelmed with professional sen
sations of universal calamity—had sat fixing his bloodshot eyes
first upon one speaker, then upon the other. Occasionally he
would take a draught from the whisky and soda at his side. With
Mrs. Keith they stopped : no one made a sign to take up the ball.
Kein inhaled the air, now beginning to be filled with tobacco
smoke, with a deep and melancholy sound.
" Well as you know I've stuck to Pierpoint through thick and
thin " he began to croak and boom : " Isabel and I will never
change in our regard for him—our deep regard ! Once we give
that we never take it back ! " The stature of his magnanimity
increased at every sentence. He finished his glass at one sharp
throw, and filled it again from the bottle and syphon at his side.
" But that there are things about Pierpoint which even his most
devoted friend would find it difficult to defend—that it is impos
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 299
sible to deny. I am sorry to say. I wish I could ! Poor Pier-
point ! I wish I could have helped him to—to, not to lay himself
open to so much hostile criticism. What he will do now I really
do not know—Isabel and I often ask each other that ! We often
wonder . We talk a lot about it. It worries us very much
sometimes. We can't help, even now, being concerned for him.
He has no money. What I'm terribly afraid of is that he may—
well really go under—a man like that depends so much upon
the support of a few friends—goodfriends ! "
" And look how he treats zem ! " Vernede exploded impe
tuously : Kein casting him a dull glance of resentment.
Mrs. Glasspool shook her head, saying, " Yes " in her girlish
voice—her musing eyes fixed upon the disgusted face of Vernede,
every bassesse met with a blank snub.
" Ah my dear Eddie ! " Kein exclaimed in a low melancholy
gurgling tremulous roar, gathering volume as it went. " If you
only knew how Isabel and I, especially Isabel, have helped him
in a hundred ways—have put ourselves out—as few people, my
dear fellah, will."
Julian Hyde said to Mrs. Kein.
" What an ungrateful beast ! I quite see the type of person
you are describing. He is one of those people—they are unluckily
numerous—who don't know when they've got a good friend."
" He certainly doesn't ! "
Loud, strong, offensively harmless laughter (like a healthy
organism emptying out of its window upon the public place, as
it were—with a good-natured oath of good pedigree—a surplus of
unvalued energy) rushed out of Zagreus—abrupt, disinfectant.
The baltic-blue of his eye shone with insolent open light upon
the caustic offended subterranean yellows of Mr. Hyde—anchovy-
tinted with traces of eczema, with his harassed pomposity, who
when attacked seemed offensively to exude his sulphurous pigment.
" You heard all that ? " Zagreus asked Dan. " You heard
what they said? It's all fantastically untrue. It is very amusing
to me who know the truth, as far as there is truth in these matters.
What they never say- ! but of course they never utter anything
but a pack of lachrymose lies."
" Do they " said Dan. Zagreus laughed, growing noisier
from moment to moment. Dan blushed at the thought of all the
lies. He blushed for all these liars—tears and untruth.
3oo APES OF GOD
" It's an old habit of Isabel's to discuss her guests openly. That
dispenses one under certain circumstances from any ceremony
oneself—there is that about it : both as regards her, and her
guests. For if the hostess does not respect the guests—why should
they resped the hostess, or respect each other ? No. No reason
at all ! It becomes a free house. So let us make ourselves at
home—I will be the host ! You are an inquisitive arrogant
gossipy guest, upon my left hand—you would like to know what
description of cattle I have invited you to meet : I will inform
you—not, it is understood, with the aristocratic sans gene of
Isabel. Nothing but good-breeding could enable one to achieve
that. Still, I will do my best."
Thereupon he slowly passed in review with his eyes, starting
with Mr. Julian Hyde, the luncheon party. Dan's eye followed
his from head to head—a furtive follower.
" Nineteen of us ! There were some I was not able to account
for at first—the first two that came, for instance. The two shabby
unimportant couples and perhaps a couple more—I've found
out their function. They are friends of Pierpoint, or formerly
were. That is what they are here for—what you have witnessed—
what you have heard."
" Who are those people—upon the right " muttered Dan,
indicating their host.
" That one ? Now him I can tell you all about—it happened
that I was seeing Kein at the time he materialized. That is Keith
of Ravelstone, who tends the shadowy Kein ! "
The bronzed albino threw back his head and uttered a piercing
laugh, like the cry of a wild-bird.
" He is as you see, a very earnest, rather melancholy freckled
little being—whose dossier is that, come into civilization from amid
the gillies and haggises of Goy or Arran, living in poverty, he fell
in with that massive, elderly scottish lady next to him—that is
his wife. She opened her jaws and swallowed him comfortably.
There he was once more inside a woman, as it were—tucked up
in her old tummy. In no way embarrassed with this slight addi
tional burden (the object of all her wishes, of masculine gender—
but otherwise little more than a sexless foetus) she started off
upon the grand tour. And there in the remoter capitals of Europe
the happy pair remained for some time, in erotic-maternal trance
no doubt—the speckled foetus acquiring the german alphabet,
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 3ot
learning to lisp italian greek and Portuguese. It was at this
point that that old Man of the Sea yonder (our venerable chum
Lionel) came into his young life. Keithie is a journalist, you
must know, and develops a great deal of scottish earnestness with
traditional facility upon the slightest provocation. He is a ' critic '
you must know, too. Now the latest little book vamped up by
the Old Lionel's foetid dotage, is published : it is in due course
dispatched to Helsingfors to Keith to review—Li-ing self-por
traiture, of course—on this occasion about Li's school-days (which
had to be resorted to in order to reach a vein of homosexual
episodes—no one since his tenderest years, I will say that for
them, has ever thought of Li in that way, and he is incapable of
inventing.—except, and that he is a little master at, over and
around facts). The book carries of course the nom de plume of
Simon Cressy—no indication whatever of the cunning old fury
concealed beneath the chaste name of Cressy, except naturally
what could be found in its pages by anyone not a complete fatus.
' Ha ! ' says Keith ' a new writer ! ' So (incredible as that
may sound) he discovers old Lionel ! Ha ha ha ! in the inno
cence of his heart and thanks to the deep critical insight that
distinguishes him—he unearths that Old Li ! He has the honour
of being the discoverer of the same that is now, or (at this time
of day) ever will be, for ever and ever amen ! So he pores over
Lionel's pages, immediately develops freckled earnestness. Mamma
—that is wifey—scents perhaps something more palpable than
genius in the pages of the ' new writer '—at all events croons
encouragement, as ever, at the sight of the little earnest half-
born face of the child-hubby. Down he squats upon his little
freckled hinnie and for his sins or his fathers' pens a little earnest
careful paper—all about old Li's little book. Off it goes the
earnest little article to the land of Yankee Doodle, where a
million molluscs learn of the dering-do of the double-faced,
double-penned, double-named (that of the plume and his per
sonal one) double-dated, Li. Deftly excised by the vigilant
Romeike, back it flies to the lair of the watchful old stiff, feverishly
awaiting events—his last little old egg painfully laid, with the
robust collaboration of Isabel. Kein at last has ' an admirer ! '
Oh ho ! a something-for-nothing, a boob in the flesh—an authentic
unpaid supporter ! Demented curiosity in the Kein household !
Who is the Unknown Idiot? Who can this unmatched moron be
 3o2 APESOFGOD
now ? What manner of poor puny little scribbling gull can that
feeble little bait have hooked—for the love of Lillith ! It is
Madame Kein and old Lionel smelling and peering at the little
simple meaningless words, of the A hauntingly beautiful piece of
work—the We await with the keenest interest the next book by this new
writer type. All, all swallowed. Ha ! Ha ! with bursts of
phlegm on both sides of the table ! Not a trick (painfully con
cocted between them and wound out of their two old heads)—not
an attitude, not a line, not a lie, not swallowed whole, by the earnest
little unknown mind.—To cut a long story short, as Shanks would
say, epistles fly forth into the Unknown. Eventually Keith over
there is brought to light—he stands revealed as The Unknown
Idiot. Soon he has not a shred left upon his poor little person—
the epistolary rage of the Keins ferrets and burrows and scratches
across space. All his history, circumstances (with special atten
tion to financial details)—age of his wife, climacteric approaching,
what residue of breeding-years (circumstances of old better-half
with special attention to financial matters) —marital relations
(satisfactory agreement materno-platonic from the start, or, con
trariwise, appetit qui est venu en mangeant merely, or sporadic aphro
disiac patches only, regulated by atmospheric conditions, or
intangible factors)—early upbringing of Unknown Idiot, in the
highland-home—fingers in the porridge pot, tending of the
shadowy, mist-wrapt kine (excellent training for subsequent
attendance upon Lionel—boredom-proof it is to be assumed !) :
juvenile ' complexes,' little hopes and fears and infant vanities,
hatred of vermicelli, imperfect acquaintance with classical idioms,
french, shorthand—gallantry exhibited in early struggles brought
to conclusion by the arrival of God's messenger, pawky Peggy :
all this is wormed out of Keithie across space by letter after letter,
that drew nearer by every post ' admirer ' and ' admired '.
With heaviest modesty Li returns the compliment. Keithie is
informed of what he ought to know—the salient facts—namely
the modest competence that has enabled the ' new writer ' to pro
duce his books without considering the Public—the age of the ' new
writer ' (admirer let down gently with an ' in middle-life,' or
' bleached and seared somewhat '), his infirmities—conspicuous
amongst which is a love of truth and a tender and over-easily-
touched heart (over which Isabel, his dear good consort, has
sternly to mount guard) —his hopes, his fears, his infant-vanities,
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ,. 303
his boyish ' complexes ' : and last but not least the beautiful
character of his wife—that astonishing jewel that Heaven knows
he does not deserve, but which was sent him to make of him any
thing that he had subsequently become—with her companionship,
her helpfulness (especially that habit she has developed of amusing
herself by writing books more or less, with Li's tremulous assis
tance). All the preliminary ipanchements, in short, were dis
charged—calculated to lay the tearful, clayey foundations of a
thousand and first ' life-long friendship.'—To all friends met
with or to ill-paid hirelings Li exhibits the treasured newspaper-
cutting, from the american paper. ' The only one of the whole
lot who understands my Work ! ' he exclaims. ' He, my dear
fellah, knows what I'm driving at ! He's the only one so far ! "
There is one cutting he always keeps in his pocket—a duplicate
of it he lends out—both are renewed in his methodical household
like the ink in the inkpot, or the towel or the napkin, as it gets
soiled, by the dependent detailed to such tasks.—But at long last
the time approaches for Keith's return from foreign parts. A
day of expectancy and then, behold, no longer through a glass
darkly, but at last face to face—Admired and Admirer. Lionel
gives him one quick glance, opens his mouth and swallows him,
in fact sucks him into every pore of his rickety old person and
closes the lid. But Li has also to swallow, as best he can, Missis
Keith, of course, which he does with a grimace or two. Lionel's
' admirer ' is then rapidly installed in a cottage a few miles
from Falshwood Farm, his country house—and they all live
happily ever afterwards so far. There is another aspect of this
little romance that is not without a curious interest of its own.
Lionel, as you know, since Proust's imposition of the pederastic
motif upon post-war society, has not of course become a prac-
tioner—his years preclude that : but as far as possible he has
worked into his scheme of things the pederastic pattern. Nothing
if not in the swim, old Li : so he immediately on realizing the
way the wind was blowing, secures a pederastic major-domo
(our friend the butler), who is encouraged to ogle all his male
guests in the hall, valse away with their coats and hats and so on
—as you have seen. But Keith also has been dragged in and
made to contribute to the same end. So now Lionel disputes the
already half-devoured and over-chewed Keithie—approaching
with senile impetuosity from the purist pederastic position, and
 3o4 APESOFGOD
driving straight to the proustian bull's-eye—while Missis K.
simultaneously bears down from the angle of woman-love.—That
is who that pair are. Next please ! "
This had been delivered at a moderate pitch, in a rapid mono
tonous rattle. Some parts of it reached their neighbours, especi
ally in the case of Violet Ashmele the entire volume was absorbed
and rapidly shorthanded in the mind in the natural course of
things. Zagreus's eyes frequently struck towards the people being
described who however could hear nothing as Kalman was
wrangling across them with Kein.
" And does the person you have just described now compose
novels himself? " Dan asked.
" Undoubtedly. But I think Keith is encouraged more to be
a critic. That is evidently his forte—I should say Kein was dis
tinctly of that opinion. No, I don't think he must spend too much
time in writing Fiction ! A little poetry, that is a harmless
pastime : but ambitions as a fictionist would cause difficulties.
Then he has his living to make—the cottage, bought with Kein's
money, has to be paid for ! No, Keith is a critic, I think."
Dan looked idly along from the Keiths towards Kalman.
" The cynic-philosopher of the Kein establishment " said
Zagreus. " Horry over there hardly needs explanation. He has
been explaining himself one way and another ever since he sat
down. The next are a Pierpoint couple—the lady Pierpoint was
probably careless enough on one occasion to sleep with—so she
bears within her unprepossessing person the promise of love's
confidences. She has in other words, figuratively, a dirty scandal
ous little Pierpoint foetus in her side. And like most such things,
it would bear very little resemblance to the alleged original. She
will be eagerly accouched later in private, by the Kein obstetric
method—she exclaiming a little, perhaps—affecting to regard the
operation as a painful one—a very painful one."
Horty's blue mirthless lip lazily outlined a " sardonic " smile
as he remarked to his neighbour Bolsom :
" I can see what's going to happ'n to that ant-Mary—Zegg-
roost what's his name ? He's going to get himself thrown out
before long—that's what he'll do I guess ! "
" Next, our hostess, who has set us this excellent example."
Horace fixed his eye, across Daniel Boleyn, upon Isabel Kein—
and as though sketching her, looked up and down, from a point
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 3o5
upon the table in front of Dan over to her face, and then back-
to and fro in clockwork flashes, as he proceeded :
" Isabel, now, is ' une forte tete '—I like old Isabel. It is a
sneaking regard. She is capable—not attractive. That sort of
' good-looks ' usually causes me to shudder. But with Isabel,
she drives her old well-polished and well-repaired chariot jauntily
along—she is so sensible with her personality—that from the sheer
good-sense of her handling of it one finds it (without its ever being
anything but a barren and expensive fraud) yet not absolutely
unpleasant. That is the triumph of good-sense. That is what it is.
I do not at all mind Isabel. Her face has been lifted, they say,
nineteen times—gathered behind the car, you know, and laterally
adjusted—she has had paraffin injections beneath the skin—she
cannot see clearly more than a foot and a half : in spite of the
fact that she eats nothing, Isabel is fat. Now you would expect
the result to be depressing. I for my part do not find it so. How
is that ? Simply because she is so sensible about it ! Her cosmetic
operations and the rest of the ridiculous business of being that
over there, she does not take that seriously—it is entered upon,
and gone through with, with a perfect good-sense—coolly, ' cynic
ally,' quite without pretence. The result is not a triumph of the
face-surgeon's art, but of good-sense—always good-sense.—For the
sort of person who would laugh at her for all that, for such she has
(her intelligence enables her to justify it, make it prevail) a com
plete—a masterful—contempt. It is not for them that she hitches
up her old sail and paints it a seductive pink—nor for anybody
for that matter. It is on the same principle that persons wash
their faces with care that she gets hers surgically refitted, it is
hygiene rather than vanity. Good-sense everywhere corrects
and as it wcreniakes aUrigfUy/haX in a less intelligent person would
be repulsive and comic. Take again her writing habits—for she
is in fact an Ape, it is she who writes his books rather than Lionel
himself. I do not mean she writes them—Lionel is her medium
—he writes them, she is the all pervasive editor. Primrose was all
about herself, for instance—she would tell old Li some salient
passage in her youth—he would go off and write it down, as well
as any Boswell that ever held a pen. Then Boswell would return
with the type-sheet. But this Doctor Johnson had something to
say (who can doubt it ?) in her own portrait—who would not ?
Yes, there was an extraordinary affair ! It was a jumble of all the
3o6 APES OF GOD
nice things anyone had ever said about her or that she had sup
posed people had ever thought. I came into it. The sweet
things that I was supposed to have thought about Isabel made
me rub my eyes at times ! But again that book was not quite
idiotic, as it might have been. Good-sense rescued Isabel, even
there—when posing to herself as the seductive ' Primrose.' The
same cool cheek, the unruffled craft, saved it from being what—in
less capable, steady, emotionless hands—it undoubtedly would
have become. A certain brazen contempt for themselves—that
I think is the secret of the strength of such people. It is the under
dog virtue par excellence—as a truth-bearing virtue it is probably
unsurpassed. It is not beautiful, anything but.—Of course Isabel
is not by birth " Horace raised his voice slightly " not the butterfly
—the ' social butterfly,' as an aunt of mine on one occasion
reproached me with being, not that at all—she is not a butterfly,
really—she is a clothes-moth, one might call it. You may know by
repute the famous Covent Garden misfit shop, Lazarus "
As the name of the mendicant leper, the opposite to Dives, rang
out from the lips of Zagreus, the fist of Isabel smote the table at
her side.
" That's enough Zagreus ! Take your latest boy somewhere
else if you wish to slander people ! " Isabel exploded, her breast
heaving. Kein, who had been unable to hear anything at such
a distance, had been signalled to anon. With a growing nervous
ness he had attempted to catch what his troublesome guest was
saying—semaphoring repeatedly to his wife, reflecting her rising
resentment, in his flashing glances. Now he jumped up and
moved towards Zagreus, Mrs. Kein at the same time shouting
towards him :
" Turn him out ! We've had enough of him ! He's insulting
everybody. He's drunk ! "
" What—on cider-cup ? " Zagreus indignantly protested.
" Isabel ! Your good-sense should tell you that on such fare "
" My good sense tells me you are a cad ! "
" No not on cider-cup ! " Horty agreed " Something else has
excited his head " looking significantly at Dan.
" My wife wishes you to leave Zagreus. Will you please do
so, as you have annoyed everybody "
"He has not annoyed everybody" Mrs. Kein cried. "He
has insulted me—deliberately. Tell him to go—at once ! "
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ,. 307
Horace Zagreus sat looking with a smile of bewilderment
about him.
" Mr. Horty " he exclaimed " I appeal to you as a gentleman
and a foreigner, regarding our english ways with the impartiality
of a stranger ! Did you notice anything in my behaviour that
seemed to you not to conform to the manners of this present com
pany or that was in any way unworthy of our host and hostess ? "
" You leave me out of it " Horty said, wriggling his lean
bottom, and pulling down tightly his mirthless upper lip as
though drily to sip a little tea—" drily " smiling. " I noticed a
good deal, although only a foreigner."
" You are very observant Mr. Horty—I could tell that at
once " said Zagreus pleasantly. " I appealed to you in conse
quence. But you are not thoroughly acquainted with our ancient
customs, I fear. It has always been among the habits of the
ingaevonic and in a less degree of the celtic tribes, when at lunch,
for the hostess to discuss all her guests in a loud voice, with some
person selected for that purpose. But also and from time imme
morial it has been the inalienable right of every tribesman (if he
so wished) to discuss—with anyone he might select for that pur
pose—his hostess or any guest or guests he might choose—or indeed
all together, one after the other. I have merely availed myself
of our ancient british custom—obsolete, it is true, but recognized
wherever men of our race foregather—as a precious and jealously-
guarded privilege, always up everybody's sleeve at any moment.
With the american procedure in such a case I am unacquainted."
" In Amurr'ka I guess we're not so law-abiding as all that.
But never mind about Amurr'ka—leave me out uv-utt Egg-roost ! "
" Very well Mr. Horty. I see that as a stranger "
Kein tapped Zagreus upon the arm.
" I should like to have a word with you Zagreus."
Zagreus suddenly sprang up and caught Kein by the arm.
" Of course, Li. But tell me about it later. You're such an
impetuous, terribly impatient man ! "
Heading Kein towards his empty seat at the bottom of the
table, Horace gently led him towards it, Kein proceeding with
him as though he were walking backwards.
" There Li. After lunch, my dear fellow—that will be plenty
of time ! Bad for the digestion ! "
Mrs. Kein, with a chair-noise like the angry clearing of a
3o8 APES OF GOD
throat, rose, gathering her wrap around her heavy shoulders, and
all the guests rose too—sliding out backwards between the chairs,
and awkwardly standing looking from their hostess to Zagreus—
the ladies initiating a herd-movement towards the door.
" Zagreus ! " Isabel called harshly. " You won't come here
again, you understand, with your ridiculous boys ! Find some
where else in future to take them ! The servants will have orders
not to let you in. We have had enough of you."
Swinging her heavy body majestically, she strode towards the
door, which Anthony Horncastle opened, the ladies following.
Zagreus made a deep bow towards her—remaining slightly inclined
until she had left the room. He then went back to his seat and
sat down, inviting Dan to follow his example.
" I think we'll go upstairs," Kein said to the other men of the
party. " Hassan ! " he called to the pale profile slipping out at
the door at that moment. " We will have the coffee upstairs.
No—upstairs ! "
" You see how peculiar they are," Zagreus was saying to Dan.
" They will not have it that what is sauce for the goose is sauce
for the gander. They advance instead some ancient usage of
tribes to which we none of us here, as far as I know, belong."
" Did they do that ? " asked Dan, for he was at that moment
an offended " genius "—looking with sternest astonishment in the
direction of Kein.
" No but they're quite capable of doing so."
The last of the other guests had passed through the door on
their way upstairs. Kein stopped and turned back towards the
two seated figures.
" Zagreus " Kein's face was soured and sobered—his habits
had met an obstacle, challenging in a new tongue his sad sweet
dream at its mellowest.
" Sir ? " Zagreus, throwing an arm over the back of the chair,
turned towards him.
" You heard what Isabel said ? "
" Yes, most of her remarks—though naturally some escaped
me. You know that I am hard of hearing."
" Well, you'll please come here no more. You hear that, I
hope ? "
" I can scarcely say with truth / hear it, but I see it—is that
satisfactory ? "
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ,. 3o9
" Entirely, so long as you understand that you are to come to
our house no more."
" I may or I may not. Who can say ? "
" You will not. The servants will have orders not to admit
you."
" I never take any notice of servants—except when forced to
repel their advances."
" Very well. Take that boy away as soon as possible."
A sudden turbulence invaded the cloudless blue disks with
their greek immortality of calm—like a reminder in an athenian
brain of the cold landscapes behind the migrations—or the cloud
imposed by the sun when it had struck him, ravelling the young
images of life.
" Kein, you shall not insult a visitor here under my protec
tion. You must confine your remarks to me." But the cloud
was driven back by a wild easy laugh as he regarded that old Li.
" Hurry away you crazy old humbug you or I shall begin weep
ing like the angels and laughing like Kalman at the same time,
and you'll have to get an ambulance—and pay for it mind! They
make a charge for bringing ambulances to private residences !
You'll have to have me carried away—I shall be completely hors de
combat if I look at you much longer. Shoo ! Your turn is over.
Look out—or the curtain will come down upon your head ! "
" Be careful that it doesn't come down on yours ! " Kein
turned to the door. He started as he found a small stocky figure
in a short jacket and 183o hugoesque necktie, falling in a loose
bow, who stood there demure and grim, awaiting him. A priest
like repression fixed the face, that of a wizened child, in sedate
repose. Marking time duck-like, with a monotonous muscular
oscillation, holding out a hand Vernede was saying :
" Goodbye—I must be off."
As he recognized Vernede, Li exclaimed with annoyance :
" What ? Aren't you coming upstairs ? "
" I must go, I'm afraid."
" Oh must you go now ? Why ? Come upstairs and have
some coffee."
" I have an appointment at sree."
" Come on let's get out of this," Mr. Zagreus said to Dan,
rising. " Let us go and get a cup of coffee at that coffee-stall we
passed on our way here. Better coffee there."
 APES OF GOD
Hassan was awaiting them in the hall, as Vernede, Dan and
Mr. Zagreus came out of the dining-room. His personality was
steeped in the nostalgia induced by this humdrum service. Secret
ecstasies haunted cloudily his face—he stood drooping—a fune-
really-clothed human monument of voluptuous absent-minded
ness. Stationary butterflies, his eyes fluttered bashfully as the
three visitors came into the hall. Then he turned towards the cup-
boarded room where the coats and hats were placed.
Kein retreated up the staircase from this region of unsatis
factory conflict, hurrying to the side of Isabel, who he knew
would be awaiting him in the drawing-room. He saw her
luminous myopic eyes of fierce enquiry—heard her few breath
less words in an undertone, a certain hush among the guests. He
began already forming the syllables : " I told him to take his
boy away as soon as possible. (She will want to know just what
I said. Take your boy away yes.) I told him we had had
enough of him. Yes he's gone." He glanced back over the
banisters. Zagreus was looking up at him and now rushed to
the foot of the stairs exclaiming :
" Shoo ! Phuist ! " with gestures to hasten the departure of
an animal. Kein's batrachian muzzle stuck over with its bristling
military moustache—the toffee eyes behind the spectacles—-stared
solemnly down—the black loosely-hanging frustrum of the cranky
trunk above the rail, and, beneath the ascending ornamented
soffit, the shining linen—the cigar held in the hand—remained a
moment as though commanded to stand still by some super
natural agency—immobilized to gaze inscrutably down into the
twilit well of the hall.
" Basilisk. Pecksniff ! " Zagreus shouted with a gesture of
banishment and dismissal. " Acabada la comida ! Finished!"

* * *
When they were in the street Zagreus started at once walking
to the right, Dan following, with Vernede attaching himself,
hastening to keep up. Coming abreast of Zagreus, Vernede upon
the outside, the belgian said :
" What was ze matter between you and Kein ? "
A Stage latin-quarter artist, Vernede expressed himself in a
Stage-Frenchman's english, of zee and zat.
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 3"
Zagreus looked straight into the sun, for now it was bright.
Remember albino ! That was still in his mind. Remember albino !
" I think Li was a little oiled nothing more—if he'd only drink
the same stuff he provides for his guests, all would be well."
" Ah you are right ! What wine ! I did not know zat zair
was such a drink possible ! "
" He gets overtired you know—he works, as he calls it, too
hard. At his age he oughtn't to play the Proust. It's very bad for
him, I am sure I couldn't. On top of that he is apt to drink, not
too much perhaps for a normal person, but for him—to repair
the waste."
" He gets vair-ee tired ! "
" It's a bad system all round, there's no getting away from it."
" A ver-ree bad sys-tame ! "
" But he is an ungrateful old parasite—he has the sense to
attract people of vitality, but he skives them down—takes fright
at the flight of a mosquito if it is money, as though it were a
veritable Flight of Capital. And he is jealous, too, of power-
it is that that makes him so ugly."
".That is the chew!" Vernede vehemently observed, illu
minating his nearest eye with a chauvinistic light. " They can't
help themselves—where it is money zey are mad ! "
Zagreus also gave him only one eye, and their two single eyes
manoeuvred for a moment in their profiles, one with its large
massive prominent beak, the other with its crushed and puckered
smeller.
" When people fall out " Zagreus remarked " they always call \
each other ' dirty dagos ' ' dirty Jews,' ' dirty Germans ' or I
whatever they happen to be respectively. Yet that is surely the
very moment when they should, instead, insist upon the individual
person, more than at any other time—rather than upon vague
generalisations."
" I agg-ree ! " exclaimed Vernede. " Off gorse ! "
" Supposing you are having a dispute with a Spaniard. You
call him a ' dirty dago.' That transfers at once all the indigna
tion at your command to the whole race, instead of concentrating
it upon him—from a man to a pentagonal peninsular."
" But do I not know ! " howled Vernede with passionate con
viction—as if it had been just that he had been endeavouring to
express.
3i2 APES OF GOD
" Or on the other hand you call a person ' Ill-bred,' a
' bounder,' or what not—he referring to you in the same manner.
That transfers the offence to a usually entirely fictitious class. I
have never heard a man call another ' a dirty human being '—
though it is true you often hear such an expression as ' bloody
woman '—as though that meant anything : or ' bloody male ' I
have heard."
" I too have heard zat ! "
" So the sex gets what you intend for the individual. Look
here, if I were angry with Kein—as Heaven help me I am not—
I should call him Kein, I should leave the jewish jibe out of it. I
don't believe in 'Jews,' ' Dagos ' and so on, either. They are
vulgar myths—but that's another matter."
" Yes but all zee same, Kein is a chew—zat is not nothing ! "
Vernede objected.
" Yes and I have known persons who were Jews whom I
respected more than the cabbages of christians by whom they
were surrounded ! " Zagreus protested energetically.
" Oh do not speak to me of zee chreestian ! " Vernede im
plored him in a screech—putting the points of his index-fingers to
his ears, as though to keep out the noise of the " chreestian "
cabbages.
" Kein is a bad specimen of his kind, that is the trouble."
" Zat is it ! "
" He is an idle ."
" Oh he is/wr-full-ee idle ! "
" pretentious ."
" What does he not pretend ! "
" old busybody of a succubus he is ! "
" Ha ha ! " exclaimed Vernede, his eyebrows levitating
alarmingly above his eyes : " a succubus ! II est un veritable
succube ! "
" He is no advertisement for any people."
" People in all zee races are like zat ! " Vernede shouted
fiercely.
" Yes " Zagreus stormed back, grinning broadly at the
romantic ghost at his side : " when we meet an Englishman like
that we do not say ' Dirty Englishman ' ! "
Vernede laughed in glad false mirth—for he was very angry.
" You can not do zat ard-/« .' "
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 313
" No because then we should be calling ourselves ' dirty '
too, by implication. We have to leave it in that case as a judg
ment upon an individual. Smith, or Jones, is a dirty dog we say
—that is the idea ! That is more precise."
" Ha ha ! yes—zat is what zenn you must do ! " came the
breathless Stage-french chorus of Monsieur Vernede.
" With Kein I prefer to do that too," said Zagreus, as they
rushed along.
" OfFgorse ! " Vernede breathlessly rejoined. And then very
quietly, with a black look, Vernede put the snub away into a
dark place—where many snubs of all ages were collected. The
" Off gorse ! " had been violently forced up, an example of self-
respecting submission. A turbulent silence filled in after it.
As they passed the tunnelled entrance to a Mews, a figure
stood looking up and down the street : then it remarked with
emphasis into the mouth of the tunnel :
"I - shant - get - a - bloody- break-down-not-a-goin-on-as-I-'ave-
bin-lateh/ ! "
A bark of enquiry came out of the tunnel.
" I-shan't-get-no-bloody-break-down-not-goin-on-way-I-'ave-
bin-lately ! " the figure shouted.
A fresh bark of gruff uncertainty came from the tunnel.
" I sed, I-shant-get-no-bloody-break-down-not-goin-on-same-
as-I-as-bin-not-lately ! "
They left this figure behind—his hands in his overcoat-pockets,
looking up and down the road.
Ahead of them, from a street running at right angles to the
one they were descending, appeared an airy, well-dressed form.
" The swan, Youth " said Mr. Zagreus. Almost immediately
afterwards the dark bulk of a police-constable rolled forth from
the same spot.
" Health ! " said Dan.
" The Duck ! " said Zagreus.
" Helse zee Duck ! " exclaimed Vernede.
As a third figure rose to the pavement painfully from an area
they cried in chorus.
" The Toby-jug ! "
Vernede laughed, and nodded his head, sharpening his eyes
up and down the figure.
" Yes ! you are right. Eet-eess a Toby-jug ! "
3i4 APES OF GOD
" Over there is a figure that has not got its abstraction on—
he's left it at home or—what do you say ?—has never had one ! "
Zagreus pointed.
Dan scrutinized the bilious indifferent face of the passer-by
indicated by Horace as naked, unclothed in abstraction.
" I think he's got one on that we can't see," said Zagreus.
At the head of the road they were ascending three figures
rapidly appeared to meet—to clash like billiard balls, and to
disperse in different directions, calling out noisily as they receded
from one another. One approached them rapidly with a market-
porter's soiled jacket too long for him—a jaunty, fife-and-drum,
mechanical kick of the heel, as his little legs danced under the
jacket.
" There we have Race I believe—a cockney incarnation " said
Mr. Zagreus : " some scrubby little fighting-cock, hastening to
draw a ration ! "
His eyes upon the man's feet—with their jaunty lift, and deft
flash of the heel—acrobatic, a trained dog—Mr. Zagreus followed
him a moment.
" With him " he said to Vernede " you could fairly apply
your ' dirty ' categories, I should say ! "
" Yes ! " Vernede heartily hastened, emphatically assenting—
eyes pursuing the quick-travelling object to show, politely, that
he was attentive, and that their minds indeed worked in unison—
as did the trotting cockney-feet.
The three tramped forward : the Sunday coffee-stall was
reached, a flotilla of taxis beside it. Collected beneath its projecting
flap, they ordered coffee.
" You have known Kein a long time ? " Vernede enquired of
Zagreus.
" Oh yes."
" He frrightens me you know ! " Vernede smiled primly and
coquettishly. " Vair-ree much ! " he added lifting his eyebrows
delicately. Then he added, dilating his eyes and mouthing his
words " Not for myself! Forruthaires ! Always I find myself afraid
—I am afraid that he will swallow zem up ! "
Vernede with his toothless gums chewed imaginary mouthfuls.
" Yes he's a man-eater, only he's so small."
" Yes but he is dangerous " Vernede said looking very serious.
" When I see some new person at his house, I am frright-tent at
 CHEZ LIONEL KEIN ESQ.. 315
zee way Li opens his eyes ! And—his mowss ! " he made saucers
of his eyes and mouth, like a nurse engaged in an account of the
story of Red-Riding-hood. " He devours zem, he sucks zem in—
he inhales zem ! It is, you know—how do you say it in english ?
touchantgo ! "
" Touch and go indeed, but he always ends by biting them."
" He can't help himselve ! " Vernede was confidentially
emphatic.
" For my part " said Zagreus " I always feel more anxiety for
the objects of Kein's parasitic interest when the stage of the first
breathless inhalation is over. When he has thoroughly warmed
himself under the skin and begins to make himself at home—
subsequent to the first great crisis of inquisitiveness—then comes
a period when he is really obnoxious."
" I should have believed zat Kein was already enough so
—-far before zat stage mon dieu ! " Vernede answered, a littie
dour. Zagreus finished his coffee and they left the stall.
" I go ziss way ! " said Vernede, pointing to the western exit
from the large square in which they were standing.
" We this way, I think," and Zagreus pointed away from
Vernede's route.
When he had left them, Zagreus moved his head sofdy after
him and said.
" Pierpoint stresses very much the necessity of never allowing
people to use cheap class-abuse. He won't allow you to say even
' he is an ignorant man.' You have to say—' Smith is ignorant.'
As to nations, and social classes, he would throw his hands up in
despair if he heard you making the sort of generalisations indulged
in by that little Belgian."
Dan looked at him steadfastly.
" I know I should not have said that—I am glad you noticed,"
said Zagreus, shamefaced. " I did not mean either ' little ' or
' Belgian '—those were both slips of the tongue."
He looked Over his shoulder. Vernede was out of sight.
" Kein on one occasion got rather excited and offered to set
up Vernede in a bookshop—for art-books, first-editions and so
forth. Next day of course Vernede received a note to the effect
that Li much regretted, but that on making enquiries at his bank
he found—or that owing to unexpected calls he was unable—or
that thinking it over he did not see his way—or that he was so
316 APES OF GOD
upset at the thought of Vernede abandoning his literary work
and wasting his time selling books to stupid people—in fine, that
he—. The old old story ! It is always the same—Kein never fails
one, he knows he never fails one—in that way. And when he
knows you know him and he can't humbug you any more, he
grows defiant and morose. He can never feed on you again.
Once you know—you cease producing the milk he depends on.
Also, although he has no ' pudeur,' he hates being watched at
work—that puts him off his feed too.—What did you make of
him ? " '
Dan frowned—he brought his mind to bear upon Kein as
best he could.
" Not much I expect."
" He did not seem to understand," said Dan slowly.
" That is it " said Horace. " And Isabel ? "
" She did not seem to understand " there was a long pause,
and then Dan precipitately added " at all."
" How true that is—that is it !—I like old Isabel " said
Zagreus : " a sneaking regard—but they do go splendidly to
gether. Li and she. Wc will go there again and have another
look at them ! "
As they were about to part at the bus-halt, Dan said slowly,
" I wish I knew Pierpoint."
Zagreus appeared much taken aback—he caught his breath.
Then looking a little askance at his pupil he said,
" That's impossible. But you wouldn't get on—I will tell you
all about Pierpoint—I am his Plato."
And the bronzed albino left his disciple laughing—saying " I
am his Plato ! "
PART X.

WARNED FOR DUTY

AT LORD OSMUND'S
J
 WILLIE SERVICE, dressed as a chauffeur, entered Daniel
Boleyn's spartan quarters—a letter in one hand, a philo
sopher's egg in the other. In sheer sombre smartness he
exsuperated all known car-flunkeys—surely with busks in breast
and bum—with a more than military bombasting. Civilly he
removed his official conning-cap and dust-goggles.
" Well " he said '' what of the newt? "
Blandly affording the ground for an objection of crambe
bis cocta, he cocked his eye at his marsh-mallow of a master.
Dan shook his head mournfully. He knew nothing of the
newt ! But he was alarmed at the formal nature of the costume
in which Willie Service had thought proper to disguise himself
upon this occasion. He feared that it boded no good for any
body, least of all himself.
" A letter for you sir " said Willie.
With a wan smile Dan took it and held it in his hand.
" Here is this too—it is a philosopher's egg." Willie handed
him the egg. Dan accepted the egg, and he held that in the other
hand.
" That's all " said Willie Service.
Dan reconnoitred his posh livery more in sorrow than in
anger.
" I'm detailed for field-work. I'm in on this," said Willie
Service.
" On what ? " said Dan, blushing at this language of high
handed complicity.
" I have to taxi you down."
Dan looked with infinite sadness into the distance—his feet
were hurting and he had no vaseline.
" Aren't you going to slit up the letter ? " asked the factotum.
Dan considered the new-laid philosopher's egg and sighed.
" I have blown out the albumin and popped in the saffron.
Any complaints ? "
Dan dropped the egg upon the floor.
" What a fool you are ! Can't you even hold an egg ! "
Willie Service picked up the egg—it was a salmon-yellow
3'9
 APES OF GOD
hen's-egg with smears of dung. He examined it. It was only a
little crushed in upon one side.
" I suppose I shall have to get you another. If you break
that I shall leave you to your fate. You'll probably get gastritis.
Look out ! "
Dan shivered slightly at his cross tone and veiled threat and
he had a shooting pain in his bad toe. His nose began to bleed,
but not very much. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and
held it over his nostrils.
Willie Service went to the door and removed the key.
" All right. Lie down. I'll put this key down your back ! "
Dan, still holding the letter, got down upon his rude pallet,
and Willie Service thrust the large key down his back. Dan
shuddered.
" I will go and make another philosopher's egg," said Willie
Service.
" Thanks awfully," said Dan.
" Don't bleed to death while I'm gone.—Turn the key round
when it gets hot."
Dan blushed and the blush came down his nose as haemo
globin.
At the door Willie Service turned.
" Haven't you slit up the letter ? "
Dan had not slit up the letter. He held it upon his chest like
a missal.
Willie Service went back to the table and threw a table-knife
at Dan.
" Here, slit up the letter. It's important."
Willie Service then left the room smartly.
For some time Dan lay still, bleeding gently and dozing.
Then he picked up the knife and slit up the letter. Horace's
superscription was within.

DIRECTIONS FOR LORD OSMUND'S PARTY,

That was in Horace's big dainty hand ! Dan fanned himself
slowly with the letter. Who was Lord Osmund and what party
was this ! Oh how his feet hurt him ! He had just returned at
full speed from three parties (he could not walk slowly) at one of
which Horace had been present but in the company of an
 WARNED FOR DUTY AT LORD OSMUND'S 321
extremely objectionable person of the same religion as that other
horrid man who had said such beastly things to him about
Horace and whom Horace called Split. He simply disliked from
the bottom of his great irish heart this one however—he was a
young man. He was more horrid than Split altogether, and talked
very quickly and rudely he thought—very. He had a name like
margarine. He had been distinctly uncivil and once quite
unkind ! He could not understand Horace associating ! He
could swear to it on oath that once Horace had laughed up his
sleeve at something that disgusting young man had said in his
ear and he was positive that he had been the subject—turning,
with one accord—he had been sitting at the time and observing
closely a lady-Ape who had wanted to play with the piano but
she had not been allowed. Horace had been first and last all
through the party terribly unkind !
His log swarmed with the names and addresses of Apes, he
was tired of writing down their descriptions : and now here was
another great party and masses of new Apes in " spectacular "
rendezvous f And what had Willie Service done yesterday ?
(He was a madcap he knew but there were some things beyond a
joke—off and on he believed he was not responsible, his actions
discovered it !) When Daniel was out on a night-party he had
obtained possession of Dan's log, and he had written in it in a
facsimile handwriting that had quite imitated his to a turn,
several disgusting remarks that he had found by the purest of
accidents when he came back though he might never have done so
and what would Horace have thought ? He was dismayed !
What he wrote was soft-headed mischievousness but not what you
would expect. "Met" (he had written in the calligraphy of
Daniel—as though he had written it) " an Ape of God (Paris
Exhibition 1898 first class diploma) called Horatio Zagrust, nee
Follett, a bombastic faggot if ever was—called bronze albino,
tropically tanned but pink underneath, (homo sapiens, not homo
sexual) sixty Summers, and one dull Spring—who says we are
gibbering gibbons but what about himself? "—In the own iden
tical handwriting of Dan it was scribbled as large as life, as an
entry of the week-before-last. And for an hour at least had Dan
not been compelled to go over the whole of his log, entry by
entry, and scrutinize every sentence—to make sure Willie Service
had done nothing else in a cruel attempt to disgrace him ! The
 APES OF GOD
offensive impersonation in question he had torn out of the book
and burnt it and how he could explain its absence, that the page
was not there at all, he did not know—he must say it got lost or
fell out, or the best thing yet, that some Ape crept in when he
wasn't looking and snatched it out of his note-book, because it
was about himself and he had got wind of the log he was making
and feared to be shown up for the creature he was ! That was it !
Still, to business ! What was this new thing in store for him ?
So he read—though he did not understand much of it especially
about the dress :

" This is the greatest battue of full-grown man-eating—and

Lion-hunting Apes—to which you have so far been summoned. I
have designed it to serve as a grand culmination to your appren
ticeship. If you come through this with flying colours you may
regard yourself as a Bachelor of the Gentle Art of Bearding the
Ape in his Drawing-room. It has been announced in every
Gossip-column in Fleet Street as a great Lenten Freak Party.
Our part in this pantomime will in this instance be a sufficiently
important one to require the support of two other individuals
at least, and I have chosen (to fill the roles indicated by the social
commitment I have entered into) Mr. Julius Ratner on the one
hand and upon the other a very brilliant young man indeed
(whom you have recently met) Archibald Margolin—whom I
suspect of having just a touch of genius—how much I cannot say
as yet.
The party occurs at the house of Lord Osmund Willoughby
Finnian Shaw, in the country, at a distance of forty miles from
Charing-Cross, at his Lordship's week-end country-estate,Jays Mill
Manor Farm. Lord Osmund, the senior, more or less male, offspring
of the Marquis ofBalbriggan, is a master-Ape. It is with him well-
nigh a craft—he makes of Apehood a true business—not of course
that he earns money by it (for no Ape can be an Ape unless he is
quite rich, and no one has ever yet been found who is fool enough
to pay an Ape a penny-piece for any piece of Apery). But he
takes Apery very seriously indeed : whereas his expertness and
his method entitle him, in the great freemasonry of Apehood, to
the title of grand-master-craftsman of all branches of Ape-work
whatever.
Very luckily for you Daniel the Finnian Shaws afford the lively
spectacle of how Apehood may affect an entire family, for
apparently all the relatives of Lord Osmund (even as far removed
as second-cousins from the primum mobile, Lord Osmun'd in
person) are slightly tainted. There is no Finnian Shaw at all who
 WARNED FOR DUTY AT LORD OSMUND'S 323
without warning is not liable to advertise himself at any moment,
in however modest a way—abruptly revealing himself as a
lampoonist, a zither-player or precious minor poet or stunt-
historian.
The details of the r&le expected of us at this party—we are
going there not as guests but as performers—will be unfolded
when we meet. I am having conveyed to you a parcel, which
will contain a costume. I suggest you accustom yourself to this
by wearing it for some hours before you are to be fetched—that
will be at four sharp tomorrow afternoon.—Service will inform
u of anything else you may wish to know. No rehearsal will
necessary for the part assigned to you. It is a simple one."
Horace Zagreus.

Dan put down this document with one sensation uppermost

and one sensation all along the line—namely, that Horace in
every respect and to the vanishing point of susceptibility, was
perfectly generous—perfectly kind ! Even the prospect of the
presence of Margolin did not throw a shadow. Horace had
selected for him a simple part, where he would not have to walk
about too much and make his feet sore and even in that Horace
showed his thought for him. Dear Horace ! Dear Horace !—
Dan fell asleep.
MR. ZAGREUS AND

THE SPLITS MAN

 i
SLIDING along the hedgerows, a new figure approached the
cottage. A profile with an edge, it cut its way warily through
the twilight. The cross eye, with its lids like films, fine
frowning scroll of hair hooked to the apex of the hooked nose,
examined the gate. With an impatient slothfulness a sleek hand
snatched from a pocket shook it. It wrenched at the jamming
latch. At the doorway a felt hat was removed, fingers pushing the
reddish hair. The nails softly guided the cold hair, collecting it
as though familiar with each bristle, smoothing it so as to throw
a thin mist over the baldness in the centre.
Butting upwards, like an animal constrained to an evolution
not proper to it, the asiatic profile with the frowning eye forced
its way stealthily up the stairs—the slice of scalp skimming the
damp soffit, which led, a gothic trail, to the bedroom.
At the door this visitor stopped, knocked twice softly. A vege
tative eye fastened upon the handle. Adhering, a fungus growth of
moody displeasure sprang up and multiplied itself in a moment.
Had his thoughts possessed a material projection, a dense cluster
most like a museum specimen of polypifcrs, would have been
swelling about the metal knob.
He could not have knocked more softly or looked more darkly,
if he had been some priggish Mephisto drawn to this meeting
by impertinent magic. Magnetically the cross eye reconstructed
what was the other side of the obstacle — the filmed eagle-
eye of the snake stabbed out in wrath towards its unseen
adversary.
Now keep me waiting ! (spat the thoughts of the visitor). Yes
that's right—keep me waiting ! Have I the money ? No—/ haven't !
I'd kick the door down the filthy devil ! I can hear him breathing
(smoking a cigarette he's inhaling). He knows the buck-ger—
when I go in he'll ask me if I've got the money. Yes why am I
standing here—I don't know why I stand it absolutely. I'm
standing here for nothing — swine! (The visitor rapped and
kicked). Always pretending—as if this door! This is typical—
J»7
3«8 APES OF GOD
shell within shell—he expects people to stand outside like servants,
tap and wait—oh buck-ger !
(He threw a spasm into his body, and it reversed the disposi
tion of its muscles, his shoes scraping the floor.)
He knocked twice again, angrily and sharply.
At once a come-in sounded, very near, with a wounding
composure.
He turned the handle : he was at the bottom of a bed. On
this a masked figure lay.
" Well, milord ! " the visitor said and veiled his sickly smile
beneath his yellow lids and lips—allowing it to shine bashfully
towards the bed. He worked his neck like a chicken, throwing
his eyes coyly to this side and that to see where he could deposit
his hat.
" I'm not Lord Rochester. I am Mr. Zagreus. Close the
door," the masked figure said.
He closed the door. As he stepped forward again, Mr. Zagreus
beat him back with his hand.
" Back ! back ! There—at your elbow, Julius. Dip your
fingers in that stoup. A simple lustration. Forgive me .
You understand. Just dip. A little domestic perirranterion."
" Is it necessary ? M the mincing guttural and croaking voice
sneered—while obediently, placing his hat upon the foot of the
bed, he dipped his fingers in a grey ewer placed upon a chair
beside the door.
" It's always as well, Julius. One can't be too particular.
You will feel better after it yourself."
" I see," Julius Ratner drawled, holding his wet hands limply
towards the floor. He became astatic. His uneasiness was
localised to hip-movements of a graceful type, which threw his
head into opposition on each occasion—so that first it dwelt upon
the ground with its contemplative eye directed to one side, and
then transferred itself to the other, the eye-beam always aimed
over the projection of the unflexed hip.
" Do you want a towel, Julius ? There is one."
" Ought I to wipe it off? "
" I think you might now."
The masked Mr. Zagreus had not moved, except for wavings
of the hand and arm. He lay sprawled in shirt and trousers. The
russet half-mask, in the feeble light, gave him a personality of the
 MR. ZAGREUS AND THE SPLIT-MAN 329
commedia del arte—and the little room, with clothes flung about,
the yellow light of the candles, helped the suggestion that this
was a resting acrobat. Ratner, with the movements slinky and
dead of sluggish deliberation, or those of a circumspect machine,
with a careful veneer of gauche grace, went to the washing-stand.
His fingers were dabbed upon the towel, and then drawn up and
down over its rough surface.
He then turned, the eyebrow crossly hooked, the eye
abstracted.
" Sit down," Mr. Zagreus said again. He held out to him the
obtruding member of the phallic hand. Ratner took it for a
moment as he sat down.
" I am having a hundred winks, before setting out for the
party. We may be late. We shall have to tell all their fortunes.
That fool Kit Hanna has told them that, like Simon Magus,
I can walk through walls, and that Helen of Troy is my mistress."
" What a fool ! "
" Yes, Kit Hanna is a terrible fool. He is a terrible, terrible
fool ! He trespasses upon the best side of one's nature—the whole
time. He treads it down. He seems to think it's there for him.
All that expense. He will not understand it is there for—oneself.
Kit Hanna ."
" What are you doing ? " sneered Ratner sheepishly. For
while he had been talking Mr. Zagreus had been licking his
improper digit and sticking it up his nose. Subsequently Ratner
had seen him boring into his ears with the same spittle-anointed
finger.
" Disinfecting Kit Hanna."
Horace Zagreus lay with his hands upon his chest, and the
wedge of the right thumb protruded from between the fingers of
the left hand.
" Is that for Kit Hanna as well ? " Ratner croaked. " Is it
necessary to far laftca ? Am I so dangerous Horace ? "
" No one is dangerous if properly handled. Those of us who
are bad managers have to resort to magic."
" I see. Have you got my costume Horace ? I am sorry I
was a little late "
" Yes. I hope you will like it. Everybody would not. But
you are a peculiar fellow. I wish I could have found a beau rile
for you "
33° APES OF GOD
" There can be only one beau role ! "
" I don't see that. It is your vanity that teaches you to
think that."
" Not at all ! " Ratner retorted, polite and spirited.
" I should have liked, Julius, to have fitted you out as a
homunculus, a disembodied mind. Or as the Holy Ghost—the
most tremendous of all the feminine r61es. You might, for that .
matter, have gone to the party as the Paraclete."
Ratner, his legs crossed, had his sallow eye fixed upon the
mask, which continued :
" You remember in the Symposium the account of the crea
tion in which the eight-limbed cylinder is severed, and as man
and woman we make our first dramatic appearance ? "
" I can't say I do—I am not a Greek like you—that is not the
ancient literature of my race. But go on please Horace ! "
" That's a pity. In any case there is a distinct threat con
tained in the prophetic mind of the son of Sophroniskos that if
we go from bad to worse we may be subjected to a further slicing
up, and find ourselves with only one leg, eye, arm, and so forth—
instead of the present more ample symmetrical arrangement."
Julius Ratner kept silence.
" But that, my dear Julius, is neither here nor there. It has
nothing more than a bearing upon what I have to suggest."
Ratner buried his thoughts in his silence, and hooked his eye
high upon his forehead.
" I have not been able to dispose of an impression I have ofyou
Julius—rather, I have relied upon that impression to work out
the make-up. I think it points to a very good disguise. I have
fitted you out with the few necessary things—there they are, in
that brown paper parcel."
He paused, recommencing with conventional seductiveness, as
though upon the threshold of an argument :
" Suppose that you have lain so long in the depths—at the
foundation of the world (if it does not make you giddy or uncom
fortable to contemplate such a spot)—and that, like the Pleuro-
nectidae, you have grown facially all on one side—I hope it is not
asking you too much to imagine that ? At all events, by that
road we shall get at the idea. For you are to be something that
this figure will help you to realise. You are the terrible Barin
Mutum, or African Half-man. What is that ? Nothing to do
 MR. ZAGREUS AND THE SPLIT-MAN 33i
with the Socratic variety. Forget the great deeps, too. I have
just been reading about this creature. He must be one of the
most formidable demons in the world at his weight. The Arabs
call him Split-man, it seems. It is a being split down longitu
dinally. He has therefore one eye, one arm—leg, hand and
foot."
Mr. Zagreus touched his eye, arm, leg, hand, and he pointed
towards his foot.
" There is the Persian Nimcharah, or Half-face—you may have
heard of? The Zulus even believed in a whole tribe of such
Split-men. They describe how one day these half-people came
across a Zulu girl. They examined her. ' The thing is pretty,'
they said. ' But oh the two legs ! '—You get the idea of this
being ? "
" I think I see what you mean," Ratner said as darkly as
though the door had separated them, and the filmed eagle-eye
of the snake were stabbing at the obstruction. The mask was
retained to insult him—it was a more intimate, a more offensive
obstruction.
" The Barin Mutum is as swift as the ostrich. He is also
reputed to be as cruel and as dangerous as the snake ! "
Julius Ratner sneered, the colour very slightly mantling his
sallow skin.
" So the impression I give is that of a Half-man ? "
" Exteriorly I always think of you in profile—like a bas-relief,
you know. You always seem to me to be looking at me sideways—
like a bird."
" Really ! You read a great deal into me Horace that is not
there I fear—I never knew I was so interesting," Ratner croaked—
his assumed worldliness breaking and cracking, the primitive
gutturals getting the upper hand.
" I know Julius, I know what you say is true—you bore your
self terribly. But you were made for me, not for yourself.—I supply
the interest Julius."
" Indeed you do Horace ! "
" But there is another point or two. Do you happen to have
read any of the Phan-Khoa-Tau—the Taoist book of esoteric
doctrine ? No ? That now supplies us with the side. The Taoist
recommends you to love your left side—where the heart is kept
—and to despise your right—that is the side of energy."
332 APES OF GOD
" So I am a left Horace ?"
" No—don't let's run before we can walk. No, Julius, it
appears to me to be the other way round. You are a right-sided
split-man, with the liver in place of the heart.—I suggest this
because otherwise the dragon is liable to bite you. Although the
Taoist regards this as a favourable accident, I don't feel myself
justified in laying you open to that."
" You are very kind. I'm sorry though, that you won't let
me have a heart." A strained, cowed smile was fixed upon the
face of the weaker, the heartless vessel.
" I only want you to be right. The Half-man is evidently
a right-hand man. I am afraid all half-men are right-hand
men. The heart is a superfluity. The whole left side is useless—
embarrassing and really far beyond our human means. Our
purse is not long enough. / can barely afford it myself. My left side
is a facade—but of course it is there."
Ratner rose and picked up the parcel.
" Very well. I will be your right-hand man for to-night."
" You are my Jinn, my dear Julius. You are in my power. I
elect you to be my servant : as you say—for to-night. Not for a
permanency, Julius. I wish I could ! But you would be a very
thieving servant, and I can't afford such parasites as you. Some
day, perhaps. Not now ! Don't worry about the side, Julius.
There is an alternative."
" I am glad to hear that ! What is it ? "
" According to Taoist theory by turning my back to the
audience, and calling you my brother, I could supply you with
the missing heart—though the wrong way round. But I don't
see how you would benefit by that."
" That wouldn't matter at all, so long as you could supply
my deficiency." Ratner looked indifferently into the opening in
the parcel. " Well, I will go and put this on I suppose."
" I suppose so."
Watched out in silence, Ratner closed the door quietly. He
stood a moment at the stairhead, his thin bow-legs arched care
fully in the dark—examining with their extremities, through the
thin leather of his shoes, his foothold.
His journey to his inn appeared to him in its totality, as
though it were a rope he had to pull in, or a drugget to roll up.
He addressed himself to this, a ruffled mechanism. But the same
 MR. ZAGREUS AND THE SPLIT-MAN 333
split-man as arrived returned once more, lightly and swiftly—out
of the gate, along the hedgerows.

ii
The masked figure has lain laughing at the split-man, and
has addressed himself to his own disguise. In a half-hour the
heavy toilet may be said to be complete, percoct in his literary
kitchen.
" Aah-Tehuti ! " he cried, " seed-moon, grain-moon, great
arithmetical wanderer—water-wizard, shower-bath, shaman of
the sky—shechinah of our halting judgments, god of lunatics, tell
me where my cob and wand has got to ! Flash down your
roving light ! "
He grovelled beneath the bed, and found what he had been
looking for.
Upright once more, glancing out of the window, he said,
" Pardon. I did not notice you were so small " ; as though,
having been exhorting to love an exhausted man, he had suddenly
observed the malapropos.
There, in the thrilling chasm of the sky, the ever-vivid
meniscus was visible.
The masked figure kisses his hand to it as an attic husband
man would to the new sun, and he turned the little silver coins
in his pocket. He wished. His wish was a child's prayer—mono
tonous with happiness. This tsabian gesture exposed a large
bronzed hand, which he now began to darken further—with sun
burn powder, purchased in Lausanne, sold to alpinists.
The low window, over whose sashes he looked, allowed the
mild tranquillity of the night to flow in. The candle in front of
the mirror, only disturbed by the maternal pressures of the
atmosphere or the more eccentric movements of the man, shed
its light upon the small room. It made arbitrary graded zones of
the accidental scene—with its position, its colour and particular
incandescence—as does the eye of the painter with the objects of
his world.
A small iron bedstead, a table beside it, with a cloth of dyed
lockram—a chair, a stool, clothes hanging like a carcass in a stall
gaping and sagging—handless, footless, and without head : two
334 APES OF GOD
shelves of books : an open creel which had contained his disguise
and the material of that of Ratner, a mat of stained hemp
bristles.
A pergamene mask of coarse malignity through the eye-holes
in the tawny canvas fixed fiery eyes upon the mirror—or that
speck on it representing a comedo imbedded in his jaw, which
his fingers were removing. He snipped the last tell-tale vibrissa.
Sputum gathered upon the brutal lips—cracks represented with
darker paint, manufactured for this masquerade. He tugged the
black lambskin ofthe beard to the left. He stepped back, examining
again the symmetry of his composite clown.
Six feet from head to foot he was composed as follows—like a
Mexith's renowned statue bristling with emblems :
A large hat, the crown of which was the mask, representing
in a projecting horn, pointing upward, the beak of the Ibis : a
miniature representation of the Atef crown of Thoth.
A pearl upon the front of the hat, beneath the beak or horn—
the Urna or third eye of Siva.
A pearl at the back of the hat to stand for the pineal eye.
A green feather at the side from the crest of Huitzlipochtli.
The mask was a canvas vizard stopping at the nostrils.
Inside the eye-sockets a film of white rose from the lower lid.
Very long coarse lashes formed fans above and below the
opening.
Small ears, like a goat's, displayed their pointed conches high
up among the discreet tufts of black hair.
The forehead drove its centripetal furrows to the apex of the
nasal bones.
Upon his breast was pinned a bunch of forgetmenots.
Round the neck hung an Anguinum—egg composed of saliva
from the jaws, and froth from the bodies of snakes, produced in
their knotted summer sleep, propelled upwards by their hissing,
and caught by the Druid in his apron.
Below this came a gilt necklace of twenty hearts.
Below this hung the disk of a monstrance, only in place of the
cross was a thermuthis.
The mantle of Graziano—corrugated like a peplum—fell from
the shoulders and swept the ground.
A black fustian jerkin, with large silk buttons like plovers'
 MR. ZAGREUS AND THE SPLIT-MAN 335
A belt upon which hung a Harlequin's pouch of red leather.
The pouch contained an Easter Egg. The Mundane Egg in
uncial characters appeared upon one side. Upon the other was
the figure of a bull, representing the Tauric constellation. The
capsule was made of paste and hair, coloured like chocolate.
Inside, one extremity was painted yellow for the animal pole
or male principle—the other red, for the vegetative pole. A
marsh-mallow cube lay there—for a pierrot sweet, or a moonlit
Nirvana.
There were also a few palmers' shells in the pouch, and a tooth
brush (in case he should get on toothbrush terms at all).
A very small ovular pebble. Sesamum, grains of salt and
buttemah, made a debris in the bottom.
A dozen spillikins. A Bezoar Stone.
A milfoil wrapped in tissue paper.
Thoth's reed and palette of the scribe.
A snuff-box alongside the Easter egg, to help simulate the
gesture of dharma-chakra.
A leaden box full of small grains like barley-meal, and in
their midst the mighty Schamir.
The waist was lion-like and ritualistic, resembling that of a
Minoan nut (slender and at all events nobiliary) or a kalakhanya.
Or the wasp-like billowing of the thighs and sylph's flat
haunch seemed framed for the stampeding of a Jota.
The jerkin bristled with coarse black hairs—these were the
kaohuang, or famous hair-rays of the Buddha.
Upon the right side a tortoiseshell was attached to his belt,
ready to crack in the fire like the face of an old man (the disposi
tion of whose yellow map spelt a more general destiny) and so
compete with the yarrow.
A calumet with rattan stem, feathered, and with a filigreed
beading upon the bowl of soap-stone.
He would hold a six-foot long, yellow cane-wand, represent
ing a corn stalk, surmounted by a gigantic ear of wheat—a relic
of Quetzalcoatl's millennium, rescued by a Spanish priest from
the destruction of the temple of Cholula.
For him to carry there was a gas-filled follicle at the end of
a string. It now clung to the ceiling gently, the string dangling
to within a few feet of the floor. A tawny serpent painted spirally
upon it indicated this as a further emblem of the Orphic egg.
 APES OF GOD
A short sling attached to it made of painted cloth, he was
further provided with the lotus stool of the " divine magician."
Staring at this personal pageantry, he became lost in its
distant allusions. In the starry valley before him, he thought he
saw the shadow of the Roc.
Out of the shell-face of his disguise he stared as we do out of
the protoplasmic mask of flesh, his vision seeming to swim* out
upon the flood-tide of the night. The sympathetic starthing of
his features recalled him to his unreal personality.
" I am a moonraker. I am a moonraker," he thought,
thrusting the word out, croupier-like, as though it were some
celestial implement, into the night. Remembering the tread of
the Venus d'Isle, he heard his right-hand business-man upon the
stairs coming to claim him.
" He weighs more now I've cut him in halfthan he did before,"
he thought as he listened.

iii «
Marvellously disguised, Ratner stood with sulky diffidence
near the door.
" I thought that would, suit you ! You have successfully
blotted out your rudimentary left side. Turn round. Perfect."
" I thought it was rather good," Ratner said with gentleman
like modesty—very very gentleman-like and retiring.
" How do you like my disguise now you see it completed ? "
Mr. Zagreus asked.
He swept his hand over his intellectual accoutrements.
" I think I have really got a costume worthy of the occasion ! "
" Out of all proportion I should have thought to this occasion
Horace."
" After all the occasion is what one makes it."
" You, my dear Horace, see occasions everywhere. Nothing
is not an occasion—as far as you are concerned."
" Everywhere ! you are right."
" Who was your Clarkson for this party ? " The business-man
spoke.
" Pierpoint. He made it up. I have his inventory."
Mr. Zagreus tapped his decorated hip—there was a hidden
pocket, with a book of words.
 MR. ZAGREUSAND THE SPLIT-MAN 337
" Pierpoint is very ingenious."
" Pierpoint is a genius ! " shouted the now copper-bronzed
albino, his silk-worm-white moustaches blowing in the wind of
his shout.
Julius Ratner sneered with a soft rattle, displaying a single
yellow fang.
" Was it Pierpoint also who provided the descriptions for my
get up ? " Ratner asked.
" Every detail ! " exclaimed Zagreus. " Every button ! Our
conversation—that was his creation ! "
" That too ? "
" Every word of it ! "
" I think Pierpoint must be mad ! "
" Absolutely mad—as a march-hare my dear Julius. But
with such method ! "
" Yes, he has method, as you say." The business-man spoke.
" He sometimes terrifies me with his method ! "
" Demented people are always supposed to be like that."
" Their logic you mean—yes of course. But examine me,
Julius—pocket your envy, you poor split-person—salute this
strange shell I have grown ! Here I stand, Julius Ratner, as
florid as Boro-Badur. My very fly-buttons are allusive."
He took the mislaid wand from the corner.
" You see my fairy wand, witnessing the harvest of a hero.
What agriculture ! "
He removed the gilded cob.
" So it can become the rod of Moses. Ab ovo it is always a
rod in any event. I have merely removed the egg from which it
is issuing, or the egg which has issued from it. I have two wings
of an air-pilot's jacket in my pocket, wired and united in a socket
which fits on the end of this. So I get roughly my caduceus, if
necessary—if Hermes Trismegistus is in the wind, and you have
enough fancy to see the gilded olive wood in place of calamus."
Replacing the staff in the corner, Zagreus picked up from
the table a small beam and scales, its brass dishes suspended from
chains.
" Thoth. It is a small balance—but too large for the hearts
that we shall be called upon to weigh."
He took from his pouch the small white pebble.
" The egg of the cirrus cloud ! Bundle of icy needles floating
33« APES OF GOD
just beneath the advective floor. Why should not this lovely
fleece have its egg, as well as the constipated eagle of Zeus ? "
He touched the wiry growth upon his jerkin, raising one of
the hairs from beneath with his finger-tips, which he drew along
to its limp extremity, when hand and tip nervelessly fell.
" Medusa's locks ! Kaohuang—the electrical radiations of the
Buddha."
From his pouch he drew the leaden box, and opening it,
pointed to the stone, of the size of a barleycorn.
" The most powerful of the Yidgod's creations ever spat in
the hey-day of his hexameron ! The ass which spoke to Balaam
was pupped at the same time. And Rebecca's well. What a
day ! Yes : the electrical stone-worm, my boy, the unscientific
radium of the Mittelalter's fancy : the creature who can break
up the atom : for his size more remarkable—or who knows !—
than your ganglia or mine, for example. You call him a devil or
the opposite according to the estimates you form of his inten
tions—whether you regard him as a responsible power—able to
break you up, when he might not be able to put you together
again. No Harlequin's pouch complete without it ! See that you
get one the next time you go prospecting with Fortunatus into
Purgatory—or Mr. Zagreus, my name. You know how to get
it ? Usual trick : hard-boil the woodpecker's egg while he's not
looking—no, I'm sorry that's the test. Cover his nest with glass.
He fetches the worm to break it. Worm and egg—solar-myth—
all for tuppence ! "
" So cheap ! " grated Julius. The business-man to the fore.
" Shamir ! " bellowed Zagreus.
He replaced it in the box. Pointing to the forgetmenots he
said :
" Vergessen Sie nicht das Beste ! Do not mistake and fill your
pockets with gold, or you will be caught in the thunder of the
mountain. That is not a Talmudic exhortation."
Pointing to a smear upon his cloak.
" Singed by a meteorite—aimed at Melkart, enemy of the
Zodiac ! My anguinum ? " touching his necklace. " Shall I be
impeached for employing snake's spittle ? "
Withdrawing from a pocket in his hose twisted tissue paper,
he displayed two red and wrinkled filberts.
" The testicles of the archigallus ! "
 MR. ZAGREUS AND THE SPLIT-MAN 339
Ratner leered appreciatively.
Withdrawing the spillikins from the pouch, Zagreus said :
" This for Miramoro. Sown upon the ground by a duly sensi
tive hand, they arrange themselves like a child's alphabet of fate."
Replacing the spillikins, he produced a few berries which he set
rolling in the damp furrows of his gowpen.
" These float upon the water, delivering similar messages.
There are 365 buttons on my coat. On its lapel " (he turns
up the lapel to the light showing a metal disk sewn on) " the
Abraxas."
Turning inside out a pocket, he shows a swelling along the
horizontal seam.
" Sewn in here is the Nest of the Mantis—gathered beneath
an auspicious moon."
His left side being a blank, the Split-man kept his lively right
side correctly in position to follow this inventory.
Mr. Zagreus drew a handkerchief from his waist-belt, flowered
saffron and white. Pointing to one corner he announced :
" Dendam ta' Sudah. Endless love ! You see, though,
the work is unfinished. Were it finished, the world would have
ended!"
Raising his cloak, swinging forward a cable of pendulous
cloth.
" The scorpion-tail—the winged feet too—of the Everlasting
Sun."
Raising the mask suddenly, his whitened face appeared
beneath.
" The child's face of Shudendozi, of the neighbourhood of
Kyoto—protected therefore, I need hardly say, by Fascinus."
He had banished from his eyes so completely all but the
attributes of Shudendozi, that Ratner was almost alarmed at
last.
" These two horns sprouting upon my forehead are not
cuckoldic, but a symbol of undying creative energy. At my belt,
upon this bootlace you see a phallus, such as was worn by the
phallophoroi at the Dionysia. You can address me as Mfumo,
Bassar, Tabib, Bomor, Mganga = Red-water : Saucy-water or
Bitter-water (within this flask) : in case I should have to officiate
where I am going at El Halaf."
He lifted a charm hanging upon a cord around his neck.
 APES OF GOD
" There are three names on it, you see : Senoi, Sansenoi.
Sammangelof. It is a charm against our bad mother, Lillith.
The three names are of the three protecting angels who flew with
her in conversation as she hovered with her illicit wings above
the Red Sea."
He fished out in succession a variety of objects, announcing
their significance.
" The Album Gnecium of the Hyena.—
A saphie—a shell with one golden lock from the gentle head
of Mutter Rosa. I would not exchange this periapt against the
biggest eye in the world ! Jettatura differs, however—and one
cannot be variously enough protected. There are seeds in the body
of the cock inimical to the lion ! There are seeds in every body
inimical to another ! You cannot be too well stocked."
Fingering the cloth of his tunic :
" This is a funny cloth. A simple dewdrop posed upon it will
tangle the thread for a cubit's length. The breath of the South
Wind, the Auster, will disentangle it."
Mr. Zagreus stuck his index and digitus in/amis right into his
breast, and lugged out a heart-shaped locket, from its nest of
savoury hair.
" I have put on my Bulla, too, sir, for the occasion. (Toga
virilis ?)"
(He directed the question with his free hand, to his costume.)
" Yes ?—I'm glad—I need not show you my little phallus need
I ? They are all the same. Mine is a child's—and it has been
locked away for so long."
" Has it ? " Ratner set going the grating music of his sneer.
" Oh ! la ! la ! Ever since last autumn, when it found an
Eden upon a moor. A real moor though. Open my heart-
when I'm dead, not before—and there you'll find it nestling ! "
The Split-man swallowed the little filbert-shaped bait and
went on croaking harshly and merrily. His countenance was
lightedAvith the sultry covetousness of the dung-fly.
" Are you putting that on ? Or are you really interested ? "
Mr. Zagreus affected surprise.
" I don't know. No. I think it very interesting, like every
thing about you Zagreus ! " (The name gritted out of the
coffee-machine of his throat, an intended caress.) " It's a new
eclecticism I had not suspected ! "
 MR. ZAGREUS AND THE SPLIT-MAN 34i
" Well, if you are really interested, I will show you."
Mr. Zagreus opened the looket, Ratner peered in. It was
empty.
" Poor Julius ! " laughed the bedizened albino. " Nothing
doing !—I'll make up for it one of these days, and open my heart
to you. I have a Sex-morsel there, yum-yum !—certainly I have !
I've been keeping it especially for you : if you will stand up on
your hind-legs and beg nicely. But not now Julius. At the
Pyanepsia—when as a child I used to play with and sometimes
eat the beans meant for the altar of the Autumnal Apollo, I used
to call them each by- a girl's name—Syrinx, Astraea, Agave,
Nephele, Hesione, Thisbe, Echo, Maia. I wonder if Apollo ate
them all—that is, those I left ? "
" I shouldn't be surprised. Ah you Greeks Zagreus ! "
" Why was I named Zagreus ? "
Ratner, substituting for his natural resentment at this mocking
vitality dancing in front of him a sickly-shy, slow-moving smile,
grated :
" I didn't think you were. I thought you were called "
Mr. Zagreus stopped him with a menacing hand.
" Never mind ! Never mind ! " Pierpoint's incantation
stung the air with the spanking N and Minder of its vibrating
gut.
He stepped back and began counting upon his fingers :
" Ace, deuce, tray, cater, cinque, size. How many letters are
there in my name ? Are there enough to fill the points of space ?
You can say that—numbers don't matter. You don't know ?
Go to Bath, Mr. Ratner ! you're never there when you're wanted !
But now listen to me a moment Mr. Julius ! "
Mr. Zagreus towering above Ratner, declaimed in a pro
phetic style.
" Never change the barbarous names given by god to each and all
—you read in the spurious Avesta compiled in Alexandria :
Because there are names possessing an unutterable efficacity ! Beginning
with the stock-in-trade of the Phap : the name you utter is not
the name. The Unnamed is the principle of heaven and of earth.
But the name is an abortion and a tyranny—and you do not have
to ascend into the sky, with the Tao, or allege anything more
than a common cat, for that. Name a cat and you destroy it !
' Not knowing his name I call him Tao.' "
342 APES OF GOD
. " My name for today, Ratner, as it always is but today
especially, will be Zagreus and no other. It is a most pitiful
travesty, is it not that ? Our names are our slave-marks. We
should name not be named. Yahveh ' putting his name upon '
the People of Israel was branding them like sheep, was he not ?
That is so. We shall never be anything much, we men, so long
as we have names shall we, like Ratner and mine—shall we ?
Have you ever tried to think Ratner of a name for yourself? Of
course Ratner is not your name at all I suppose—any more than
Julius which you have stolen from Casar ! So you are all right,
Ratner, in that respect.—I have never been able to imagine a
name abstract enough for myself." Zagreus swelled out his chest
at this. " Maimonides disgraces his god by saying that the tetra-
gram IEVE (Yah He-Voh Hi) is worthy of him. Schem Ha-
Mephorasch ! I wish I could see it ! It .would not satisfy a very
particular man—not a quite commonplace man ! But in any case
the Hebrew god would keep his real name up his sleeve—he
would be afraid to leave that lying about where anyone could get
hold of it ! I prefer some of his Shoan names to the tetragram :
Ililfarsangana-el for example : Telk-el Walib-el Bel Mel. Or
his secret ones—Coltekolcol (like a mexican god). Gohatjir
is a good one. Hajirji : Gorgovajir : Corooking.—A people,
however, that would officially reduce one face to an ovoid with
seven holes, would be quite likely to find YAHVEH very unique."
Ratner rolled the harsh r's that lined the bed of his gullet and
a reverberant croak was emitted—saluting the mock Yah-he-
voh-h6.
" What is the real name then of Pierpoint ? " Ratner asked.
" Ah ! " Mr. Zagreus exclaimed. " That !—Pierpoint ! No."
" Pierpoint ? Is it ? "
" Ah."
" Why, is it a secret ? " Julius limply coaxed, grinning with
sickliness that increased as he bashfully and balefully eyed this
gimcrack sphinx-man. " You are so mysterious Horace ! "
Dr. Mysterion wetted his naphtha-eyes and flashed up two
liquid sparks to our firmament.
" Our names are our slave marks—you have heard what Pierpoint
said—Our names " there was a lacuna in which the mouth of
Horace continued contorting, but no sound came " slave-marks ! "
He licked his lips.
 MR. ZAGREUS AND THE SPLIT-MAN 343
" Yes "
" Slave-marks ! " softly Horace breathed again, with a thrill in
slave—a hissed whisper of whips.
" Did Pierpoint say that ? "
Zagreus looked at Ratner steadfastly for a short interval of
time—very slowly opening his mouth, and drawing back his lips
as if his lips were cats and they were in the act to spring—as his
lips often stealthily moved, to pounce upon words.
" It was Pierpoint " he said weightily " who said " he paused
and struck up his moustache, " all that I have said to you ! "
" Figuratively Horace ? "
" No—."
After a moment Zagreus added :
"Julius."
The eye of Horace glittered with the same light as that that
alarmed the wedding-guest who beat his breast, but Julius Ratner
only rolled his most raucous r's about in the bottom of the old
yellow sack of his mouth and slowly drawing in his breath over
the rattling consonants, brayed a harsh bright cloven bray.
" He said it to me " said Zagreus—mouthing me, his voice
dropping to the plane of confidence.
" And you got him to write down the names ? "
" I got him to—he did."
Ratner repeated the croaking bray, with a sluggish dragging
inhalation.
" You old Boswell ! " ground out Ratner, in chaffing wheedle.
" What a lovely time you must have together ! "
" Pierpoint is the greatest genius I have ever known ! "
Zagreus shouted, challenged in this way, at the top of his form.
The bray of Julius followed the greatest genius—it broke out to
caress Zagreus with its sluggish mockery.
" He taught me a ' vanish ' for tonight that is superior to
Houdini—or Devant ! "
" What was that, did you say Horace ! "
" To Houdini ! "
" Really ? "
" Also how to subtilise a pigeon," Zagreus hissed under his
breath, rolling his eyes. His lips moulded in dumb-show the
words after he had spoken them—upon the atmosphere arose the
shadow of the words " subtilise a pigeon " from the unctuous
344 APES OF GOD
labial pantomime. " That is simple " he said quickly and scorn
fully aloud. " I have two in that basket."
" Two what ? "
" Pigeons. Pigeons ! "
Zagreus repeated dumbly twice more (in dumb lip-pantomime)
pigeon.
Ratner brayed more sofdy, so that the sound approximated to
the runculation rising from a dove-cote, the cooing of a sinister
spate of gelded pigeons perhaps—in moist and inclement condi
tions.
Zagreus having mysteriously boasted of his big bag of tricks,
he then looked up and down the room. Then, with some
solemnity, he raised his hands, palm outwards, the two first
fingers and .thumb extended.
" Mano Pantea," he said fixing Ratner in the eye : he then
suddenly spat three times in his face, shouting—
" Despuere malum ! That's for luck ! "
" Luck for whom ? " Ratner asked in piping and vibrating
voice, wiping off the saliva.
" You may be annoyed with me for spitting in your face.
That would be a mistake 1 I have to do that to be on the safe side
with you Julius. You can't help yourself any more than a person
with a squint—it is on record that two women once lived together
in a London suburb upon the best of terms : only as one of them
had a squint, the other was forced to spit in her face three times
a day to be on the safe side—like me. It must have been unpleasant
for both of them. But they appear to have got quite used to it."
All this having passed off very pleasantly, Mr. Zagreus looked
out of the window and said :
" Well there's a time for play and a time for work."
Ratner was still wiping his face.
" We had better be up and doing."
" I thought we were."
" Is the car at the door ? "
" I believe it is. I heard a knock."
"Did you?"
Horace began gathering together all the objects that composed
his costume.. He lifted up a perforated box. Looking at Ratner,
he framed in dumb-show with his super-plastic lips the word
" pigeon."
 MR. ZAGREUS AND THE SPLIT-MAN 345
Julius Ratner had grown slightly morose, and threatened, if
spat at any more, to resort to a dignified attitude. There was
hauteur in his sallow mask already.
" Willie Service must bring these down," said Zagreus. He
replaced the perforated box upon a large black case, secured with
cord.
Ratner was silent.
" Daniel Boleyn is at the Plough and Viscount with Margolin."
Ratner, still stand-off, said " Is he ? "
" We pick them up as we go along, at the Plough and Viscount"
By his demeanour Ratner conveyed that he was indifferent as
to who might be established at the Plough and Viscount (himself he
had been provided with a garret at an inn called the Moody
Arms) but that he was prepared, ready as ever to oblige his oldest
friend, Horace, to assist at their honourable collection—more he
would not say.
" Daniel Boleyn awaits us " Horace said impressively.
Ratner replied with an impatient movement, then he said :
" How have you dressed him ? Is he dressed up too ? "
"As a Cinquecento exquisite—white silk tights—rather a
smart novel dress."
Ratner gave a sickly sneer t)f long-drawn weary mischief.
" Who is footing the bill Horace—you are doing things in
style ? " The business-man insisted, with threatening eye.
" That is all settled between Lord Osmund and myself.—The
fee is not large ! Did you get that money ?—Tell me later ! "
Zagreus moved towards the door.
" Here : carry this." He handed Ratner the lotus throne.
At the door Zagreus stopped, catching sight of the many
gaping life-like garments, he was leaving behind in the room.
He returned and battered them out of human shape as far as he
could. Some were recalcitrant and seemed to cling to their
second-hand life. At last he thought he had subdued them. The
bed, too, had his imprint removed from it—and it presented no
longer a surface upon which magic might be practised. He then
rejoined Ratner, who was warily descending the stairs, with the
lotus throne.
PART XII.

LORD OSMUND'S

LENTEN PARTY
/ THE BANQUET.
A S the door opened the approach of a human tide was
announced, it had its peculiar voice. The first distinct
.L A. words, for anyone awaiting it inside the room, would have
seemed to contradict its first jarring murmur.
" J'APPELLE UN CHAT, UN CHAT ! "
As if the spirit of the speaker had burst away from the confine
ment of the sluggish tide, came this intemperate declamatory
shout.
Lisping and nasal, with an affected testiness, someone scolded
the disturber.
"J'APPELLE UN CHAT, UN CHAT!"
A refrain, or a dogged assertion, again these words stamped
themselves upon the air. And immediately afterwards followed
the lisping voice of mock peevish-complaint.
" I know, and somebody un fripon. But do be quiet Knut—
you've made quite enough noise. The Pigeon will escape ! You
will terrify him if you keep talking about cats ! "
" / will talk about cats ! There are so many cats ! "
" Do ! Do ! But not quite so loud ! " A sneering purr or
grunt accompanied these words, and the speaker appeared in the
doorway.

Led by the pink emolliated form of Lord Osmund, the com

pany enters the long apartment where the dinner is to take place.
Lord Osmund is accompanied by his boyish wife, by his brother
Phoebus, his cousin Eustace, guests and attendants.
"QUI, POUR LES BLAMER,
MALGRE MUSE ET PHEBUS N'APPRENDRAIT A RIMER?"
the head as it were of the procession continues to vociferate—a
small grimacing pink-cheeked puppet, in the shadow of the
figurehead, the host, the famous Chelsea Star of " Gossip," Lord
Osmund Finnian Shaw.
35o APES OF GOD
Lord Osmund is above six-foot and is columbiform. His
breast development allies him also to that species of birds whose
males are said to share the task of sitting and feeding the young
with their mates. The pouter-inflation seems also to give him a
certain lightness—which suspends him like a balloon, while he
sweeps majestically forward. His carefully-contained obesity
may be the reason for his martial erectness. Or rather, there can
be no other reason for the evocation of that god.
Like Lady Fredigonde, Lord Osmund is a divine Pleroma—
and the company the brothers have collected for this banquet is,
with few exceptions, a brotherly brood. So the elder sweeps in
with dignity, the fifty guests or more and relatives wander or
shuffle in. Prowling up and down the board, they seek their
names upon the cards, to find what place they are to occupy.
At the far end Lady Robinia Finnian Shaw seats herself, with
Lord Phoebus and Mr. Eustace Mulqueen upon her right and left
hand respectively.
A tremendous punkah oscillates overhead, to deal with the
equinoctial mildness expected, installed by some mattre des secrets
of the family. It has been gaudily painted till it resembles an
example of Newton's rings. The sconces, where the torches are
stuck, the length of the rough and lofty walls of this converted
tithe-barn, are of polished brass, and their mirrors each rock a
duplicate flame.
This is a hastily-converted norman grange, in the rear of the
super-farmhouse acquired for parties and as a nursing-home by
Osmund. It is ill-lighted and draughty, a large log fire is at either
extremity. The torches and a multitude of twinkling candles
upon the refectory table—to seat at a pinch a hundred diners—
are the only illumination. It is productive of a glaring and smoky
light. A constantly agitated firmament of shadows, lost in the
timbered roof—the rushing, slovenly-dressed, hired waiters—a
scratch troop of flustered women—everything sustains the air of
restless improvisation, a sort of quaint, shabby lavishness, down
to the cheap and perfunctory disguises of the guests.
Robinia, married for two years to Lord Osmund (who com
bines, with the traditional irish " madness," every correct minor
mania of the post-Ninety aestheticism of the Chelsea English)
conforms to the prevalent fashion for victorian atmosphere. She
is a period-piece that is a wan confection : she has a deep straight
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 351
parting in her flaxen hair, her very narrow colourless face possesses
the sly and pallid repose of an entirely devitalised instrument of
post-Ninety satisfaction. As it were a permanently run-down
domestic animal, Robinia drifts, scenting things a little, staring
distractedly at nothing—and, sometimes, between her fingers she
twists a straight silken wisp of the yellow hair of her head. She
is a musician, like Dan she is a genius—there is no greater musical
genius in Europe than Robinia. It is questionable if there is any
so great ! .
Above the pallid musical girl-wife, Phoebus and Eustace
frankly tower—before they all three are seated—for they are both
six-foot three inches high. This pair of cousins are very grave
indeed, with the air of supporting a ceremony with affected
awkwardness. Suddenly both of them sit down as if at a word of
command—as if falling from a considerable height : as ifthe word
of command, ill-learnt, had forestalled their readiness by a couple
of seconds, whence their unconscionable haste.
The male preponderance, and the physical conformity, of this
assemblage, would have been remarked upon immediately by a
stranger—Lord Osmund would be found to respond to the
" ancestor " in these patriarchal cadres. Then, could human
beings grow up in a year or two to be rather pallid boys of twenty
or even more pallid chaps of thirty (but shrinking into corpse-like
faded shadows as they tread the borders of middle-age)—should
they be littered in half-dozens, and should infant-mortality be
small, this table would have appeared furnished principally by
children of Osmund. But—this not being so, as it is not—some
reason for the queer personal conservatism that prevailed would
have to be found—to satisfy science, or mere curiosity.
As far as possible, then, the generality of this assemblage are
physically identical : and the pattern is a pallid chorister of
seventeen—gelded or drained of all the grossness of sex by a
succubus or something at birth.
Robinia exceeds all in lifelike imitation. But a decade or so,
in reality, junior to Osmund, in appearance too transparent and
thin—five-foot and pale—where he is so much the opposite, she is
yet a succinct shadow of her bulky lord. The majestic original,
not yet quite a senior but yet already patriarchal, he is adapted,
by malignant Nature, to the dishonoured seat of priority.
To the above law of the pallid rabbit of the osmundian social
35a APES OF GOD
system, a few exceptions only can be distinguished, here and
there. An insolite group of three, placed midway between the
imposing polar presences of Osmund and Phoebus (for Robinia is
but a blind window, or a tinkling victorian musical box) : a man
in a green forester's jacket, with tyrolean cock's feather : lastly the
occasional women, all old ones, and the finnish poet who in many
respects transgresses the osmundian pale—he whose exclamations
have disturbed the entry.
There are two women upon either side of the host : there are
the two blood-relations upon either side of Robinia.
This gathering, meant to be a lenten festivity, develops
through the includable bent of the hosts and satellites into a
soggetto, arranged for the showing off of their favourite characters
—it is their private theatre, this is Osmund's dramatic troupe and
household-cast at full strength. In addition there are a few
distinguished guests who are spectators. In his personal theatre,
Osmund is seen with his troupe then au grand complet : except
that the most important figures are always Absent (since, if it is
generally true that les absents ont toujours tort, in the case of Lord
Osmund's gatherings they could be said to receive an overdose of
wrong).
Hors d'oeuvres of a summary description begin to pour on to
the table : skipper sardines, salamis, beetroot, celery, saladed
potatoes and an occasional dish of egg-mayonnaise. The cutlery
and silver, much of it brand-new, of a quality found in cheap
restaurants, is in places defective. Some guests have only one
fork or no dessert-spoon.
A suggestion of the sumptuous has been cynically imparted to
all this, however, in the details of the appointment of the feast.
In addition to the punkah, Congolese figures and Malayan masks
make their appearance here and there, upon the walls of this
giant dining-room. A painting by Severini (of Scaramouche with
a guitar and two masked pals) hangs near a cubist rendering of the
Woolworth Building in New York, and a post-pre-Raphaelite
landscape by a period-fancying Gloucestershire Hebrew, to point
the grangerising of the time. Rough craters, of pseudo-etruscan
design, are distributed at intervals along the centre of the table.
These are filled with tulips. From the midst oftheir whorls oflightly
carmined lawn—a yellow stain surrounding the green suppuration
of their stigmas—their pistils arc trained point-blank upon the
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 353
guests. The human cryptogams in front of them (the carefully
bled Osmundian sucking pigs) —vegetative, secretive—grown from
spores, without true seed, stamen-and-pistilless, were obscenely
mocked at by those chasmoganous growths—the tactless table-
ornaments.
But now the trumpeting of the verses denouncing the grand siicle
drew attention to the scandalous guest :
" POUR UN SI BAS EMPLOI MA MUSE EST TROP
ALTIERE.
JE SUIS RUSTIQUE ET FIER, ET J'AI L'AME
GROSSIERE.
JE NE PUIS RIEN NOMMER, SI CE N'EST PAR
SON NOM:
J'APPELLE UN CHAT, UN CHAT."
" Oh, taisez-vous done, monsieur—avec votre ehat et encore
votre ehat ! " exclaimed his neighbour.
" Yes, do be quiet Kanoot. I do wish you'd learn something
else," Lord Osmund scolded, in lazy nasal drawl.
The Finn, a gilded laurel wreath upon his head, and upon the
top of that a green Phrygian bonnet—but combed like a common
tiara—grinned with doll-like fixity, with eyes insanely bright.
Pointing at Lord Osmund he again burst out :
"MAIS, SANS UN MECENAS, A QUOI SERT UN
AUGUSTE ? "
Lord Osmund tossed his head and clicked his tongue, in sign
of despair, and turned to his reigning pet. This was a lady
veiled and muffled, she sat upon his left-hand side. He deferen
tially whispered to her. The lady belonged to a distant generation.
She supplied him with tit-bits of Gossip arranged with his favourite
sauces, the old yellow sauces of the Naughty Nineties. This was
really his old cook, who presented him with little delicacies cut off,
first from one, then from another, of his more aggravating acquaint
ances or friends—done to a turn in her cunning old cuisine,
flavoured with the recipes she had learnt in a former age from the
lips of the great men of that wicked, perverse, most clever epoch—
from Wildes, Beardsleys and Whistlers.
Some hated swine-flesh there was, of particular enemies, that
the more-than-a-thought teutonic Osmund never wearied of :
354 APES OF GOD
some little birds' anatomies he knew by heart, whose entrails he
especially prized.
Purring a trifle piggishly, and savouring the ridiculous in his
prominent snout (from which came a sardonic note) he settled
down gluttonously to gossip.
" Tell us, Sib, about So-and-so ! "
" What did So-and-so say to you, Sib, when ?"
" Tell them the story, Sib, of how you met So-and-so, yester
day—/ thought you bought it, but I find ! You know Sib—do
tell them that ! No one has heard it, I am positive ! "
He pleaded, condescendingly down his nose—exciting with the
colossal snobbery of his baying drawl his muffled aged soothsayer,
come all the way from that far land of the Nineties. He wheedled
his old Nineties-nurse for a further slice of victorian cat's-meat.
" Sib ! Sib ! Was So-and-so seen smelling Belvedere's hand,
while Poor Tom was being sick—that was perfect you must tell
them that—you must ! Do tell us again I have forgotten how it
goes ! That was a divine story Sib ! "
There were a thousand and one gems of cafe-chatter, of tit-for-
tattle—of score-offs and well-rubbed-ins.
The monotonous leads, uttered in rich nasal drawl, never
stopped for a moment now. Osmund caressed his foetid old
prophetess with his fond false eye. He confirmed the impression
of the pouter-pigeon by that gruff, gurgling coo—with which he
would encourage or reward her devoted clowning, her decrepit
somersaults.
Indeed, from the moment that every one had become settled, a
blight ofunrelaxing gossip and ofstale personal allusion descended
upon the entire table from end to end. For this Lord Osmund
in the first place was responsible, and it was accepted by all as the
business of the evening. The tongues started. And a motley of
figures arose in these racontars. There were the small antagonists
of osmundian literary intrigue—people who had hurt his lordship's
vanity by ignoring or by castigating his literary enterprises.
There were those who had resented the dilatoriness of payments
for a picture or a book, or for an object offurniture—kindred-spirits
were pulled out and made to run the gauntlet of these tongues—
someone who had made him a butt in an entertainment like the
present one. Many victims recurred with clock-like regularity.
In fact in a sort of'ill-acted Commedia dell' Arte, with its
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 355
Pantalones and Arlechinos (the family ofthe Finnian Shaws mono
polising the Harlequin role, however unsuited for it), this family-
circle passed its time. A passion for the stilted miniature drama
of average social life, as it immediately surrounded them, had
assumed the proportions with this family of a startling self-abuse,
incessantly indulged in. Their Theatre was always with them.
Their enemies—Pantalones, comic servants, detestable opponents
(whose perfidy disrespect malice or cabal they would signally
frustrate—unmask them, knaves and coxcombs to a man !)
always this shadowy cast was present. Indoors and out-of-doors,
dilated, in full war-paint, sometimes as bombastic phantoms, or
else, laid aside in doll-like collapse—but always present. So their
commerce would appear, to an outsider come into the circle of
their existence, like some unvarying " shop," with all its monoto
nous technique—concetti, soggetto, repertorio—masks of gravity,
malice, or lechery—cloaks of the Dottore, air-bladders, rice-
powder—incessantly in evidence.

In colour Lord Osmund was a pale coral, with flaxen hair

brushed tightly back, his blond pencilled pap rising straight from
his sloping forehead : galb-like wings to his nostrils—the goat-like
profile of Edward the Peacemaker. The lips were curved. They
were thickly profiled as though belonging to a moslem portrait of
a stark-lipped sultan. His eyes, vacillating and easily discomfited,
slanted down to the heavy curved nose. Eyes, nose, and lips
contributed to one effect, so that they seemed one feature. It was
the effect of the jouissant animal—the licking, eating, sniffing, fat-
muzzled machine—dedicated to Wine, Womanry, and Free Verse-
cum-soda-water.
The hosts, except Lord Osmund, who represented some apo
cryphal Restoration ancestor, were not in fancy-dress. But the
guests availing themselves for the most part of the alternative of
the invitation cards were Characters in Fiction. The party of three
nondescript strangers, quite unknown to their immediate neigh
bours, conversed with each other in low voices. They were deeply
disguised. This banderbast of bold intruders detained the eye of
their host, he cast in their direction many questioning puzzled
glances, so rapidly they became indicated as the official butts of
this phase of the entertainment.
The lady facing the Sib, across the stately front ofLord Osmund,
356 APESOFGOD
was a massive harpy who glared at the assembly, often she would
explode in broken English. Admired by her hosts, because of her
prodigious aggressiveness, she was as it were a bulldog bitch of a
society-matron, with pretentions to a sledge-hammer wit, whose
robust tempers in contrast to their own had the power to divert
both Osmund and Phoebus, though obnoxious to Robinia.
Next to this lady the finnish poet, who was in fact it was said
a Lapp, in a very tight and shabby suit of clothes of a dark green
check, sat bolt upright throughout the banquet—his staring eyes
of intense polar green appearing to light up his rigid, long-lipped
grin-from-ear-to-ear, with its deep symmetrical dimples, to make
his painted cheeks as well glow with a more carmined flush. But
this strange painted shamanised northern wanderer—who possessed
no home, but who passed from pub to pub, studio to studio, party
to party—he it was, if any one, who was the recognised Soggetto.
He was the factor of scandal, required for the occasion : his role
was to provide that thrilling element—to be the iron jelloid of the
languid jest, to be the live wire amid Weary Willies.
From those high latitudes out of which—a figure of crapulous
saga—Kanute or Knut had emerged (a mad painted grin graven
upon his face where two flanking front-row teeth were missing) he
had brought, in his ever-tightly-jacketed boy's body (though now
in years a strapping man) a voice for an apocalypse. At a
moment's notice it could take its place in a brass-band, in the
event of the bursting of a percussion instrument or the destruction
of a trombone. With this equipment he had in France collected
a proud booming delivery. That was upon a classic stage, which,
an infant-actor, he had trod. The verses of the french high-noon
of the Latterday West welled up, inconsequent accidents, from
this source of incandescent sound, of their own accord. The
entire table was rocked with the detonation of haphazard strophes
—fragments of poetry, metrical thunder-claps, bisected couplets,
heads, or extremities, of rhymed invective—they struck it with
the full force of the age of the King-Sun.
"J'IGNORE CE GRAND ART QUI GAGNE UNE
MAITRESSE ! "
(Jeeeen^rrw ss grarnt-torr—kee garnytx een mayt-tresss I)
The vociferation occurred, a solitary alexandrine—and Knut,
with his face split across with kobold-grin, was stiffly silent after
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 357
ward, squatting wooden and smiling, as if modelled upon a
ventriloquist's knee-boy—the leering nipper of music-hall canon—
that the performer's voice had abruptly ceased to visit.
Lord Osmund, putting his hand round his ear, as it seemed to
protect the most tenuous of maidenly whispers, and looking
significantly towards the Unassimilable Three, the group of
interlopers (still carrying on their anti-social mutter-a-trois)
shouted at Knut :
" Do speak up Kan—oot ! I can't hear you—there's so much
noise going on ! "
Kanoot spoke up. The face of the rouged and powdered doll
that is to say split. While the horizontal gap expressively con
tracted and expanded, two more vast lines of verse came out,
deafeningly recorded.
" SAINT-AMANT N'EUT DU CIEL QUE SA VEINE
EN PARTAGE.
L'HABIT QU'IL EUT SUR LUI FUT SON SEUL
HERITAGE."
Lord Osmund held his hand behind his ear always, as if hard-
of-hearing, and again he called out in strident tones—to make
himself heard seemingly above formidable interruptions :
" You really must speak up Kanute—I can't hear a word you
say ! There's such a diabolical noise going on that it's quite
impossible to hear oneself speak ! Speak up and then perhaps I
may be able to hear you."
" It is difficult, isn't it ! " bellowed Phoebus from the other
extremity of the table, rolling eyes of an affrighted doe upon the
Unassimilable Three.
" I can't imagine where all the noise is coming from can
you ! " Lord Osmund answered in a howling whine, looking down
both sides of the table in turn. " It isn't as though there were
any noisy people here ! It is really absurd that we shouldn't be
able to hear each other speak without shouting like this—I can't
understand it at all."
As the drawling thunder of the big-baby-talk rolled up and
down the banqucting-board, from Osmund to Phoebus and back
again, the Unassimilable Three were silent, burying their masked
noses in their soup.
" I know ! " exclaimed Lord Phoebus. " It is really too bad
358 APES OF GOD
of Mrs. Bosun to have left the wireless on," he lisped in a tremen
dous drawl, that concentrated the full force of its snobbery upon
Bosun—" is it the wireless loud-speaker do you think Osmund—
shall I go and turn it off—why ever has Mrs. Bosun left it on ? "
" No " big brother bellowed back : " I'm positive it's not the
loud-speaker ! " ,
" No it's too loud for that don't you think—I wonder whatever
it can be ! " Phoebus with his dupe's-mask on-—ofsimple puzzled
gull—carried his eyes hither and thither.
" It isn't the sound, or what do you think, of the loud-speaker
Phoebus ! " Lord Osmund tallyhoed back, in majestic high-
pitched lisp : " the loud-speaker makes quite a different sound—I
shouldn't bother to go and turn it off if I were you Phoebus—I'm
positive it's not the loud-speaker ! "
" It's far too loud I believe for the loud-speaker—unless
they've got two or three more since yesterday. I shouldn't be at
all surprised would you ? We didn't have to shout like this
yesterday ! "
" I know ! It was quite quiet wasn't it yesterday."
" Perfectly—I can't make it out at all can you ? Mrs. Bosun
probably ordered two more in case one should break down."
" She insists on having the Savoy-band with her supper."
" I know, but I do think this is going too far, don't you agree ? "
" Much too far, I shall speak to her about it tomorrow."
" I only hope it's not a storm brewing ! " blew the rumbling
nasal contralto of Osmund, upon a fog-horn note of fear. And
some guests shivered slightly and they gazed about for a Clerk of
the Weather.
" A storm, yes I hadn't thought of that—the temperature has
risen I believe in the last few minutes—do you think it is—I hope
it's not ! " bayed back in blank-faced alarm (such as that felt by
all young feathered things at the approach of the tempest) the
languidly-youthful wild-eyed Lord Phoebus, gigantically Faunt-
leroy. " It looked very black I thought just after sunset. Did
you see how black it was ? Just after sun-set. What ? After
the Sun Set yes ! It was ! "
" Was it—I know ! I did notice, most terribly black—and
blue ! " Lord Osmund agreed, still shouting down his nose, in
lazy nasal blare. " But it must be a very bad storm don't you
agree ! "
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 359
" I believe it must be ! I do hope they've shut the windows !—
All I hope is they've closed up the win-dows ! "
" It must be one of the worst storms for years ! "
Turning to the Sib, Lord Osmund repeated, in a lower key :
" Don't you agree Sib, it must be a very severe storm ! It
must be quite a hurricane."
He raised his voice (above the storm of course, and combating
Sib's deafness) :
" Phab-us thinks Sib—yes Phab-us Sib—that it is probably
one of the worst storms for years, I shouldn't be surprised if it
were ! Don't you think it may be ? Don't you find it exceed
ingly difficult to hear what people say ? I do ! "
" I believe I did find it a little difficult just now—yes it is
difficult ! " said the Sib, with her bright craft, in her veiled voice.
" Most—I feel particularly deaf, myself."
" So do I ! " agreed the Sib, " as deaf as a post ! "
" It doesn't seem like an english storm at all does it ? There's
something outlandish about it don't you agree ? It's the sort of
pandemonium that Cockeye often refers to, when he's talking
about his early experiences in the Gulf of Siam ! "
" Yes—the gulf of Siam ! "
" It simply means that the weather has broken ! " Lord
Osmund crashed out crossly, impersonating the marquis his papa,
' Cockeye ' in fact : " but somehow I felt in my bones it would
break—all along I knew something of the kind would happen,
didn't you feel it might Sib ? "
Affecting to listen with misgiving to the outrageous sounds,
denoting that uncouth break in the english weather, the Sib drew
her black victorian wraps about her shoulders.
" I don't believe it's a storm Osmund ! " she panted stormily,
short of wind.
" Not a storm Sib ! "
" Not exactly a storm ! " breathed the blanched Sib.
" I wonder whatever it can be then " Osmund asked anxiously,
" if it is not a storm ! That would be most uncanny, if it were
not a storm ! "
The Sib leant towards him "a little, and she said in a more
muffled pant :
" I believe it's the loud-speaker ! "
" Sib thinks it's the loud-speaker ! " Lord Osmund imme
36o APES OF GOD
diately called down the table, beckoning to Lord Phoebus. " Yes
Sib believes it is not a storm at all—she believes it is the loud
speaker Phoebus ! "
The Finn, who had begun to resent the competition of the
bogus elements, suddenly took out of his pocket a piece of soiled
paper.
" I haf a Map of Tenderness ! " declared the Finn.
" I don't care what you've got Kanute ! " said Osmund with
high-pitched off-handedness.
" Is that Madame de Scudery or is it Doctor Stopes ? " asked
Mr. Wildsmith across the table, for he was sitting next to Sib,
without looking at the Finn.
" I don't know," said the Finn. He put the paper back in his
pocket. He drew out another larger fragment of paper, upon
which there was some handwriting.
Noticing an accidental hush, Kanute clamoured automatically
without stopping to think :
"ET TOUT DE VERS CHARGE, QU'IL DEVAIT
METTRE AU JOUR."
The verses still issuing from his mouth, he affected to grind an
itching shoulder upon the upturned wooden blade of the chair at
his back.
" ET TOUT CHARGE DE VERS ! "
With a resentful loudness, Kanute insisted upon this.
" I do wish you could manage to let us forget—if you are lousy
it's nothing to be proud of Kanute—let it go at that don't you
think ?—is it really necessary to scratch ? " in his complaining
drawl scolded Lord Osmund.
Basking in the seigneurial banter, the Finn grinned, at the two
old women, his fellow-satellites.
" Mais comment monsieur ! vous vous frottez contre votre
chaise ! Mais alors quoi ! " exclaimed ruggedly Madame Volpe-
mini : " si vous etes tellement chargi de ces betes-Ia, monsieur,
ne vaudrait-il pas mieux que vous vous mettiez un peu a l'ecart—
je n'ai pas envie moi d'etre devoree—ce n'est nullement pour cela
en effet que je me trouve ici, a cette table hospitaliere—je vous le
garantie—Au contraire ! "
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 361
" Mais parfaitment madame ! " answered Knut. " Moi non
plus ! "
" C'est là cependant bien votre affaire à vous, n'est-ce-pas !
Quant à moi, je n'en ai pas envie—voilà ! Je ne veux pas de vos
hôtes agiles et malhonnetes, vous entendez ! Gardez vos vers
pour vous, monsieur, gardez vos vers pour vous Monsieur ! "
" Mais, Madame, je suis un poète—donc, je n'ai pas le moindre
vers ! "
" Tant mieux ! Voilà la sorte de poète qui me conviens, à
moi ! D'ailleurs j'ai horreur des bohèmes sans-culottes ! "
" Sans-culotte madame ! Comment ! J'ai toujours mes
culottes ! "
He drew her attention to the tightly-sheathed darkly-checked
thighs beneath, half-draped with tablecloth ; then he looked up,
and in masterful accents brought to light the same verses with
which he was charged, all over again, with a challenging flourish
—letting in the daylight, putting them on show.
" TOUT CHARGE DE VERS, QU'IL DEVAIT METTRE
AU JOUR ! "
"Je n'aime pas ces vers-là non plus—autant peu que les
autres ! " growled the same old critical polyglot, who was Venetian,
while she slightly scratched her naked bicep of pale roman ochre,
that smelt of sweet-pea.
"Je croyais madame que toutes les belles filles aimaient les
poètes ! "
" Moi pas ! " she roared " Moi pas ! "
Lord Osmund and his Sib had proceeded to whisper, in loud
penetrating stage-tones, looking towards the three masked
mystery-men.
" Osmund ! "
" Yes Sib ! "
" Do you know what I believe it is that has been making all
that noise ? "
Osmund is all hushed attention : he whispers back :
" No Sib ! Do tell me !—what is it ? "
" I have been looking round," husky and dull hurtled the Sib—
communicating from afar off among the black Beardsley glades
haunted by big inky vamps, and pirouetting amid the Fetes
Galantes of the Naughty Nineties—interrogating her attentive
362 APES OF GOD
beruffed Restoration patron, so far and yet so near—in fact at
some distance as well, in the time-spaces and chronologic per
spectives, in the London of Lord Chesterfield.
" Yes Sib ! do tell me what you suppose it is, I shall feel all
of a shiver till I know ! " He purred down at her from the baby
drone within his musical beak : " for some time I must say I have
had my suspicions—but I could scarcely believe my ears ! I
wonder if what you think's the same ! "
" It is only a guess ! "
" I know, it is impossible to make up one's mind—I've found
that too—first one thinks it's one thing, then one thinks it's another
—I still believe I must be wrong ! "
" Mine is only a guess—tell me if it seems too fantastic ! "
" I am quite in the dark "
" So am I—I conjecture, I am tentative "
" I am not dogmatic ! "
" Anything but—anything but ! But for some time it has
seemed to me—I know it sounds absurd—that all the noise is
proceeding from those three people over there "—she slid her eyes
round, followed by those of Osmund " the ones with the steeple-
hats, who look like three friends of Guy Fawkes," and the Sib
lowered her blind-puppy eyelids, while Lord Osmund observed
with attention the three masked mystery-men.
" Do you know !"
" Yes ! "
" I had exactly the same impression Sib ! "
" No really ? "
" It was identical ! "
" I do think that was a coincidence ! "
" Wasn't it ! I thought my ear must be deceiving me ! It
would not be the first time ! "
" Don't talk to me about one's ears ! But I believe we must "
" We must I believe be right Sib ! "
" I don't believe our ears have played us false ! "
" In this matter—I believe they haven't ! "
" I am not positive—but I should be surprised if they had
deceived us ! "
" For once I do believe that mine has proved trustworthy ! "
" It is a miracle if mine have ! "
" Not more so than with mine ! "
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 363
" But who are they, do you know them ? "
" I have never seen them before in my life ! "
" You don't know who they are at all ? "
" Not the foggiest ! " Osmund sneered and purred the absurd
expression.
" Who brought them ? "
" Who indeed ? "
" When did they arrive ? "
" I did not notice them arriving ! "
" Are they interlopers ? "
" I shouldn't be surprised ! "
" How did they get in ? "
" Ah who knows ! "
" What did they come for ? "
" What is their business here I should like to know ! No good—
I confess I can see nothing for it but that ! "
" It looks black against them ! "
" And for us ! Very black for us ! "
" Certainly it is disturbing to have them ! "
" Disturbing ! Disturbing's not the word ! It is too much of
a good thing altogether ! "
" I should not be surprised if they went away."
" If they don't, I shall have to have them removed I know
that and pretty quickly too ! "
" They are certainly enigmas ! "
(Those nearest to Lord Osmund follow his example, they hold
up their conversations and transfer their attention exclusively to
the mystery-men. An uninterrupted hoarse whispering arises
from the Trio of Scandal. Their postiche Fifth-of-november
moustaches waggle in a manner that bodes no good for anybody,
beneath their black half-masks of satin, which carry at their base
sharply protruding, steeply-pent, half-noses—pink-lined, with
nose-tips of live flesh outcropping. Their neighbours incline
their ears, in the relative hush, to surprise some sentence or some
tell-tale exclamation, but it is out of the question to catch what
they are saying, although their voices can be distinguished quite
plainly).
But the finnish principal, at a loss for a verse (that should be
both sonorous and incendiary), realised a danger. In his
mesmeric fixity, of latter-day Scald, he abruptly foresaw, in a
364 APES OF GOD
visionary fashion, that, in the long run, at the hands of these
intruders, he might suffer an eclipse. As a performer, he might
suffer an eclipse. He noted their unpopularity—he assured him
self of the will of his masters, Osmund and then Phoebus. These
beyond question were official butts—he saw it was a sport to which
all and sundry were plainly invited. Therefore, staring at the
dread Three, in company with the rest, he took the initiative.
He delivered a blow at the table with his large-hand-for-a-little-
man.
" Silence ! " he roared at his rivals. " Silence, I say ! Do
you not hear me ! Silence ! "
Twice again he gave the table volcanic slaps, to the delight of
his hosts succeeding in shivering a wine-glass and upsetting the
wine over the great harpy, the Volpemini's evening-frock.
" Im-W-cile ! " that irascible foreigner cried out beside herself,
as the false scarlet of the bad Bordeaux was ditched the length of
her hefty lap, spilling over forward spout-wise from between her
knee-caps, splashing her slippers.
For a moment it seemed certain that the pampered bull-bitch
would fling herself upon Kanute. But instead, pushing her chair
back, she attempted to repair what had been done without loss of
time. To that end she wrenched open the two beefy cliffs of her
thighs—the ditch split, a chasm yawned, the wine dropped
through, upon the floor beneath. She wrung, in convulsive
laundry-work, the discoloured silk. Gripping a napkin, up and
down she scrubbed—Lord Osmund, with ceremonious perfidy,
assisting her with abortive advice, seconded by the squinting Sib.
"Mais quel goujat ! " panted the Volpemini. " Mon dieu,
quel malhonnetc personnage quel celui-la ! "
" Vous avez raison madame ! C'est un—fripon ! " Lord
Osmund agreed, with great readiness. " Fripon ! " he added
mildly to Kanute.
" Un fripon—c'est exact ! Un fripon en effet ! "
The big three, the mystery-merchants, did nothing to suspend
their debate—they showed no sign of intending to draw each
other's attention to their unpopularity in any manner—they were
composed and earnest and impenetrably disguised, as to class or
kind, though in sex there was some probability that they were
just mystery-men and not women.
" Osmund ! "
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 365
" Sib ! "
" It occurs to me "
" Yes Sib—what is it ? "
" Aren't those three people ," in her muffled pant said the
sycophant Sib.
" Yes, those three whispering bandits ! "
" Those three men like bandits—perhaps the performers—
those conjurers."
" No, the conjurers when they come, at their own request are
to dine at that table there, that is apart from us. They will not be
with us—it is not the conjurers I am positive."
" Not the conjurers."
" No not the conjurers."
" Oh."
" I can't account for them in any way."
" I can't either."
" They are mysterious. But there is no question about their
insolence."
" They are quite undisturbed ! "
" They are three knaves ! "
Kanute slapped the table (up to which the Volpemini had just
drawn her chair once more) with undiminished force. With the
accents of a town-crier announcing a lost gold-hunter, he voci
ferated :
"THREE KNAVES!"
The Queen of Spades at his side answered—
" Sale voyou ! "
—but those he had denounced—the Three Knaves—remained
unaffected.
At the far end of the table, looking in the direction of the
finnish poet, Lord Phoebus remarked :
" I do hope there's not a fight ! "
Mr. Eustace Mulqueen was positive there would not be—the
Volpemini had not got the pluck.
In a training voice, charged with a pompous gravity, Lord
Phoebus explained to his neighbour the situation—the very loose,
very rough soggetto, in short.
" Knut—you see up there at the other end of the table, who is
sitting beside Osmund—next but one—he is quite mad. Yes
quite mad. He has been mad all day. He has the most extra
366 APES OF GOD
ordinary delusions. He believes that his spirit is a pigeon. He
is afraid to open his mouth for fear it should fly away."
" Really ? How very extraordinary ! "
" Yes it is. Did you notice, a moment ago when he called
out and struck the table, how with the other hand he guarded his
mouth, as though he were belching ? "
" I can't say I did."
" Well, that was in case the pigeon should try and escape.
Yes, very peculiar isn't it ? That's what I said to Osmund. I
really think he may never recover this time, because he refuses to
sleep. He has not slept for four nights. He dare not sleep for
fear the pigeon should escape. It's a Trinity Complex."
" A Trinity Complex ? "
" Yes a Trinity Complex."
" Who are the other two members of his Trinity ? "
" He has a theory that the Pigeon is attached to his umbilical
cord. It is supposed at present to be in his stomach."
" But who is the Father ? How does he ?"
" No, he says he does not know who his father is."
" And the Son ? "
" He, of course, is the Son."
" He must be quite mad."
" Quite, I'm afraid," Phoebus drawled with thrilling matter-
of-factness, returning to his dinner.
" He ought to be taken care of. Has he seen a doctor ? "
" He refuses to see a doctor. We wanted to take him to see
our doctor today. Osmund is going to try again after dinner."
As the wine found its way into the small bloodless stolid bodies
of the guests, the canvas became more animated. It moved them
to diminutive dead-born gestures of comic aggression, towards the
interloping trio. And a certain comfortless inter-ogling declared
itself and there appeared a gentle ruffling of the surface by not
very strong currents of obscenity of a certain type—drifting or
stationary, always a little dreary, just so much languid play as the
engrained, long-cultivated spectator's role would allow.
But the wild Finn, the poetisch scaramouche of the osmundian
canvas, was, in contrast, so replete with exalted nonsense and a
great deal of drink, that, by this time, a denouement seemed assured.
Some terrifying lazzo slept in his shining eye and his ear-to-ear
grin ! Would he become a seal and grovel nimbly upon the
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 367
sawdusted floor ?—where he would fight the Volpemini to the
death ? Or would he, glass in hand, vault the table and perch
upon the dresser, and from thence challenge the unpopular Three ?
He rose with the same uncertain suddenness with which
Phoebus and Eustace had at first sat down. Molto perturbato—
full-scandal-lazzi. A startled complaisant " Oh ! " from the
Sib—sheepish grins and a little pale-pink blood in the cheeks of
the initiated spectators.
Kanute turned a shining eye upon the company, an actor sure
of his triumph. But no athletic somersault or gem-like sally was
required, he knew, for success. Only to be a Finn, to be drunk,
and to appear the whole time about to outrage decorum, to be
always on the point of tearing off the veil of grey restraint.
Head erect and eyes fixed above the level of his scalp, he
started off, unsteadily but quickly, towards the principal exit.
// guido maestro shook with condescending fun, cooing gruffly :
but he flashed signals with his eyes, as he was always doing, to his
business-manager, brother and colleague, Phoebus.
Phoebus rose. He planted himself in front of the door, or
rather flattened himself against it, his head dislocated in the
direction of the Finn, with his hands palms-pressed upon its
massive panels. He did not look at Knut, but gazed like a dog,
or like a cop dissimulating his interest in a suspected person, at
something else, with a kind of heavy professional duplicity. The
shamefacedness peculiar to Phoebus added its sheepish flavour of
coy sex to this pretence.
Affecting to discover, there before him, quite unexpectedly,
this human bas-relief, the Finn changed his plans. He continued
his journey, as a circumnavigation of the table. He negotiated its
extremity, circling behind Robinia, and went up the farther side
on his return journey to his place beside Osmund.
A moment he lingered behind the three interlopers. He
examined them with his broadest grin at close quarters, but at
their back. Then he passed on. Arrived behind Lord Osmund,
he approached his grin to his host's ear—holding his hand in
readiness, near its slit, to intercept the pigeon. This action
resulted in a gesture of clumsy confidence. He whispered for
some minutes.
Not resuming his place at table, Knut wandered amongst the
domestics. Phoebus, back in his place upon the right hand of
 368 APES OF GOD
Robinia, eyed him with a wary and business-like eye : he was
more than prepared at any moment to crucify himself and to be a
bas-relief again—" over my dead body "—an attractive tableau,
and one that furthered the Soggetto, at once. But Knut
drifted beatifically on, round and round the mulberry-bush,
colliding with the waiters. He made longer and longer stays in
the immediate rear of the interlopers, however, it was noticed,
by both his hosts—who saw him passing continually around
them—with sagacious sporting eye, as true fans of such baiting
and fencing.
Coming up with a waggish spurt behind Phoebus—who kept
the tails of his eyes busy in readiness—Knut suddenly collapsed, a
hand upon one shoulder of his junior host, his head rolling in
unsightly finnish horseplay upon the other.
" Phoibos—pewer one !—tarling ! I must tell you ! "
Phoebus started up, scandal-lazzi uppermost in his stern
mask, the man-of-action to the fore.
" Knut ! go back at once to your seat ! You are disturbing
everybody ! You really must be quiet ! We can't have it ! Go
back at once ! "
The mock-victorian-old-maid, which historical character-part
met with a hospitable reflection in the spirit of Phoebus, discharged
her shocked accents.
Holding him at arm's length, Phoebus marched him back to
his place.
" There ! Sit down and be quiet ! Stop there till we tell you
to move. You mustn't move about so much and get in the way
of the waiters."
Knut collapsed in his chair, directing his gaping grin and
painted cheeks at his major host, for approval.

I Two log fires at the opposite ends of the room develop a devastat-
/ ing heat. The guests fan themselves at last and shrink from them.
" Is it too hot for you, Sib ? " Lord Osmund asked with
concern. " I am so sorry—I feel as though I am in a Turkish
bath myself. I wish they wouldn't pile logs on in that way.
Peters," he lisped in complaining falsetto—" Peters—don't you
think you could possibly manage to get a few of those logs off?
The heat is beyond description. I know it's cold sometimes, but
it's particularly warm tonight."
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 369
Lord Osmund addressed Peters with a coaxing appeal but
with the customary complaining nasal peevishness, and the
servant, with a mixture, as well, of impatient contempt and of
slovenly obedience, began removing the uppermost of the logs.
Lord Osmund twitched his nostrils, curled his lip, and sniffed very
slightly—looking whitely at the Sib, his hands upon the table at
either side of his plate, the hard-goffered cuffs coming down over
them, a flowered handkerchief overflowing his chest from beneath
the brocaded flange of his doublet. Then he turned quickly
again towards the servant.
" Don't take them all off. We must have a fire ! Before it
was too hot—that was all I meant."
Peters like an automaton, without turning his head, replaced
two smoking logs, which he had just pulled out into the grate,
upon the fire. Lord Osmund looked at the Sib, his eyebrows a
little raised.
Peters poured water from a carafe over the logs in the grate.
There was a determined hissing, a burst of steamy smoke, and a
slight stench, at once.
" I wish you could think of some other way of disposing of the
logs Peters ! " hissed and puffed Lord Osmund in still louder
expostulation, simulating a man choked with the fumes of char
coal. " Now you've filled the room with smoke ! It's quite full !
I wish you could manage not to smoke us out ! "
Peters took no notice at all of his testy lord, he hit the logs.
" This is too much, what are you hitting them for ?—don't
hit them !—how do you expect us to eat our dinner if you first
grill us and then choke us, I wonder ifyou could with your mouth
full of smoke ! The fumes are dangerous ! I wish you'd take the
logs away, instead of patting them like that and making them
worse ! They are far worse now ! "
Peters rose, bandy and efficient, grasping a log where he had
extinguished it, and he bore away the first smoking carcass.
Lord Osmund pointed to his forehead, and shook his head.
" He's so stupid ! " he said to the Sib. " Peters is a natural."
Contorting herself and smiling with a pained twisting of the
wooden lips, Sib replied :
" Servants pride themselves upon their stupidity so much—
they are all the same. Their stupidity is the symbol of their
independence."
37o APES OF GOD
" Yes. But I think Peters is really stupid."
" Oh I am sure he is ! " obsequiously panted Sib.
" Yes—he really is ! "
At the farther extremity of the table there was a similar
upheaval. Phoebus rose, and, with a face getting very flushed
and cross, he struggled personally with the logs one by one. The
servants paid no attention to the turmoil engineered by the two
brothers, for they had been led to expect it ™ whenever the tithe-
barn was used for an extempore banquet, scenes of this nature
were re-enacted. Osmund and Phoebus would bay whine and
bluster, complaining of the fires as if they had not installed the two
great grates themselves—they might in fact have been put there
by their own proper fetches, or by some monstrous " good people,"
but never by them : the staff, it was half implied, was a besetting
world of supernatural underdogs, who were in league with the
fire and smoke. In consequence the clowning passed unnoticed
by the servants, for they observed that this was nonsense, beneath
their notice, and most likely not intended for them as well.
Gathering himself together, for a final struggle perhaps, with his
competitors, the mysterious Three, the Finn was alert. Attracting
the attention of Finnian Shaw Major, by his violent and incendiary
gestures, he uttered, by way of clarion call to the disturbed
company :
"POUR LE REPOS PUBLIC—POUR LE REPOS
PUBLIC ! "
—and having gained the attention of his host, he added in a more
familiar key, but with the same unctuous pomp :
" DU MOINS IL ME LE SEMBLE ! "
" Moi aussi ! " Osmund grinned agreeably his encouragement,
and Knut at once proceeded, embracing the entire table with the
radiations from his staring eyes of polar green and the unrelaxing
pits, dyed in the carmine of the setting sun, of his dimples :
"TOUS LES HONNETES GENS, AYANT FAIT
LIGUE ENSEMBLE,
TOUS LES HONNETES GENS, (mais oui madame, Urns les
honnetes gens !)
DEVRAIENT COULER A FOND, A GRAND COUPS
DE BEAUX VERS
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 371
(Devraient fondre dessus)—A GRAND COUPS DE
BEAUX VERS!
LES PEDANTS, PLUS FACHEUX QUE LES TROP
LONGS HIVERS ! "
A big pause came after these heavy blows of beautiful verses,
administered like a master : aiming in anti-climax a mere bluff
blow of the fist at the spot hit before (to make bull-bitch saltate
as she readily did), Knut detonated, denouncing what he would
send to the bottom, swamp, sink with verse-blow after verse-blow,
or broadsides of booming vocables :
" PEDANTS ! "
(PAY-PAY-DORR !)
That's what he would stave in and scuttle ! Pay-pay-dorr !—
But that dark Trinity of Pedants did not stop the mechanical
waggle of Fifth-of-November postiche moustaches (large leaves
of oil-dropping saladed lettuces tattooed with their Clarkson
bristles, as they vanished in their faces, beneath the masked
noses)—they ignored the heavy blows of the beautiful verses.
" I'm positive that he's right, don't you agree Sib—three
pedants—of course !—it's just what they must be now I come to
consider ! Don't you agree ! Don't you agree ! ! "
" Pedants ! Of course ! Pedants ! " echoed Sib. " I was mad !
It is as plain as the nose on your face ! "
" It's as plain as a pikestaff ! "
" It's as plain as print ! "
" Plainer than print—plainer than print ! "
" Much—much ! " lisped Sib in the voice of Osmund, pre
cipitately.
" Pedants ! " Knut rushed in to agree forcibly with him
self, in a splutter at the cap, a big labial P, nodding with fury at
the shoddy Buddha, Wildsmith, across the table—who kept his
chin high and looked down his nose at everybody, full of the scorn
of Iiis cheap contemplation, his eyes swimming superciliously in
his spectacles. " Per-per-per-ped-dornt-tuss ! "
" How stupid of me, how really asinine of mc it was ! " brayed
the great victorian Osmund at that, the young Trollope-curate
in person : " of course I should have known all along—all the
time they were really peasants ! "
" Pedants ! " Sib corrected.
37= APES OF GOD
" Yes of course, Pedants—I should have thought of that at
once—did you ? " Osmund chided himself again. " But how
stupid of me ! I could kick myself ! "
He inflicted a light blow upon his own shin beneath the table—
Sib to follow suit hacked out but she hit Mr. Wildsmith with her
foot by mistake.
" I was a perfect fool not to have thought of that ! " Sib
panted, plunging herself into sackcloth and ashes, in clownish
imitation of the clowning of Osmund, and they both took the
tumble together, their eyes on each other.
Wildsmith (more meretriciously chinese, the Bloomsbury
sinologue genre Chu-chin-chow, at every moment) put on a mask
of deep offence. Pedants !—what was this they were talking
about ? Who was a pedant ? What next !
" Of course. Pedants ! " Lord Osmund repeated.
There's no of course about it ! said the indignant mask of Wild-
smith, Bloomsbury Mandarin of the First Button. No of course
about it !
" DEVRAIENT COULER A FOND, A GRAND COUPS
DE BEAUX VERS ! "
The shouting Finn rose to his feet. He described an intoxi
cated stance with an imaginary besom, with which he swept off
the board all pedants that were there, with the stroke of a Plus
Man or of a magical batsman bent on a century. And having
done that he just said—
" TROP LONGS HIVERS ! "
—looked at the compary to see if they had taken in about the
length of the winters, and sat down with the greatest abruptness.
" Far too long ! " his host, with his purring sneer, agreed.
" Pour le repos public ! " added the Sib.
" Exactly ! " said Lord Osmund. " Pour le repos public—too
long by half ! "
" En effet ! " the Volpemini wound up the matter.
Wildsmith slightly singed the Volpemini in passing with a cold
sinoiogical ghost of a pale dawn of mirth though not quite so
coarse as a smile.
Along that side of the table upon which sat the mysterious
Three, the form of Phoebus floated forward osmundward and his
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 373
chair was vacant. There was some hush as he passed, for such a
step was unusual. Phoebus had come to confer with his brother
Osmund : the Finn, as he caught sight of him, exclaimed in
rousing accents that occupied the silence :
"MAIS, QUAND J'AI MAUDIT ET MUSES ET
PHEBUS,
JE LE VOIS QUI PARAIT, QUAND JE N'Y PENSE
PLUS ! "
and then he kissed his fingers at the approaching divinity.
Phoebus inclined himself to whisper in the ear of Osmund,
and Osmund whispered back, with olympian calm his detached
eye wandered. There was a short return of confidences, a consul
tation in which Osmund pronounced himself, it was plain, and
Phoebus was satisfied. Solemnly concerned was Lord Phoebus,
it was a weighty secret, and their friends watched their mysterious
patrons out of the tails of their eyes, as the movements of two
policemen are intently canvassed by the crowd in an emergency—
as the officers consult and counter-consult, moving noiselessly
hither and thither, flashing their bull's-eyes upon this object and
that.
But the Finn rose in his place and barked at the intruder—
pointing his finger at that obtuse embodiment of nursery pomp-
and-circumstance, curly Lord Phoebus- Desmond—pointing and
shouting—
" BIZARRE HERMAPHRODITE !—BIZARRE HERMA
PHRODITE !
DE QUEL GENRE TE FAIRE—EQUIVOQUE
MAUDITE ! "
" Do be quiet Kanute ! " said Lord Osmund, objecting to
' hermaphrodite.'
" Yes do be quiet Knut—it's a mistake to think you're
funny ! " Phoebus was quite down on him too, these verses,
a la longue, were a consequential absurdity, even in bad taste.
" BIZARRE HERMAPHRODITE ! " thundered the Finn.
" Kanute stop making that noise or I'll have you put out
side ! " Lord Osmund raised his voice to say, while Phoebus
stopped in the midst of an important disclosure. But the Finn
indicating with outstretched arm and stiff air-stabbing forefinger
374 APESOFGOD
his vacant place, to the breathless Phoebus, at the far end of the
table, replied, frowning and openly contumelious—
" TU NE ME REPONDS RIEN ? SORS D'ICI ! FOURBE
INSIGNE !
MALE AUSSI DANGEREUX QUE FEMELLE
MALIGNE ! "
Phoebus rose quickly up into the air, swiftly leaving Osmund's
car behind him and beneath him, full of portentous secrets, and
on light and airy feet withdrew, the way he had come, followed
by the voice of Knut—
" SORS D'ICI ! FOURBE INSIGNE ! "
" Don't you know anything else Kanute except those stupid
lines of Boileau is it still ? We are tired of those, try and remember
something else." Osmund turned his back upon Kanute and
signalled the Sib, who was talking to Wildsmith, who had his back
turned towards her.
" It's difficult to know how to stop him once he is wound up.
Kanute gets obsessed with some tiresome verses."
" All Finns are like that ! "
" Have you known many Finns Sib ? "
" No. But he is not a Finn is he ? "
Scarcely had Phoebus resumed his seat, dropping into it with
graceful precipitation, than he was again upon his feet. A
distant, hollow and violent, banging was present to the ears of
everyone at the same time, and it woke a sensational echo, from
one end of the table to the other. Both Lord Osmund and Lord
Phoebus started up, with looks of horror.
" There they are ! " Lord Osmund exclaimed.
" Who ? " asked Sib.
" It is the conjurers ! "
" It sounded like the conjurers," agreed Lord Phoebus,
stalking towards the door.
" Just like them ! It must be the conjurers. Unless it is the
police ! " Lord Osmund added darkly, under his breath.
" The police ! "
Full scandal-lazzi at " police." A hundred guilty china-blue
periwinkles in awed baby-heads composed a suitably guilty chorus
for a police-raid. There was plenty of guilt, if looks went for
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 375
anything, there was no lack of lawlessness, and all the officers
would have to do when they burst in would be just to " pull " the
entire assembly—they would then have under lock and key (said
those coy criminal-masks, that openly hugged out-of-sight some
unmentionable turpitude) a pretty hot catch for one round-up—
a bag of a hundred odd of sly little black-sheep, and a few
crooked old black shepherds, and one or two big blond ones.
There would be promotion for those police-officers ! Oh lucky
police !
The knocking somewhere continued.
" Wherever is Mrs. Bosun ? " Phoebus asked in disgusted
caterwaul.
" I expect she's listening-in to Moscow."
" I shouldn't be surprised ! "
" She's in the middle of the News I'm positive—from the
U.S.S.R.B.C. ! "
" Does Mrs Bosun listen to Moscow ? " asked the Sib, the
evident victim of a long wavelength of civic misgiving—hearing
the ineffable name of " Bosun " associated with the metropolis of
the Third International.
" Peters has taught her how to listen in to Moscow," said
Osmund still standing : " she never misses her bit of propaganda
about this time ! "
" How alarming ! " Sib panted : " to have one's staff in
nightly touch with the U.S.S.R. ! "
" But she can't reply, she can only listen."
" She can only hear jazz ! " said Geoffrey Beale.
" Peters is a dangerous man." Sib cast a glance over her
shoulder, lest he should be passing.
" I think he is, like all half-wits." Osmund's eye stalked
Peters in the distance.
" Why do you have a half-wit for a butler," Sib asked him.
The knocking grew fiercer, and more hollow.
" I think I'd better go don't you Osmund ? " Phoebus called.
" Well perhaps you'd better—Mrs. Bosun it seems is not
going."
" It seems not."
" I should go, if I were you ! "
" I think I will ! I will go and see who it is ! "
" I am positive it's the conjurers ! "
376 APES OF GOD
" It is the conjurers I believe."
Lord Osmund sat down. The assembly awaited the return of
Phoebus in a tense secretive manner, mostly with an excited
whispering, speculating upon the likelihood of a descent by the
London police—though all agreed that if there was little to choose
between one policeman and another, that the London Police was
the best and the Berlin Police the worst. So the world-hush of
the universal Speak-easy-soul of the Post-war, was in this company
prolonged until the knocking abruptly ceased. Then it was
surmised that Phoebus (a little confounded with Siegfried) was at
grips with the Law-and-Order dragon—though in spite of the
deference due to their champion this Theoretic Underworld still
shook in its criminal shoes, its Edgar Wallace teeth never ceased
to chatter, its Potemkin heart was in its throat. The World that
had become fashionably Underworld wilted deliriously, at the
bare prospect of wholesale detection : half-amorously it fluttered
at the shadow of Authority (a child shrinking from the birch-
armed Dad) —all breathing one big bated breath of fond fellow
ship of romantic Revolt, of elect Criminality.
The door was burst open and a tall masked figure with a back
made for the Stulz swallow-tail, holding in its hand a six foot long
yellow cane-wand, surmounted by an ear of wheat, the mantle of
Graziano held over an arm, entered. It was Mr. Zagreus, in
ordination First Conjurer to Lord Osmund for this momentous
Lenten Party : but upon his heels came a Half-man in stealthy
procession, and a tall young Florentine gentleman next, with a
very small figure to bring up the rear, which was Margolin. But
Mr. Zagreus now in his dignity of First Conjurer gave the rule of
respect to that of the Split-man and they revolved a moment in
proximity to the entrance : then Peters turned them aside, and
the party headed for the performer's table, while Kanute:—
princeps as well as primus—raised his green bonnet in greeting, for
he foresaw here a welcome diversion, that would draw away
interest from the mysterious Three.
Separated from the main portion or nave of the tithe-barn by
irregular pillars of wood, and a network of rugged struts, were
two aisles : these had been here and there fitted with partitions,
furnished with tables, with underfoot sawdust but otherwise
nothing. It was into such a compartment that the group of per
formers was introduced by Peters. It had the appearance of the
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 377
Manger of tradition, in an altar-piece, with Zagreus in that case a
visiting Magus, and they sat with their four backs to the wall,
with as the nearest guests to them the three- mystery-men. From
left to right they were Margolin, Dan, Zagreus and Ratner.
Behind them upon the wall two small wooden panels hung, they
were specimens of pokercraft. One said—
DO BE CAREFUL PLEASE !
the other said—
TEA FOR TWA.
" It was the conjurers ! " said Lord Osmund.
" I thought it was," answered the Sib.
" What did you think of them ? " O. said.
" Which ? " S. looked about to form an opinion.
" The party of conjurers," said O.
" Very smart I thought," said S. " Their leader was im
posing."
" That is Zagreus," O. said.
" Oh that is Zagreus," S. replied. "Who used to do the jokes?"
" Yes," said O. " Zag-rooce."
" I know ! " nodded S. (a fellow-' Ninety ' !)
" He is a magician now," said O. with rounded eyes, to welcome
magic. " They say he can walk through walls. He learnt to do
$0 in the Orient where he has spent many years—he is an adept
of afghan magic."
" Is he going to put us under some spell this evening ? " S.
made haste to ask.
" No, he will not this evening," O. disappointed S. " He says
it is not worth while. He has promised however to cut one of his
assistants in half: also he will make a flagstone float upon the
surface of the bath-water—that will be only for members of the
family."
Both O. and S. showed signs of distress, as the logs had got the
bit between their teeth and roared, daning their large tongues
into the brick chimney.
" I hope," said S., " that he won't disturb," and she looked
around the powerful barn " the atoms of the building, with his
spells. Already I feel a little insecure."
" There is no occasion to," O. said : " I am positive that he
won't interfere with the atoms. He is very careful."
" Oh that is good," S. panted back.
378 APES OF GOD
" He did what he calls a vanish," said Lord O., " at Lady
Shuter's, a week or two ago. He was supposed to be spiriting
away one of his assistants, but instead of that all of a sudden Lady
Shuter disappeared ! "
At the thought of the vanish at Lady Shuter's there was a gasp
from S.
" Lady Shuter disappeared ! " she said, " how terrifying !
Into space ? "
" Yes," said O. " There was nothing left but a rather dirty
stain upon the floor."
" I've never heard of such a thing as that ! " S. said.
" Nor I," Lord O. agreed.
" But was it explained," S. said, " at least ! "
" It seems that something had gone wrong," O. told her.
" No one was more surprised than himself—Mr. Zagreus looked at
his assistant who was supposed to vanish and of course the young
man was still there ! But when Mr. Zagreus found that Lady
Shuter had disappeared he considered that the trick had after all
been a success."
" I should think it had ! " S. clamoured. " I should rather
think it had, don't you ! If it eliminated Lady Shuter it must
distinctly be called a success I should say ! A success—it was a
triumph of the conjurer's art—almost a turning point ! "
" Un succes fou ! " Lord Osmund cooed and sneered.
" I suppose everybody thought the same," the S. then asked.
" It was regarded by several people I understand as the best
trick they had ever seen ! " Lord O. at once replied.
" What happened after that ? " S. pressed him to tell her
the sensational sequel.
" Then Myrtle Shuter began crying," said Lord O. in his
deep coo : " she said she wanted her mother back and she
accused Mr. Zagreus of doing it on purpose—of spiriting her
away ! "
" Of having her in his pocket perhaps ! " S. said.
" Perhaps ! " said O.
" Did he then whisk Myrtle away too ? " S. asked.
" He might have done so with advantage," O. agreed. " But
as a matter of fact he was rather upset about the disappearance of
Lady Shuter, because apparently he was not sure he had the
required formula to bring her back again."
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 379
At this neither O. nor S. were at all surprised and they
sympathised with the perplexed magician in retrospect.
" How did he manage to do so ? " then S. asked.
" He tried several passes," after a pause O. said, noting in the
distance the behaviour of the forester. " Then in desperation he
remembered the pass that the indian fakirs use to conjure with
elephants (they call it the ton-lifter, it's done with fingers forked)—
he made the pass, and Lady Shuter shot out of the ceiling and
was restored intact to her guests ! "
" As hale and hearty as ever ! " croaked the S.
" Far more so ! " exclaimed Lord O. " She incommoded
several newcomers by her redoubled heartiness that nothing had
prepared them for, and assured them all that she had never felt
so terribly hale, that she could remember."
" So sound in wind and limb ! " S. panted in asthmatic chant.
" So full of joy dee vivre ! " O. added.
" It was lucky he remembered the formula ! " S. said with
feeling.
" Wasn't it ! " eagerly responded O.
" I suppose Lady Shuter thought that all's well that ends
well," S. conjectured.
" Oh no," said O. " Not she ! " said he. " Lady Shuter
wanted to disappear again ! "
" That was tempting providence."
" It was," O. thought as well.
" And would he do it ? "
" No," said O. " Not again, he said he couldn't do it again—
not so soon ! He said it wasn't safe ! "
" What did he mean ? " S. asked, " by that—was that polite
of him ? "
" I suppose he meant the house might not stand it a second
time ! "
" In quick succession ! "
" It was only a house after all ! "
" I am surnamed The Hardy. I was King of England,
Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Saxony,
Brandenburg, Bremen, Pomerania. I am Hardycanute," inter
rupted the Finn, with the rude buzzing rub-a-dub of his norse
palate, discharging a volley of r's at them, as they gossipped about
the vanish at Shuter's.
38o APES OF GOD
" Kiss me Hardy ! " was all that Lord Osmund said, in a tone
bordering on contempt, and turned the cold shoulder upon his
clown, who was under a cloud and inferior fun to a vanish he must
understand.
" Oh Osmund !—tarlink ! " the Finn exclaimed affecting the
soppy manners of the Seventh Heaven, and offered to fling him
self at once upon his host. Lord Osmund gave him a buxom
push with his fat hand upon the chest.
" That's quite enough Finland ! " he sneered in a rough pun
as he threw him off.
" Tart-ling / " exclaimed the Finn.
But as too much haste is as much before time, as too much
delay is out of time, Hardycanute enveloped a shadow only of the
nimble bulk of his host (who had left a void for the outstretched
finnish arms) and he fell flat upon his face and there they left him.
His legs provided an obstacle for the staff, over which they hurdled
at breakneck speed, on their way to the service door, getting very
expert soon at this.
As he lay upon the floor, his cheek wooing the soft dust of
wood, his nostril distended to capture its sappy scent, and closing
an eye, Knut was heard, in muffled lazy bellow :
" LABORIEUX VALET DU PLUS COMMODE MAITRE,
QUI POUR TE RENDRE HEUREUX ICI-BAS POU-
VAIT NAITRE ! "
Lord Osmund levelled a kick at the exotic prostrate tumbler,
his polyglot fool.
" Shut up ! " he said : and Kanute lay still and stark, apparently
falling into a deep sleep.
" He's passed out," said Lord Osmund.
" Who is that ! "
" The King of Finland ! " Osmund replied.
Some anxiety had been experienced at the prolonged absence
of Lord Phoebus, for no one had seen any sign of him since he
had gone away to admit the party of conjurers. But at this
moment the door rapidly opened and Lord Phoebus was revealed,
in great drooping haste to resume his seat, his hair a little dis
hevelled and his face so preternaturally obtuse that it was realised
by everybody, without anyone needing to tell them, that some
thing of a grave nature had occurred.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 38t
" You've been away a long time Phoebus ! " as he saw his
truant junior sink into his chair, Lord Osmund called out to him.
" Yes I know ! " Phoebus hollered back, signalling to Peters
for some asparagus.
" I hope nothing's the matter ! "
" It is—very much so ! "
" Whatever is it now ? "
Phoebus raised his voice, and he discharged the peculiar news
in measured and loud matter-of-factness.
" Mrs. Bosun's had a fit ! "
" A fit ! "
" Mrs. Bosun ! " the World echoed.
In a world ofBosuns what could two babes-in-the-wood expect,
except repeated calls upon their vitality and their initiative,
Phoebus conveyed by his perfectly wooden expression, as he lifted
a piece of asparagus into the air and lowered its blunt barbed
head into his dickie-bird beak, thrust up to receive it.
Sensation throughout the audience—Bosun and Fit ! A vivid
exchange of shocked anxious glances and the splutter of a giggle
here and there.
Lord Osmund sprang to his feet and in the deep florid bay that
belonged to the throat of all Finnian Shaws without distinction, in
the male line, he responded, in undisguised consternation—
" A fit—has Mrs. Bosun had a fit ! "
" Good heavens ! " exclaimed the Sib. " Mrs. Bosun ! "
" What kind of fit ! Was it apoplectic Phoebus—are you sure
it was a fit ! "
" I'm positive it was a fit—she was lying by the side of the
loud-speaker ! "
" By the side of the loud-speaker ? How extraordinary. Was
the Savoy Band playing ? "
" No."
" Not the Savoy Band ? "
" No."
Whereupon it was immediately apparent to the least initiated
that something very strange had occurred, and that it was not
unconnected with the loud-speaker. It was extremely significant
that it was not the Savoy Band—Lord Phoebus knew more, it was
quite plain, than he cared to impart, unless somewhat pressed.
And the loud-speaker was in some way at the bottom of it.
38a APES OF GOD
" Did you turn it off? " asked Lord Osmund, taking a step
as though to go and do so presently, as the thought of its roaring
away by itself was uncanny.
" I turned it off the moment I got there," answered Lord
Phoebus. Nothing if not a man of great emergencies, Lord
Phoebus had turned it off at the main with the most surprising
presence of mind.
" And the Savoy Band was not. after all what you heard
Phxebus—not that but something else you say ! "
" Certainly the Savoy Band was not at all what I heard."
What could it be (whatever could it be !) that Lord Phoebus
had heard, as he just saved Mrs. Bosun by turning off the loud
speaker ?
" You will see they will continue shouting to each other, they
are wound up," Horace Zagreus pointed out to Dan : " and they
have this play to do—it is called Bosun. But look—you cannot
benefit by all that you are hearing in that position, you are crouch
ing over the table with your legs spread out—I am sorry, hold
yourself (have you your drill-book ?) well, to begin with Ugs
crossed of course—crossed—clamp them then, fast, that is the first
step " (Dan crossed two silken show-lady shadow-legs under the
table-rim, clipping knee to knee, grasping the under with the
upper) " and the hands, cross those next—palm on back of it—no,
right on top—press down next upon the thigh surfaces, it is the
prescribed position—cast your eyes up and in upon the juncture
of the brows—squint Menschenkind — in other words squint !
squint, that is it, is that so difficult ! it's all in the book, equilibrate
—equilibrate ! Make yourselfinto a vessel a retort that will trap that
thunder of pure folly, this thunder of pure folly, that is going on.
Those equidistant claps from Phoebus, counterclaps from Olympus,
which is Osmund—what a moonstruck music of hallucinated
machines that is—they chose Bosun to suggest a nautical print
these predestined period-fanciers I expect, to make you hitch up
your slops and spit black plug—there is no Bosun, and there is no
fit ! But attend ! they are approaching their stupid orgasm. It
is they who will have the fit ! Watch them excite each other, see
how they whip one another in perfect time with drawling tongues,
they quite lash out—it is a slow approach to the delicious crisis—
a heaven ofsmall hate constructed of small-talk will explode as the
joke bursts. Bang !—What a small return for so much solemn
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 383
fuss ?—not at all—ends and means, like effect and cause, are not
marked off with such precision as all that ! There, in another
moment they will have their fit ! You will see them ' die of a
little snuffling laughter. But their ritual must be seen to be
believed ! Regard those pompous showmen as the kettledrums
you remember—the clouds and drums heard from within, coming
out of the body in the first condition of Yoga. After (hat the
bees and then the bells—then the bells at the end of it. You know
Yoga. Don't you remember—enjoining silence ! Yoga. Yes-
Yoga ! Indian stuff. Well. Here it is different—you have to
turn this inside-out I should say outside-in, do you follow. You
look a little stupid (perhaps you have not diligently practised
squinting—it is a lost art) . Imagine for instance the good Osmund
is an intestine. Yes an intestine. He has been reduced to a per
cussion music by your disciplines your asanas. That was essential.
Let his snout be the mouthpiece of a submissive organ. After its
kind it can make music. All this company is but one unit. It is
one thing, a unit. You have to compress it, for it to be a single
body—you define it, set terms to it, you endow it with a hide to tie
it up, force it into one envelope. Cram it in—it will go nicely.
But yourself, you hold yourself outside it. That is quite good
Yoga. Now however these thunders become the intestinal
organic music of Yoga. Is that quite clear—I ask you for you do
not look as if you entirely understood (but that may be the effect
of the squint).—Listen to Osmund. His voice is instructive—it
is a drone, in the sense of the basis of the bag-pipe. Ennui is the
ballast of the drone. When it is Osmund. A slow measure,
listen again—Osmund dances to the music of his boredom, slowly
with satisfaction. That is the sound of Osmund. And Phoebus is
his bombastic echo."
That was good Yoga, yes perhaps ! thought Dan, if he thought.
—But as he sat with his legs tightly crossed, his hands forming a
vice-like circuit with the stiff arch of his shoulders, and his eyes
directed inward, fixed on his nose, in a high-pitched squint, all he
could say in reply to himself, but over and over again, in a self-
colloquy—which in its turn was a verbal squint of sorts—was
" why oh why ! " and the rest of his customary invocation to
Horace—the cause of the unkindness of whom he could never
pretend to fathom for a moment, for it was strange and unnatural.
And then Dan wondered, with great bitterness, not once but many
384 APES OF GOD
times, how long he would have to sit in that grotesque position.
" Why Horace must I sit " and so on, but of course such questions
did not pass his lips, and how long he had no idea, but only sat and
squinted (with death in his soul) as high up his nose as possible
(though once he fell as low as the tip).
Star' alia porta quana" un non vuol aprire,
Et aver un amico che ti vuol tradire,
Son died doglie da morire !
Margolin was mischievous : the sticks of matches fell in a
shower upon the mysterious Three—they shot up from the
nervous fingers of Zagreus' assistant, for Archie was a match-
stick archer, and he shot true. But occasionally a piece would
fly out at a tangent, and, as Dan riveted his eyes upon both the
left and right surface of his nose at once, to satisfy Yoga, now and
then a Lightship Safety Match stick flew into his restricted field
of vision, and the delicate missile administered a small blow to the
organ Dan was surveying, before glancing off and falling upon the
table. Such was life !
" That drone of the bored grandee, My Lord Gossip " Horace
continued, to supplement the action ofYoga, " ifyou only sit in the
right position, you will have that music at your centre, it is right
there inside you Dan, like the thunder-cloud in Yoga, that's what
I mean. (With hard cash it is, My Lord Gossip pays the columns,
the mentions, such as ' Lord Osmund has a new book of verses on
the way,' or 'The Finnian Shaws again ! What a strangely gifted
family ! '—he thrusts round with agents the photographs, that he
buys in reams, of his stout ego—nothing except enforced absence
from the Gossip in the cheery Chat-columns would cause him to
lose weight.) Sink boldly Dan into these embodiments of
' Gossip ' as you would into the swelling volume of a velvet-
watered hot bath to the neck—to enervation—get well into this
rich thunder of Chatter—get down boy into it neck crop rudder
and udder (though painful it is well worth while) with the same
zeal that, the good little Yogi, you would slip into the appointed
' Noiselessness.' Here you have come out frankly, into a swarming
desert, to find Noise—not to fly it.—The Raja Yoga is reversed.
This is Pierpoint's invention. Pierpoint's ? Yes his invention—to
me that would never have occurred—to get the specific noises
(including the notorious tinkling) outside, by disciplines, that is his
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 385
handiwork—in everything he is inventor. Great Inventor ! "
Mr. Zagreus clamoured his belief in the infallibility of the great
Pierpoint, while Split-Man bowed his head, with sneers. " The
subconscious prehension should be sextupled, as the adoption of
the correct position improved it ? Do you find you are registering
the vibrations better now? They are charged with idiotic—charged
with idiotic—I should say idiot-waves is what they are. Are they
rolling in forcibly ? An insipid machinery. I can no longer
listen myself, I am impatient. What ? Have I not implemented
my promise, to show you the Ape of God at-home ? If you are at
a loss to reach the meaning of any of his diversions, at once inform
me ! No man can guarantee to circumscribe, with cast-iron
cartesian definition, all that they do. But that is not necessary.
The posture you have adopted enables you to transcend such
dialectic. The significance of these reduces itself to a sort of
music, and that you have trapped. That you should have trapped.
I as your Guru am music-master in ordinary : I impart a musical
art. The last thing you must look for is the message of an orderly
sentence—the significance lies in the impact of the image. One
of Pierpoint's loveliest verses will sound like nonsense.
Multimark of the cliff-breeding species, to cormorants
Next allied
Were apses.
You see ? To speak of the ' meaning ' of that would be
beside the mark—it gets you in the guts like a bomb or it doesn't.
Were apses !—It is my favourite ! "
Mr. Zagreus smiled to himself with pleasure, over were apses.
A Safety Match struck Dan's eyelid. He heard the nasal roar
of Osmund, as it were in the distance—well outside. The Safety ,
Match landed sharp corner foremost : he did not flinch.
" Listen to that one ! " said Mr. Zagreus, as he heard Lord
Osmund calling again to Lord Phoebus. " Quite apart from the
words. Chart the intonation, plot it—then you have the whole
lot in a net ! Osmund is the perfection of Osmund. I call his a
first-rate tone—of course making allowances. A mellow bellow !
What is that instrument ? What is that instrument ? "
Mr. Zagreus lent his ear to the osmundian pipe.
" As to the subject of the song, it is unquestionably self-pity,
rising from the illustrious blubber—Osmund is spermy. Why, the
pathos of a What's-his-name exploiting his patent blank-cartridge
 386 APES OF GOD
or hollow manhood that is it, as if such things could constitute the
patent conferring the laurel coronet of the historical poet ! But
what are the Wild Red Waves Saying, Lord Osmund ? Lord
Osmund to the Dark Tower Came—but WHAT ARE THE
WILD RED WAVES SAYING? If they were not there, then nor
would you be either Osmund—anachronist—Kanute squatting
fronting the flood-tide that is blood-red at the flood. Just out of
reach. That is paradox if you like—such is the price of what we
call ' Gossip '—the principles symbolised by the coloration of
massacre military and civil, gollops everything except ' Gossip '—
' Gossip ' and more ' Gossip,' which (highly politic) it leaves stand
ing as an advertisement. That it allows—for does not the mildew of
the ' Gossip ' throughout the land discredit everything the Red
Principle moves to destroy—what else so much as it and the social
facts to which that corresponds, could cause this society to look
quite so foolish ? The answer is nothing. All Revolution is preceded
by ' Gossip.' That must be so—I feel that must be a law. No it
is too ugly, I cannot listen—but that base old viol has a fine tone
all the same, for such as can descend to that basement ! "
The Finn passed, bombarded with matches by Margolin.
" Osmund before he had become Gossip-Champion, when he
was at the outset of his career as a professional Publicity-attrac
tion, had a great hankering to be a Lion and to be hunted by
the latest Lady Leo-Hunter. With his itch to take part in a lion-
hunt with himself as the ' lion,' Osmund directed his steps to all the
selectest bright Chelsea parties, as the War ended. But the leo-
huntresses saw him, shot a shaft at his title for luck, but would
not at any price hunt him upon the ' lion ' basis : none were to be
caught napping by a lion-skin stuffed with pedigrees and Brad-
burys. For all he has said of them since, those hostesses had the
good sense to recognise that that was nothing but an Ape in
' lion's ' clothing not worth powder and shot of a ' Leo '-Diana.
At this Osmund raged, and he vowed to get even—to hunt if he
might not be hunted : to humble, in fact, those unsportsmanlike
Chelsea hostesses—who cried out for ' lions ' and more ' lions,'
asking Osmund to bring them ' lions ' when next he came
as though he were not there himself at all—ready to roar very
prettily. Qua ' lion ' they would not consider him, only as
' society ' figurehead, who (like themselves, in all probability)
wrote articles about dress, and novels or broadsheets about their
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 387
acquaintances. So it was thatfaule it mieux Lord Osmund became
a Leo-huntress's-hunter. Lion I am not, Leo-hunter I deign not, and
10 on. Hunter J am. No. It was a case of discouraging those
sports in which he was not qualified to participate as the sacro
sanct victim. Such is the genesis of Osmund's lampoons upon the
Chelsea hostesses—it was a would-be ' lion's ' illegitimate vanity,
wounded by the non-discharge of the Leo-huntress's duck-shot ! "
" Is that really," asked Ratner " the reason " ?
Margolin called to a waiter and asked for more matches.
"Of course."
" I didn't know."
" I thought everyone knew that Julius."
" I supposed he found the hostesses boring, as most ofthem are,"
quite bored and off-hand Ratner thrust in his objection.
" Not at all ! He loves Society. But that of course is the
answer he would make himself to what I have just said."
" Would he ? "
" Of course—you made it for him !—Again Osmund hated the
' lions.' That comes into it too. Britannia's hard on the
' lions,' and Osmund never liked ' lions,' not real ones, any
more than Britannia. All such as Osmund have those sensations.
I know, because Pierpoint has told me. They have hated him,
for his lion-heart—he knows all about it ! The ' Gossip ' page
is a zoo of sham kings-of-the-forest as everyone knows, and
' Gossip ' as we now have it was invented about nineteen twenty-
four, for that purpose. All along what he coined ' high-brow ' to
denominate was hated by the yellow hack. The proletariat of
Letters was glad to settle accounts with its grandees, those ' lions '
—poets and artists—and the Osmunds of whatever period make
pacts with the canaille—they are true to nothing not even them-
selves—to nothing ! But so long as there were Leo-hunters there
would be ' lions ' that was but too evident : so if you destroyed
the Leo-hunters you killed two birds with one stone, so it seemed.
To doing that Lord Osmund was by no means averse, although his
peculiar quarrel was with the narrow-minaed huntresses, who
would not hunt a stuffed ' society ' animal—that was the gist
of the trouble."
" Do you believe though Horace that the suppression of a lion-
hunter does any harm to real ' lions,' I don't see how it can,"
Julius had his say, but Zagreus turned upon the Split-Man at once,
388 APES OF GOD
with an offensive laugh—he had had enough of his Split-Man as
usual, though he would not part with him for worlds.
" Ah, I see : you also Ratner would not have been averse to be
a little hunted! No—you know as well as I, that when you
destroy one snobbery you make room that is all for another.
Besides what better ' snobbery ' exists perhaps you can tell me,
than a passion for those of great intelligence ? What more
natural than to seek their society ? Snob—that is anyway a word
invented by the middle-class yahoodom of Liberal England. It
is a Whig word."
" At least you practise what you preach ! " boldly hissed
Ratner in his face, but Mr. Zagreus did not seem to hear him this
time—to the real Ratner he turned a deaf ear.
A Safety Match dispatched by Margolin, at this moment struck
Lord Osmund.
" Soon there will be a fracas." Horace gazed with approval at
the practical-joker-born. " But you know the advertisement of
Birth that is used as puff-matter, in order to swell this Gossip-lion
so much with gas—referred to in gentle Gossip-mockery as the
' importance of being Finnian Shaw '—on the pattern of being
Ernest ? "
" Of course."
" That it seems is a sham too ! "
" Go on ! " said Arch.
" No. Their grand manner turns out (my informant is a
Debrett-fan) to be a flunkey's, as one might have guessed without
Debrett.—They are not Finnian Shaws at all or Willoughbies."
" Now I think better of them ! " exclaimed Margolin, light-
heartedly aiming a Safety Match at Phoebus.
" Are they bogus, Horace ? " sneered Split-Man at his side.
" Do you mean Finnian Shaw is not their name ? "
" No. Shaw is their name. The first Shaw, or should I say
the last Shaw, was a Dublin-Scot, he was a wealthy chandler.
The Marquis of Balbriggan at that time was penniless. Some
how the Scot got the place and got the name : these are Shavian
descendants—a waxwork, a wax-tallow, dynasty."
" How could that have happened though—you Horace under
stand about such things however." The Split-man would not
let the wax-work out of Debrett past.
" No. I may not have got the facts, in fact I haven't. But
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 389
my friend is emphatic. He has the facts. They are Eighteenth-
Century chandlers—of Lowland stock ! They have nothing to do
with those ancestors about whom they talk and who come into
the big Finnian Shaw puff-ball as feudal ballast, who before being
french-speaking nobles of the Pale, were paladins, in Anjou and
Germany."
" That would certainly account for a great deal, if it were
true," the Split-Man said with reluctant relish, coyly torn
between hatred of Lord Osmund and hated of Horace.
" The story would account for their picturesque snobbishness,
their middle-class snobbishness, if we may have it both ways, and
put them in the category of Leo-hunters."
" I think so. It might."
" Why not ? A family butler, usurping the style and title of
his master, would, in three generations, lead to something like
Osmund ? "
Ratner smiled assent to the proposition of Horace, accepting
the butler, if such Nichtigkeits amused his childish patron (truly
this was the thyroid talking !) He smiled with a sad superiority.
" They have an ancient name, but they have the push of the
new-rich. All the boastfulness of a usurper ! "
With a non-committal smirk of hatred-all-round, the Split-
Man contemptuously allowed these remarks to pass, about new-
rich, and about usurpations.
" The story must be true ! " Horace insisted.
" Well I don't know about that Horace ! " Ratner was very
indulgent, loath to disappoint.
" Oh I believe it must."
" The more I look at them, it is true, the more I feel convic
tion growing Horace ." Julius gave him both their heads,
on a sudden impulse, with malicious unction.
" That is it ! All is not sweet, all is not sound ! "
The Split-Man gave a croak that was a rattling insuck of the
breath.
" Not quite ! " he said.
" Well, that is all right," said Zagreus " as far as it goes.
About this upkeep of Split-Men there cannot be two opinions,
they leave us where we were. It is a rotten stable."
" You seem discouraged Horace," Split-Man, showing him
his coyest half, insinuated.
39° APES OF GOD
" No, no, but I cannot waste time with you sir, you are not
here to make conversation."
" Very well Horace. As you know, I am at your service."
" Masochismus, thy name is Ratner ! "
" Do you think so ? "
" Inoculated grafts prove better than those which spring out
of the stock. But that is nothing to do with tallow-mongers and
intruders."
" You know best."
" Dan."
Mr. Zagreus turned to Daniel Boleyn and as he began to
observe his disciple he fell to laughing, disturbed with a great
seizure of involuntary mirth.
The original erectness in the rough-and-ready postulant had
slackened on all hands, the head had sagged forward, the elbows
swung idly inward upon the ribs, a stoop had crept up the back
and buried each shoulder, two fists foregathered limply upon a
mere lap of dejected thighs, legs had quitted their muscular self-
constriction (muscles gone to roost)—folded together as tame as
two dangling extremities of tackle out-of-commission. Daniel
Boleyn had from head to foot disintegrated, in the stress of
meditation, into a squinting crouch. Having given each other
a disconsolate rendezvous at the projecting nose-tip, his eyes met
gloomily upon a point between two nostrils—resignation had
deposited the hands like unoccupied gloves beneath the navel at
the table-level—such was Dan's ultimate Yoga, his whole gutter
ing appearance providing a commentary not far short of a mock,
directed point-blank at the methods of his master.
" Why what a funny Yogi you look " Zagreus howled almost
to himself in astonishment. " I have never beheld such a droop
ing Yogi as you ! "
Even all Dan's love was not proof against this coarse assault ;
he drew himself up, throwing discipline to the winds, gave a shake
like a person waking from a dream, and said from the bottom of
his heart, with the utmost simplicity,
" I am not a Yogi."
The Split-Man laughed outright, a little painful clap of deri
sion, and Mr. Zagreus ifanything nonplussed looked fairly serious.
" No but you have come to see these tallow-lords at play and
you are under a discipline that has some points of resemblance to
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 391
Raja Yoga you know, come you know that don't play the innocent
—the system in which the insistence is upon the will. Will ! "
Mr. Zagreus licked his lips and rolled his eyes. " That, if I am
not mistaken, is your strong point ! A will of iron Dan I should
say you had got, from all I know of you ! " Mr. Zagreus positively
shouted in challenging fashion at the grinning Julius, " To bring
your will power out to the full has been my object : I have con
stituted myself your temporary Guru or master. No young Yogi
ever got far without a Guru—that I know for a fact—in me
you see your trainer let us leave it at that. You must not say you
are not a Yogi. It's very naughty of you to say you're not a
Yogi ! "
Dan's mouth trembled at ' naughty ' as he stood up to the
reproof, still slightly squinting. Oh why should Horace call him
naughty, when he had never intended to be ! His feet were
extremely painful : but he had a little tin of vaseline in his pocket
and at the first opportunity would introduce it between the toes
that hurt the most.
" The Ape of God is a portion of eternity greater than the eye
of man can measure—you will find in that diapason (the braying
as it were of a mechanical ass, bellowing to its fellow, Phoebus) all
that is necessary to fill that cosmos, brought by your postures
beneath the control of your six-cylinder will. You will be able to
call it up or dismiss it—at will ! You will no longer depend upon
the exterior cosmos in any way whatever—the power to create
and destroy will be -yours."
He gazed at Dan in admiration, in the most flattering manner.
" You are the most silent person I have ever met. That in no
way surprises me ! Did not Bhava when asked to describe the
nature ofGod, observe a profound silence : in the same manner he
met question after question. Silence. That is your answer ! It
is because silence is your answer, Dan, to all our questions—it is
for that reason that I believe so profoundly in your genius, the
quality of your silence allows the highest hopes for your future.
Its brilliance I have never doubted for a moment ! "
Dan blushed, and opened his mouth to speak.
"I " he said.
" Silence ! " commanded Horace : " it is your modesty that
causes you to open your mouth and to say ' I '—that ' I ' spoke
volumes ! "
392 APES OF GOD
The single act of insubordination was now forgotten and
forgiven.
" When Mrs. Bosun, you observed, was picked up beside the
loud-speaker—you heard all that ?—what was it that had
overcome Mrs. Bosun—such was the burning question of the
moment. What deadly sounds had been coming out of the
loud-speaker as Phoebus entered the room ! You heard the
sequel—when at last the laugh came, at the name Robert. Their
friend so-named was broadcasting a poem tonight — had you
studied the B.B.C. programme beforehand, and so been aware
of that fact, you would certainly have foreseen what would have
been supposed to be coming out of the mouth of the loud-speaker,
when Mrs. Bosun was supposed to have been taken ill, and
Phoebus was supposed to have gone in. It is a typical panto
mime. As performed by these strange adult children of anything
from thirty to fifty, you have a fair specimen in this farce called
Bosun. Robert Wright is a well-worn London laughing-stock,
of ten years' standing—before that he was laughed at all through
the world-war, on account of his pronounced gallantry-in-action
and constant attempts upon the laurel of the war-poet, in
competition with Brooke : there was a time when you only had
to say Robert and everyone would hang out a bright smile to
welcome what was to come. So much for the world's fool
Robert—the Public however understand he is a poet—ten
million spell-bound subscribers or some of them listen to the truly
gloomy verses of Robert we will assume. So when at last the
cat was out of the bag as you saw, and the cat turned out to be
Robert, that was an instant success. Mrs. Bosun, joke number
one, had been knocked out by Robert, joke number two. You
must bear in mind that all these persons are permanent school
children, if desire counts for anything, and in consequence all
their jokes smell of bread-and-butter as you would expect, and
you must not be surprised if they are very very simple little
skylarks really and also portentously solemn, conducted with
that particular solemnity only met with in youngsters. But
there is their standing joke too—that illustrates exceedingly
well what I wish to convey, all the more so as it is the joke
of ' the Parent,' the male Parent—that grimly remote author
of their being, as seen in the eyes of a family-group of oh
such mischievous high-spirited gossoons and nestlings. This is
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 393
the Finnian Shaw family-jest called ' Cockeye,' a typical nursery-
persiflage, depending upon the capital illusion of this tribal group
of wistful adults—namely the abnormal perpetuation of their
young-ness, like a new most mysterious patent of Nature's.
That is the nickname given the father—' Cockeye '—the aged
marquis, by these gallopins, such disrespectful little offsprings of
his as they are—Osmund, Phoebus and Harriet—and what these
little rascals will do when ' Cockeye ' goes to a better place it is
difficult to see. Pierpoint is very much to the point upon this
subject (he knows them intimately, they hate him terribly, but
they don't know that I know him—I should not be here if they
did). The Wiltshire story Pierpoint tells is admirable for the
light it throws upon this case, so sociologically curious, of the
Finnian Shaw family, and their kind ofprofessional wistfuljuvenility.
I forget it but here is its gist. It is a tale whose purpose is to
illustrate the longevity of the natives of Wiltshire. Two old
patriarchs of ninety or so are seated dozing upon either side of
the fireplace in their cottage, when a neighbour rushes in and
announces that their son John, who is at that time a mere sixty-
five, has been fatally gored by a dangerous bull, and his body
is being brought back to the village on a hurdle. There is a
long silence in the cottage. But at length the old man exclaims,
in an exultant quaver : " Ah Nellie I always did tell 'ee that
that lad John would be a difficult one to rear ! "—Pierpoint says
that he can see no reason why Lord Osmund at sixty-five should
not still be devising pleasantries at the expense of the hoary
Elder, ' Cockeye,' ever so mischievously—with the wily ' Cockeye,'
with the superior cunning of eld, retorting by cutting down
Osmund's allowance from time to time, and telling the Mar
chioness that ' for the sake of the dear children ' they had better
tie up the entail or take some steps to protect (in the unlikely
event of their own demise) the inexperience or impulsiveness of
these minors ! "
Ratner's face was transformed with a radiant smirk for a
brief moment, grateful to be back in a home-element.
" Later in the evening " Horace told Dan, after a glance at
Ratner, " you will see them all sit round in a great family circle
of militant minors—Lady Harriet Finnian Shaw (whose last book
of verse Willie Service handed you I hope yesterday) will be here
after dinner. Harriet is about forty and very bright in a stately
 394 APES OF GOD
cantankerous fashion—she is the image of Phoebus—she will be
accompanied by the friend with whom she lives, Miss Julia
Dyott, who is about fifty and a perfect kitten—with Eustace,
and perhaps some other cousins, they will all collect, with a
mass of visiting pseudo-child-guests in front of the vast Santa-
Claus Christmas-time grate, and tell each other stories of
' Cockeye.' You must be present—it is field-work of the first
importance—have you your note-book ? Fathers and Sons it is
the great contemporary subject—Pierpoint was the first to point
this out (I should have sent you his treatise). You will see a sort
of film of the communising Nursery—call it ' Revolt of the
Children '—they will not fail in the course of the evening to
laugh at ' Cockeye's ' most extraordinarily amusing habit of
referring to them in conversation with the Marchioness as ' the
children ' : that affords a mental picture of a family-group of
quite small tots, such touches contribute to the idea at which all
strain. Admittedly it is a gloomy business to come to this super-
children's party—I understand your feelings ! I will let you know
when the ' Cockeye ' phase is about to open. But a thing to be
noted : none of these children themselves possess children—a
sterility that has had the effect of preserving intact the all-
important Nursery-situation as you can imagine. They can
never, however long they are spared (and may it be a long
while yet) become Cockeyed themselves in turn—that is unless
a certain New Zealand jewess, Babs Kennson, succeeds in landing
Phoebus, when certainly the youngest of these great subfeminine
tallow lords will be compelled to melt and conjugate, giving a
pretext at least for a brood to the Jewess, who will be given an
inch and will take an ell. The future marquises will then be
considerably less shavian and the more masculine realistic strain
should drive out most of the wax-work nonsense (though I need
not add that Miss Kennson is as scottish as scottish—look out for
a go-ahead mayfairish flaxen but anything-but-braw lassie).
Robinia cannot breed (but pass your eye over Robinia)—if Babs
traps Phoebus with the magic of her Maori money-bags, she has
all the trumps in her neat kosher fist.—Now they are going.
Observe, Dan, this pompous departure. Never omit to pay
especial attention to the breaks—when a society breaks up—for
that matter either for the shortest time or for good and all it is
all one—that is the moment for the restless analyst.—Lord
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 395
Osmund will pass us. He is somewhat annoyed at the matches
of Margolin, he has a feeble appreciation of fun when in the
form of matchsticks or otherwise it is directed against his own
person. I think you can see that. Here he comes—I believe it
is his intention to speak to me—yes it is.—Good Evening Lord
Osmund ! Yes I have my troupe as you see—we each have our
troupe Lord Osmund !—We shall do our best, I am sure, to
entertain the company.—What ? Those three conspirators—yes
I noticed them certainly. Gould I hear ? Well my ears are
not of the best as you know, but I heard what they said quite
distinctly. Their speech ? About that there was no question
at all : I am sorry to say I noticed that they were speaking to
each other in hisperic latin. What ? In hisperic ladn I am
afraid. It is a lingua franca of the lowest type of conspiratorial
scholar.—Yes, it seemed to me rather underhand—yes, very
difficult. The Allus prosator was written in hisperic, you may
not have heard of it, it is worth knowing from some points of
view—it gives you immunity from any death except death on the
pillow. That is important. Don't want death on the pillow ?
No. I don't blame you. You'd rather have violence! Well
that's a matter of taste Lord Osmund—yet violence is nice in its
way ! Many people have regarded death on the pillow as a
privilege—though there are always people to be found who
plump for stoning or lynching. Live dangerously—of course, that
is my motto too.—What is that ? Never, as far as I know.—
Pillow-death is not romantic but it is comfortable—no I'm all for
it, for the absent-minded and weak-sighted.—Death by suffoca
tion.—What were those wild men saying Lord Osmund ?
Nothing in particular—they said you were—but I really could
not undertake to repeat what three such ruffians said, they were
three objectionable cads and what they said is neither here nor
there. They were outside the pale !—Their private thoughts.—
Yes. They appeared to be engaged in the doubtful pastime of
exchanging their private thoughts, from what I could gather.—
I should ! In a public gathering it is a breach of all privacy.—
No next year.—Very well. We will follow as soon as we have
finished our coffee. The coffee. Yes.—Peters ? I shall re
member. A rivederla !—Niente niente !—What a monumental
posterior—look how it rolls him, the great double-barrelled
contraption for sitting that he has plastered on to him—heaven
396 APES OF GOD
help him—what a sweep of sit-down to pop into Restoration
shorts !—Death on the pillow—he'll never escape far from those
two great swollen segments of pillow-for-day-use (not for the
head but the tail)—there he will die, even if shot he will fall
back on his downy bottom-bolsters—he couldn't fall forward.
But what aids to gravitation !—what an unfair pull that must
give a body !—No—what do you say about it ! There goes his
clown at his heels. Come here Karaite—lie down, good dog ! What
a slumberous broadside of a quarter-male—what a tallow-laden
gelding goes there, by Pierpoint ! "
At the door, the last to leave as he had been first to enter,
Knut turned back with dismal bellow, eyeing the refectory-scene
he was leaving behind him, with the litter of fifty covers :
" MUSE, CHANGEONS DE STYLE, ET QUITTONS LA
SATIRE !
C'EST UN MECHANT METIER QUE CELUI DE
MEDIRE !
A L'AUTEUR QUI L'EMBRASSE IL EST TOUJOURS
FATAL—
LE MAL QU'ON DIT D AUTRUI NE PRODUIT QUE
DU MAL ! "
A burst of hollow clapping came from Mr. Zagreus and the
Finn bowed in acknowledgment, removing his green bonnet.
" Lying is a ' mechant metier ' ! " Mr. Zagreus exclaimed,
" and to be a ' mauvaise langue ' may have bad results on
occasion—but rather tell that to your patron, you peculiar
parrot ! "
" I will so ! " And so is it !

//. THE PLAYERS SOLUS.

" Does Pierpoint see them now ? " asked Julius, muffling his
rough utterance to smuggle ' Pierpoint ' out innocently, as if the
' Pierpoint ' had never been inside at all but was an external
transaction of the lips.
" Pierpoint ! " Discreet as had been the ' Pierpoint ' it had
provoked a flushed and religious response.
" Does he see them ? " Julius clipped with his upper-lip the
small cup held in his corked black hand, drew up a hot dram of
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 397
coffee into his throat, once or twice, with a poised eye of hawk
like abstraction, a pause between each dose of his black gargle.
" No not now " said Horace, watching Ratner's face to see if
any more ' Pierpoints ' were in the wings.
" Did he know them well ? "
" They were great friends, for a long time. Pierpoint rather
likes Phoebus."
" I should imagine he would."
" Would you ? Only yesterday Pierpoint told me Phoebus
was not so bad—he had the makings of a disciple, he said. He
said that was somebody else's remark."
" I thought they were friends."
" Yes they used to be."
" Did Pierpoint want Phoebus to be his disciple ? "
" Pierpoint ! What a singular idea ! No, he meant for
me.
" Oh for you Horace ! " Julius croaked sweetly at the modest
' me ' of Horace the Humble.
" Yes. He said Phoebus, till his dying day ."
" Phoebus till his dying day ! I like that expression Horace "
Archie Margolin obstructed the discussion, with violent
patronage, " I like that. Till his dying day. The day for dying,
same as day for drying, Horace—clothes on the line. His dying
day !"
" Didn't you know it ? " asked Horace delighted. " Didn't
you know it ? "
" I have heard it," Arch said, aiming a match at Peters, who
grinned broadly as he fled with a spank of black swallow-tails, in
the wind of his exit.
" What did Pierpoint say ? " asked Julius.
" He thinks Phoebus is a nice girl."
" Till his dying day ! " Arch choked, excited with mischief.
" Till his dying day, that's it. In perpetuity a pleasant-spoken
young lady."
" What has become of Willie Service ? " Julius asked, it was
plain, to be censorious.
" He's in the kitchen," Zagreus said.
" Oh."
" And why not ? He is now abusing us like pickpockets in
broad Hoxton, he is winning the confidence of the Finnian Shaw
398 APESOFGOD
chef. He is a smart boy in white stove-pipe head-gear. In that
way he hopes to collect some Finnian Shaw gossip."
" I think I'll go to the kitchen " said Margolin rising, and he left.
" That's done it " said Julius.
" What do you mean Julius ? "
" That young man seems very restless. I wonder why he has
gone to the kitchen ? "
" Who knows ? "
The eyes in the sunburn-powdered face of Horace, who had
laid aside his mask, spoke volumes of approval as he watched the
dark dancing figure of Arch disappear.
" I think " said he, with a look that was an afterthought at
Dan, " that Margolin has more than a streak " he lowered his voice
" of genius."
The Split-Man croaked deeply and drearily.
" How -lovely for you Horace has he ! "
" I know genius means nothing to you ! I see through you."
" Do you Horace ! "
" I've got your X-ray-cabinet—don't think you're opaque."
" Have you Horace ! " The sceptic gazed at him stolidly.
Opaque !—Ratner squatted impassible, a dense screen to his dis
gusted consciousness of opacity, called up by this use of the word.
(The impenetrable deposits of yellow suet that no tennis would
dispel did not seem present at all to the guileless mind of this
florid foe.)
" Absolutely—I have your thumb marks ! "
" Have you Horace ! "
Ratner thudded with his throat-cords, a rusty G-string
gamma-music. He shot a look at Dan but it was impossible to
gather whether he was attending or not.
" There must have been a time Horace " he said " when
Willie Service even showed signs of genius ! "
" What ? "
" Did Willie Service Horace never look as though he might
turn out to be a great genius ? "
"Willie Service?"
" Yes Willie Service. I seem to remember you called me
sceptic ."
Horace had been bewildered for this was too subtle—the
cunning collocation of Service, a name for a super, and of that
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 399
quality, " genius," which played such an outstanding part in his
life. But bronzed albino in full warpaint that he was, he was as
impassible as his split sparring-partner, as he sat erect, a haggard
kitcat to the knees—most like a Choktaw chief who chatted of
buffaloes with a feathered chum. But in quick pity he laughed
at the split-creature to whom genius was a closed book.
" Service would laugh if he could hear you ask that ! "
laughed Horace.
" Would he ! " Ratner with withering croak riposted. "Now!"
" Service is a detective ! "
" You didn't tell me Horace Service was a detective." Julius
was coyly reproachful with Horace, in tfite-a-t€te now that Arch
had gone, for Dan did not count.
" Oh yes. Listen Julius to the strange life-story of Service."
" He has scarcely begun his life yet."
" He h young ! " agreed Horace with a bustle of alacrity but
an eye touched with pathos, the difficulty of associating no-genius
with youth causing him a passing sensation of impotence. " But
he is a disciple of Edgar Wallace."
" Of Edgar Wallace. Not of yours Horace."
" That—never ! He is totally wrapt up in the criminal-world
as it exists in the brain of Edgar Wallace."
" That is disappointing. I have seen the point of Service ! "
" He believes I am a lag as he calls the receiver of stolen
goods. Dan he regards, he once told me that, as my homosexual
decoy, whatever he may mean by that, I don't understand. He is
persuaded on the other hand that you, Julius, are one of the Big
Five of Scotland Yard ! "
Ratner rattled away in his throat to be disarming, and he
examined Horace blackly out of the black segment of his painted
face, the eyehole of the non-existent moiety.
" Oh is that his Complex ; he sounds rather like you, Horace."
" Me, Julius ! "
" When you were young. You must have looked at things
like that a little."
" You mean my jokes, you angry devil.—Always angry ! "
"Angry!"
" Always really—angry ! ' '
" I didn't mean anything Horace."
" A public clown."
 4oo APES OF GOD
" No—really Horace ! "
" It was my jokes you meant ! "
" Is Service, as you describe ? "
" No Service is full—but full of Edgar Wallace ! It is fantastic
—he lives in a world of crime."
" Don't you envy him—it must be nice to be so excited
about."
" Never bored."
" I know, I wish I were."
" Those of us who are not tecs in Willie's eyes are criminals—
picklock or anti-picklock—nothing that is not rat or anti-rat."
" What are we ? "
" We, Ratner ? "
" Are we rat or anti-rat ? "
" I am anti-rat. You of course are rat—with such a
name !"
" I know. I guessed as much—Ratner—of course.—In Edgar
Wallace there is no criminal who is not also a detective."
" I know, and vice versa—that's poor Willie's picture of
things too—he is completely mad, Ratner, don't you think ! "
" I must say he sounds."
" All through reading Dime Novels."
" I don't understand that craze."
" Edgar Wallace ! "
" I know ! "
" Pierpoint." Zagreus uttered the name-of-names and
stopped, expectant.
" Oh yes Horace, let's hear what Pierpoint ! " There was a
convulsive croak. " I expect he has a lot to say—I can imagine
what Pierpoint thinks."
" Shall I tell you ? "
" Yes Horace, I should like to hear what Pierpoint thinks
Horace."
" You would like to hear what Pierpoint thinks, you sewer-
rat."
" House-rat ! " coyly.
"No. Cloaca."
"Very well. Goon."
Ratner obliged—he effected the equivalent of a temporary
withdrawal beneath the basements, beneath everything else, in
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 4o1
pitch-black drains, underneath the horatian city. After the
snub, he composed himself to listen-in to the big-wigs booming
up above. He would submit to the broadcast of the absent Pier-
point (whose microphone-personality, in the mouth of Horace,
offended him if anything more than the hated flesh and blood).
It was settled—he would answer when spoken to.
The argument opened along, to Julius, familiar lines. Even
the voice of Horace took on the tone of the distant speaker.
" The Detective Story and the Dime Novel are the same
thing—both are children's reading am I right ? "
These Am-I-rights !—So the broadcast began—Ratner dutifully
muttering his response de profundis.
" I suppose so."
" Ten years ago and beyond during the Great Massacre, Mr.
Phillips Oppenheim was the favourite reading of all Cabinet
Ministers and all great magnates, all bishops and Captains of
Industry. The War-makers read Oppenheim—the young men
fought the Boche."
At " young men " the voice of Horace grew unctuous.
" There is a similarity in those occupations," said Ratner.
" I confess that had escaped me until now."
" Outside those circles (this would include subordinates—
employees, congregations and the great average of the electorate
—the time-honoured patrons of the Dime Novelist) Oppenheim
was not read. Only by politicians, bishops, generals and stock
brokers among outstanding people, of so-called education."
" I suppose you mean the high-brows didn't read Wallace then."
" No I said Oppenheim—Wallace is his successor. Yes, no
one who was intelligent, or, more important, had pretentions to be
that, was an Oppenheim-reader. That has altered. What yester
day was a sign of stupidity, is today a sign of intelligence."
" There are always fashions."
" Yes. The fashions of an epoch reveal its popular tendencies.
The Wallace-fashion is symptomatic of high-brow capitulation, in
face of universal pressure."
" But as a compensation surely Horace the Paris high-brows
are sufficiently cockahoop."
" In relation to the world-scene that must be looked upon as
nothing but an entlastungsoffensive."
" And our solitary high-brow pur-sang Lewis ? "
4o2 APES OF GOD
" His are teiloperationen."
" What is that jargon Horace ! "
" The war-jargon of german peace-politics.—At this moment
every high-brow is a Wallace-fan."
" Yes I know, Horace."
" Wallace is for modern London what the Arabian Nights
were for arab civilisation—to account for their habits the high
brows claim. Or, they say, ' a vice '."
" He is a vice I think."
" Picking your pocket a man might exclaim if you detected
him, This is my weakness /—then shoot you and remark, A still
worse one of mine ! "
" Yes I see that Horace."
" Thanks to Western training-for-war, the anglo-saxon infant-
mind has always resembled the inside of a criminal mad-house.
It has been full of drugged potions, sawed-off shot-guns, arsenic,
hairbreadth escapes, blackmail, armed warders, King's Mes
sengers, pirates and crooks. What was the schoolboy mind has
now become that of the anglo-saxon adult. The post-war anglo-
saxon adult has become a boy with a tin pistol. To that the Great
War—the ' Great Adventure '—has brought him."
" He always was. You said so yourself."
" No, he tried to grow-up out of the criminal reformatory—he
called it ' outgrowing.' He had aspirations away from murder,
arson, public massacre, theft and blackmail. As a boy his elders
fed him upon them : as a man he did attempt to escape. But
the War was every anglo-saxon schoolboy's dream-come-true."
" But the cabinet-ministers, the generals -."
" Those pre-eminent in the profession of Arms, of Politics, of
Finance, are of course committed to murder, robbery, blackmail,
physical and non-physical lawlessness. Life is their bustling melo
drama : Oppenheim or Wallace holds up the mirror to their will-
to-power in all its cheapness—that is understood. Pre-war anglo-
saxondom was deeply vulgarized, but a certain fraction stood in
opposition."
" It is that that has gone, is it."
" There is no opposition. The discipline is perfect—there is
only ' party ' and ' non-party.' Professedly ' non-party ' men
are as zealous as those of the party.—But first there was the
cinema. Begin with that."
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 4o3
" Don't you like the cinema ? "
" That is not what I said. For a decade everyone has grown
accustomed to watching animated photographs of plays written
for children, or for the least bright Nippy or domestic drudge. He
could not help himself ; if he went into any Cinema Theatre he
was compelled to swallow a mass ofthe bad with a fraction ofgood."
" Not necessarily, he could enquire at what hour was the film
he wanted to see."
" The War was a leveller."
" I have heard that before. I am afraid it was Horace."
" You are afraid it was Horace."
" Yes I think so."
" It must have made the fortune of the manufacturers of
' gaspers'."
" Are Gold Flakes levellers Horace ? I smoke them."
" All men below staff—or cabinet—rank were compelled to
smoke, eat, read and the rest, worse—for all men the standard fell
—except perhaps for convicts."
" Do you object to that very much ? "
" I object to nothing. I state."
"I "see."
" The film-play of Post-war is the homologue, upon the mental
plane, of the War ' gasper,' from the standpoint of palate. And
the thrillers of Edgar Wallace also are a sort of gaspers '. Mental
* gaspers '. "
" It is not as thrillers people consider them."
" They are the ' Gaspers ' of this Peace—of this unhappy
Truce. But if the average high-brow had not been broken in by
the Film to unrelieved stupidity, then he could never have
swallowed Wallace."
" I daresay."
" If you will allow an illustration from luxury—Restaurants,
except those priced for the magnate-client, have settled steadily
down to Lyons level."
" I like Lyons."
" The collapse of the cuisine in France, where the average
meal is now worse than London, is the triumph of the standards
of the poverty-line. But name anything where taste is at stake—
it will provide an example of the systematic forcing down of
civilized standards."
4o4 APES OF GOD
" Where does this lead—the suspense is beginning to tell on
me Horace."
" To the standards of the misery-spot—after an orgy of cheap
ice-cream, which may last a hundred years."
" Aren't you glad you won't be here Horace ? "
" I am here.—Back to The Squeaker ! Edgar Wallace is what the
government gives you to read. It amounts to that."
" Has Edgar Wallace a government contract ? "
" It amounts to that. From station-stall to smart hotel it is
he that is purveyed, in uniform editions, is it not ? It is your
bully-beef, your tasteless ration. Turn up your nose at that and
you are a marked man."
" How sinister you are Horace ! "
" A dangerous, an aristocratic taste is betrayed, if you turn
away with a yawn from The Squeaker"
" You would make a good advocate."
" A devil's advocate you think. That depends upon the god."
" I did not say that."
" The official stamp as well is upon Jazz—the approved mass-
article. Jazz is the folk-music of the metropolitan mass—slum-
peasant, machine-minder—the heart-cry of the city-serf. His
masters sing his songs—they even write them for him ! "
" That's above my head."
" Edgar Wallace is what the machine-hind is supposed to read."
" Machine-hind ? "
" The little oiler feeder and keeper of the machines of the
Mechanical Age."
" There are alternatives to Edgar Wallace, Horace."
" Not many really, and what's good enough for a Secretary of
State (what they now call ' Puppet-politicians ' for fun) is good
enough for a machine-minder anyway."
" Their tastes are much the same—since both are puppets that
is not surprising."
" The same laws, such as the amcrican Dry-laws, which make
every citizen into a potential criminal, watched by an armed
federal agent, provide Everyman with his Dime Novel up-to-
date."
" True Horace."
" Shades of the prison-house begin to close about every
formerly law-observing polite person, for if he does not go to jail
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 4o5
for a bank-robbery he may go there for an unpaid fraction of a
blood-tax or a reel of cotton sold out of business hours. The
criminal mentality is forced upon him — the furtive tricks of the
underdog and underworld taught him, through unnatural laws.
Almost some criminal ruler might have wished for company !—it
is the sensation that these laws suggest. All the average, useful
and honest, persons are brutally empressed—they are mocked for
their ignorance ofprisons—for their respectability and the possession
of the bourgeois-mind, as civilians were mocked for their ignorance
of murder at the outset of the War, by shrieking women—it is a
newly-branded handcuffed world ! "
" Crime is de rigueur ! "
" In this connection ! It is dangerous not to be some sort of
criminal, or outlaw, or out-caste, so that you come beneath the
protection of those penal principles involved in the motto, Honour
among thieves."
" That does not sound to me over-safe however."
" Only more safe.—So this tax-crushed post-war puppet of the
megalopolis has the energy demanded—no more—to a nicety, to
tickle his pale fancy with a blood-and-thunder article ofthe writer's
art—did he display more it would be taxed, it would be taxed ! "
" Ah well Horace ! "
" Willie Service is that small average high-brow automaton
—he is hallucinated. He absorbs the matter provided in the
books, he gets drunk upon the film-pictures. Now he is stunted,
with the mind of a daring gutter-product of ten-summers.—What
is the issue ? Pierpoint is convinced there is no issue ! We are all
rats caught in a colossal mechanical trap."
" Ah " exclaimed Ratner, in full panoply of resurrected rat-
hood issuing out of his cloaca with a hoarse squeak.
" Ah." Mr. Zagreus gazed at him, in a questioning manner,
as if at a gigantic rat-coated interloper.
" If we are all rats ! "
" That makes you less of a one ! " Horace lightly called out
and with the manner of a Merry Monarch he struck Julius grace
fully upon the shoulder. " Do not crow over us all the same, you
old bottom-dog popped up from your gallows-pit."
" So that is what you think of Service."
" He has been quite swept off his feet. He lives for crime.
He lives for crime."
406 APES OF GOD
" Is that his only interest ? "
" He has no other," said Horace simply and he relapsed into
silence.
The staff had left the barn, after having removed upon sub
stantial trays most of the cheap china and plate. At the moment
no servants were there at all, it was occupied only by the belated
performers, less Margolin who remained absent.
Zagreus was reposing now for a moment after his performance,
Ratner was sulky and no sign of life came from Dan, when the
door opened and a pair offurtive persons, one evidently a woman,
entered. The first was dressed as a cowboygirl, the womanly one
was in a costume suggesting a rather shy but wealthy edwardian
child of about six, in knockabout print-frock for nursery-wear.
She and her big brother (or a sister immodestly disguised as a
he-man) had the air of being upon an expedition of a predatory
nature. They might be actuated by a desire to introduce a finger
into a pot of strawberry jam kept in the cupboard, or even to
subtilize a small fragment of a piece of delicious marzipan.
As mischievous a pair of lovable little genial bodies as ever
played truant, the moist-eyed paragraphist of Punch of the time
would exclaim—catching sight of them in the distance over the
top of his spectacles, allowing a lucrative tear to gush underneath
at the thought of all the thousands of sweet little nestlings he'd
never had—some throbbing Thackeray.
The cowboygirl was jowled, rough-browed, and dark. These
two suspiciously-reserved intruders whispered for a moment.
The fantastic form of Mr. Zagreus, beside the guttering candles
upon the side table, resembling nothing earthly, and the bisected
figure, half of shadow, like a satellite reflecting sun upon the
side offered to Zagreus, were not remarked. Dan was concealed
by a pillar of wood.
The cowboygirl went towards a dresser, upon which some
silver lay. There were a few nickel spoons and a nutcracker.
She swept them up, an eye upon the farther door, and thrust
them into the pouch of her belted girdle, sagging with the weight
of an outsize automatic.
Her companion had noticed a movement from the direction
of the performers. Zagreus had lifted his head in fact rather
sharply. She uttered a warning pssst ! The cowboygirl strolled
back. They exchanged a few further whispers, eyeing the
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 4o7
fantastic statues set against the wall, lighted by the guttering
candles. Then in best film-manner they withdrew as they had
come with a deliciously guilty jerk.
Zagreus turned to Ratner with a small ornamental laugh, the
mild tinkling of a musical-box.
" Do you know her ? "
" No."
" Ah ha ! "
Zagreus lighted a russian cigarette.
" Did you see what she did ! "
" I saw." Ratner nodded.
" The cowboy was Molly Seymour-Lambton."
" Oh, Molly Seymour-Lambton ! "
" The one that went off with the nickel salt-spoons. I knew
what she was after ! "
" Crime, Horace, crime—we are in the thick of it ! I said you
were like Service ! "
" In the thick of it Julius. I wish Willie had been there. He
would have enjoyed it."
" They may be friends."
" I don't think so. It was Molly Seymour-Lambton who was
arrested in Rapallo last year for a church-robbery."
" Oh yes.—Is that it ! "
" Indeed that is it. You recollect it ? She attempted to make
a get-away with an offertory-box, she had her car waiting outside
the church—Molly has been on the dirt-track she is a great
motorist too.—She punched a priest in the eye."
" I'm glad she didn't catch sight of us. She had a gun ! "
Mr. Zagreus shook his head.
" She wouldn't use it."
" Does she stick at that ? "
" She wouldn't use that ! "
" Did she get off? "
" In Rapallo ? A passing black-shirt captured her—she
slapped his face for being fresh and kicked his bottom."
" Stout fellow—I don't blame her !—I suppose they let her
off? "
" No—light-fingered Anglo-saxons of possessing-class-status
are anathema to Mussolini, as you know. Molly had to go to
jail."
4o8 APES OF GOD
" I remember the case. Wasn't there a woman with her ? "
" That was the girl you saw."
"Just now?"
" I think so."
" Who is she ? "
" I forget her name. She is a niece of the Duke of Strathorr."
" Is it Hermione Gordon—I once met her at a party."
" Hermione Gordon, yes."
" Have you known—what is her name—long Horace ? "
" I first met Molly thirty years ago when she was a debutante,
she still lives in the family-mansion, it is in Petley Street, Park
Lane—it's a big house."
" She is well off."
" Extremely well off—why she's an old heiress and has married
herself, as it were—she's a bachelor-bride. From birtlvshe has
been lesbian. But the first time I heard of her stealing was in
1919, when she got off with a caution for stealing a priest's bicycle
in North Kensington."
" It sounds as though your friend had a down on the clergy."
" I think that was a coincidence—but they say she has effected
many daring daylight robberies in a small way. But Lesbos came
first, and Devil's Island last—she still is first and foremost a
sapphist and her defiance of the eighth commandment is a side-
issue. She is said to have a museum of plate and other stolen
articles, which her secretary and butler take the greatest care of.
They are hauls from restaurants, churches, hotels and a few
museums, all over Europe—she has the names written upon
tickets. A sixpenny mousetrap is one of her exhibits."
" How well informed you are Horace ! "
" That is true. I have been at great pains to do field-work
for Pierpoint and wherever I went to get that material that he
requires."
" Well, Miss Seymour-Lambton is in the same line as Service."
" Only Service does not run with the hare so much as hunt
with the hounds. She would look down on Service as a cop."
" Do you think she would ? "
" I'm positive she would."
" Extraordinary people, aren't they Horace ? "
" It's in the air ! "
" I suppose it must be, as you say ! "
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 4o9
" Jacques Coq d'Or the Paris critic is now officially enrolled as
a thief—he belongs to that new exclusive club of french men-of-
letters, for which no one is eligible who has not his thumbprints
at the Surete Generale."
" I think it's in the air ! "
" It must be. Pierpoint is always right. There are the Faux-
Monnaycurs."
" There are certainly the Faux-Monnayeurs."
" And the Grain Qui Meurt leads to the Faux-Monnayeurs. An
outcast-status leads to a brotherhood—reaching from the gallows
to the rubber-shop. Laws against sex-perversions like dry-laws
make criminals of harmless sex-oddities. But everybody is driven
into the league against Law."
" That is true Horace."
"Jacques Coq d'Or."
" What a name."
" For years with him it was common-or-garden homosexuality,
not very exciting (we had our poor old Oscar under Victoria) but
new in France and very exclusive. The french are stubborn
whoremasters—they are I believe, what do you think, far more
masculine than the Anglo-saxons. It afforded Jacques the neces
sary advertisement for a rising critic for many years. Now times
are different. Homosexuals are as common as dirt."
" It is now the non-homosexual who is abnormal."
" That is so. But Jacques Coq d'Or was not the man to stick
at anything and something had to be done and that quickly, so
he pocketed a pourboire put down for a Bock Blonde that had
been left upon a cafe table by a departing customer. After that
he made a habit of it. He would watch for the departure of a
likely British visitor, then he would sweep up the tip in great
style when the gar^on de cafe wasn't looking. He has boasted
that ' his pourboires ' as he calls them run into four figures.
Annually."
" That should be easy in francs. Does he never get
caught ? "
" Never—involuntarily. Once he was, but that was on pur
pose. No one believed in his capacity or they pretended not to—
they thought he made money by writing reviews or something
stupid of that sort. This was too much for him.—But a month in
the Sante was essential in any case."
4io APES OF GOD
" How old is Jacques Coq d'Or ? "
" Well en pidiraste he says it's thirty-nine. But I daresay it's
not more than fifty. He's just been shut up."
" The Sant<< ? "
" No in an asylum. He was extremely angry afterwards and
made a great fuss when he got out, because he had counted on it's
being a criminal asylum, and it was not."
Ratner gave his laughter free play for a moment upon the
barren bed of his gullet, it dragged itself back and forth.
" I should have thought that was too risky " he said after that.
" They might have kept him."
" Oh no. He is a very eminent critic—they couldn't lock him
up for good. Besides, he isn't mad."
" I should think he might get caught. The pitcher that goes
often to the well."
" No, they're too stupid."
" I suppose so."
" He has many rivals, of course—that is the only quarter—
several of the best-known ' younger ' french novelists have spent
their villigiature in jail lately. Dozens of Americans do time as a
matter of course now—they won't let them into America when
they want to go back if they haven't—I mean won't let them into
the best literocriminal New York circles. The ticket-of-leave is
as important as the passport."
Ratner croaked again and Dan started at its nearness. He
was very nervous.
" Francois Villons, without the poetry." said Horace. " These
gaol-birds who have never sung ! They are as common as dirt."
" Is that so ? "
" As common as dirt."
The door opened softly, both noticed it at once. A rice-
powdered face out of a victorian harlequinade came into the
room by itself, disembodied, a long chicken-neck cut offby the door.
Convulsively it shot to left and right, it peered up and down. A
spontaneous outburst of laughter broke from Zagreus and Ratner.
" Not another ! " Julius grated, incredulous.
" Come in ! Never look back ! " called Zagreus.
The head as if shot darted back, and the door shut with a
smart jerk. While it had been ajar they could hear the sound of
the constant arrival of motor-cars in the court outside.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 411
" Willie should certainly be here ! I wonder where Margolin
is ? " Zagreus gave a delicate yawn, cat-like and dumb.
" Would he have arrested them ? "
" The women ? "
" Yes."
" No. He never arrests."
" Never ? "
" No never.—I have known him to blackmail."
" Ah.—I thought there must be something more."
" Oh yes. He blackmails, but that is merely graft and
thoroughly policemarusque as he calls it."
" Folicemanesque ! "
" That's what he calls it."
" So he blackmails ! "
" He is very apt to.—I daresay he will blackmail Osmund if
he gets a chance."
" He is a dangerous young man ! I thought he was."
" Oh you can call his bluff—he's not very serious."
" Can you ? "
" Easily."
" Perhaps there are ways of blackmailing Aim, too ! "
" Now Julius ! " Zagreus stretched, striking Dan lightly with
his hand. " I am sorry Dan !—Well there it is—ifwithin a decade
and a half you massacre ten million people in war and another
ten million in civil war, it is not easy after that to return to a
morality that regards it as wrong to pocket a salt-spoon."
" I suppose not."
" Life is more important than a spoon."
" I suppose so."
" The universal return to the mentality of childhood and. of
savagery—Nursery after Army, and dugout-canoe after dugouts
in trenches—that seems to ensue."
" So it has been said. I have read that somewhere."
" And there will be more upheavals."
" It is difficult to sec how that can be avoided."
" People had better keep their hands in, with a little pilfering
—' scrounging ' is the word they have for it in the war-books."
" Have any of the new french school of literary-pickpockets
yet dabbled in homicide ? Are you informed about that ? "
" Ah there is the difficulty ! " Mr. Zagreus passed his finger
412 APES OF GOD
lightly across his neck, where the chicken got the chopper.
" There was Loeb and Leopold in Chicago. But you have to be
under age, rich, and one thing and another, else you swing, that
is the difficulty. Besides ten years is no joke ! "
"No."
" But it is actually no difficulty " Horace smiled steadily and
lazily at Ratner.
" How is that Horace ? " Ratner looked suspiciously into the
distance, with indifference.
" Why simply this. We have the immense background of War
and of Revolution. That is enough—the blood is gratis ! Both
the soldier and the communist enrol themselves to murder—one
under militarist rules, the other under marxist disciplines. But
both are homicide-clubs, you call your victim ' Hun,' you call him
' Bourgeois,' it is all one—no, wars and communes have cheapened
murder."
" That is the solution ! "
" Both sides wish us criminal—both invite us to a carnival of
bloodshed accompanied by universal loot. There is no side, there
is no Church, that repudiates the weapons of Terror and of Force.
We are between the Imperial Devil and the deep Red Sea—that
other crimson sea ! "
" Perhaps God will cause the waves to part ! "
" For some, no doubt.—No, homicide is in the air. No one
would get anything out of homicide, unless he first proved that
in minor ways he was a hardened criminal. He might after all
just be a regimental sergeant-major out of a job or a dull marxist-
doctrinaire, might he not, a theorist of 'catastrophe' !—That
would prove nothing."
" I suppose not."
Zagreus stood up.
" I think I will go to the kitchen ! "
All was preparation and bustle in a moment in the Split-camp
—as Horace with his svelt pedigree back, made for the Stulz
swallow-tail, left the table. The entire Split-person, with a
wolfish rush, came together, the dead half and the quick—it
shook itself, it burst into action. The repressed instinct to strike,
in the snake-like suspense of the faculties, in the rattish winter
of his discontent beneath the horatian city, armed Ratner's
tongue.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 413
Scoffing with passionate eye-glitter he watched—after the
manner of a witch's needles he plunged glance after glance into
the back of the dummy—the human body was a dummy, at that
distance it lost importance. (But a feeble toy walked off nothing
more, out of which had evaporated Horace the Talker.) Then
with a ponderous swing (owing to the weight of the attraction of
the retreating dummy) he dragged his yellow face off its moving
target. With a well-let-that-go look, with lips curled in contempt,
with the relish of hatred, the face swung round on to Dan. In
caressing croak, the softest available, he expressed himself.
" Horace is really mad I believe tonight ! " he immediately
suggested to Dan, whom he attempted to mesmerize with the
battery of his eye-in-profile, with which he watched him to see
the effect of the suggestion.
But Dan sat motionless, he was not disposed to be talked to or
mesmerized any more for the moment, all was at sixes and sevens
in his head as he thought of the kitchen. Horace had gone to the
kitchen, Horace had gone to the kitchen ! for Dan nothing else
existed except kitchen and Horace—he might have to sit on
where he was, beside this wearisome stranger, all night—no word
had been dropped by Horace when with cruel suddenness he
disappeared, going to the kitchen, to say whether he would come
back or when, or what was at present afoot, if anything. When
had they to get up on the stage ? He dreaded the publicity, with
the pink puffing on his legs and all, but that he would face—
almost any exposure. It had not seemed Horace had noticed
how he was left rapt there upon the bench—no word to say
Come too to Dan—no Come to the Kitchen ! How he longed that he
might be asked, for the simple request of the words Come with me
Dan to the kitchen. Willie had been there with the chef why not
he ! it was most cruel and unkind, he could have just said Come
when he went there too, if he must go he could have said that !
No. This sudden going away, there was nothing said, but—/ am
going. Margolin had gone to the kitchen and now Horace had
gone to the kitchen. Had he dared he would follow, he would
have gone and simply turned up in the basement, walking in
with an I've come to the kitchen too nothing more, sitting down
without looking. But they were all there and he was not intended !
He was shut out—why could he alone not ! The kitchen of all
places in the house—never could he have believed it possible if
 4H APES OF GOD
you had told him last week ! Oh why did Horace hate him so
much—was life really worth while !
" I really think it's the beginning of the end " the impossible
person hissed in his eardrum and he smelt his breath, bitter with
the coffee.
" The end ! " starting violently Dan echoed it, in fervent
despair. The end—this was the most startling man !
" Yes " said the Split-man, encouraged and with a glow of
decision, " he may even have to be restrained." This was the
most startling of men—to be left with too without so much as a
word.
" Next to nothing " he said, though what he meant Dan did
not know but he felt funny. " Pierpoint's teaching " Split-man
was saying talking forty-nine to the dozen—and it was that it
seemed had done it. Pierpoint had altered Horace, all Horaee
had been changed inside-out. It was a pity ! And it was Pier-
point !
" Was he not always ! " disclosing his secret heart whis
pered Daniel greatly daring to his Split colleague. His own voiee
was frightening, as it came into these guilty exchanges, to discuss
Horace. But he did dearly desire to hear of some alteration.
Why ? Because he supposed it might be an excuse—an " altera
tion "—he hoped there had been an alteration !
" Like this ? " The voice breaking out at his ear was loud
and angry with the question, though heaven was witness he had
not meant it, to offend the man by asking, or to offend in any
thing—except that he was betraying Horace. Terrified, to put
it plainly he was of this cross person he must talk to, and had
never expected him to come jumping down his throat in that
fashion—all he had said was Was he not always and what harm
was there in that ?
" Like this—not at all—as he is at present. Horace has
changed completely. You would not know him ! Not the same
man. He used to be. Not himself."
Horace had changed !—the man had spoken the truth ! So
Dan listened again, and he heard the man say, always with grins
of apology, or of superiority.
" Poor Horace ! " he said " I've never seen him like this ! "
an impressive mutter. " He has been an actor at one time.
(Horace an actor !) He remembers as you've noticed all the
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 415
words he gets by heart—he repeats as if Pierpoint were Holy
Writ. I'm sick of hearing ! "
Dan heard him say " religious mania " with a grin, but he
was asking himself—Poor Horace? What was that—pitying
Horace ? Never mind for nothing mattered.
Dan's head ached and was somewhat worse—was the party
over ? It might be—the play had fallen through. He felt quite
tired and done up and glad if the truth must be known to be
sitting. The man with the rat's name went on as before : he
stopped listening. Dan doubted if he could stand—questioned if
it was possible to listen, his head hurt, mostly at the back but
there were shoots up beside the eyeballs.
That " broadcast " was the last straw ! Oh Horace, why must
you broadcast ? Since they had been together no evening had passed
but they had it, and sometimes at lunch or tea—twice Horace had
" broadcast " by telephone. Certainly there were voices and
voices : but the accents of Pierpoint—well it passed his under
standing that Horace with his beautiful speaking-voice should
adopt the harsh bellows of that pronounced charlatan. Again.
Saying all that now, to other people—that was not sensible, it
put Horace in a strange position as it would anybody (though
Horace was blind to the fact) to have that disgusting charlatan's
great voice (with all the wild things it said) coming out of your
mouth ! If Horace would only realize the position it put him in
—it was of course that that that rat-named individual was always
hinting at the toad, and he could bring it home to him. Horace
did not seem aware. Might he not be arrested ? He might
that ! Horace was in danger at this minute ! All through that
charlatan !
Dan put down his head to reflect upon this situation. To
night it had been especially worse than ever, he went back to
think it out—that voice would be the death of him ! How they
had kept it up tonight too, one after the other, with insults and
laughter, with the other man being so rude all the time he could
see. It had been a bad night (though if you asked me to say
what it all led back from at the start, I'll be bound to confess I'm
unable—don't ask me !). Quarrelling, and smiling at each other,
a most painful impression it had made on him, very painful from
start to finish—he could not bear these strange arguments where
they were smiling and laughing all the time like so many hyenas !
 416 APES OF GOD
Oh how he had prayed they might stop on bended knees, he
could not endure it the sound of the two talking as if to order
upon his senses. The howling of two waves in the sea that were
engaged in a combat—that might express this disagreeable sensa
tion, something painful and impossible—he would have screamed
out to Horace and the other to leave off there and then but how
could he, he had no excuse !
Dan put up his fingers to his ears—they still rang with it
He shook his head violently.
The trouble was, Dan said to himself, it did not end with
them at the table. No it did not ! Say what you would, under
neath there was something. You could feel it—he had seen it.
Out of sight it was, there were other people—you could not see
them—it was just as with Pierpoint—never there in person, to be
touched and seen. Horace had called him a puppet, both were
acting—they were shaken by what they said, he had been shaken
—that was the others that shook them ! So they tossed and
fought. The impatient smiles they each had upon their faces
as they spoke and as they were answering—then the words !
perhaps they, worst ofall, destroyed him entirely and so the head
ache had come. They were once or twice scientific. That horrid
word used by Horace what was it ! Homo and something—he
never felt comfortable. He was quite positive the word was
beastly, he could not understand at all why Horace insisted upon
using it when broadcasting (as he called this acting, when he was
doing Pierpoint). The struggle raged under the words, the words
became beastly. Both used beastly words to each other until he
became frightened. Partly it was what they said, partly the way
they said—speaking in cipher, or was it a tone-code, of another
tongue.—Between the flashes of the speeches this time with great
distinctness he had snap-shots of the second scene. Actually he
had seemed to catch glimpses of a country that was beneath this
land—in which they were locked.—It was something like a glanc
ing landscape, like a dream that was there—he had had that as
a schoolboy in Ireland, when the Rebellion was, the night before
the arrest of his father, when he had seen through the pavement
(as he had dreamed he was walking) scenery beneath his feet.
There was a world that ran through things, like pictures in water
or in glassy surfaces, where a mob of persons were engaged in hunt
ing to kill other men, in a battle-park, beneath crackling violet
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 417
stars. Were there trees though—it was a distinct picture and
there were parks for fighting ? No not trees. Certainly that was
treeless also. At both ends there were groves of spikes. A
withered world altogether—spike-planted parks it looked like.
A needle pricked the skin and there was blood. Everywhere
underground under the earth trodden by us was blood too. So it
would seem if again he were not partly in a dream. This world
in question had looked brown. As to colour there you had it—a
pinkish, a brownish, but a dark shade, and, for its extent and
measurement, a plain ; and he had in a dull flash perceived its
distances, a tall row of hills, a moon was shining. At moments
the place had come out so vividly beneath, when they were
laughing most—certainly he could not hope to follow what they
exactly meant, but here and there WAR—war this and war that
—had been spoken of between them. The other had turned away
his face from Horace. Arrests and murders they had been men
tioned especially, at a certain point he believed Horace had
spoken about blood. There must undoubtedly have been some
murder. Perhaps it was a big case or a cause celebre. They both
cracked jokes. Someone had been done to death ! Evidently,
some criminal hands ! There were guilty persons, not caught
red-handed—all was in confusion so he gathered. And in all
probability he had been looking at the identical bloody scene of
the act. Where he had been looking (that place that brought the
dream back he had) he had just been staring down into the very
scene as a witness of the catastrophe. That accounted for its
presence.—Both were laughing. But both had seemed angry.
Angry, Horace had—he had heard him say to the other—he had
said (he remembered) always angry !—always angry he had mut
tered and he appeared to be accusing the other really, in some
fashion, but he could not be sure of that fact. He was not at all
sure it had not been somebody who was absent he accused and
spoke to, but they had laughed as if it had been some kind ofjoke
they had together. It must be the blackest bloody joke, thought
he, this side of hell, to judge from the signs, and it separated them
—little wonder ! The landscape was very near to him once—
there were stones he believed—there was smoke, it came out
where the earth was cracked, it burst from bricks—in the sky the
stars constantly burst into smoke, there were pools of smoke, also
there were thundering fountains, reaching to a hundred feet.
418 APES OF GOD
That was black smoke. The music of Lord Osmund had played
from his stomach while that was in progress—a martial march.
Nothing could live thought Dan, or love thought he and sighed,
where he had been looking, where alas he had looked and seen
the battle-parks and the spikes planted for trees, he thought.—
He would never look again ! Never of his own free will would he
look again for years ! Between as it were the flashes of their
remarks, the steady quarrelling with one another—glimpses of
violence that was all—nothing pleasant !—he' would not look
again at that or ever listen to a " broadcast " as understood in the
mad vernacular of Horace, never ! For pleasure, was it, as it
seemed, that Horace walked in those repulsive places—did Horace
not know what love was perhaps—was he not able ever to be
happy ? And what was that landscape, and the cause of the
quarrelling ? They kept breaking through into something else,
as you put your fist through a sheet of paper.

Ratner was voluble, he pressed Dan hard with argument and

was very insidious, knowing and obliging.
" You are not the first one " said Ratner with a weary leer.
"I've seen a few—the way you feel—it's beastly ! One has to make
up one's mind to the fact I'm afraid—Horace is irresponsible Dan."
(The puzzling person's breath stank like a fish, fish-like were
his eyes for that matter, Dan wished he would move away. What
now was " beastly " then—was it himself—could he be shaken
off. This limpet was abrupt and repulsive. He heard Ratner
with a coax in his croak call him Poor Dan.)
" Poor Dan ! I suppose you think Horace is sincere don't
you—I don't blame you, it is diff-i-fu// / You will find Horace
out Dan." He heard further phrases from Ratner. " The old
Horace—Old days—Only difference—Now practicaljokes with us—
Before practicaljoked—Crowned heads—He hoaxed the nation."
(Perhaps Horace was not quite a serious man ?—Why had he
become Dan for this person ?)
" Horace acts Pierpoint."
(Scrappily Dan gathered the heads of arguments against his
will. He half-heard Split-man remarking. " Horace is an
actor." An actor was not a serious man. Was Horace not a
serious man. and an actor ? He had never known an actor.)
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 419
" Horace is one of that crowd—Yes that—What ?—Lord
Osmund—He belongs to the same set—Rich Men—When he
mocks at Lord Osmund—Words stolen from Pierpoint—He steals
from—That is bluff !— More fool you Dan !—Believe me or not—
Pulling your leg."
(Was Horace pulling the leg? Dan looked down discon
solately, he saw the pink puffing, there were the strapping Ziegfeld
understandings, just clear of the table-rim. The figure of speech
led him back to his fancy-dressed figure in concrete with legs in
fleshings to be pulled like crackers—he blushed as he thought of
the discredit, and he saw in his mind's eye Father Donovan.)
" Yes pulling your leg."
(Ratner looked at the legs too, with a sneer his eyes followed
Dan's glance, and they both stared down at them together.)
" Yes pulling your leg ! " Ratner repeated.
(Dan looked away from the pink puffing. Ratner as well.)
" He doesn't care whose brains he picks—He picks Pierpoint's
brains—It's not pockets—Pickpockets—Not his line—Brains ! "
(Ratner looked at Dan's head. Brains ! His head ! The
" genius " was there, thought Dan, the " genius " ! He felt un
comfortable.)
" Yes—Brains ! "
(Ratner continued to stare significantly at Dan's head.)
" I'm very fond of old Horace but I know Horace is a perfect
vamp—Vamping you for all he's worth—Old Horace will pick
you dry."
( Vamp motif. Fear of the Ogre.)
" He knows you've got genius ! "
(Ah!?)
" He is after your genius ! "
(At this point Dan became seriously alarmed.—After his
" genius " was he—was it possible ! But was that true at all ?
How could anybody obtain one's " genius " by a coup de main ?
He felt very uneasy indeed, however, for all that he argued
himself out of his natural concern, for his threatened
" genius.")
" After all Dan, what is Horace doing—what are we all doing
here ? "
(With circumspection now, Dan allowed himself to wonder
what they might be doing.)
42o APES OF GOD
" Horace likes dressing up—Finnian Shaws like—Both like—
Buffoons ! He has come here to play a few rather stupid jokes—
He laughs at other people's jokes—Finnian Shaw jokes—Just the
same as his."
(Dan continued to give ear and to pick out the main heads of
the abominable arguments against his hero as they came.)
" Horace has seen through his set."
(His set ?)
" That is his set—Always has been Horace's set—He has seen
through—He wants to stand outside—Vanity—To prove he doesn't
belong to it."
(Forgive me for listening to this man Horace !)
" Do you know what he says behind your back—Are you
listening ?—He is making a fool of you ! "
(A fool behind his back ! Oh Horace is that possible !)
" He calls you his idiot-boy."
(His idiot-boy—oh Horace, your boy yes indeed 'tis so !)
"Moron is his word—Do you understand moron ?—He means a
sort of rustic idiot you see."
(Moron was a nice word !—lam his moron Dan thought, and since
he always thought of himself as small—/ am Horace's little moron I)
" Once Horace described you as the justification for Miss
Gertrude Stein—Yes you—For Miss Gertrude Stein."
(Gertrude—what ? What girl was that Dan wondered that
Horace had brought into the conversation !)
" Don't you know Miss Stein ? "
(Know Miss ! This was the most alarming man !)
" Miss Stein is a writer—She is a genius Dan—Has a peculiar
way of writing. Horace says you are a moron—You think as
Miss Stein writes."
(If this girl was a genius, that altered the whole complexion of
the matter. He had never met a girl who was a genius—not a girl.)
" Pierpoint calls her the Stammerer—Miss Stein does stammer
as a matter of fact—She stutters Dan—Miss Stein does stutter."
(And that was the sort of girl that Horace ! For him. With
an impediment in her speech !)
" Well—are you listening ?—Horace says you have the moron-
mind Dan—Celebrated by Miss Stein. She writes—are you
attending—like an idiot—It is like a soft stammering ninny
spelling out its alphabet—Horace says."
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 421
(She writes like an idiot—the girl he was mentioned with by
Horace in what connection !)
" Horace got that from Pierpoint— Child-mind Pierpoint says.
Cult of it—Child-mind."
(Pierpoint again—Pierpoint the Pickpocket.)
" Sham-child-mind he—Pierpoint—says— Stein's sham. You
follow ! Stein's sham—yours real. You—Dan—genuine idiot ! "
(Nasty man—who doesn't improve upon closer acquaintance.)
" That is what he thinks of you Dan ! "
(He would tell Horace all the lies this man thought proper to
tell.)
" Can't you see Dan that you are Horace's plaything—When
he talks about your ' genius '—Pulling your leg—That's to get
your ' genius ' !—People always pull other people's legs when they want
to get hold of their genius! "
(Oh the disgusting fellow, now he knew this was not true after
all, and he had suspected Horace without cause !)
Dan got up.
" Where are you going ? " asked Ratner surprised.
" Kitchen " Dan muttered.

///. THE KITCHEN.

Ratner entered the kitchen but it was full of smoke. It was
the cellar of the farm and there were great vats to tan or brew,
imported from the next homestead, for period purposes, standing
beside the doors, like drums. But Ratner soon saw, when his eyes
emptied of water, many people enough, with the chef in the
midst, distinguished by the white cylinder his head supported in
integral erectness, armed with a bright cutlass. He was demon
strating his art.
Domenichino who painted Sodom put three pillars upon the
left of the ill-fated esplanade, there was an aqueduct to take
potable water to the doomed citizenry, but no river (there was no
occasion to wash dirty linen in public) and three Stewards of the
Plain with spotless ribboned rosettes, approached a group of
nonentities with a view to warning them off. They had come
where they were not wanted—all were Walking Gentlemen out
of the cast of a Revue lately come to an end, who balked their
422 APES OF GOD
exit from the capitals of the Plain, though economically undesir
ables. That picture had been seen by a fellow-tourist of Julius
Katner. Upon his tardy Grand Tour (when business had
boomed, in the first days of the Private Presses) he had met the
tourist, who had seen the celebrated canvas. He himself had
never seen Domenichino's Sodom at all, but such was the impres
sion of what he had been told—as he blinked into the smoke
screen he saw the passage to the right where there was the imita
tion, lantern-lit, of a provision-shop (a true Pye Corner, with
delicate-pig-and-pork) from whose pent-house dangled Bologna
sausages, an entire porker, and a dusky period-movement of self-
conscious shopmen that brought to mind a painted place. Per
haps it was the three pillars in the centre resembling salt—it had
called up at second-hand the mere tongue-picture, it is true, a
vivid verbal snapshot, of the decor of Domenichino—pillars of
whitewash : yes a colonnade of balks began—they held up the
hall above, stationed to prevent Osmund and friends from falling
through bodily into the kitchen. Otherwise they would have all
fallen through into the kitchen.
The domestic inferno (accessible to staff but not guests) under
the upper world which for sun had Osmund and for moon
Phoebus, for a sharp-set food-fan perhaps a very heaveri-on-earth
certainly, was far from that for the dismally-prowling Ju. His
maw was chokkerblock, with everything turning to basalt already
within (what intestines to be handed down to one !) which would
have to be blasted out the morning-after, with charges of pink
female pills, nothing less. He hated kitchens. For him this was
hell—as an embodied curse split down the centre he made his way
through the chimney-smoke. The heat of this nether cook-house
found favour with his chilly bones, his body took like a duck to
water to the hell-heat, at least there was that to be said ! He drew
near to the distant fireplace, between the pillars, a whipped under-
devil or sub-demon, scheduled to play a domestic-animal part, of
an unwanted doctored cat, spinally sectioned black-sided and
white-sided. The main thing was the hell-heat however, that was
good. It was the cheer of the period-fire, in the period-kitchen,
in the period mock passion-play, in the period-world. The Dance
Of The Black Joke went on.
" Away kitchen-stuff ! Rip you chitterlings ! " a proper
roaring boy from the noisy Past for the occasion, the thyroid
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 423
maddened Horace quoted. " Kitchen-stuff! " he bawled in his
accents of a section-boss. He was entering into the spirit. Strad
dling and pointing. Beastly albino-hyena, as usual ill-bred old
brawler, he pointed rudely at two gloomy turnspits or counterfeit
potwallopers (for it was a fake-fire sure enough, with period-pot
and period-spit) who sat sucking their smoked thumbs as if they
had been two copper-red smelt-bodied kippers, if that could be,
they had been sucking head-first. The twin City-porters Magog
and Gog (Briton and Saxon emblems or gods) could not have been
more like this, sentinels upon either hand of the chimney—a
museum of salamanders, saucepans, gridirons and a permanent
baron of beef, revolved by the smoke-jack, making a model
museum-joint. Both poor pensive clowns mocked up hill and
down dale by Horace—calling out to kill your head kitchen-stuff
over and over again. Beefeaters ! he shouted. Beefeaters ! The
cursed devil ! ah hold your tongue—you'll soon be dead !
Ratner's eyes, bloodshot with smoke, strucjc out in evil stabbing
glances at this bombastic phantom— You will soon be dead! his
mind hissed. Horace was grinning at him.
A pig swung from a cambrel in the pent-roof beyond the exit-
du-fond. The excited chef hurled his chefs-knife in the manner
of a javelin at it. The party of conjurers applauded. It stuck in
the floating carcass. Drunk was Ratner's conclusion and he
slunk to the left,' avoiding them, sitting down beside a dejected
turnspit who eyed him heavily, as if he had been a rival
period-piece.
A number of drudges from whose mouths streamed cries, in
the manner of prints plastered with slogans, upon all hands stam
peded, as the young chef of the kitchen, a little above himself,
discharged a second knife—juggling as they ran with sauce-boats,
tureens, skillets. The tide of the banquet in the barn had flowed
back into the deeps of the kitchens and the murky bottoms of the
household—fine ten-pound pines were visible, the refuse of geese
a la daube, house-lambs, the bones of lemon-soles and electric
eels, Skipper Sardines, ruined sweetbreads of sheep, lettuce-leaf
still-life a la Douanier, tinned goosegogs, Heinz's tomatoes,
noggins of iced punch, bottles of Bass, flagons of Kia-Ora, ernpty
bottles of Presta Splits, a Big Tree Manhattan bottle—masses of
bitten and half-swallowed rubbish of animal and of vegetable.
The refuse of stomachs. How these armed maggots crawled in
424 APES OF GOD
this garbage, with heavy voices, overcome by the fumes. A World
of bowels. Synecdoche !
An auxiliary outfit of unused ship's-coppers blocked the second
entrance which was just as well. There were only two doors and
these admitted the emergency staff and the standing-army of
slovenly personnel, a few blackguards who came in to pick up
what they could get, a few hobbadahoys plus a pompier
skeleton crew from the village in case of a fire which was very
likely.
Willie Service in full roadster-kit now (though burnished with
shammy-skin and buttonbrush to a dazzling pitch ofposh liveried
perfection) entered leading Daniel Boleyn. Though ghastly pale
Dan blushed a ripe red, for he felt he was called upon to buff it
and as naked as next-to-the-skin could make it.
" What has happened ? " Asked Julius Ratner.
" What Dan do you mean ? The puffing caught fire."
Horace spoke as if referring to pastry.
" What is puffing Horace ? "
" His legs went up in flames."
" Good heavens ! "
" It was the puffing on them."
" Was it ? "
" Do you feel better Dan ? " At Dan Horace hollered and
turned away smiling towards Margolin : Ratner elected himself
upon the spot an indignant embodiment of Public Opinion. He
became a walking reproach to the callous Horace. And there
stood the poor oppressed young man Dan, first class witness for
the Society for the prevention of cruelty to children !
Dan drooped and blushed and was tugging at his hose in a
deep girlish fidget, of virginal concern. The part of the per
sonality near to the blushfully important, the centric-parts which
must draw the eye, was there—one more such accident and all
would become irreparably improper. The soul started at the
knee-cap and ended at the navel. Oh !
But the prominent specific codpiece, fashioned like the bot-
ticellian conch of Aphrodite, laced into position, was all that was
left, except for the hose which was clipped up with suspenders.
The short bum-curtain of the doublet was a lascivious eaves—the
contretemps had occurred almost immediately upon entering,
and there seemed nothing for it but to blush and bear it The
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 425
fire had done in a flash, lashing at his loins, what, in the way of
costume, he would at no price have consented !
" For the rest of the evening you'll have to be a girl Dan ! "
Horace might at least moderate the timbre of his voice, was
Dan's reflection, in publicly approaching such a painful subject !
—his friend's suggestion took from Dan the last vestige of coun
tenance that he had and visibly he was confused as could be.
" We must borrow a frock."
Surely it was not necessary for Horace to specify the nature of
the garments that it might be necessary for one to wear ! Was
it not bad enough as it was ? And what would the man say next—
were they to have an inventory of a feminine toilet ! Were they
to be spared no details of those blush-producing attires !
" I'm afraid you'll have to make shift with that ! "
That is right—shout it out ! Oh in what a bullying tone
Horace was speaking to him tonight, upon all occasions. No one
would think, who did not know, that Horace was the only person
in the world who had recognised his genius and believed in it
absolutely—nobody !
Well he must dress up as a girl ! thought Dan—nothing but
the fire-bucket flung at him by Willie had saved him perhaps from
destruction, it had been Willie's presence of mind. His legs had
burst into flame as he stood by the main grate of the building
with his back to it, and it must have been a fragment of tinder or
a wandering spark of volatile coal-gas attached to a mote of the
atmosphere. All must go by the board (sex he would not consent
to think of directly but it was sex must be sacrificed his sex whis
pered and he could not stop it) in such an emergency all had to
go—but why should he care how he looked—yet he would not, it
stood to reason, choose to take a female part. What man would
wish to be got up as a girl ? No man would. It was the last
thing of course. He would see what he felt like and perhaps he
would find he would go away from the party at once, for he could
not suffer himself to be insulted any more by that little Margolin-
fellow the cad—whose Safety Matches already rattled upon his
codpiece, in offensive bombardment of his person. He really
believed he must take Horace aside and whatever the conse
quences give him his private opinion of his newfriend Margolin—
who was evidently one of those people who lived on the outskirts,
the dirty portions of capital cities and put our Saviour to death in
426 APESOFGOD
their own city in the Bible. Then at this juncture he thought of
Father Donovan, he would speak to him about them and find
out what might be their numbers and if there were many of such
people really, or how it came to pass that he met so many, whereas
was it perfectly safe or not to consort with them, or suitable for a
catholic. And also he would have to report how against his will
entirely he had allowed himself to be dressed up as a woman,
though all his instincts had been strongly against consenting and
would remain so to the end.
Well then, if woman it was he was now to be, the sooner he got
the things on the better as he did not relish standing here before
all these strangers in this public place. The chef must think him
extremely peculiar ! He exposed himself to insult, or to some
immodest pleasantry, every moment he stood there. He would
have turned his back—but ! At his back—at his back he had no
codpiece !
Splitman came up, and Dan, gravely blushing, held his head
in pensive inclination, prodding the floor with his toe. Ratner
was looking at his legs—he wished the horrid man would leave
him, or not look there !
" Did you get any burns ? " Ratner asked, using his eyes
terribly ! Oh take your eyes from off my legs, and take your
beak from off my thingimies ! Singularly tactful to come and
gape at an accident !
" You were extremely lucky not to have been badly burnt ! "
Oh was I Mr. Paul Pry ! Go back to your stool and mind
your own business !
" Did it just burn the silk ? " Ratner approached a finger
to the blackened hose-top, soaked with the emergency-douche
from the fire-bucket, where small festoons ofskin appeared beneath
the doublet. At this Dan acted, he removed himself a step : he
thought that was not far enough and he took two more.
" You must go up and see Mrs. Bosun Dan ! " Horace was
calling out before everybody in the room. He might have come
over to him—he really appeared to experience no interest at all.
No interest at all ! What had he done, except catch on fire—to
cause Horace to be so indifferent, and so terribly cold ? Evidently
he had not wished him in the kitchen—that was but too clear !
Willie Service was at his side, as per ever sleek and impassible,
standing almost to attention.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 427
" Quick march. You are to come with me sir, up to the
housekeeper ! "
Willie Service himself began marching, he was linked to Dan
—he led him quickly off. Dan did not look up at all, he hung his
head as he was taken off.
A man passed them, coming in, and called to Peters who was
in conversation with the chef. He said—
" Old Osman sez 'e wants a saw ! "
" What's 'e want now !—a saw ! " called Peters with
passion.
"Ah! A saw."
" What's 'e want a saw for ! "
" I dunno."
" To saw off his bleedin' 'ed ? "
" Ah ! "
" Well 'e can't 'ave one the rotten ole barstard not tonight !
Ask 'im what 'e wants it for ! "
" 'E says 'is wife wants to play on it ! "
" 'Ere tell 'er to go and play on 'er spinach bed instead ! "
Peters retorted violently, and turned his back upon the
emissary.
" What's that you want mate—a saw ? " asked the chef over
the broad shoulders of Peters.
" Ah ! "
" 'Ere's a saw ! " the chef said, and he pushed towards him a
short butcher's meat-saw, like a ragged hatchet.
" Ah take 'im that ! " said Peters.
The man wiped the saw upon a tablecloth.
" 'E says a long saw 'e wants."
" Take 'im that, that's all 'e'll bloody well get tonight ! "
Peters told him.
" It don't matter not to me what 'e don't get guvnor ! "
The slouching man who was a hired waiter, went indifferently
away, holding the heavy meat-saw.
" If 'e can't play on that mate tell 'im to come 'ere and fetch
one 'imself ! " Peters raised his voice to shout back out of the
midst of his muffled heart-to-heart passages with the chef, Lord
Osmund still indistinctly on his mind.
Margolin with Mr. Zagreus stood in repose beside the period-
grate, interfering with the passage of the heat from the coals to
428 APES OF GOD
the body of Ratner. Mr. Zagreus had been watching the episode
of the saw.
" Every man gets the butler he deserves," said he.
" Some don't have a butler at all." Margolin was sleepy, as
the period-heat ascended his ancient spine in the young body of a
blond crimped doll.
" I know." Mr. Zagreus did know that there was a class of
persons without butlers, who deserved them.
" / haven't," Arch told him.
" If you had you wouldn't attract such a butler as Peters
Arch ! Where he picked up Peters is a mystery to me. Possibly
Peters was his batman."
" I wouldn't have a butler Horace ! " Arch effusively favoured
Horace with his confidence.
" Class-War is in full swing at Osmund's," Horace remarked.
" Class-war—in full swing ! "
He watched Margolin's lips expectantly, moving his own
slightly to anticipate the response, but Margolin said nothing.
" I know somebody," said Horace—it was clear from the
expression upon his face that Pierpoint was that Mr. X., " who
says before a revolution these conditions always exist, as between
masters and servants."
" Before a what Horace ? "
" Revolution—like the French Revolution of course or the
Russian."
" Was there a revolution there ? When was that Horace ? "
" Of course."
" I didn't know. Was there ? That must have been when I
was young."
As Horace watched the lips for the words and saw them spell
out with their subtle movements the word " young," he beamed
at Arch fiercely from out of his bronzed Choktaw mask—thrilling
(great European) at the youngness—all his subconscious surging
up in silent hallelujahs, blending snob-thoughts of muscle with
snob-thoughts of mind.
" He says servants become unmanageable."
" Like horses like."
" It is a sign ! "
" Go on ! " Arch had shut his dolly-eyes and slept stolidly
upright. He dropped into the mass-jargon, playfully class
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 429
conscious, standing before the period-fire, in the company of one
of nature's gentlemen.
" Yes " said Horace, thoroughly warmed up to the topic, " he
says it was just the same in Russia before the crack."
" Was he in Russia ? "
" No. The masters felt it coming as well."
" They must I should think."
" Yes—they get familiar with their servants. Many treat
them as friends. They start doing so."
" Servants ! Do you like a servant Horace ? "
" That depends."
" I think " said Archie " servants ought to be kept down ! "
" You find the servant who is waiting at the table joining in
the conversation—he will help himself over your shoulder to a
whisky and soda occasionally. In Russia they used to smoke
cigarettes while handing round the fish."
" They hadn't half got a nerve hadn't they—I didn't know.
While they was waiting ? "
" I gather that is so."
" I shouldn't wonder in Russia. I've heard they're very
socialist there ! "
" Of course, but before that ! "
" I should smoke if I was there doing that. Wouldn't you
Horace ? I was once a waiter for a week."
" The barriers that will soon be thrown down are already down
in fact."
Margolin stretched himself and yawned out of his pink-and-
white doll-lungs ofsaw-dust, a miniature bay (stretching his mouth-
muscles, displaying his midget boxer's-reach with curled-up fists)
in order to expel the period-heat that was drugging his tissues.
Yach-yach-yach ! he distended the invisible guttapercha binding his
jaws like sailor-hat-elastics. Emerging from these spasms swollen-
eyed, he plunged into a casual confidence, tied-up in a little
pompous frown, with the airs of a consultant in a key-industry at
a moment of national crisis.
" There won't be a revolution not in Old England Horace ! "
(And that was from the horse's mouth—by the courtesy of one
of those that make the revolutions, an insurgent " worker of the
world.")
" You think there won't."
43o APES OF GOD
Nature's gentleman, against whom such disturbances are
directed, politely declined to be convinced.
" I bet you—here Horace I bet you a cool thousand, will you
take me on ! " spluttered Arch, this stupid cool tacked on to the
pound-sterling four-figure-quantity tickling him to death whenever
he used it.
" I don't possess such a sum of money ! "
The paradox, for all the nobilitarian smile that accompanied
it, was lost upon Arch.
" Not in our time Horace ! " Arch said—he threw an over
powering leer of the most lurid mischief in, at the sarcastic posses
sive before " time," also at the furthct english idiotism and the
thought of many more, with which he was furnished. In mockery
of his mastery of this important tongue he had a spasm like a
sneeze. Taking his hand out of his jacket-pocket he cocked a
thumb and finger and sped a Safety Match to its billet—a broken-
down british club-waiter out-of-work cantering in the back
ground with a tray of glasses.
Zagreus, a great sportsman, dilettante of all dexterities,
watched the trajectory of the Safety Match. The first fell short.
Arch drew out from the bottom of his pocket and loaded a
second, cocked and discharged it. It winged its way, this time
over the waiter's head. A third followed in lightning succession
—Archie was bracketing. It was short, but a better shot. At
last one fell upon the tray.
" What quantities of people Osmund hires for his parties,"
Zagreus remarked, watching another hobbling picture of past
smartness in edwardian tails.
" It can't half cost old Osmund a tidy bit Horace to have a
party you're right."
" This is the nucleus of a Parliamentary Army ! "
" What's that ? "
" Black Guards—Red Guards ! "
" Are they ?—I didn't know."
" That is their feudal leanings—playing at the seigneur. All
Finnian Shaws are vulgarly feudal—like a new-rich with a castle."
" You're right Horace—ole Osman's a proper toff ! "
" He feels his time is short, it may be that."
Mr. Zagreus bent an impressive gaze upon his proletarian
genius-in-embryo, the halcyon yiddisher babyhood of whose face
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 431
refused hospitality to any political shadow whatever. But
Zagreus expected an answer. Margolin was crystallising into an
oracle rapidly, for each time now with Horace this came about
with greater speed. As he felt himself compelled to conform to
the sphinxishness expected, by this, compared with him, gigantic
gentleman (dressed as an aborigine) Archie felt he must keep a
straight face. Turning towards what now was obviously a new
patron, out of the same family as Dick, he tucked him up under
his proletarian wing with the lightheartedest splutter.
" Horace, who's been telling you Old England's rotten
Horace ? they're not right ! Don't you take any notice of them,
it's sil-lee ! "
Not right—how lovely—Zagreus wore his smile to-the-manner-
born, like an over-big buttonhole in his mouth.
" What ? " he said, and laughed.
" Don't listen Horace to alarmists ! That's alaaarm-ist ! "
Archie was delighted with the pomp of this big foolish newspaper
word he had found inside his little head, burlesquely he swelled to
utter it—all words were potential toys, big mouthfuls especially,
to be batted over when talking, by his little tingling tongue, at
such as Horace—talking a great indoor sport, batting the winged
word captured in a newspaper over the net.
" Is that alarmist Archie ? "
" Absolutely—Horace ! " Arch frankly disintegrated at the
sheer orotundness of the christian name of his patron—Horace—what
what !—not to mention Archy-the-Bald for-the-matter-of-that !
" Is it ! "
" Ycees ! Here ! You must have got in with a lot of com
munists Horace ! "
He frowned up his face in inquisitive reproach.
" Do you think so ? No. I don't know any."
" Well it sounds as if you was. That's what that lot say
Horace, I know some communists. Revolutions—Old England
won't stand for them, not the Briton Horace—you don't know
them—I know Britons, they won't stand for them, not the
British."
" No. It's the Banks. The Banks have been telling people
there is going to be a big crash."
" Oh it's the Banks ! "
" The Banks ! "
432 APES OF GOD
" Which ? " barked the baffled Archie, scowling towards the
Banks.
" People I know are selling their houses and leaving England.
A whole family I know went back to Florida yesterday. They
had been here for forty years—the old man was nearly eighty."
" Nearly eighty ! "
" The Banks say there is going to be a big crash."
Archie the sphinx stood grinning and nonplussed confronted
with the Banks.
" The Banks are liars ! " he blustered. " The Banks are
potty ! "
" A big crack is what they think—I shouldn't be surprised if
there were ! "
" I should—very surprised indeed—very surprised indeed ! "
Mr. Zagreus fixed a sparkling eye upon his budding oracle,
eagerly watching it speak, lip-reading with great relish—he was
trying out this new machine, but he had made up his mind to
have it as an oracle, whatever came he would have it as an oracle,
it was too perfect.
" That lot upstairs has to go somehow Arch ! " Mr. Zagreus
raised bloodthirsty eyes to the ceiling.
Archie Margolin burst out laughing in the face of his patron
at this.
" Who, old Osman ? " he shouted.
" The same ! "
" Why, Horace tell us why, Horace, old Osman must go ! "
" Nature I am positive has marked them .down for extinc
tion ! " Mr. Zagreus resorted to natural law.
" They don't do any harm to anyone ! " Arch complained
stoutly—" Not old Osman and Pheebie ! "
" Osmund is his own worst enemy," Mr. Zagreus sentimentally
conceded, a crocodile-sob a la Kein in his voice—he felt for two
pins he might begin broadcasting Lionel.
" And that's not saying much ! " spluttered Arch.
" That's true, that is not saying much ! " Mr. Zagreus said
almost abjectly.
" If that's all he has to worry about ! "
" He hasn't much]! "
" You're right. I wish I had nothing worse than that any
how ! "
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 433
" I should be a new man if I hadn't any more than that ! "
" You're a communist Horace."
" Yes perhaps that's what it is. I am down on the rich."
" You're an alarmist ! "
" I think you're right Arch ! "
" I know I'm right Horace, you alarm yourself Horace."
" Yes. Well I may ! No that's not true. I've got nothing to
lose—as yet. When I have ! "
Horace Zagreus regarded his new discovery with an increas
ingly uncritical eye. One more step and he would no longer be
able however mildly to keep his end up he plainly foresaw, he
would be prostrate. He was practically certain now that he was
in the presence of genius !
" I think Arch you're absolutely right—through and through !
—the Finnian Shaws are not the sort that would take a social
knock-out standing up."
" Absolutely not ! "
" They'd crawl into any World is what you mean—upon their
hands and knees if necessary and even by choice, in the attitude
of quadrupeds—so long as it was a capital W of a World, with
Gossip-notoriety attached, and it had possession of all the Beaches,
newspapers, palaces and great hotels."
" I didn't say Horace—no. Poor old Osmun give him a
chance ! "
" That's it—how right you are ! Already they are fairly out
cast, which, as Pierpoint says, it is essential to be—from what
cadres are still standing of the old fabric—in order to be socially
popular with the canaille of the Ritzes and Rivieras ! "
" Oh hark at you Horace—you're a proper communist as ever
I come across—it was at the Ritz I was a lift-boy for a week—no
I was in the kitchen ! "
A dreary report burst from the throat of the unseen Ratner, it
made no pretence to be a laugh.
" They have not far to fall," fiercely continued Horace, in the
midst of a sudden broadcast " to step into the social cadres of a
Soviet ! "
Arch yawned. The lassitude of the sphinx was apparent—
—what was Soviet to him or he to Soviet ?
" When are we going to have our show Horace ? " he asked to
change the subject.
434 APES OF GOD
" We will go up in a moment and see. I have to arrange our
screens."
" Have you Horace. Have you got them ? "
" Service has."
Both Margolin and Zagreus were glad that Service had got
them and they wondered what he was doing.
Peters left the laughing chef and they both approached, Peters
in front.
" Here Pete ! " called Arch.
With a dark and friendly grin Peters strolled up, stocky and
bandy, a butler of steel, to the grinning Eastender waiting to
receive him—Peters' little class-pal.
" Sir ! "
" Here—this gentleman here says Pete we're going to have a
proper revolution in Old London Town—you know same as they
had in France when old Robesspot—no I'm getting it mixed—old
Potemkins ! "
The clouds of an impending British Terror descended upon
the brow of the butler (who Was harshly un-period even anti-
period) and he ceased outright to grin. His eyes became those of
a wholesale informer, at the bar of summary popular justice, with
all his highly-placed arch-enemies about to forfeit the least
important parts of their bodies, namely their head-pieces.
" I shouldn't be surprised if one of these days " said Peters
with great energy " I didn't make a revolution not all on my own
—straight I shouldn't ! "
Mr. Zagreus left anti-period Peters and his small grinning
class-pal and approached the youthful chef-de-cuisine, who stood
smiling bashfully with a mighty chopper stuck in his girdle, a
great deathsman of dead ruminants and an iconoclast in his way.

IV. MKS. BOSUN'S CLOSET.

Dan and escort passed a fishfag who stood at the door repre
senting one of the Old Cries of London, with more bloaters and
fresh haddock, and the cat scratches the wheel. Up the office-
stairs they directed themselves and it was Service who announced
with a knock they had come.
" Is this the young gentleman ? " Mrs. Bosun asked.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 435
Dan blushed and Willie said it was.
" This young gentleman will make a lovely girl " said Mrs.
Bosun. " I'm sure I shouldn't have known the young gentleman
was a boy if you hadn't told me."
This egregious period-matron gloated upon his great maidenly
damaged fleshings, with professional fish-eyed sex-banter born of
a seafaring past (and archaic sex-directness of nautical ancestors)
until he could positively have screamed at the vile old body and
told the horrid old soul to call her great coarse blue eyes off—or
he would say good day to you without more ado and give her his
room instead of his company the old horror !
Mrs. Bosun sat in her closet (she did not rise when the two
came in from her Windsor chair) which she presided over : a
dignified red-white-and-blue domestic personage bluff and
stout with blue and steadfast eye, of best ocean-blue (as the waves
used to be before Trafalgar but especially prior to the Mutiny of
the Nore), with a discreet foam of decent frilling bursting from
under her buttoned-up period-bodice-case (bust-glove or rib-
trunk)—rigid with stay-busks—and also a trickle out of the
mouths of her massive serge sleeves of spotless undie-white : as
she moved there was a period-petticoat-rustle with it of silk and
black callamanca combined, under the barme-cloth or the callous
apron as white as the morning-milk—flannel and swanskin cer
tainly in comfortable bloodbaked sheathes clung upon the buxom
body, of beef-bred british limb and torse, of this model matron.
A heavy wet upon her housekeeper's work-bench bubbled at
hand, obvious porter : though no one would rule it out with
Mrs. Bosun, that such a ruddy period-piece as she was would
stick at a round dollop of Old Tom, termed blue ruin, to keep her
period-person in good twig and up to snuff—is there not melody
in max ? There is melody in max ! She would not draw the line.
—But there was a bottle of Arquebuscade Water as well and the
remnants of another Baume de Vie not far off, also a posset not
very distant, always ready for the headachy or the coldie-coldie—
and the young gentlemen and young Lady Harriet too were head
achy often poor little darlings, and fretful bless their sweet precious
hearts ! And then would they not looking ever so pitiful, come
crying in to good old nanny Bosun for a posset please ! with a petu
lant lisp, or some arrowwoot : or they would sometimes go and
strike their little knuckies against a piece of furniture, or fall down
436 APES OF GOD
as children will, or cut theirselves, and then looking ever so blue
come crying up the stairs to have her kiss the place as she often
did and make it well, or have it dabbed with Arquebuscade. For
Mrs. Bosun herself, who liked her cup of tea, there was, not far
from the heavy wet, a monumental Rock Pot (classical Rockingham
ware, of coarsest plum-purple and blue-black glaze—samovar of
the servants'-hall—the cheapest but sweetest, guaranteed to pro
vide a better brew than the choicest china set)—a worsted camblet
was next a family-Bible, which awful brass-bound volumen was a
certain pledge that this period-bosom was not sounding brass at
all or a tinkling thimble but sound to the core—nourished upon
Genesis and upon Exodus. Then there were knitting sheaths and
needles lay upon a second table—pillows and bobbins for the
Bucks Point that Mrs. Bosun had easily learnt to do. A large
swill held garments of The Quality—a larger swill was dark sweat-
grey and grease-green, with the garments of The Flux, which
were to be mended—the former by Mrs. Bosun, the latter distri
buted to her two maids, though she would sometimes do a cere
monial garment of Peters, with braid, and sometimes a maid
would handle a garment of a guest. On top of the first basket
was a pull-over of Mr. Eustace, in violent russet and reckitts
counterchange, for he was staying this week—he was a fair one
was Mr. Eustace for tearing his things he was and a very careless
gentleman.
That Mrs. Bosun went to the arms of Morpheus in the same
closet over which she presided, was but too evident, owing to the
portentous presence of a four-poster, minus its pillars, but plus a
strictly period eiderdown—two quilted bedcovers and a counter
pane. A sitzbath and the bases of two flowered chambers com
pleted the evidence for night-and-day occupation and residence,
with the includable suggestion that Mrs. Bosun cast off her purely
period-shell in the night-hours and sought the repose she had so
well deserved upon the same spot where she so brilliantly trans
acted the housekeeping, from six o'clock onwards, and dispensed
possets and arquebuscades.
" Well I suppose we must find this young gentleman a young
lady's frock mustn't we ! " boomed Mrs. Bosun with the opaque
cheerfulness of the keep-smiling doggedness, that made the playing-
fields of Eton what they were in pre-Brodrick days. And the
breezy old body got up upon her staunch sea-legs and bore down
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 437
in an air line upon a roomy Mother-Hubbard-cupboard, built in
the wall, but the size of a station waiting-room in a small Halt.
Into this Mrs. Bosun passed bodily, the door following her in and
remaining in the entrance behind her, and she was now lost to
view and as it were in a second Mrs. Bosun's closet.
But Dan was torn between the horns of a gigantic dilemma,
which tossed him to and fro and made him by turns hot and cold :
for the question that at every moment forced itself with greater
urgency upon his consideration was this—how to effect the change of
costume ? Could Mrs. Bosun be relied upon to turn her back ?
(That was the sort of agonizing question.) Or—and this was the
idea that had obsessed him entirely ever since he had entered
Mrs. Bosun's housekeeper's closet, and (poor forlorn Daniel of a
Dubliner that he was) put his head into the British Lion's genial
den—would this kindly old period-body and dear old dimity-soul of a
wax-work housekeeper not perhaps insist upon effecting the change with
her own officious oldfingers !—There was no use disguising the fact,
there seemed every likelihood that, with her fiendish sex-jollity—
her primitive prude-ragging proclivities no doubt—with those
solid period-views in fine, of a breezy and barbarous culture (born
of nautical necessities, of sea-faring sans-gene) that she would
simply ravish the last vestige of one attire—picking him dry of
every stitch, as though he had been a pre-war Pears-Soap-Baby
or a little animal nursery-tot (especially seeing what in reality
was her accredited social function as regards all Finnian Shaws up
to sixty, or any of spoilt-baby ilk resembling same, and arousing
similar reflexes, under her care, from first childhood to second
childhood—she possessing diplomas, cups, gold medals, and shields
for untold tact in between—making due allowance for the fact that
everyone whatever, for her, as a matter of professional pride, was
simply a tiny tot, or else a poor young person, born into a bosunic
universe with a silver tit stuck into its pout as a matter of course)
—bearing all this in the brain, was it safe to assume that having
with business-like bustle ravished him of one objectable fancy-
dress, she would not force upon his unwilling limbs another—
some disgraceful frilled abortion such as females bought in haber
dasheries (even down to the abjectest drudge) packing their
immodest extremities with lace in the most offensive manner. Oh
what a ticklish situation to be faced with as the result of an acci
dent—in a sense Dan could almost wish he had been a girl ! For
439 APES OF GOD
at least then he could not have been treated in this rough-and-
tumble masculine fashion at least—girls lucky devils were pro
tected from these tactics of false free-and-easiness on grounds of
modesty : at least had he been a girl there would have been no
question of his being manhandled and heartily-overhauled by a
member of the opposite sex or dressed and undressed like a circus-
horse or washed down like a public stallion with no mind of its
own ! Sometimes to be a man was awful nothing short ! When
one came in touch with these hearty persons of primitive culture,
it was awful !—who had about as much sixth-sense (that is sex-
sense) as a knock-about comic or a lousy sheep-dog in the street,
but just plunged through life like a bull in a china shop seeking
the exit, death in their eyes ! This great mastodon of a matron
from the brutalest of the British Past (and how brutal the British
Past was only an Irishman could guess) would come crashing out
of her closet-within-a-closet, playfully lay hold of him possibly by
a leg, like a chicken to be plucked, and strip him in what she
would of course call two shakes yes of a Moke's tail or some such
hearty horror of an expression. She would regard it positively as
a joke and a good hearty side-splitting one too, to slip one of those
repulsive garments that all women wore upon their legs to make
them look different to men's though they weren't (hung probably
—and he shuddered—with the most fearful bawdy frills and in
other ways stupefyingly disconcerting) upon his. He was fully
alive to all the dangers that he ran in the room of this terrible old
lady.
Willie Service, an underdog eye upon the door of the closet-
within-a-closet, was polishing off the heavy wet imprudently left
behind by Mrs. Bosun upon the table. Dan's mind was made up.
Face it he could not ! He moved towards the door by which they
had entered.
" Yes ! Where are you going ? " Willie Service the horrid
officious little beast had one of his worst bullying moods on at
present, everything pointed to that. However Dan said nothing
but he suggested—to whom it might concern and whose business
it was—by the expression of his face, that just feeling the least bit
queasy, he had intended to go down into the yard, for a minute
or two.
" No you don't ! "
Willie Service bore down upon him and drove him away from
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 439
the door or perhaps Dan fell back before the onrush of his liveried
keeper—disconcerted by this forced march and the stern expres
sion assumed by Willie (whose motto as he always told people was
Ich Dim like the royal family, or Atyour Service !)
" Back ! It's no use ! You must stop here ! " Willie Ser
vice's two eyes were in chilly ambush beneath his shining cap-peak
of a sham-chauffeur : he stood-easy, chewing an imaginary piece
of gum, in imitation of the american film-sleuth.
" Why ? " asked Dan faintly.
" Because I say so. That's good enough for you ! "
The little bully squared his jaw, Dan fell back a step.
" Anyway orders are, Boleyn, that you should be dressed as a
girl. You know that as well as I do." He became the genial
turnkey. " I'm sorry and all that old bean—duty's duty !—I'm
surprised they haven't dressed you as a girl before—it will suit
you, down to the ground."
Down to the ground !—with burning cheeks Dan turned away
from this impossible attendant.
" You'll have all the men after you ! " added Willie, as if on
purpose.
Oh Horace, why should you have chosen for me this impossible
attendant, who does nothing but bully and insult me !
" She's thinking-up an attractive undie-outfit for you."
The beast ! Dan could almost have wrung Willie Service's
neck and would not any longer stand for all this caddish bullying
but the very next day would tell Horace that he could not con
tinue to suffer himself to be bullied by this little cad of a Willie,
—either Horace must find somebody else or he would take the
law into his own hands, he would go away or simply dismiss
Willie Service after this party and tell him he required his services
no longer.
But the door of the closet-within-the-closet burst open with
fracas, and Dan's great irish heart of a wild doe of Erin was in
his mouth, riding the root of his tongue and threatening to
suffocate him. Mrs. Bosun came out loaded with one lady's
complete period-wardrobe and instantly it was possible for Dan's
eyes to note (with a distension of unmixed dismay) on top —and
as the most conspicious garment—a forked horror loaded with
lace worthy of a second-empire can-can cocotte. Oh Horace,
why (Dan could not refrain from observing to himself) have you
44o APES OF GOD
exposed me to such insults as these ! And he blushed at these as
who wouldn't !
Filled with an uncontrollable panic, Dan flung himself towards
the door, colliding with Willie Service, who was there a fraction
of a second before him. In his irrational consternation he seized
upon the handle and shook it violently, but like a vice the police-
manesque fist of William Ich Dien closed upon his fingers. Alas,
there was no escape ! For two pins Dan knew this fiend-in
human-shape (but with the soul of a policeman) attached to his
person by the heartless Horace, would have handcuffed him—
the demon incarnate would not have stuck at pinioning his legs
—he would have stuck at nothing—he would not have drawn
back in horror before chloroforming him for the operation of
undressing him utterly—spreadcagled upon the operating-table of
the terrible Bosun, and drawing on, piece by piece, that most vile
costume ! So, his heart beating a breakneck tattoo, he withdrew
from the door and he stood panting before the intolerably cheerful
personality of this period-nurse of gigantic tots, full of a diabolical
bustle of unmentionable preparation, now borne forward upon
the flood-tide of the coarsest high-spirits to a consummation of
the most total immodesty.—Pawing and fingering she was the
fearful cylinders ofsenseless silk, smoothing out the sprigs ofthe best
Honiton, testing the tautness of the rigging of the stays, counting
the scollops, locating the button-holes, seeing that the hooks went
into the eyes, hunting for the ends of prurient tape—behaving as
though the body were a smoking-room joke in fact of which the
legs were the cream (but in which the bust ran them pretty close)
—as if some Rowlandson had come back to earth to spread the
view that human beings were worth nothing more than things,
and that all were within the compass of his bold stylistic pen, from
bigwig to bowwow—women big coarse flowers open to the four
winds of heaven, stations for bees-glue or pollen upon the route of
the mystical bee—men an abstract species of great bulk, con
cerned with a dull system of unwieldy crafts—all men and women
justified in nothing but as objects pure and simple—to be models
standing to be drawn for the laughter of a Rowlandson !
" Now if this young gentleman will strip while I turn the
other way ! " roguishly crashed out the preposterous Bosun with
a fruity joyous indifference to all finer feeling that was absolutely
pre-French Revolution, and that was even fading beside the
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 441
death-bed of the last of the Stuarts (Queen Anne is dead that most
significant sentence in all the chapters of the long tale of England
—alas Queen Anne is dead—the Old Dominion and the Land of
Penn in full swing—the first sky-scraper in sight upon the dismal
horizon) : " Lord bless my heart I do declare the young gentle
man is blushing ! Why what next my pretty—to suppose an old
woman like me who's had three husbands two of them widowers
matters ! But there—I promise faithfully not to look ! Here are
the things laddie ! You know how to put them on don't you ! "
(Oh the old fiend—he could have struck her outright—she was
holding up the most horrible of the suggestive garments and
actually waving them up and down, a faint but meretricious
perfume escaped from them, and Dan did not know which way
to look). He simply averted his burning cheeks and downcast
eyes from these filthy frilled cylinders—with that beastly duality
that was tantamount to a carnal encounter (it was in the nature
of all such things that they should go in pairs too, which made it
worse) —oh that he might never again see or hear of such humiliat
ing leg-bags and breast-sacks, stomachers and calf-hose, that were
contrived to make a mockery of existence, or else why have
invented them at all !
But the hearty old hen would have her way and turned her
back with a roguish discretion—he could have struck her upon it
with the flat of his hand for being so extremely beastly !
" Hurry up you ! " said Willie Service. " We're all waiting
for you ! "
But hardly had Willie Service given vent to this coarse and
bullying remark when the door at his back flew open with as it
were violent ceremony, and he staggered with the impact before
he could remove himself. This was succeeded by a ceremonious
pause, then a heated messenger appeared, with majestic haste, in
the entrance—an osmundian footman, cheap but showy.
" His lordship has been injured in the kneecap by a saw ! "
in a hollow drawl this man announced, as if he had been breaking
the stillness of a room with a Viscount and Viscountess ftfeecup
Byassor !
Mrs. Bosun wheeled about, with the precision of a buxom top
of good manufacture, the solicitude of generations of brawny
brisket-bred mothers-of-men pictured posthumously in her merely
period-face, which only had two expressions and this was the other.
 442 APES OF GOD
" His lordship—injured ! " she cried, taking a smart step to
the rear.
" Yes, my Lord Phoebus madam ! His lordship has been
injured by a saw."
" A saw Giles ! "
" Yes madam. Her ladyship did it with a saw."
" You must be dreaming man ! Her ladyship do it ! "
" His lordship cannot come up the stairs, he says he would be
glad madam if you would go down at once madam and attend
to him. His lordship is in the study.—His lordship is with him."
Mrs. Bosun flung open her medicine chest, her hand went
automatically to the spot where the first aid articles were col
lected—for pricks, knocks, cuts and cigarette-end-burns—burnt
tongues, hot ears, bruises, pin-wounds and tender feet. She
snatched up the bottle of Arquebuscade and without needing any
» further prompting she rolled with dogged speed and ruddy dignity
out of her closet, followed by the impassible osmundian valet de
pied.
" Now get these things on " said Willie Service extremely
rudely. " I will look the other way ! "
This young man was more horrid with his brutal bullying
manner than Mrs. Bosun was jocund and vile—there was not a
period-pin to choose between the pair of them, except that Mrs.
Bosun could not help being like she was whereas Willie was
wilfully awful !
" All right " said Willie Service yawning. " I will go and
take a leak. When I come back mind you're ready—if you
haven't got them on I shall report you ! "
Blushing Dan covertly watched the pocket-martinet march off.
Then he went over to the door and double-locked and double-
bolted Mrs. Bosun's famous closet firmly upon the inside.

V. AT THE AMERICAN BAR.

A Praxiteles' statue of ill-luck—a squalid fate—placed at the
stair-head above the kitchen, Ratner listened to the voices of
Horace, the chef, Peters and Margolin below. He could see upon
his right the far-fetched prismatic lustres of the great saloon, that
was crowded with people who were strutting in a dance, to a music
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 443
of drums, with contralto and counterbass saxophones—period The
Present. The studied mass-energy of the music, hurrying over
precipices, swooping in switchbacks, rejoicing in gross proletarian
nigger-bumps, and swanee-squeals shot through with caustic cat
calls from the instrumentalists, depressed him. It was as if he
had written it himself ! But more still did the vibrations of the
voice of Horace Zagreus depress him—that it would be impossible
to attribute to Ratner's handiwork, with the autocratic dominant
strut of its sentences, but doubly stupid it was in Ratner's esti
mate, twice as tiresome as the idiot mass-sound of the marxistic
music.
" He is a genius ! " Horace was thundering below. That
accent of fatuous, finality that he knew so well ! His yellow face
took on a mildew of hatred. Upon each occasion when a new
planet (for his private solar system) swum into his ken, radiant
with what he called genius, this thunderous acclamation recurred
with Horace. There he went again ! " You should be proud to
have a genius in your kitchen ! It is the first time you have ever
had a genius in your kitchen ! "
Trying to make the young chef jealous ! Well well—Mar
golin ! The mildew of hatred almost smelt, like a fungus, upon
the face of Ratner, as he stood suspended at the stair-head.—But
the " genius " was not averse to hearing his own vuicc either—
Arch made himself heard in vocables collected between Smith-
field and Mile End, and Ratner responded with a sickly smiifc
(alas my poor brother !) 1o this pantomime : but the voice of
genius cracked beneath the weight of its natural hysteria—
Ramer could hear its collapse below, like the crash of a lush fat
duck's egg upon asphalt, and the chefs laugh crowed out, to
crown the accident, with imitation excitement—Ratner's lip
curled back and he sneered at the young chef.
One by one at last they came up, talking nonsense. They
were followed half-way by the boyish Swiss responsible for the
economics of the menus, his white cap waggling as he laughed.
Ratner moved away from the stair-head, as they caught him up,
after their long delays about the exit to the kitchen. There was a
small room with AMERICAN BAR above the open door.
Horace led them in at a grand stroll, Ratner brought up the
rear, the sting in the tail of the trio.
One of two negroes tossed an american mixture in a silver
444 APES OF GOD
shaker lazily, while he rolled his eyeballs, to show he was a negro,
and did not hide his teeth under a bushel.
" Is it compatible with our standing as players to ask this negro
for a drink ? " boomed Horace to himself, who was in fine fetUe
and high feather at the idea of the presence of " genius " under
his wing and protection, and sat down. Several consumers cast
glances upwards of abashed enquiry, at the self-styled " player."
" What will you have Horace ? " asked Margolin mounting
upon a tabouret at his side, very bustling and possessive, and full
himselfof the nuptials of his " genius " with an intense " admirer,"
Ratner stood outside the lunar warmth of this grotesque honey
moon ofthe mind, and its peculiar sentimentals—shivering slightly
in his Split-kit, which admitted the draughts of the period-farm
house.
" I will have a Madeira " said Horace. " What will you
have ? "
Behind the negro were dazzling ranks of bottles, decanters and
flasks of alcohol, of rainbow-tinted spirit, super-" colorful " as
possible for the coarse saxenglish nigger-palate, side by side with
black Eighteenth Century stoppered flagons, for the Sandeman
Sherry, Port and Madeira i926.
Horace lifted the glass of Madeira and put it to his lips.
" Bottlescrew days ! " he exclaimed before sipping it off.
" Happy days ! " howled Margolin happily to Horace.
Ratner with a furtive distaste put his glass to his mouth and,
his big flat grey eye-in-profile crawling upon the wall in front of
him, he allowed a trickle to enter his body.
" Oh double-racked—aguardiente fortified—white Jesuit Wine
I don't think ! " Horace clamoured at his glass.
Beaming at Margolin—the little frisky bride of his Under
standing—he employed the / don't think of his popular repertory
as a pretty compliment, and drank again and again, hosannah
after hosannah, to Archie in the Highest. Margolin smiled in
brotherly brutality at the afroamerican, who was whirling the
shaker.
STILL GENEVAS THE LIQUOR OF LIFE

A card pinned upon the bar-wall above a large black period-

bottle had these words lettered upon it.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 445
" Genevas ! " said Horace as he caught sight of it, pointing it
out to Ratner at once.
" Yes " Ratner said, looking over at it reluctantly and sulkily.
" Best unsweetened London Gin I should say."
" That's his national drink " Ratner said.
" Whose Ratner ? " Horace asked.
Ratner nodded towards the gold-toothed ex-cotton-helot at
the bar-counter.
" Are you referring to Africa ? "
" No—I suppose he's an american negro—Americans call
gin ."
"An american negro?" Horace muttered absent-mindedly,
for he was wondering if Margolin could sing, as he believed he
must have a splendid tenor voice—in fact he was turning over in his
mind whether genius would manifest itself by appearing as notes
out of the mouth or as a handicraft or in the field of engineering.
" I suppose he is." Ratner looked crossly askance at the love
sick wool-gathering genius-flirt, lost in this new affair of the mind.
" American probably " said Horace, watching Ratner in the
bar-mirror. Ratner with an abrupt movement perceived he was
being watched. He grinned angrily back in contempt, at this
fatuous effort to spy.
" Yes Horace ! "
" Are you an american negro ? " Horace asked the Black.
" Yeah ! " said the negro.
" Ach so—du bist doch lieber Neggerdeutsch nicht wahr ! "
" Nop boss I no comprenny. I'm no dutchman barss ! "
" Have you just come over from New York ? "
" No I've just come up from Athens last week."
" The Congo has come from the Acropolis ! The Congo has
actually come from the Acropolis ! " Mr. Zagreus chanted, lifting
his eyes heavenward, forgetting the boulevards of Athens in
imagining the african swamps, which were extremely unhealthy.
" Is he badly hurt ? " asked a person at Ratner's elbow with
black grease paint, counterfeiting the negritic hue, a compliment
to the black bar-tender, in the costume of an african rajah out of
Purchas or Mandcville since the guests had been invited to disguise
themselves as characters in classicalfiction.
" No he was only scratched " replied a tall man partly in
fencing-dress, representing Adolphe.
 446 APES OF GOD
" I thought he'd had his leg sawn off " said the first.
" Not quite " said the second.
" Didn't they send for the ambulance ? " the bogus despot as
seen by the untutored mind of early navigators asked, smiling at
his blackened face in the glass—at the broad-mindedness that made
it possible for him to eclipse his skin's white and become a
brotherly-black on the same footing as the nigger.
" He only had his trousers torn a little."
" Was that all ? Were you there ? "
" Yes, the saw wouldn't work it was too short and Robinia
snatched it away to send for another one and hit Phoebus on the
knee."
They both smiled in the glass at their faces and the negro
smiled.
Recalling the saw taken from the kitchen, Ratner handed in
to the gathering of grinning heads in the looking-glass his own
bitter contribution, an acid smirk of contempt. He found Horace
watching him again.
" Oughtn't we to see about fixing the screens Horace ? "
Ratner asked.
" There's no hurry," said Horace.
With the guilty stealth of the cat Ratner spat at his side—one
of the worst of his Complexes related to a sense of inferiority in
the matter of his spittle—Ratner felt that everyone was repelled
by and had a down on his spittle—Ratner was very cowed after
having spat, but the bitter taste remained in his mouth. There
was champagne on tap, with a nickel-spigot with butterfly stop
cock in the tinselled bottle-neck of the magnum, which was laid
upon its labelled flank. Archie held out a glass to the negro who
filled it from the bottle.
" Subject to market fluctuations, six bob a bottle ! " Horace
told him, as Archie held it frothing an inch from the counter.
" Fizz is my favourite wine ! " burst out in bubbling mock-
confidence Archie to Horace—letting him in behind the scenes
with a rush to have a privileged peep, giving away what was the
favourite beverage-wine of " genius "—when at its most sparkling,
at its youngest—the cork simply flying out at sweet seventeen,
and still going strong at barely twenty. He leered at Horace, and
Horace leered back at him. Ratner turned away his head as if it
were blown round upon his shoulder—one of his really capital
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 447
Complexes related to his face in such a situation as this, where he
was an outsider—it always felt like a face deprived of its nose as
pictured in a clinical treatise.
" Fizz is your favourite ! " crashed out Horace, demonstrating
by the fire of his response that he was not unworthy of the con
fidence of genius, and that he thrilled at the privileges accorded
him. " I can understand that Arch—that I can understand ! "—
the impact of his voice upon the air was so perfervid a slap that
even Ratner started—the outburst was overdone—even for some
body genius-mad as was he—this was a super-solicitous Boswell
of this baby, surely—could so much force not be intended to be silly ?
And even the subtle watchful sleep of Ratner's flat eye-in-profile
in the looking-glass seemed disturbed as if it smelt a rat.
" You are like champagne yourself Arch ! " after a pause
Mr. Zagreus thundered. " Like a magnum full of life—your
wit astonishes me ! If a jack-in-the-box popped out of a
bottle of Heidsick I could not be more astounded ! You are
champagne ! "
The watchful grey eye-in-profile in the mirror gave a positive
jump, as ifa fly had bitten it. Ratner turned abruptly and looked
Horace full in the face, with both eyes, for a brief moment, of
awful scrutiny.
" At six bob a bottle ? " Ratner asked in a business-like tone,
looking down gravely at the counter in front of him.
" No ! " shouted Horace in his ear, " no you old cask of sour-
grapes—Vinegar-man !—not at six bob a bottle ! Nineteen-nineteen
you hear—best year " he dropped his voice suddenly to average
pitch —" best mark ! "
" Ah ! " Ratner's eye was in the glass again, more vindictive
and more direct.
" Absolutely ! "
" Taste in wine Horace ."
"Yes Julius! Taste—yes."
" I was about to say taste in wine is purely subjective," Ratner
sneered.
" According to you," exclaimed Mr. Zagreus noisily, foaming
slightly at the mouth in a mock-rage or with mock-inspiration,
his eyes sparkling, " everything is subjective, you old relativist
Ratner—you relativist ! "
" Relativist ! "
448 APES OF GOD
" You deny objective reality even to yourself— and I for my
part take you at your word ! "
" Thank you Horace."
" Not at all, that is not at all difficult."
" I meant for believing me ! "
" Oh there is no belief attached, if that is what you mean ! "
" No—I am sorry Horace."
"But I have not made you the devil of my Morality for
nothing."
" Your Morality Horace ? "
" Let us use then the favourite expression of Lionel Kein,
Amorality—my Amorality."
" I don't understand. Arc you referring to a play ? "
" Not really, no, my words meant nothing. But such assis
tants as you are going cheap today you can't get away from that.
Three offers of help by post—I've got in my pocket."
" I know I'm not a genius Horace, if that's what you mean
Horace-—not even afinancial genius ! "
" You are all right. You were the first to my hand."
" I see, the first to your hand Horace."
" That is itJulius—you are handy. You have financial—talent! "
" Next time I shall not be so accessible," Ratner pretended to
retaliate, affecting to be on his dignity.
" That won't matter at all—there are plenty more where you
come from. As like as peas, as like as peas ! I could do it myself! "
That having passed off pleasantly and everything being put
upon the best indulgent basis, honours being easy, Horace asked
Ratner's opinion upon a matter of moment, in the following
manner, but as may easily be supposed Ratner was not much
pleased at being asked, and equally Zagreus paid little attention
to his responses.
" This party gives me an itch Julius to do a thing I have never
done before ! " said Horace.
" What is that Horace ? " asked Ratner.
" Write an epigram," Horace said.
" Oh. Write an epigram. Why don't you Horace ? " his
Split shadow that financial wizard put the question required by
the principles of the broadcast-dialogue.
" Because - I don't understand the laws of satire " Horace
explained to Ratner.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 449
And Ratner realized that Horace was preparing to " broad
cast" or to try out a new Pierpoint Record, and that he might
begin at any moment now. He resigned himself to listen to the
ubiquitous loud-speaker, with the hated voice of Pierpoint
starring.
" Are there laws in satire ? " asked the shadow-man.
" Certainly there are laws in satire," Horace assured him.
" What are they Horace ? " ever so humbly Ratner asked,
crawling up to his feet to learn what laws obtained in Satire.
Horace looked at him with some fixity and then he said with
deliberation :
" The comedy of the Stage has killed the comedy of Life."
"Yes? Hash?"
" Eccentricities have become less prominent. All the material
for legitimate comedy must vanish as civilization advances."
" If it advanced," Ratner helpfully objected.
" Yes, if it advanced. As it advances."
" Yes. Well ? " Ratner sought to confer a natural touch
upon this transaction by picking his nose in the glass with thought
ful eye—" and who said that Horace ? We are listening to Pier
point I suppose ? "
" No, those words are Hazlitt's."
Wrong again !—any one would do as well as he really—and
there were plenty more where he came from ! Finance was his
real province. Ratner had a movement of impatience.
" Well ? " he said.
Horace watched for his response in the glass : when the lips
had finished moving he went on.
" A century since it was said by Hazlitt that comic social types
upon the stage killed comedy-types in everyday life. Does it
not become increasingly difficult (Hazlitt asked) for people
to be ridiculous upon the scene of life, when upon the stage they
are constantly caricatured ? So, he said, life tends to grow
uniform and accentless."
" Well Horace—and what is your epigram ? "
" Today we may be pardoned for regarding that remark of
Hazlitt's as unsound."
" Yes we may Horace," Ratner smiled indulgently at Horace,
showing no more than the yellow tip of a fang.
" Don't you think ? "
45o APESOFGOD
" As we look round us ! " Ratner looked furtively round him.
He was evidently expected to look round him.
" Exactly. But Hazlitt probably meant in a stable society,
not subject to violent fluctuations and to abrupt decay."
" Yes I expect he did," Ratner hissed lightly, with an increase
of occulted impatience.
" He took it for granted Julius that the anglo-saxon society he
knew was a sort of fixture upon this earth or had a longer lease
than in fact it had."
" I expect so—we all think—yes I expect so Horace."
" Yes—but even then, however much good comedy might
teach people how to laugh, and at what to laugh, they would still
laugh at the wrong things—or if at the right, still Lord Osmund
and Lord Phoebus would be very little modified. Their skins are
too thick. Satire would break its spear upon such a hide."
" I have heard Lord Osmund is very thin-skinned."
" No that is a mistake. His skin is very thick."
" I believe he would be easy to wound," said Ratner, " by
satire."
" He would bellow at the least aspersion upon himself. But
he is thick."
" Thick-skinned, is he, yes."
" But there is another point Julius."
" Another point ! What is that Horace ? " Very indulgent
and talking-down-to-the-children, Ratner sneered at himself in
the glass, with a yellow-lidded blink and puff.
" True satire must be vicious, Hazlitt I believe was right, not
wrong as is generally thought in accusing Shakespeare of being
too good-natured."
" Did he ? "
" To be a satirist, at all events. The venom of Pope is what is
needed. The sense of delight—the expansion and the compassion
of Shakespeare is no good at all for that. He is a bad comic."
" I don't remember—did Hazlitt say that ? I have never read
Hazlitt." (He was a mere financial wizard ! )
Zagreus gave a broad quick grin to Ratner-off-his-guard, who
smiled back wanly, not in time.
" You've missed a treat ! " said Horace.
Julius nodded his head.
" I daresay," he said. It would not be the only treat—with a
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 451
glitter of the eyeball he conveyed the picture of a " treat " he
would not miss for something. But nature's gentleman had not
finished.
" To be a true satirist Ratner you must remain upon the
surface of existence."
" I see—upon the surface."
" You must never go underneath it."
" I don't see I'm afraid what you mean—but you will explain
Horace—go on, I'm sorry."
" No. Well, to regard people as ' good,' or as ' bad,' you will
concede, one must remain very much upon the surface to do
that."
" Must you Horace ? "
" In other words morality is superficial."
" Is it Horace ? "
" Morality is of the surface. But also the values that decide
whether a person is ridiculous or free from absurdity are pure
conventions of a society, they exist only in a surface-world, of two
dimensions."
" Well."
" You agree ? "
" Please go on."
" Underneath, if one pricks far enough, in the eyes of a Shake
speare we are all ridiculous—we all play those tricks that make
the angels weep."
" Some more than others Horace," Ratner humbly corrected
the rationalizing megaphone at his side bringing order into chaos
with broadsides of reason.
" That more and that less—such fractions are invisible to eyes
that are sufficiently unsealed."
" I suppose so, to eyes that are—as you say."
" Such a man is no satirist. God could not be a satirist."
Ratner grinned at God in the glass—the God of Horace.
" So satirists have to be half-blind, there is no other way."
" Perhaps you are right Horace ! " Very sub specie sternitatis.
" To the satirist a thing must present itself as more simple, it
must possess a stupid finality, it must be more rigidly contained
by its genera, than in fact anything is."
" There is not much left for the poor satirist Horace is there ! "
" What about the Public. The Public ! "
452 APES OF GOD
" Ah the Public ! "
" Yes the Public—that is most important of all—the Public."
" I had forgotten the Public Horace."
" Yes. But the audience of the satirist is composed of strictly
two-dimensional beings—such creatures can respond alone to a
quite simple, a superficial, image. It has to be a something cut
out of their prejudices and conventions."
" Yes."
" Shakespeare employed simple laughter too much, when he
was not handling tears, to be a satirist."
" You think so ? "
"Yes. I think so."
" I suppose he did if Pierpoint says so."
" Yes. Or his laughter had not the metallic bark that kills."
" Perhaps."
" There is no perhaps."
" No of course not ! "
" No."
" You are meaning Falstaff? "
" Falstaff was the Swan of Avon's soft spot."
Ratner off-duty sneered slowly at elizabethan knighthood.
" Satire to be good must be unfair and single-minded. To be
backed by intense anger is good—though absolutely not necessary."
" Absolutely not necessary."
" No not necessary—better without it."
" Oh."
" But you Ratner, if you had the talent, would make a good
satirist."
" You think so ? "
" I am persuaded that you would."
" I am not so sure about that Horace ! "
" Oh yes—if you had the talent."
"I know. If."
" Yes. And if your anger were more sustained ! "
Horace lay back and fanned himself, and smiled at Margolin,
who had been silent and now looked a little damped by so much
satire, and Ratner knew that the " broadcast " was at an end. He
darted a deadly look of solipsistic understanding at himself in the
mirror—with hooked frowning eye-in-profile, sank down in
relaxation, yawned with a bristling peep of fangs and sighed.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 453
" What did you think of it ? " Horace asked suddenly, in
almost a timid voice.
" What Horace ? "
Horace saw that his duettist was cross.
" The scene Julius—what we have just done together Julius."
" I thought it was good ! Was it all Pierpoint this time
Horace ? "
" Every word ! "
" Very striking ! "
" Except the gag where you come in."
" Oh, that was yours ? "
" Most of it." Horace leant over to speak in his car. " What
do you think I paid him for it ? "
Ratner grinned the bad grin of a black sheep—sheepish but
full of turpitude—a financial sheep.
" Do you really pay him—for things like that ? "
" No do be sensible ! Pay him ! Of course I pay Pierpoint
for everything I get ! The labourer's worthy of his hire."
" Yes."
" No but tell me Julius. What would you suppose I paid him
for that. Roughly ! " Zagreus coaxed him, to persuade him to
put his sense of values in motion quickly and tell him roughly
what he thought would be a fair price.
" I confess I can't guess."
" Not guess ! "
" No." Bored, smiling with difficulty. " I give it up Horace ! "
Horace paused a moment, uncertain and crestfallen.
" Well." He cleared his throat. " A tenner ! " he breathed
in Julius' ear.
" A cool tenner ! " said Margolin who had leant over to listen.
" A tenner ! Not bad was it ? "
" What for—about Hazlitt ? "
" From the epigram—that was the start—down to where you
came in—ifyou had talent—you remember ? "
" Oh that was his was it ? "
" Yes he said that would annoy you."
" He is quite wrong ! "
Mr. Zagreus stood up and laughed.
" You could not convince me of that."
" I don't wish to."
454 APES OF GOD
" I don't believe you."
" All right Horace !—What has happened to Dan ? "
Slipping into the part of agitator, at the service of all oppressed
classes—women, miners, children, Jews, horses, servants, negroes,
frogs, footballs, carpets during Spring-cleaning, Zoo-reptiles,
canaries and so forth—seeing all that might be got-the-better-of
and got-even-with thereby—all the husbands his feminism could
give horns to—fathers to rob of their disaffected children, riders to
be thrown off their rebellious horses, civilised habits to be sup
pressed—where no man would be willing to serve another—libraries
to be bonfired on the ground that the care of books competed
with the care of babies, carpets caused to flap round and hit
housewives in the eye, footballs to refuse to enter goalposts unless
people stopped kicking them, Zoo-reptiles to be caused to bite
their keepers, wild nature to be encouraged to flourish at the
expense of contriving intelligent Man—Ratner frowned, as he
asked where that poor young man Absolom might have got to,
and grinned at the same time to make it worse—the grin struggling
in vain with the frown, the frown stronger—righteousness more
than a match for mere friendship and fondness for Horace.
Horace Zagreus laughed and took Margolin by the arm.
" Yes where is Dan ! How do I know Julius ! "
" I think we ought to find out."
" Why Julius?"
" Oh I don't know ! "
" Don't you Julius?"
" I think he's a very sensitive young man—he might hang
himself from a tree ! "
Horace Zagreus frowned upon the Split-man.
" Your sympathy for others does you great credit—why should
Dan hang himself from a tree ? "
Ratner swallowed and put his ears back to show that against
the grain he had given up the battle for the Oppressed.
" Depression leads to suicide " Ratner muttered. " The
awkward age."
" Yours is a far awkwarder age Julius—when as now you are
no longer young and scarcely know what to call yourself ! "
Horace laughed, beaming pleasantly at the Split-man—in every
thing divided. " It isyou Ratner who may be found hanging from
a tree!"
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 455
Ratner smiled in the face of this sentimentalist with bitter
craft with the consciousness of the impossibility of any age being
" awkward " for such as him—entrenched in such opposite impulses
to those that produced these touchy romantic children.
" I must wash my hands " said Horace.

VI. T>AN AT THE ASSEMBLY.

A lovely tall young lady it was, of a most drooping and dreamy
presence—most modest of Merveilleuses that ever stepped upon a
palpitating planet screwed into position by a cruel polarity of sex
—in consequence compelled to advertise a neck of ivory, nipples
of coral, a jewelled ankle of heart-breaking beauty-line—extremi
ties, for the rest, superbly plantigrade—a miracle of blunt-heeled
—metatarsally-dominant—proportion—under the arch of whose
trotter a fairy coach made out of a cobnut could be readily
driven. What has not been the lot of girls since the first sombre
circles of Bluestockings assembled, or the rampant feminist denied
The Sex the bland receptive idiocy of does—that was embodied
once more in Dan—as if to say " You must come to poor defeated
Man if you desire to find what was once the Eternal Feminine—
alas only in Man is now to be found the true-blue Ladyhood or
Girlishness—by Man invented, by Man never betrayed ! " That
is what those sad and melting eyes, with a shrinking modesty,
proclaimed. With a timid and enquiring step, with a circum
spect eye, Dan wandered forth into the decorated garden ; by
the protective height of a box-hedge guarded from behind, upon
a retired garden seat he sat down—he sighed. Life was a lottery !
Oh Horace Horace—why hast thou willed me a woman ! Oh !
A few perfunctory Alcoves, furnished with supper-tables of
six covers, had been constructed beneath the grove of trees that
led up as an avenue to the french windows of the great saloon.
Two parties sat there at supper—upon a railway-platform hand-
trolley for food, tons of cold prog was pushed over to this party
from the kitchen, by hard-breathing attendants. The splashing of
water issuing from the hidden mouth of a mammoth gramophone
filled the air.
Suddenly the welkin rang with the shooting off of chambers,
with alarms and points of war. In all directions a rash of fresh
456 APES OF GOD
illuminations switched-on suffused the gardens with an inflamed
rufous glow, while green and blue tassels of fire sparkled sharply.
From behind the box-hedge came a smother of self-satisfied
voices, and then Lord Phoebus quickly made his appearance,
leading a group of ladies and gentlemen, to whom he loftily
exclaimed—
" Yes but come and see the Bonassus—yes the Bonn-nass-
suss ! It's a most wonderful animal ! There are only six in
existence. Yes—it is a Bonassus. It is a sort of Ape ! "
" Is it alive ? " asked a guest, while, limping heavily with his
bandaged leg, where he had been wounded by the saw, Lord
Phoebus hurried them forward at breakneck speed, to see the
Bonassus.
" Too much alive at times " Lord Phoebus grimly drawled,
through set-teeth—for although he made light of the terrible
wound in his knee-pan, it was not to be supposed that a less
determined person would have been able, with such an alarming
handicap, to conduct a party of people to look at the Bonassus.
" Very much alive indeed I'm afraid—you have to be very care
ful ! But if you're with me there is really not much danger ! No.
Not very much danger ! I can manage the Bonassus better than
anybody. So I am told ! "
" I do think Phoebus is terribly brave don't you—I shouldn't
like to have to look after a Bonassus ! "
" I think it's too marvellous the way Phoebus is using his leg
as though nothing were the matter at all ! Ten minutes ago he
couldn't stand up ! "
" I know ! I think Phoebus is terribly brave ! "
" Have you had the Bonassus long—is it yours Phoebus or is
it Osmund's ? "
" No not long. Cockeye sent him to me as a birthday
present ! "
" A birthday present ! " The guest's voice conveyed that he
scarcely believed that there could be a birthday in the family of
Finnian Shaw !
" Yes a birthday present ! "
" How marvellous ! I think Cockeye is sweet ! "
" Is this Bonassus a birthday present to you from Cockeye
Phoebus ! "
" Yes from Cockeye. I must show you Cockeye's letter. /
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 457
didn't know what to give you for your birthday so I thought I would send
you this ridiculous Bonassus ! "
" Oh how good that is—I adore Cockeye ! "
" What a terribly good story ! "
" I think that's too marvellous ! I do want to see Cockeye's
letter Phoebus ! "
" I think Cockeye is too marvellous don't you ! "
" Terribly funny ! "
" I think that's too marvellous ! "
Feeling that the situation he had chosen was getting decidedly
popular or threatened to and was too much exposed to the passage
of tumultuous persons of either sex or of both sexes at once—who
might eventually seeing him there accost him, taking advantage of
his isolation—Dan rose from the bench. Also if there was to be
Fireworks—and he remarked in the distance certain preparations
that distinctly pointed to that—he did not want to be there out-
of-doors at all as he was afraid of rockets—which as is well known
go up but also come back again to earth when least expected with
their charred sticks, and he had heard somebody say Fireworks
behind the hedge. Beyond the miniature bandstand, where the
Mazes were, he had heard a prolonged squeal which he took to be
human—he had shivered and as he did not at all relish the idea
of the Bonassus, he thought he would step into the house. He had
remarked many Apes already this evening but not an ape of the
kind hinted at by Lord Phoebus (whom he considered particu
larly intrepid) an ape which, if that gentleman was to be believed,
entertained a fond partiality for him—but would one, Dan
reflected, be justified in the expectation that—should it meet a
strange young lady in the dark of the garden—it would regard
her with a similar favour ? Nothing but the blind pride of one of
nature's vestrymen could cause one to believe it ! No, thought
Dan, the Bonassus would scarcely change its spots to accommodate
him, but in spite of the lanterns would immediately proceed to
devour him, should he find him alone upon a garden seat, with
out a protector. At that moment a further discharge of muzzle-
loaders beyond the house did not tend to reassure his feverishly
beating heart—he hastened his steps.—Everything considered, the
crowds inside were safer than the solitudes without.
But from the first moment of that starblasted afternoon when
he had agreed to undergo the disciplines imposed upon the Ape
458 APES OF GOD
hunter by Horace, until this tremulous interval—left quite to
his own devices by his friend and master—he had never felt so
low. Even a new thought came into his mind to add to his
confusion : altering his opinions without the slightest reservation
—without remorse as without provocation—Horace might grow
to forget the very existence of his genius, upon the discovery of
which their pact had been based. Insignificant as he was—by
comparison with his paragon—he yet felt wounded as it were in
Aii genius—at all the neglect he was called upon to suffer. Humbly
he arraigned his great preceptor, backing his charges with
proofs, most ably led—pragmatical and overbusy as he knew
these complaints would appear if he were suddenly confronted
with their irresistible object. But he did not think Horace could
be entirely absolved from the charge of unkindness, for allowing
him to wander dressed as a girl, alone at night, in this unholy and
old-fangled garden, where if he had not been a prudent young
man he might have fallen into the mazes that Mrs. Bosun had
told him to beware of—from which had issued that peculiar only
half-human cry—suggestive of the violent enterprises of some
wretch who perhaps had his lair in those ill-begotten Mazes.
Before doing anything else Dan just thought he would go to
the lavatory and make use of the vaseline upon his right foot
which was the worse of the two and which really he could not
bear much longer, and he entered into a dark back-door and
found himself in a low passage where in the obscurity he tripped
against a disused period-jackback for the home-brew, and shinned
himself with a cry of pain. There was a red light at the end of
the passage which was a long one : as he approached the rose-lit
door the body of a large woman who evidently knew her own
mind burst out of the dark wall just at his side dressed in a lute
string trollopee (with a couple of twin chicks upon her heels,
bunters in stuff gowns) howling " This way ! " and in an incon
tinent rush they all charged into the red door. What an escape
—it was a Ladies and Dan rapidly stepped through the door still
quivering with the late explosive passage of the three women, and
Dan understood as if in a flash that he was a girl to all intents
and purposes, but that ds a consequence all regular places of
retirement were barred to him, both dexter and sinister, both
cock and hen, and he sadly limped down what seemed a service-
passage, wondering what next was in store for him, when he
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 459
approached a lighted opening and noticed it was a Gentlemen.
As he passed it he could not help out of the corner of his eye with
a little envy looking in, when, in that single glance (for imme
diately he hastened his steps and reversed his head and the
picture had gone by for ever) he perceived Horace in the midst
of a number of persons in fancy-dress attending to their make-up
or joking and some were washing their hands in a row of basins.
Horace sat upon a table, wiping his hands upon a towel and
there in front of him stood Margolin, showing off as usual,
planted in the centre of the picture. Though they evinced some
surprise, as who would not, at his coarse antics, the guests seemed
to desire not to notice this discouraging buffoon. Holding up
the furcula of his first two fingers to express 2 (as if he had
expected Horace to seize his merry-thought and wish) Arch gasped
with unbecoming mirth—with that wheezing sound of slightly
punctured gutta-percha squeezed, or that a mouse makes with
its throat like compressed indiarubber, and Dan felt quite sick at
the mad message of mirth of this obscene wind-pipe. It had been
for the fraction of a moment—as a line is the flux of a point, so
from the imperceptible pause that his astonishment at coming
upon them so unexpectedly had caused him to make Dan glided
forward—disgraced in his feminine dress as he felt—barred bodily
from all places set aside for his legitimate sex—he saw those
enervated masculine prerogatives dissipated in a breath ! He
was no longer a man ! In a sense was he not an outcast of sex !
He was an outcast !
But now he had turned into another passage and could collect
himself, although to his left sounded that hungry roar in close
proximity, where lay the great saloon. Abruptly, in the neigh
bourhood of his head, a Jack-o-the-clock called Kook-Koo and
looking up he observed the Welsh Ambassador withdrawing,
after having delivered itself of this untimely remark. It was half-
past ten. An animal ofwhom no one was fond—it got through life
on account of this solitary remark, nesting in timepieces—Dan was
rather afraid of these birds but it was clever to use them for that !
Entering the crowded saloon, Dan noticed at the farther end
the small gallery, that held the musicians. At present they were
enjoying an interval : they were six negroes—they smoked
cigarettes and regarded with cold pity the mob beneath them,
which danced to their music, masses of white fools !
46o APES OF GOD
Dan found a seat with lowered eyes, and, once seated, gave
himself up to a relentless melancholy. The hurried glimpse of
Horace, in the company of Margolin, had been particularly dis
tressing—a blow in the back in fact : thus to see, without himself
being seen, these two—for now he must think of them together,
not of one without the other—was worse than being met without
speaking.
Committing himself to a first venturesome glance or two at
the surrounding panorama, Dan distinguished a great number of
variously costumed individuals—ranging from the Cyclops,
apparently, or Cain and Abel it seemed, down to Peter Pan or
perhaps Prufrock. All seemed profoundly conscious of the recti
tude of their own appearance, most had the air of being highly
satisfied to be found where God in his infinite wisdom had placed
them—to assemble and roar for a while at Lord Osmund's Lenten
Party.
After the solitude of the garden this place was almost restful
—after the Bonassus, after the Mazes, after the rockets. So Dan
sat a long time it seemed, and rested. The orchestra crashed with
the fulsome stutter of a maudlin giant. A sluggish rhythm stirred
up the dense mass—this was driven about, in an eccentric vortex.
Then with a crash the band stopped, to start its huge stammering
again after a storm of clapping, and so forth, and Dan found him
selfin the midst of another interval, wondering if he might attempt
the discovery of some secluded spot once more, in order to apply
the vaseline, when he remembered the Bonassus. But at that
moment when he had just remembered the Bonassus, there was a
great outcry : involuntarily he raised his head—he saw a strangely
painted half-naked man rush past him with sub-human roar.
The apparition had enormous red asses' ears. Upon the heels of
this fugitive appeared Lord Phoebus, very flushed, resentfully
aloof from everything about him. The whole cross manner of
Lord Phoebus plainly showed that he had been compelled to
enter a place that nothing but an emergency of some sort would
have induced him to come to : without allowing his eyes to
recognize their shapes as individual men, much less as guests of
his brother or himself, he dashed into the throng assembled in the
interests of Gossip, taller than most there with his three inches
over six-foot, in pursuit of his red-eared quarry.
" Stop that animal ! " he was vociferating loftily as he ran.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 461
" He has escaped ! Be careful how you catch him. It is the
Bonassus—you must be careful to seize him by the right ear !
What ? Yes—it is a Bonassus ! "
" Is it a Bonassus ? "
" Yes it is a Bonassus ! "
Lord Phoebus rudely pushing to right and left his guests,
disappeared in the crowd. All the assembly followed the inci
dents of the chase. In a moment the Bonassus, still hunted by
Lord Phoebus, disappeared at a distant exit. The band gave a
gargantuan belch, followed by drum-salvoes until further orders.
Then it whined out in its nose a little sugar-stick complaint—
about a very little, much misjudged, unimportant person.
" Phoebus looked rather pale I thought—he does not like
parties," said a guest and anyone would have known at once the
guest was an intimate friend and probably dined in Chelsea every
night when they were in town with the brothers Finnian Shaw.
" So I've heard " said another more modest party-goer.
" I think he looks wonderfully decorative " said a lady-guest,
providing the sex-note demanded by the Gossip-situation—the
homage of the eye, at the passage of a god, from a humble non-
friend—anonymous mover in the best Gossip-circles, but very
much opposite-sex—deliciously that.
Dan considered the Bonassus. Was it a man dressed up ? He
felt slightly less afraid of the dark spots in the garden now.—But
a new terror was substituted for the Bonassus—multitude, like
solitude, held its particular bogey-man, the Crowd now gave him
a taste of its quality. And a most mettlesome crowd it turned out
to be, possessing a mettlesome champion.
In one of his periodic light-house-like outward sweeps en
dessous (of his veiled and melting—bronze-velvet violet-shadowed
—eyes) Dan began to remark a suspiciously loitering stately figure,
who was observing him in a pointed manner, with an expression
that sought to suggest—so it seemed—that they two had some
secret between them—that it was my word a terribly amusing one
—for the horrid man, on the second occasion, bit his finger—
although he was plainly an elderly man—as people do when they
arc shy. The conclusion was unavoidable—the man was suggest
ing that he Dan was shy and abashed—he mistook him for a girl
of course and Dan blushed deeply and turned away his head—
to show the man he wanted to have nothing to do with him.
 46a APES OF GOD
But in a moment this obnoxious person, with the most immov
able smiling assurance, had come up quite close to him. That
he must conclude him a fool was obvious—Dan forgetting that he
was a girl started moping. But to Dan's dismay then this monster
made a leg, quizzing him very roguishly with a dancing eye. To
say that Dan shunned the occasion of speaking with this foppish
stranger of advancing years would ill convey the shrinking
manner he had of expressing his desire to be left in peace. But
to put off a designing fop with undisguised signs of mild aversion
is of all attempts the most chimerical and the least likely to suc
ceed. The gentleman's costume denoted research after elegance
that was impertinent in one so past the zenith of his manly charm,
with legs so shrunken and with such bloated saucers for his eyes
to squat in withal, and such a web of blood-vessels risen up like a
lye into his cheeks : whereas his breeding, if breeding it might be
called that breeding was none, bore all the stamp of a pastiche
artifice.—To what attribute this booming see-saw delivery too—
which sought to confer a significance upon the most trivial
remark ?—to nothing but a Nineties-culture, from that it must
date, where this fatuous relic must have been a buck in the
shadow of Oscar—oh an Ape-of-god ofNinety-one.—I think I have
done with assemblies, thought Dan to himself and attempted to
forget the presence of this importunate individual—But soon the
voice followed the smiling presence. And it was of such a brazen
tone that it deafened Dan a little and he was compelled to introduce
his forefinger at last furtively into his ear because it was singing.
" I humbly beg pardon ! " boomed this great clap-trap beau,
with a mince, " for breaking in upon—what I conjecture—must
have been, seeing its subject—the most delicious of reveries ! "
and this mannequin from the salon of Madame de Lespinasse,
compounded of every egregious gallic trick, to outwit the animal
world, took a pinch of tabac d'Espagne, of the powder of the
Spanish Indies, tiptoeing at Dan's side. " But if I may be so far
allowed "—again he paused, to take snuff, and to enable the last
booming of allowed to die away upon the air—" the honour and
happiness Madam—if I may presume—if I am not so unhappy as
to have been the cause—of a dislocation of some precious train of
thought ! " and he actually inflicted upon his forefinger a vicious
bite, as if very bashful and contrite, " if the honour and happiness
—however undeserved—might yet Madam fall to my lot ! "
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 463
At this point Dan's admirer had the assurance to sink, with a
sweeping movement to remove the ponderous flaps of his laced
coat and laced waistcoat from the diminishing space between his
posteriors and the seat of the chair by the side of Dan : then with
a gliding movement, like the sortie of a nest of snakes, his lanky
fingers came out of his gigantic sleeve-cuffs and en bloc they
firmly seized the hand of Dan.
Snatching his hand away Dan made to rise but the gentleman
rose too and Dan sat down once more, while the gentleman stood
over him, with an invariable graceful flowering of the lip-tips of
the perfection of insolence, stolen from the portraits of some
understudy of Talleyrand, of Etienne de Mortemart, or of Philippe
de Vendome.
The wig of clubbed hair of this outrageous coxcomb was
attached behind his head en baton with a fathom of ribbon, of a
silk of madder-plum, whereas its foretop mounted towards the
lavishly decorated ceiling of the resplendent saloon where a
hundred bestial cupids that were a pink litter of pseudo-Picassos
(pneumatic—with the wind with which they were inflated whist
ling out of their rosebud-mouths—ill assorted with the stolid
carving of Grinling Gibbons upon the walls and fireplaces) swam
in a tormented musical ride, high above the stalactitic lustres—
while to Lord Osmund's bathing-closet elsewhere (absconding
from the crowded conditions that prevailed upon the ceiling) a
solitary plump cupid had winged its way and (blowing like a por
poise from its rosebud mouth-piece) was privy to his lordship's
testy morning despair—over the mounting tide of his flaccidity,
the alarming growth of his natural adipose bustle (that only a
cache-bdtard would be adequate to disguise) as he saw himself, in
all the naked pomp of his all-too-solid flesh, reflected within a
venetian mirror (of course in two pieces) bordered with bold
rosettes of Iapis-lazuli crystals.
" But allow me Madam so far to presume ! " fell the brazen
drone of the old period-piece of a painted man-harlot upon the
eardrum of Dan " the irresistible charm—if I may venture to
impute to myself—some feeble proportion of unconvincing discern
ment—of the grace ! " he threw a thunder of wonder into this long-
drawn syllable, " with which Madam you with such infinite
sweetness discover—your partial displeasure "—the snuff-box
snapped, as the hideous pretence of exalted coxcombry swept his
464 APES OF GOD
body towards the ground, and he waved his hand with an awful
fatuity—" is more pon honour than mere mortal Madam—is able
entirely to withstand ! "
Again he made a leg—was it ?—and was contemplating another
when it appeared he changed his mind, and disposed himself to
resume his position (having stood long enough, in the interests of
decorum) at the side of Dan. Once again the long and dandified
fingers abandoned their ambush within the striped sleeve-cuffs
and took possession of the fingers of the bashful Dan—and when
anew the large hand fled, pursued it into what would have been—
had Dan been the girl he seemed—his lap.
But this was far more than Dan was able to tolerate and it had
gone too far already by a good many lengths, so recovering from
his disconsolate droop—his cheeks the sunset hue of shame, his
eyes expressing nothing it is true that might be termed pugnacious
and yet with a sort of command in their mute appeal—Dan said
distinctly—
" Sir you are mistaken—I am not ."
But before he could say ' a girl,' this ancient period-strumpet
of a bedizened man (upon a pattern drawn from a time of swords
and silk, when men were in their floweriest scent—savagely
tattooed with braid—intoxicated with their own snuff—forever on
tiptoe—disgusted with the mannish-—wooing Woman after the
fashion of women) burst in and silenced him, quenching his words
with a deluge of vocables—ill-chosen, rapid and meaningless—an
imperious gesture to exact silence coming first, tongue-tying Dan
—from which indeed Dan shrank as from a blow.
" Madam !—even if forever I should forfeit your esteem—
Heaven avert the omen !—indeed I must vehemently demur ! "
He paused with shining eyes, as his vehemence had used up all
the breath in his old bag-pipe. " I must implore you Madam not
to disavow—a condition in consequence of which " and he rolled
his eyes about upon Dan's spurious femininities until Dan had a
violent spasm of alarm " —I am your slave—borne captive in your
beauty's chains.—No, disavow yourself you shall not !—stand by
and see you turn your back—however lovely—upon this fair self-
that-is-not-yourself—I will not hear of it !—As you appear so must
you be ! "
This language of an inflamed heart put Dan into such strong
confusion that for a moment he lost the sense of where he was and
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 465
even for a moment seemed to smile. Seeing this, his tormentor
brassily challenged at once.
" If I am so unhappy as to offend—do not seek to spare me
Madam—strike home at once !—your beauty is such—that I can
but commend my heart to your care—for to me it is lost for
ever ! "
Thunderstruck at all these abrupt and masterful declarations
Dan was unable any further to move hand or foot. Present to
his surroundings once more, he understood that here was a situa
tion such as, in his most apprehensive moments, he had far from
foreseen. Put an end to this fearful misunderstanding he must !
Oh surely this horrid man did not guess the truth !—there was
something in that too-liquid eye that troubled him more than
should even the fierce glances of a Don Juan. Dan made an effort
over himself of which he had scarcely believed himself capable.
" Sir " he said in an unsteady whispering voice " you are
totally mistaken. I am not a ."
" Oh Madam ! " cried this egregious period-being with his
deafening machine-voice just as Dan was about to say a girl, the
words simply struck dead upon his agitated lips—" Oh madam
refrain—refrain from informing me of what you are not—overlook
my presumption—if I presume too much—Madam it is, I protest
—more than should be required of me—even by you—to hear in
patience—from those lovely lips—accounts of what you are not.—
Oh Madam there is no NOT."
He waved his hand to dispel from the atmosphere any not
that might be lingering there.
Distressed beyond the point of maidenly endurance, blushing
freely and profusely all over the cut-away neck—oh for a roman
chin-cloth or a heavy wimple to cover neck shoulder, chin, but
especially ears—which blushed brightly away by themselves and
made him feel one big blaze ofshame from tip to toe !—(oh why had
he been thrust into this world as a sort of Merveilleuse—though
with pack thread he had succeeded in sewing up the nasty slashes
in the skirt).
" Loveliest creature—do not suffer me to distress you—if I
have declared myself—with too unseemly a suddenness—your
servant for evermore—you can only impute it to your loveliness—
not to some fault of mine ! "
Dan could not recollect a time when he had been so stupefied
466 APES OF GOD
with fear.—Oh faithless Horace (his downcast eyes seemed to
exclaim) to desert him in this heartless manner—dressed in this
travesty of himself—as if he had not drawn the blood that blushed
for him, so continually, from a princely phylum, of several houses
of irish kings—if they had houses—and in spite of the associations
of his patronymic with King Henry the Eighth !
" If I might flatter myself to believe " the voice of his perse-
corut again crashed out in his ear, in brazen period-drawl—
" that I might attribute " and with an intolerable leisurely imita
tion of The Graces (and always The Graces !) he again took snuff,
" not alone to your pardonable distress—at the contact of such an
unworthy object—but to some happy confusion of innocence—
those marks of concern—to some miscegenation—of a slight pinch
of fear with a tincture of pleasure !—if that is not too bold a con
jecture !—Madam it shall henceforth—be the whole study of my
thoughts—so to deserve——."
The metallic drone continued, the brazen drawl buzzed upon
the surface of his ear, but meanwhile to his extreme consternation
this ungovernable mock-personage at his side (in the midst of his
stately snuff-taking halts) had introduced a hand behind his body.
There this hand now familiarly rested upon the odious dress-
improver—which was that part of this vile costume at the back
lying upon the rear of the pelvic feminine opulence of the wearer
for whom the dress had been destined (not a man like himself)
designed to supply the true feminine line—based upon large
nutritive systems and a horrid hip-lavishness—and render its
possessor duly steatopygous, a match for the Hottentot.
" Oh sir " exclaimed Dan faintly " you are in error—I am
not ."
" NOT ! " howled the monster beside him at this, prancing
upon his chair at Dan's not, in a tantrum of tawdry protestation—
" Never Madam let me hear—as long as I live ! " he wailed
archly—" that objectionable Not again—which you inflict upon
me out of cruelty—because of the pain you rightly conjecture
that it causes !—You are not Madam like any other woman in the
world—Yes !—not one Madam that is ever likely to be overlooked
—in however vast an assembly—not one that ever could be for
gotten—by one who has been privileged to behold you—not
Madam indeed of this earth at all I believe !—Those alone are
the NOTS—which your unworthy servant—under correction dear
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 467
princess !—as the abject custodian—of your far more than mortal
beauty—is able, yes even from yourself—Madam—to allow ! "
And even as he spoke, in this strangely exalted and overbearing
fashion, he moved up and down the dress-improver, with his bold
didactic hand—until Dan came to feel, with bodily nausea, that
his a tergo extension was quite of a feminine order—in inordinate
provocation, in the feminine way—to a disconcerting distance !
Also he was beyond measure terrified lest this incalculable per
sonality at present laying siege to him, under a misapprehension,
might cause his " improver " to leave its moorings altogether,
when he would be eternally disgraced—for he could not avoid
entering into the part and it was uncommonly uncomfortable—
being in a woman's skin he could not help but feel that should he
loose his " improver "—the disgustingly occulted source of his
pelvic portentousness—he would be disgraced for ever.
Overwrought at length to a pitch where he could no longer
seek relief in a mere blush—cornered, as he felt it, and upon the
point of some decisive humiliation, Dan carried his hand to his
too open breast and drew out the tiny cambric handkerchief
which with devilish forethought had been placed there by the evil
Bosun with the remainder of the impossible wardrobe. Armed
with this lilliputian tear-sponge, he quite broke down. Applying
the handkerchief to the upper part of his face, where the eyes
were already crying, he commenced to sob with hushed little
sounds like a muted sneeze, with mild spasms of the breast which
moved up and down along the customary feminine lines, while
with his free hand he turned his attention to the place where the
absurd " improver " was still an object of abstracted interest to
the offensive gentleman who was making things so difficult for
him, and panted simply, in a last lisp of hurried pleading—
" Don't ! "
" Oh Madam ! " positively roared the ignoble personage
beside him at this, " Oh Madam—what is this that I have lived
to see !—Most beauteous of womankind—is it possible that my
eyes deceive me—or is the sparkle of those lovely eyes all turned
to water !—Can such a piece of perfection—be acquainted with
the name of Sorrow—oh Goddess is this a graceful subterfuge—
so that the poor mortal may feel less dazzled in your presence—
believing that he sees—in your affected forlornness a simple mortal
—in place of a Goddess !"
468 APES OF GOD
So spiritless and dejected as no longer greatly to care what
sort of figure he might cut, Dan steadily wept into the small
scented handkerchief (which smelt of distant roses, in gardens
that were swept with fardingales, centuries off across the misty
time-tracts). His heart was weighted with a heaviness against
which no effort of his could prevail and which could only be
expressed—if at all—by the one ponderous word never far distant
from his loyal lips—namely HORACE. He was the sport of
chance ! But when he felt the sleeve-cuffed period-arms of this
abominable old beau encircling his waist, he experienced a last
spasm of the sense of self-preservation. He withdrew himself with
a tearful energy from this insidious conjunction.
" If I have the unhappiness to offend ! " exclaimed his self-
appointed protector " Oh then Madam—I beseech you !"
But all of a sudden those grating sounds occurred which
announce the running-down, in other instances, of machines-for-
talking. Something appeared to check that brazen declamation
in mid-career. Dan felt the officious fingers relax, the pressure of
the arms grew less oppressive. Through his tear-dimmed eyes
Dan was just able to perceive a new figure, evidently present to
his aggressor, in some ominous way—who had thrust himself
suddenly into the picture. He heard himself asked in a voice of
the coldest command, in accents that immediately dispelled the
treacherous mists of period-illusion. The new accents were the
accents of everyday—even a thought cockney—there was an ow
and aw, faint but reassuring, in the new sounds.
" Are you Daniel Boleyn ? "
Dan nodded violently-^)** he was Dan !—he nodded frantic
ally that he was that identical Dan—to this protector of his youth
—with a transport of gratitude ! But as he did so a new fear
assailed him—what if the possessor of this business-like voice were
perhaps a detective, and were about to accuse him of misbehaviour
and even arrest him for being disguised as a woman ? It was not
allowed. To this the action of Horace had exposed him !
" This is a man sir ! " Dan heard the newcomer saying and
at that the discomfited fop sprang up in affected consternation.
" A man ! But sir you must be deceived—this beauteous
creature can be no man—for I have never seen a son of man so
fair!"
" This is a man ! "
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 469
" Oh sir—no man that ever breathed—possessed such lips and
such a neck as these ! "
And then Dan heard the newcomer, a little bit to his surprise,
say—
" That's enough ! Don't waste my time but beat it ! "
Quite shrill the fop retorted with great period-scorn—
" A nice expression I must say to use before a lady—beeet it ! "
But the newcomer became rougher at once, stung at the
suggestion, it seemed, that he was wanting in period-breeding.
" Get to hell out of this ! "
" Better still ! " shrilled back the beau.
" He is in my charge. Cut the cackle Arthur—I'm pressed
for time ! "
" In your charge ! "
" Yes in my charge ! And it would not be the first time Harry
Caldicott " (the roll of the Adelphi melodrama came through to
Dan of the it would not be thefirst time—Harry Caldicott !) " that you
had attempted a public seduction ! "
Dan could not see the narrowing of the eyes to feline film-star-
slits, nor clenching of cow-boy fists, but the modern cinema was
upon a sudden all about him : the dropping of the voice at the
unmasking of the villain, when the name was uttered and " Harry
Caldicott " stood revealed, came straight out of the Dime-days
and the popular photoplay—but at the same time Dan understood
that he had run a very great risk in this ill-starred assembly : for
this fearful protagonist of period-romance, an old and cunning
hand—swimming with such diabolical assurance in the currents
of this ridotto, was none other than a notorious expert in public
seduction and Dan had had as providential an escape as any man
dressed as a woman had ever had in public—snatched in the nick
of time from the encirclement of these deceitful advances, in a
public function, under the very noses of a thousand guests.
As Dan's deliverer led him away there was some small stir.
They were followed by a hush and a universal whisper. His
magnificent deliverer—whom he could not see, and dared not
have looked at ifhe could—conducted him into the garden. There,
upon the same bench upon which he had sat before—just after
the forcible transformation of his sex—he found himself again—
this time not unaccompanied.—Dan wiped his eyes and blew his
nose.
47o APES OF GOD

VII. BLACKSHIRT.
Now Dan was able, after a short period had elapsed, to examine
his benefactor. A few furtive glances showed him that he was in
the company of a young, dark-faced, black-shirted person, very
trim and solemn, and he felt himself immediately prepossessed in
his favour, apart from the fact that his gratitude would have
made of the most lamentable duck a dazzling swan, under the
circumstances. His young rescuer was just sitting there and
watching a bright supper-party of sparkling persons, which now
occupied the Alcove nearest to the house. A strange young man !
—he took no notice of Dan and was as silent as recently he had
been strong. A very nice young man indeed !
Gradually Dan felt that this person must experience an utter
contempt for him and regard him as nothing but a cry-baby.
Perhaps that might be the reason for his prolonged indifference
to his person upon the seat beside him. Or perhaps the young
man did not like girls—perhaps although he knew that Dan was
not a girl he felt awkward, as if a girl had been seated there at
the side of him. Perhaps ! But he did not look like the sort of
young man who would take much notice of a girl or feel sky at
anything. This was not at all a shy young man—he was just an
indifferent young man—who was occupied with his private
thoughts as a young man should be.
He did not like however to attract the young man's attention,
he would not risk that. They just sat side by side for upwards of
five minutes. The night-air had by this time dissipated the worst
effects of his ghastly experiences with the treacherous elderly
period-beau, in the great saloon. That had been touch and go !
Dan longed for the gift of words (enjoyed in such a superlative
degree by all his relatives, with whom speech was abundant and
continuous—all their thoughts clothing themselves in words so
that they spoke them aloud all the time, with great volubility—
gift withheld mysteriously from him). He wished to express
something to this ironfisted altruist—dressed, he timidly and tenta
tively reflected, as Signor Mussolini, the italian potentate in the
political Dime Novel of Modern Rome—that boy-scout Caesar—
oh how he wished he could seize this young man's hand and cry
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 471
Thank you for he was very thankful : but no words came and so
he sat very depressed in consequence—this young man might
never know how terribly thankful he could be !
But, to his intense surprise, he heard himself saying—in a
broken voice it was perfectly true—while he discovered his head
unexpectedly turned towards his new protector—
" You must think me a terrible cry-baby ! "
Where the courage had come from to utter this remark Dan
never knew. It must have been his Genius speaking !—he was at
a loss to see how otherwise these unexpected words could have
found their way to his lips—there was no other means of account
ing for it at all.
" I have come here to-night as The Fascist and I have two
companions. They are also fascists ! " the strange young man
said at once. He looked away again, then he turned back. He
said—
" I have a ticket admitting A Coachful."
The young man drew out of his pocket an invitation card
with a design upon it, cubed and coloured of a harlequin.
" Six persons ! A Coachful."
The young man looked at him in the way that men look at
each other who fight rivers in solitary spots, all day long; and
when they rest have plenty of time. The bench was a log. Water
splashed behind the chestnuts. There must be log-cabins.
" We are only three," the young man said slowly " I could
not find more than two to come with me."
Dan felt somehow sorry at once for this lonely young man—
who had only been able to find two to come with him, in spite of
the fact that he had a ticket for six.
" We are all dressed as fascists."
Fatchested blackshirts were no novelty to Dan and all these
were blackshirts—like boy-scouts but black—black-scouts as that
might be. Dublin had been full of blackshirts for an anniversary.
So Dan knew very well what that was and this entirely accounted
for this particularly strange young man, who was just a
blackshirt.
This Fascist had a black moustache. It was the first one Dan
had seen with a black moustache, he wondered if the others had
moustaches on their lips—that must be heavy to have moustaches.
He found he wanted off and on to put out his hand and pull it.
472 APES OF GOD
He smothered a giggle, the Fascist turned towards him, with the
same immovable solemnity.
" I know all about you Dan " with a familiarity that was of a
quality that was quite startling, the Fascist said, eyeing him.
Dan hoped very much that this young man, to whom he felt
quite drawn, only knew about him the things that were in his
favour and not everything.
" I have been looking for you the whole evening " the young
man said.
Dan's heart beat a little at this. He wished he had not smiled
aloud a moment back.
" I did not expect to find you dressed as a woman " said the
young man. " That is no doubt why I did not spot you before."
He had not yet told him how he came to know his name.
" Why are you dressed as a woman ? " Fascist asked with
truculence.
Oh to explain why he was dressed as a woman would have
taxed Dan's resources of expression out of all measure and Dan
knew it. To cut a long story short Dan said nothing.
" It doesn't matter " the Fascist said—nothing seemed to
matter very much to this young man and Dan felt for a moment
that he really might take a little more interest ! But there—it
was clear that he could not ! It was clear that the Blackshirt
could take no interest.
" I know all about you " said the Fascist. " I know you
never speak."
Someone had told this young man that he never spoke—there
was a strange thing to say—he who sometimes would chatter like
a magpie !
" Zagreus calls you ' his idiot.' "
It was not the first time Dan had heard that. It was not
obliging of Horace because a little familiarity between friends and
a pet-name or two is one thing, but for strangers to begin calling
you by them is another thing. It was a breach of confidence.
" You don't mind ? You evidently don't. It is as I thought."
The Blackshirt seemed very cool with him and angry about
something.—He did not know whether to be pleased or not at
what Horace had said, as sometimes people were locked up if
that was said about them, obviously, however innocent they might
be, and it was not exactly friendly. Horace had spoken of him
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 473
as his idiot—but to be Horace's idiot was all he asked—for the
development of his genius and to be near Horace—so no one could
mind what Horace had said.
" For the remainder of the evening you are to regard yourself
as under my charge " Blackshirt announced, and he was glad
of that.
Then Blackshirt said.
" But you will carry on with Horace Zagreus—for the Vanish
I mean."
Confusing ! How was he to " carry on " with Horace exactly ?
Difficult ! What did the young man mean by carry on with Horace ?
But all in good time everything would be explained no doubt by
this exceptionally nice young man.
" We are displeased with Horace."
This was unexpected. Who were " they " who presumed to
be displeased with Horace—he would like to know that !
" We object to Horace Zagreus' cruelty to young men—egged
onbyRatner. You know Ratner ? Yes. He wastes our time too."
This puzzling " we " always, this quite confused him in the
end, he was bound to admit that he did not much relish the young
men—how many was it he would like to enquire—although Horace
was the cruellest man he knew it was true. Who was in a better
position to judge that than himself? That it was his cruelty that
made him love Horace he could never admit to himself but he
felt at the bottom of his heart that if Horace were not so terribly
unkind he would not revere him quite as he did, so he did not
understand what these persons we stood for meant by objecting
to Horace's cruelty.
" He wastes our time " the Fascist repeated with a sepulchral
dull monotony of dogged statement—it seemed he thought that
Dan might consider that Horace didn't.
Horace wasted their time ! Well Horace wasted his time but
he only wished that Horace would waste more of it yet, but not
waste so much ofArchie Margolin's—there was no occasion to waste
so much of Archie's.
" Zagreus is a youth-snob—we have been very patient but he
is as great a youth-snob today as when we first took him in
hand."
Blackshirt seemed really cross with Horace.
" We can do nothing with him."
474 APES OF GOD
Nor could Dan, so he was not particularly astonished at that.
" It is impossible for Horace to resist youths—that is because
he is so old—it is a great waste of time."
Here Dan was entirely with them.
" Youth seems to Zagreus something extraordinary. Which is
because he is so old.—We have been unable to cure him of
that."
This was strange language. Dan too had noticed certainly
that Horace was far too partial to youths—one youth in particular
he had in mind. This had caused him some anxiety, therefore
he could perfectly understand what these people meant by what
they said and he very much hoped they might soon succeed in
curing Horace of things in which he certainly ought not to be
encouraged.
" He wastes our time ! " as a deep monotonous refrain came
out of the mouth of his amiable deliverer—to waste their time
was obviously inadmissible and that is what Horace did it
seemed.
" You have heard Horace Zagreus drivel about genius ? "
asked Blackshirt brutally, with common cockney drivel—what
words !—and Dan received a most painful impression. He felt he
did not wish to listen any more. Yet he found he heard the
young man's next remarks with an unusual distinctness.
" Horace Zagreus thinks every dull young man of nineteen
possesses what he calls ' genius '—we have often asked Zagreus
what he means by ' genius.' All he can do is to laugh. He
doesn't know himself. Genius is nothing."
This was becoming a painful conversation—all Dan could feel
was that from the bottom of his heart he was glad that Horace
had held out in the way that he did. He too had found that it
was not everybody who understood what "genius" was—it was a
difficult thing for people who had not got it to understand what
genius was, and Dan had never met anyone except himself who
had got it. (It was wonderful the way Horace understood it.)
" We have told Zagreus on many occasions thpt one more
' genius ' and we would drop him."
There was something mysterious about " genius " Daniel casually
reflected—it was not the sort of thing one wanted to talk about
with Tom Dick or Harry. He yawned.
" I found him a moment ago " said Blackshirt in a tone mas
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 475
sive with indignation " preparing a report. He intends it of
course for us. It is about a new one—a little Jew this time ! "
" A Jew ! " in spite of himself exclaimed Dan—for this nice
friendly young man had expressed what had been long in his
mind—no it was not suitable, with persons who had the record the
Jews had in the Holy Land and who lived in such terribly squalid
surroundings to this day—for it was known that they were the
lowest of the low and very dirty—to be on such terms as Horace
was with several at once, ofJews.
The nice young man had looked at him in some surprise when
he had spoken, for the last thing he expected him to do was to
speak—or if he did to take an interest in such a subject. He said,
in a more respectful tone, Dan thought, taking more trouble to
explain.
" It is not that. Pierpoint holds Jews up as exemplars, in the
matter of directness you understand : a Jew is never sentimental.
Pierpoint once directed me to get more of the Jew into what I was
doing—meaning more- head and less stupid heart. I did so and I
was successful. Now I never do anything without getting a little
of the Jew into it—It is not that."
Pierpoint !
When would he ever be able thought Dan to escape from that
terrible person. So We was Pierpoint all the time he supposed.
He looked shyly at the large shoes of the Fascist, wondering what
next he would say.
" That is not it," the Blackshirt repeated. " But we cannot
have a Jew as a ' genius '—that would cost money and we cannot
have that. Horace Zagreus has much less money than he formerly
had. That we can never make him understand."
Well that seemed straightforward thought Dan—he had never
received any money from Horace except the five and sixpence a
week pocket-money, plus expenses, and he dared say that a
person who would be capable of what those people had in the
past would be quite likely to borrow money from Horace and
this young man was quite right it would not be a good thing for
Horace to do, though he was sorry to hear that he found it
necessary to get a little of these antichrists into his whatever-it-
was (was it work ?) He would certainly tell Father Donovan
what he had heard and perhaps Father Donovan would tell him on
no account to become intimate—he would be surprised if he did.
476 APES OF GOD
" Horace must make up his mind one way or the other ! "
This strange young man now appeared to be threatening him
though why he could not guess.
" We will have no more ' geniuses '—to that we have made up our
minds ! No more ' geniuses '—you are the last ! "
Well Dan did not know what to say to that—but secretly he
hoped that what the kind young man with the rough manner—
said, might prove true. No more geniuses. He hoped not.
" Horace Zagreus often misinterprets what we tell him—as
often as not he gets it all wrong ! " Dan was being virtually
bullied by Blackshirt now—still this rather rough young man
meant well, of that he was positive.
" In the matter of these outlays for ' geniuses ' we have put
our foot down—Horace Zagreus has had our last word on that
subject ! He cannot afford it. And what you cannot afford you
should not have ! "
The moustache of the Blackshirt waggled in a swashbuckling
way and Dan became a little anxious on account of Horace—in
case this young man should meet Horace for he seemed very
incensed indeed and Dan was not sure for all his great coolness
if this young man really had as great control over himself as he
should.—However, he became more cordial suddenly.
" You now " Blackshirt said pleasantly " cost him nothing to
speak of. Apart from his boring us with you, we have accepted
that as a necessary evil. But we will not allow him to have another ! "
The Fascist was quite fierce again, and again Dan trembled
for Horace. Dan thought he understood why the Blackshirt had
moustaches—it was because, he thought, it gave him an air of
authority, in spite of his youth—Dan thought there was no ques
tion but that he was tremendously clever and he had quite taken
to him—he felt more at home with him than he did with most
men but perhaps that was because he was so terribly grateful for
what he had done.
" And then how about this show ! What do you suppose
that is costing him ? You can't go about with a troupe like this
for nothing ! "
The nice young man felt quite violent, it was apparent. His
mind was full of sums. Horace had overrun the constable.
"The Vanish alone" Blackshirt exclaimed "must have cost
him a cool fifty ! "
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 477
What might a cool fifty be—Dan was in the dark and the
young man was so angry he knew he would end by getting
frightened of him and already his head was aching at being
required to do sums—all of a sudden this young man had shown
a very mercenary side and Horace was a spendthrift if he was to
be believed.
" Where is it coming from ? "
Now what was the use of the Fascist asking him where it was
coming from ! He knew as little as the Fascist. He felt extremely
sleepy and wished he were at home and could take these disgusting
clothes off his body which was getting girlified—he did not like
to move his legs about as a matter of fact.
The Fascist unbuttoned the braided pocket upon the breast
of his shirt and produced a long folded heavy document.
" Here is your dossier ! " the impossible young man remarked,
holding it up.
At this Dan showed no sign of animation, he had not heard
distinctly what the other had said.
" Would you like to look at it ? "
Would it please this nice young man if he said he would like
most awfully to see what he had got ? He had been so terribly
kind to him that the least he could do now was to hold out his
hand and show he would like most awfully to see what he had
got !
" This is how he explains you."
The Fascist pointed to something, of which he seemed very
proud, upon one of the pages which were typed and numbered,
twelve sheets single-spaced.
" This is all about you " Blackshirt said.
All about me thought Dan ! He blushed as he took the tell
tale document—if it turned out to be.
" He leaves us all this nonsense to read."
In his mind Dan dissented —there was no nonsense about Horace !
" I am Pierpoint's political-secretary."
That was why thought Dan he had such an awfully good head
for figures !
" I have to deal with these communications."
The young moustachioed Fascist Brave stepped smartly over
to a fairy lamp which he took off a twig and returned. He held
the light up to the document.
478 APES OF GOD
" There." He pointed. " That is where it starts."
Dan read and this was what he read, and when he had read
it he was no wiser than when he started, but much sadder—as
invariably he was after having to bend his mind to the perusal of
anything above a few lines in length.

About a hundred years ago lived Mr. Diarmuidh K. a strong

gentleman-farmer of this family. His place was not far from
Slieve Bui (Yellow Hill). He was much addicted to the study of
astrology, and the occult works of Cornelius Agrippa. When his
only son was about a month old, one of his servant boys ran into
the parlour one day to tell him a circumstance that had greatly
astonished himself : " Oh, master," said he, " the black cow
was just while ago under the old thorn-tree in the meadow, and
all of a sudden a fog came round herself and the tree, while all the
rest of the field was in the sunshine. I was going over to try what
was the matter, when what should I see but a big sea-gull flying
into the fog, and making ever so much noise with his wings. For
fear he'd pick out the poor beast's eyes I ran over, but just as I
got to the edge of the fog it all cleared as if there was some magic
in it, and Blacky was walking away on the other side." " Oh,
ho ! " said the master ; " what I have long been wishing for has
happened at last. Now, Pat, attend to what I say. Watch that
cow close ; and when she calves, be sure to bring me some of the
first beestings, and I'll give you more money than you have ever
seen at once in your possession."
The boy did his duty, such as it was. He brought the first
beestings to his master, and received tol. for his pains ; and
Mr. K. ordering the child to be brought to him, made it take a
spoonful or two of this first milk of the black cow. When the
child began to speak intelligibly, the master of the house called
all the family together one day, and charged them as they valued
his favour, or dreaded his resentment, never to ask his son a
question till he was fourteen years of age. " The questions, I
mean," said he, " are such as he could not answer without being
a prophet. He is gifted with a spirit of prophecy, and when he
reaches his fifteenth birthday, you will be at liberty to get all the
information you please from him, concerning anything that is
passing anywhere in any part of the world at the moment, or to
ask about things lost or stolen, or your own future destiny. But
attend to what I say. If you ask a question of him before he is
full fourteen years of age, something terrible shall happen to him
and you ; take timely warning."
The boy had a wonderful capacity for science and language,
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 479
but seldom spoke to those about him. He was very amiable,
however, and everyone anxious for some favour from his father
always got him to be their spokesman. Strange to say, he reached
to within a few days of the fatal time without being asked an
improper question by any one.
He would occasionally when in company start and begin to
talk of what was passing at that moment in the town of Wexford,
or the cities of Dublin or London, as if the people about him were
aware of these matters as well as himself. Finding, however, by
their looks and expressions of surprise, that they had not the same
faculty, he began to grow very silent and reserved.
About this time a grand-daughter of the famous Blacky was
about to calve ; and Mr. K., who set a great value on the breed,
recommended her particularly to the care of a young servant boy,
a favourite of his. While he was looking after her and some others
in a pasture near the house, a young girl to whom he was under
promise of marriage was passing by chance along the path that
bordered the fence. He asked her to stop, but " she was in a
hurry to the big house." Stop she did, however, and full twenty
minutes passed unmarked while they stood and conversed on very
interesting nullities.
At the end of the twenty minutes he gave a sudden start, and
examined the different groups of cattle with his eyes, but no
Blacky was to be seen. He searched, and his betrothed assisted,
but in vain ; and the poor girl burst out crying for the blame he
would be sure to get through her folly. She went forward at last
on her message to the big house, and passing by the kitchen
garden, whom should she see, looking at the operations of the
bees, but the young master. Let her not be blamed too much :
she forgot everything but her lover's mishap ; and so, after
making her curtsey, she cried out across the hedge—" Ah !
Master Anthony, alanna, do you know where the black cow has
hid herself? " " Black cow ! said he, " she is lying dead in the
byre." At the moment his eyes opened wide as if about to start
from his head, an expression of terror took possession of his
features, he gave one wild cry, fell powerless on his face, and when
his wretched father came running to the spot, on hearing of the
circumstances, he found an idiot in the place of his fine, intelligent
son.

" An idiot—you see ?—in place of his fine intelligent son ! " the
Fascist remarked. " That according to Zagreus, is you. He says
you are possessed of powers of prophecy, like the bright son of
Mr. Diarmed K. but that they have been blasted—that is what
480 APES OF GOD
he says to us—by people asking you que^ ions—in your cradle, he
says. He says—they should never have bcev allowed to pester
you with questions. But he believes you may get back your
power of prophecy."
Dan's head swam with all this at once for what questions had
he ever been asked by people at the period mentioned except to
wish to know for sure whether he had a pain in his tummy—and
he smiled as he reflected that they could not have received much
of an answer—from a baby ! Powers of prophecy were one thing,
genius was quite another—for genius was the thing he had. Genius
consisted simply in what it was, and then on the other hand in
what was Horace's belief in his genius. What was prophecy ?
Old men with white beards had prophecy and artists had genius
when they painted pictures, and Horace had recognized that he
should have a studio with paints, pictures and a suitable easel
like Melanie had. Never himself would he so much have sus
pected the presence of his genius for he had never had a tube of
paint. For seeing the genius in him he loved Horace. But this
whole story of black cows and of sea-gulls was a strange and
fantastic matter—some blarney no doubt a fairy story, it had
nothing to do with genius. He did not say this but he thought it,
and left it at that : so he put the paper in his young girl's lap and
looked at a waiter who was taking a bottle of period-champagne
(Time—Present. 1926 vintage) over to the supper tables, from
which came a lot ofloud vulgar sounus, denoting the presence of
A Coachful (he would not like to say ofwhat) unrestrainedly satisfied
at finding themselves al fresco beneath the osmundian greenery,
about to poison themselves with the osmundian champagne.
The Fascist was a nice and sensible young man—he did not
seem at all surprised at his making nothing of the paper, and took
it for granted he should make no obser ation.
" So you see " the nice young man said " Horace Zagreus has
discovered this in one of the books of demonology he is always
reading. They do him no good at all we are of opinion, I may
tell you. He will go on reading them. So he jumps to the con
clusion at once that you are fey. You must have powers of
prophecy ! Of course you have been blasted by some shock in
childhood—and so you have become an idiot ! "
Dan smiled, for although the Fascist never smiled, he said
quite amusing things sometimes.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 481
" To us it is perfectly clear that you have never in all your
life been anything except an idiot, and that you will remain that
till the end of the chapter."
The Fascist displayed some warmth in this matter, and anxious
not to offend him, Dan looked the other way, for he was still
smiling a little.
" All this taking you about to show you The Apes ! Well of
course they are Apes. What however in Jesus' name arc you but
an Ape and Horace Zagreus himself he is the worst Ape of the lot !
Does he not take all his ideas from Pierpoint ? Is he not essen
tially a rich dilettante ? Is it not owing to his money—not that he
always pays ! It is absurd ! "
Dan kept his head turned away for although he was feeling a
little alarmed now and had lost his secret smile, he thought that
if he allowed himself to look at the paper lying in his lap the
other would think he wished to dispute his point of view.
But the Fascist lay back against the bristles of the box hedge
and he lighted a cigarette from the fairy-lamp. After that he
began negligently instructing Dan, as though to contradict what
he had just said about Apes, and about instruction.
" You have remarked the arrangements of the garden ? "
Blackshirt paused—not for a reply evidently, but to give Dan
time to focus his sub-average intellect upon the accessories of
the scene lying before them. He gave him a minute and a half.
" This is of course Vauxhall " he said.
Melanie had often warned him against Vauxhall in the past
and Dan remembered that it was a vast and most dangerous
bridge, from which many people had fallen into the water.
" In the days of Pepys and so on. A famous Public Garden—
an Amusement Park—this is it here. The Finnian Shaws would
suggest."
Dan looked round with obedient attention at the Amusement
Park.
" Within is the Rotunda— over there are the walks. Boswell,
Goldsmith and Walpole are part of the scenery, so you must
believe. Yonder are the famous mazes."
Dan shuddered slightly, as a timid mariner might at the
mention of a dangerous whirlpool.
" There are the Alcoves—and there is the sound (only the
sound) of the Tin Cascade."
 482 APES OF GOD
Dan heard the splash of the Tin Cascade.
The Fascist warmed to his task, he sat up. No follower of
Pierpoint was proofagainst this docte enthusiasm. Blackshirt began
expounding. It reminded Dan ofa " broadcast." Only this figure
seemed always to be " broadcasting " more or less, that was the
difference—that was because he was the secretary Dan supposed.
J " These Finnian Shaws " said Blackshirt—and Dan thought he
' detected a certain vulgarity in the accents of his voice but could
' not be sure, " they are the showmen of their Past. They are the
showmen of the Past in general as well. But first they are the
1 showmen of their Past."
The Past ! Dan was given a minute and a half for this difficult
abstract notion.
" Vauxhall belongs to the Past-in-general " said the Fascist.
" Only the Finnian Shaws, you understand, being mere showmen
now, they do not go to Vauxhall—Vauxhall has to come to them.
You understand ? Here it is."
So this is Vauxhall ! Dan's eyes in-duty-bound expressed.
" In some cases " Blackshirt expounded, as a cat sharpens its
claws on anything " dispossessed chatelaines, in the Soviet
Republic, have been allowed to stop on—but as the curators, or
as the showmen, of their castles, and picture-galleries. If that
were here (after a Crack) the Finnian Shaws would perhaps be kept
on—what do you think of the idea ?—as the managers and show
men of their ancestral castles. Then they would be allotted,
suppose, a small fund for dress, for cigars, servants, cellars and so
forth. A living museum—do you get that ? Different from
Russia. See ? Commissars from London would spend their
holidays with the Finnian Shaws in Galway or wherever it is. They
would be received by the Finnian Shaws as royal guests—the com
missars would spit in their faces when they wanted to of course—
but no Finnian Shaw would mind that—and give them a week
down below in a dungeon perhaps—for bilking the administration
in the matter of the wine-supply—falsifying the accounts as regards
tailoring expenses—not keeping themselves smart enough—
spending too much on doctors'-bills, or whatnot. Still they would
be chez eux. Home sweet home ! "
The Blackshirt almost smiled—Dan turned away his head in
case he did. But when he went on he seemed to have increased a
little in severity.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 483
" It is about like that now," he said. " Really not so very
different. Not so different as you'd think. What is the difference ?
None really except that they do not possess an administrative
stipend to run their Finnian Shaw museum on, but have to get along
as best they can with what they have got ! In consequence the
wine is undrinkable, the food bad, the decorations rough and
flimsy, and of course their guests are not high and mighty com
missars, but the smart herds of Mayfair and of Chelsea, of ' in
teresting people,' a sprinkling of Bloomsbury, a few Gossip-
column lords like themselves, a mass of actresses who cannot act,
painters who spend nine hours out of the twelve in hurrying from
house to house to collect subscriptions for their statues and pic
tures, or to get a charity-portrait on the strength of their Salon-
Jahigkeit. All this is still supported (upon an ever diminishing
margin) upon the plundering of a tenantry, upon money taken
from miners, or from engineers, or chemists, or if you like
soldiers."
The Fascist was in full " broadcast ", and the opinions of Pier-
point rang round the glades and walks of the last twentieth-
century reflections of Vauxhall, when an assistant-chef, come up
to get some air, asked the Blackshirt for a match to light his
cigarette. He gave it him with marks of a deep-rooted contempt.
" Why have I this ticket for A Coathful ? " he asked Dan
fiercely, flourishing the ticket in his face : " why have I this ?
Because (upon the instructions of Pierpoint) I am editing an
anthology of Post-war verse, and all three Finnian Shaws suppose
that an extra poem each of theirs will go in if I come here !
They are entirely mistaken ! "
Dan shrank more and more from this blackshirted embodi
ment of pierpointean invective—he felt glad on the whole that
there were not a Coachful of them but only three—although he
contrived to be passionately grateful to this nice young man for
his timely assistance.
" The doors fly wide open ! " the resounding voice of the
Pierpointean told the trees, and the insolent young chef puffing at
his elbow, and the distant masqueraders. There was, as well as
a great vaticinatory verve, a certain boastfulness about this
Fascist. " Follow me—you will find you can go anywhere !
Shall we go upstairs ? "
He rose, scowling at the smoking chef.
 4&4 APES OF GOD
" Shall we go upstairs—I will show you some fun—better than
- Zagreus could ! "
Dan rose—he felt the Fascist would make good his boast. But
oh he wished he might have stopped where he was until the time
came for the " vanish."
As they went towards the house, the Fascist advancing with a
negligent strut and a cold assurance that betokened his boundless
contempt for all he would find within, he remarked :
" When I was up in their private reception-rooms just now—
they will not go down among their guests, they barricade them
selves in upstairs as though all these people had got in against
their wi'l—I saw the start of their private sports. The Old Vies
were aniving. You don't know what that means. Colonel-bait
ing was in full swing and they were expecting an ex-Admiral-of-
the-Fleet and two Zulu-War veterans with all their medals. The
first Colonel was a bit slow. But Harriet was gingering him up."
They entered the passage that led to the garden.
" We can spend a short time up there. Then I will show you
the Library."
At the mention of the Library Dan was very depressed. Would
he have to read all the books ? He made up his mind to say that
he had read them all so need not read them all again.
As they passed beneath the clock the Welsh Ambassador
popped out and cooed Kook-Koo for the Quarter. They turned
to the left, followed another passage, and entered the main-hall.
There they ascended a sumptuous staircase to the upper apart
ments. Above the squat gilded stairs (hastily enriched with
bogus gold-leaf upon the period-balustrade) brooded a pantheon
ofVerrio. It had been executed with a jazz-agility by an american
negro-designer, who was very cheap because he was black. A
dull and thick-limbed peasant-goddess—or goddess of the dull
potato-patch of Demos—by Maillol—squatted half-way up—
then a barbarous ice-cream-tinted panel by an East-End con-
fiserie-cubist was a few steps from the dull daughter of Demos.
But pack-thread for Bosun !—a part of the canvas-wall (to make
the roundness for the period-stairpit) had already come unstitched.
An apocryphal portrait-bust of Tiffin—Bug-Destroyer To The
King—was the first object met with upon the landing, in moulder
ing gilt, with one cracked glass eye.
His face exposing the same invariable solemnity of mind,
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 485
Blackshirt made his way to a door at the end of a passage, out of
which two servants hurried with fleas in their ears it was but too
plain.
" This " said Blackshirt with condescension to Dan " is where
the Finnian Shaws pretend to take refuge for the greater part of
the evening from the concourse of their guests."
As the Fascist opened the door, there was a rush and an
outcry-.
" Shut the door ! "
" Keep them out ! "
" Don't let any more of them in ! We shall have no room to
breathe in a minute ! "
Lord Osmund's voice could be heard above the rest dominat
ing all with a stentorian whinny of irritated complaint.
" Phoebus you really must keep them out ! We can't have any
more coming in here ! They will all be up here in a minute—if
you don't drive them away. You must really Phoebus drive
them away ! "
" If you don't keep them away Phoebus " a deep lisping voice
of a woman shrewishly rang out " we shall be sitting in each
other's laps ! "
A picture of a world swarming with the coarse hordes of
Demos was at once evoked, with side by side, in dazzling contrast,
another picture—that of an intensely exclusive, aristocratic
family—shrinking from publicity—whose roman noses had never
so much as sniffed the words of a disgusting Gossip-column (from
the miasmas of bog-infected Press-puffs they had been sheltered
by hereditary pride !). It was a noble and historical piece the
second: But the spacious assembly-room, rapidly built for great
entertainments—with stage for performances of Lady Harriet's
operettc—was full of a mysterious multitude. These hordes had
come down from London in cars and in buses. Upon whose imita
tion ? ! Who was the traitor ! Who could the traitor be who had
betrayed the Finnian Shaws ?—and let in all this disgusting army
of nonentities- disguised as famous characters in classical fiction if
you please !
Lord Phabus placed his hand upon the chest of the Fascist,
and in a loud voice of baying complaint he exclaimed, while he
pushed, without looking at the object,
" No really you can't come in--you must go away ! We have
486 APESOFGOD
more people here as it is than the room- will hold. We have far
more people than the room will hold."
" Lock the door ! " a voice shouted. " Lock the door ! Keep
them out ! "
" We really can't have any more people in here, it is quite
impossible—we can't breathe as it is ! " Lord Phoebus looked at
the Fascist, for he was surprised that by pushing he had not
advanced in his intention of pushing the interloper out.
" This is private ! " Lord Phoebus bayed in aggrieved protest
at that. " This is private ! I thought everyone knew this was
private ! You can't come in ! "
The Fascist, at a slight forward inclination from the vertical,
leant against the flat hand in a stiffdrunken posture—toppling he
allowed himself to be supported by his lordship.
" You really can't come in here ! It is not for the guests.
These are private apartments."
" Turn him out ! " a roar came from the rear.
" Yes turn him out ! " came another. " Turn them out ! "
" I say Phoebus do hurry up and close the door will you—I'm
getting neuralgia ! "
The Fascist produced the card for A Coachful. He thrust it
under the nose of Lord Phoebus, with a frigid brutality, who
looked askance at it. But A Coachful was A Coachful—Lord Phoebus
was impressed and put down his arm—Coachful was the sign that
meant " Gossip "—the Press, publicity, Fame—all that could no
longer be obtained by merely being a peer of the realm—all that
was the breath of life—it was no use.
" We are terribly overcrowded " complained the flushed and
harassed face of lordly law-and-order.
" I am Bertram Starr-Smith."
" What is that ? "
" Starr-Smith."
" Turn him out ! " Osmund bellowed from inside.
" No it's all right Osmund " called back Phoebus.
" / should turn him out ! " Osmund said.
" It's all right Osmund—it's Starr-Smith ! " Phoebus called
back.
" Starr what ? "
" Smith."
The voice of Lady Harriet sounded now.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 487
" If it is Mr. Starr-Smith do not keep him out Phoebus. Not
Mr. Starr-Smith ! "
If her brothers wanted their poems left out of the anthology,
she did not want fur poems left out of the anthology !
" Osmund does not like any guests who arc not specially
invited to come up here " said Phoebus.
The Blackshirt did not move. He remained in the doorway
where he had been stopped by Phoebus, very collected and
expressionless he was, he did not come forward.
" I am specially invited ! " said the Blackshirt sombrely.
" I know " said Lord Phoebus " but people really have to be
kept out—once one began letting them in they would all come
in, you know what they are—as it is there are far too many in
here."
" Far too many " Fascist agreed.
" Far " said Phoebus. " It really is much too crowded but
do please come in—Harriet wants to speak to you—please don't
go away will you ! "
" I'm not going away."
" Well come in won't you—I want to close the door. Do
come in—Harriet is very anxious to see you."
" I will come in," said the Fascist, and he moved in the sense
required.
" I am terribly glad, you will come in !—I know Harriet wants
you most awfully to come in."
Lord Phoebus as he gazed at Starr-Smith remembered the
name and connected it with the anthology. He smiled invitingly.
" I am so glad you came up ! "
Lord Phoebus stepped aside as he heard a commotion in his
rear. As he did so a large figure burst past him, and Dan, with
out, in drooping neglect, his eyes in a swimming stare, recognised
the stout tempest of a person who had broken out of the dark
wall at his side, in the lavatory-passage, almost on top of him, in
lutestring trollopee. Limbed to her in filial leash were still the
same two burners in stuff-gowns and Prussian bonnets, but she
had outstripped them in the impetus of her exit. As she just
passed through the door, her train still sweeping for a foot at
least the interior of the room, a haggard figure appeared as
though from nowhere, almost out of the air. In a flying leap this
angular female form descended upon the departing train. So
488 APES OF GOD
great was the indignant speed of the matron, in fuming-fiight
(from a place where she had been de trop) that she was unable to
draw up. Her powerful limbs tore themselves clean out of the
train. The train and all the dress from the waist, stayed—torn
from her, upon the floor, in her wake. The flying harpy, in her
embroidered gold, with a sinister tiara, stood in the middle of
this ruin.—Lord Phoebus started forward and the tiaraed lady
who had caused the accident then leapt back, with a loud
exclamation of alarm. The trampled and torn skirt lay between
them.
" Oh look what I've done ! "
The tiaraed-one lightly wrung her hands.
" I do think you are dreadfully careless Harriet " Lord Phoebus
scolded his sister, with wild glances of affected panic. " You
might look where you're going ! "
" I do believe I've pulled Lady Truncheon's train right off ! "
" I think you have ! " Lord Phoebus cried.
" How terribly careless of me—I do hope Lady Truncheon
will excuse me, it was particularly clumsy of me."
" / shouldn't if / were Lady Truncheon ! "
" I could hit myself! " the offender bayed at herself.
" I'm sure she could ! " crashed back Lord Phoebus.
" If I had only known you were there Lady Truncheon ! "
" Couldn't you see that Lady Truncheon was there Harriet ! "
" I know ! "
" You must I think have been blind not to see that Lady
Truncheon was there ! "
" I believe I must Phoebus ! "
" I'm quite positive you must Harriet ! "
" I know, mustn't I ? "
" Whatever is Lady Truncheon going to do now," howled
Lord Phoebus. " She must go at once to Mrs. Bosun's closet ! "
" Yes there's not a moment to be lost ! " exclaimed Lady
Harriet. Lady Harriet was eyeing Lady Truncheon with a thun
derstruck face which was a reflection of that of Lord Phoebus,
which was also thunderstruck. They both stared at the wife of
Sir Thomas Truncheon, Knight—her skirt having vanished from
the waist line and a great gap occurring behind, Lady Truncheon
stood speechless with indescribable passion. The mighty legs
stood in startling neglige, like a couple of stalwart old silk-decked
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 489
stallions, which had drawn her at top speed with fine team-work
so far—then come to the abruptest halt. A streamer of silk hung
down in front, a comic apron. Dignity was impossible. The
world of without, irreverent eyes, were made privy to hind
quarters lately ennobled. A fesses of silk—born of coarse disrup
tion—almost stared you in the face. Lady Truncheon's eyes
spoke volumes to Lady Harriet, and her dyed mouth manufac
tured an epithet of the gutter, of which the high-wind of her
breath prevented utterance. Apoplexy ! said the eyes of Lord
Phoebus and of Lady Harriet—opening wider and wider ; but
the two twittering bunters flew with a cry to the hen-bird and
covered its legs with their bodies.
" Take this lady immediately to Mrs. Bosun's closet ! " bayed
Lord Phoebus at a half-grinning evening-help, " immediately do
you hear ! "
" Can't you hear ! " bayed Lady Harriet.
" There is not a moment to be lost ! " Lord Phoebus ex
claimed.
" No my lord ! "
" Yes there is not a moment to be lost ! " Lady Harriet boomed
as well, planted beside her cadet. " Don't stand there gaping at
Lady Truncheon you sheepshead ! "
" Yes don't gape at Lady Truncheon ! "
" Didn't you hear what was said ! Take her ladyship at once
to Mrs. Bosun's closet—there is not a moment to be lost ! "
" The man is certainly half-witted—can't you see that there
is not a moment to be lost ! I should have thought you could see."
" I do hope Lady Truncheon I haven't spoilt your fancy-
dress ! " Lady Harriet Finnian Shaw howled, her face narrowed
to a waspish witch-mask, as she glared at Lady Truncheon across
the wreck of the fancy dress. " I can't imagine how it hap
pened ! "
" Nor can I ! " her cadet joined in in well-disciplined bay.
" It is that carpet Phoebus, I stumbled just on the edge."
" Yes I saw you stumble Harriet— I saw you just on the edge."
" Are you sure I can't do anything—this is particularly awk
ward for you I am afraid Lady Truncheon ! " Lady Harriet
whined with a long nasal note of serio-comic consternation.
" Are you absolutely certain I can't do anything whatever for
you Lady Truncheon ! "
49o APES OF GOD
" No thank you ever so much Lady Harriet " piped the elder
of the hunters.
" Nothing ! " stuttered Lady Truncheon hoarsely, and turned
her front—now become her back as it were.
" Oh I am so sorry that it is impossible for me to do anything,
but I suppose you know best ! "
"AREN'T YOU GOING TO TAKE LADY TRUN
CHEON AWAY ! " Lord Phoebus howled at the waiter, stamp
ing his foot, a sort of thunderstruck smile playing, with the effect
of disguised lightning upon his face, twisted up at one side as if
blown in upon the other. Round one ear he seemed to be laugh
ing, round the other all was dumbfounded gravity.
" Yes I think it's too bad—I wish he would take Lady Trun
cheon away I "
" I wish he would too ! "
" I wish he would take her to Mrs. Bosun's closet !—It is high
time she was attended to ! " Lady Harriet said, turning away with
a display of regal impertinence, from the lack of understanding
of the waiter.
" It's high time Lady Truncheon was attended to—can't you
hear ! Are you deaf ! " Lord Phoebus remonstrated with the
waiter. " She must be catching cold—it's terribly draughty
here ! " he added to Lady Harriet with a sniff, in brotherly
confidence.
" I know there is a positive wind blowing here ! " and Lady
Harriet sniffled a little and shivered slightly, saying " UUUUgh ! "
" And at any moment somebody may come ! "
" I know that's quite on the cards ! That's why I said there
was not a moment to be lost ! "
The Truncheon family, in the company of the waiter—sub
jecting his smile openly to the obligations of hired service—
departed. Indignant murmurs marked their translation.
The Fascist, in a solemn aside as they, Dan and himself, all bar
riers down before the anthology, passed into the room, said to Dan :
" One of the daughters ought to have hit her on the head—
with Lady Truncheon."
During this painful scene Dan, with peonic blush and not
knowing which way to look, had stood only a foot or two distant
from the distressed Truncheon—unable to assist but unable to
glide away.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 491

VIII. FMNIAN SHAW FAMILY GROUP.

The room was a large Queen Anne and cubist apartment,
with more of the same hybrid cupids as beneath in the saloon—
a pine basis throughout with an economic minimum of oak in the
inexpensive fakes (but where oak visible, upon the outside, where it
could be seen to be gossiped over) with a veneering that would
have secured the withdrawal of any sensitive cabinet-maker from
the scene on the spot. Festoons of heavy fruitrand-flower material
surrounded the mantelpiece while in the centre Finnian Shaw arms
were displayed. The doors possessed broken pediments terminat
ing in volutes, and there was the cherubic head, circumscribed by
its bed of wings.
Upon the walls the pictures revealed the strange embrace of
Past and Present—ofso casual a nature as to produce nothing but
an effect of bastardry. There was a picture of two buffoons by
Giovanni Cassana, a late Venetian : two Magnascos of a mock
trial in a cavern of witches and gipsies—a Chirico of a carthorse
surprised by ruins, springing into the air—a Tiepolo sketch of
the abdomen of a horse with a platter—a Max Ernst of two disin
tegrated figures in frenzied conjugation—a Modigliani of two
peasant morons, both girls, one depressed upon her left flank
with a ponderous teat. There was an equestrian sketch of Lord
Osmund by Munnings (an apotheosis of the Georges One-to-
Three of super-hanoverian squirearchishness). An enlarged
photograph of Cockeye—old rackrenter, Gloucestershire land
lord and provencal chatelain, as a Victorian Volunteer. A Niccolo
Cassana ofa Finnian Shaw, a Harlequin, and 3 Rowlandsons were
in one recess, with books and African masks.
The room was a regular polygon, with an arched recess in
every-other side. It was the section of a sort of rotunda : reached
by an abrupt stairway was the tower of Phoebus, for he lived in a
small stucco tower of his own to show he was a poet—his private
apartments in this eyrie were reached by the sheer stairway
coming down in a spiral into the very large circular room. A
great many people there were not—Dan who had feared he was
about to enter a rough thick crowd with many men, found him
self thrown up into conspicuous relief and blushed in its free
spaces, upon the smart polished floor, and once he slipped.
492 APES OF GOD
Colonel Buckram, who was in disgrace through not having come-
off, stood out terribly too, on account of his large scarlet face,
staring eyes of tender blue, and huge white grampus lip-growth—
the caricaturist's Colonel. That misbegotten stock old-military-
man could not hide—his face was now at its best, for he was too
upset at not -having come-off, poor discredited butt, and only
wished they'd try him again, and yet dreaded they might.
There was a chorus, perhaps two dozen, they were carefully
picked sub-men, but there were no women—there was a great
monotony about this bodyguard—but they were a portion of the
company in the barn for dinner. Amongst others Jacoby Cheat
ham and David Parr were understudies of Robinia (who had gone
to bed with a headache after having wounded Phoebus—to be
cupped and blooded and perhaps lanced by a period physician),
there was Basil Spatworthy who was identical with Lord Phoebus
in all but height, and Robin Jerningham who was exactly like
Robinia and Osmund combined—Eric Mastrodonato was there
who was like Lord Phoebus dressed up as Serge Lifar, then Gregory
Fawkes and Dickie Pagett sat in a corner who both favoured the
personality of Harriet. Jasper Summerbell, Freddie Parsons,
Nicholas Compton, Theodore Goddard, Julian Casbolt, Clement
Glenny, Frank Brunner, Stephen Boyce, Martin McGregor, Ray
mond Charrington, Peter Runacres, Raymond Freedlander, Cecil
Dawson and Ronald Shafarek, although all pigmented differently
and of various height, age and build (some were wide and some
narrow, and the heads of some were small and of others large) yet
they all conformed to the osmundian canon but had the air in
most cases for preference of an impossibly early undergraduate
life—as if just turned out in spick and span, passionless, lisping
rows by Eton for Oxford Colleges and Inns.
Lady Harriet Finnian Shaw said—
" Oh Mr. Starr-Smith I am so glad you were able to come
to-night ! " as if it were a great relief that after all Starr-Smith
had not been prevented from coming, while she levelled an
insulting sullen look at his head—she made no pretence that she
could not have wrung his neck here and now for not putting all
the poems of the Finnian Shaws that they had ever written into
his beastly anthology but was glad he had not been prevented and
hoped he would stop till he had enough.
The Blackshirt gave her glance for glance—he said—
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 493
" I was here just now."
" Oh were you Mr. Starr-Smith ! " Lady Harriet asked him
fairly musically.
" Yes " said Starr-Smith. He was smoking.
" I didn't see you " said Lady Harriet. " I can't have been
here."
" You were talking to somebody—a military ." And
Blackshirt directed his deliberate eyes to that part of the room in
which he knew the Colonel was not to be found but in the
opposite.
Harriet looked straight over where he was—Colonel Buckram
saw Harriet look.
" That crashing old bore over there do you mean ! " with a
great burst of spleen Harriet hurtled forth like a dam and looked
relieved at once. The thwarting of hatred for the anthologist was
eased in expressions of dislike for the Colonel-who-was-a-damp-
squib. Harriet with severe pale ginger-lashed eyes stabbed
Colonel Buckram in the belly. Colonel Buckram did not double
up but held his body politely to attention, but he coloured till
he attained to a shade that was a record as an extremity of
red. But as she went on stabbing he having attained the
non-plus-ultra register even of his redness, Buckram bolted—the
door slammed upon his soldierly back with the crash of saluting
ordnance.
" Yes that's right go ! " howled Lady Harriet after him as he
went, and the routed picture of gallantry heard her parting shot—
" you disgusting old bore—yes ^ou—I do mean you—yes you—and
don't come back ! "
The Colonel's Colenso-coloured neck and the bald scarlet
moon of his tonsure flamed with fear, as they had never done at
Maggersfontein.
Blackshirt took this opportunity of withdrawing with Dan to
a suitable recess. They sat down upon a padded window-seat in
one of the recesses that this room had as a billiard-table has
pockets. It was distant from Harriet but diagonally they had the
place where she sat under observation. Blackshirt took up a book
snatching impatiently at a shelf. It had Donne upon it, he put it
in his pocket.
" That is not Klopemania " in an aside he volunteered. Then
he volunteered—" I shall drop that in a pond."
 494 APES OF GOD
He considered a moment if he should volunteer again. But
he decided to volunteer for want of anything better to do.
" I shall just drop the Donne in a pond."
Dan heard the Donne drop in the pond all right—it was a
waste of good Donne no doubt.
" Tadpoles have as much right to Donne—it might be an
Eastcr-egg for the frogs."
Dan thought of the froggie-would-a-wooing-goes—still he was
unconvinced, and Blackshirt volunteered :
" When they look for their Donne they won't find it ! "
Dan saw that.
Dan wished he could slip out, for he was inclined to tremble—
several of the young men had looked at him rather hard he was
positive, one especially, a rather nice boy, as he was passing. He
could not help wondering what they thought of him !
Blackshirt threw down a second book he had picked up.
"A book of old Harriet's !" he told Dan. "All about arab
rocking-horses of true Banbury Cross breed. Still making mud-
pies at forty ! "
Dan looked at the good sprinkling of learned looking persons
interspersed with standardised Etonians and tame imitation-
choristers by the main grate across the room—dominated by the
massive Osmund. The Volpemini flung off two or three as she
changed her position, in violent french. Osmund and the very
learned men who were peering into the books had clusters of
Etonians of all colours and ages at their feet and hanging upon
the backs of their chairs and settees. Lord Phoebus stood—he
clasped a large Bantu toy, disconcerting in its phallic boastfulness.
One of the donnish intelligentsia examined a musical snuff-box.
Many objects of vertu and barbaric fragments were strewn about
with books beside the fireplace, from tally sticks to ritualistic
pudenda from the Pacific.
Dan experienced a discomfort amounting to gentle aversion
for some of the objects. He could not give a name to his sensa
tions of confused dread but he was positive he would never be able
to know awfully clever people because they were so horrid. If
asked to converse with the young men who had looked so
strangely at him he could only say things they would think
dullard-talk—he could not look over where they were, he was
not really sorry, without moving a little every time because as a
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 495
matter of fact somebody stood in the way, which was just
as well.
It was the Sib who got her body in front of Dan—it was some
protection. She stood shoulder to shoulder, as two spectators,
with a depressed looking man, some elder Don.
" Aren't they sweet ! " said the Sib to the Don.
The Don sucking the dregs of his bypast existence up in a
straw, gazed over glassily at the studiedly-undergraduate groups,
with short-sighted old homosexual eyes.
" They always bring out all their toys, when the other children
come to see them and show them ! " the Sib panted in the Don's
car. But nothing could console the Don for not being a bright
young Don of forty—he saw the toys, he nodded his head.
" Phoebus is going to fetch another ! " the Sib panted softly
and fondly. " I am awfully fond of Phoebus. He has a little
Hottentot tricycle he's just had given him. It is carved out of
lead. He is fetching it to show it. He is terribly proud of it ! "
" I'll fetch the little tricycle ! " Lord Phoebus bayed in flight,
unthinkably Fauntleroy, as he passed them (a print ofGoody Two-
shoes tucked under his arm that he was returning to the wall of his
bedroom) . A hyacinthine lock danced giglotish upon his tall and
pensive temples as he leapt past in fawn-like awkwardness. Like
a whirlwind he rushed up his stairs, into his tower.
Three friends who were Eric Mastrodonato, Basil Spatworthy
and Nicholas Compton bolted at the same time—all four fled
upwards into his superlative rooms, furnished for a single person,
having a prospect into fifteen communes and two home-counties,
a dozen Downs, with a hundred sheep-walks.
David Parr went up to a musical box that stood upon a console
screwed under a cubed flower-piece, in a sort of penetralia, and
turned the handle, while a few badauds of the household crowded
up, to watch the mechanical minuet, danced by small powdered
gilded puppets, with such a stiff politeness.
" Phoebus " the Sib said " will never grow up—I can't think
of Phoebus as thirty can you ? I suppose he must be more than
that. It seems impossible."
Thirty was not the Don's favourite age at all, he showed less
and less interest.
" I always see Phoebus as a child, just playing with his toys—
only he is not destructive ! "
49<i APES OF GOD
" Isn't he ? " asked the old Don with languor.
" Not at all destructive ! I have never known Phoebus to
pick out the eyes or pull the feathers off one of those masks made
by savages over there.—I've often wanted to do it myself ! But
he is very careful with them—he puts them all away and gets very
annoyed if you pick them up carelessly."
" How extraordinary ! "
" Osmund now is destructive ! "
" He is more so is he ? "
" Oh far more so than Phoebus—his nature is not at all the
same ! I have known Osmund to pick a toy to pieces. Once I
surprised Osmund putting one of Phoebus's Japanese dancing
mice upon the fire ! "
" How terribly cruel ! "
" He if cruel ! "
" But Phoebus is quite different is he?"'
" Phoebus is as different as possible. They often have, well not
quarrels, little disputes, like schoolboys have you know, with each
other, it is nothing—usually about Osmund's cruelty."
" Indeed."
" Osmund has there is no denying it a little of the bully in him.
Sometimes more perhaps, he is positively brutal sometimes."
" I should not have guessed that—he looks so kind."
" Yes Osmund is kind—he is most terribly kind. I know no
one who can be kinder than Osmund. But all the same it is so.—
Sometimes he can be very cruel."
" You surprise me."
" Yes I know. I rather like cruel people I confess don't
you ! " the Sib panted, masochism mantling the pearly film of
her eyes.
" I think all people of character must be cruel " said the old
Don with ferocity, sad sadic embers smouldering up in his
owlish glances at her.
" I agree with you ! " Sib panted back hectically to him. " I
am afraid I do agree with you—I don't like to believe it—but /
must ! "
" No—one doesn't. One must. It is force majeure."
" But I am sure it is true. Everything goes to prove it."
The learned Doctor fiercely sighed—an empty old blood
thirsty homosexual sigh.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 497
" Everything. If life were not cruel !"
" It would be kind I " panted the Sib.
The Sib peered short-sightedly over at the place where her
master Osmund sat. The remnants of the optical machine that
had looked upon Oscar in all his social glory, when Lion of May-
fair, watered. In the hanoverian Osmund Sib liked to think she
saw, so she said, the living double of the blank fat mug of Oscar—
and was not that legendary wit reincarnated in the brilliant
Osmund ? It was or the Sib was very much mistaken !
Dan listened with attention and he shuddered at the remarks
of the aged Don whom he particularly feared. Must people be
cruel—how he fought tooth and nail with that thought !—it was
a beastly one to have—he stopped his ears finally when the Sib
panted // would be kind—they were the most heartless old couple
he had ever overheard he was positive or ever wished to !
But Blackshirt was whetting his tongue. He too had been
listening very much to some purpose—he had noted the Sib's view
with regrrd to Phoebus and he was bursting with abuse, with the
will-to-expound—the pierpointean dervish he began whirling the
pierpointean invective round in his head prior to commencing.
" Sib ! " Lord Osmund was calling—in a long-distance coax
came his nasal commando—for he had looked round and missed her.
" Sib ! "
" Yes ! " Sib panted back as she violently started. She was
able only to talk with her lips, Sib had no breath and answered
with a pant, as ifstruck in the stomach with the word of command.
It was behindhand—the pant got to her lips too late for its words.
Inaudible almost. Yes! Osmund! she said. "Yes!"
" Do come and tell us Sib—you know, what Lettice Lady
Hornspit said, Sib, when you upset the aspidistra ! "
" Yes do tell us that one Sib—I've never heard that one, about
Lettice Lady Hornspit ! " came over, like the sound of a gun at
sea, the counter-tenor boom of Harriet.
The Sib squeaked hoarsely. Harriet's cannon-ball had hit
her in the midriff—it knocked, in one big gutta-percha squeeze,
all the breath out of Sib's body, in a thick squeak.
" Lettice Lady Hornspit ! Yes I'll come ! "
Muttering and panting propitiatory remarks, Sib started off.
With a decrepit expedition she moved towards that Restoration
Falstaff, her beloved patron. He sat in smiling state awaiting
498 APES OF GOD
her. His eye dwelt indulgently upon this living period-piece in
crazy motion—consecrated by Saint Oscar—in which paradoxical
repository the author of Sobs in Quad, or the Ballad of a Broken
hearted Fairy, had secreted wit, it was self-evident.
Blackshirt watched very sombrely the departing old pet and
wit.
" You heard what she said ? "
He waited, he knew Dan did not know whom he meant, he
did not care whether Dan heard.
" This is a nursery ! " he hissed at Dan with accusing finger
at the general prospect, as another man would say This is a den of
thieves ! " This is not a house—this is a nursery ! "
Dan looked idly about him—he saw Lord Phoebus who had
returned, without his Hottentot tricycle. He was nursing a lovely
black gollywog made of wood—a little envy he could not help but
feci for happy Phoebus, who could help it ? He wished that
Blackshirt would not breathe so hard, it was like a great big dog
and he had never got over the fright he had got aged ten
when Carlo struck him with his tail in the face.
Lord Phoebus stood by the baroque chimney, a substantial
willow-pattern. In skeleton Lord Phoebus represented the byzan-
tine canon, namely that of nine-heads—as opposed to that of
Polycletus. But the externals were transformed into Gothic.
Haggard-faced—with his byzantine nine-heads—he had the british
version of the hellenic chevelure. Up either side it was baldish
and widow's-peaked. The haggardness was buffoonish however—
Phoebus' countenance always appeared to puff (like the mouth of
rococo cupids, cloud-blasting or blowing in trumpets) with a
smile of mirth-frustrated. A corrupt and comic gothic of niiu-
heads then—a late Perrot crossed with Pierotte for sport, obliterating
sex.
Dan wished he knew Lord Phoebus, slightly.
" This is God's own Peterpaniest family ! "
The breath of the Blackshirt was rising like the first swell and
subsidence of what was to be a first-class storm. There was dirty-
weather ahead, the wind was rising.
God's Peterpaniest family sported unmoved beneath the eyes
of the pierpointean censor—Dan even slightly laughed in sym
pathy as one of the sportiest attempted to straddle the Hottentot
tricycle, which Eric Mastrodonato had just found up in the tower
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 499
of Phoebus and come running up with, with a shrill cry of
triumph.
The Blackshirt almost laughed through his teeth at Dan—a
gnashing half-laugh —as he noticed that he had thought it
proper to smile in sympathy at the sports of God's Peterpaniest
family.
" Moron that you are—I suppose you think that's funny ! "
Dan jumped a little—it had not been his wish to laugh, he
immediately felt guilty for he realised what he had done.
" It might be a kind ofjoke, if it were not so expensive ! "
It must be terrible, thought Dan, like Blackshirt to be forever
adding up. He planted a soft glance of pity upon the chest of the
ill-tempered adding-machine.—The economist chained up his
economic wrath, for the sake of imparting other information.
" You know old Harriet by sight don't you ? "
Dan looked up, straight at Lady Harriet Finnian Shaw, whom
he knew by sight.
" There is a celebrated painting of Battista Sforza Duchess of
Urbino. Harriet thinks she looks like the portrait. Tonight she
is got up to look like the portrait."
Dan looked again—he was rather pleased at knowing Harriet
by sight, he knew it pleased Blackshirt. He looked twice more.
" Yes. That is she. Standing with her is Julia Dyott. The
person with whom she lives. That is her friend."
Dan looked at Harriet again—there she is ! his eyes said she's
over there ! He could pick her out—he was not such a fool !
Blackshirt looked at Harriet too, he squared up to her—from
unmistakable signs which he had come to recognize at once, Dan
knew a big ' broadcast ' was brewing.
" Harriet " Blackshirt said, measuring Harriet with a butcher's
eye " turns forty easily on the scales with a bit to spare. She is a
forty-year-older—and as for that old chum of hers there, Julia,
she is a fifty-tonner—what do you think—she p'raps weighs eight or
ten summers more than Harriet—do you see her there ? "
With his head bursting with time-tonnage, in an effort to learn
to weigh with the eye, Dan darted a swift look at Harriet. Dan
himselfwas not able to count above thirty (he had often been glad
there were only twenty shillings in a pound). As he looked up he
half-expected to find, where he had last seen ladies and gentlemen,
a school of salmon in their place—he was relieved to remark no
5°° APES OF GOD
violent sea-change but just the same rows of bodies he had seen
before.
" You see that great romping bundle of kittenish black silk
bouncing about at present beside Lord Phoebus ? "
Dan certainly remarked a lady behaving with great vivacity,
quite close to Lord Phoebus—who looked sad he thought.
" To his intense disgust ! To Lord Phoebus's great vexation !
Observe the expression upon his face ! "
And Dan did notice that Lord Phoebus did not look best
pleased and felt very sorry for Lord Phoebus in a way, he looked
so cross and upset.
"Julia's not a bad old body. Is it her fault if she's a cool
fifty ? "
A breath of refreshing air seemed to blow over upon Dan from
the fifty cool summers of the girl-friend of Battista Sforza. Chilly
proximity—for fifty such cool summers !
" I daresay she's got as much of the milk of human kindness in
her big toe as all the Finnian Shaws together have venom in their
little fingers—it's quite possible. But she's altogether too milky,
whether it's kind or sour."
With bewildered fawn-face shyly Dan cast a covert glance in
the direction of the Finnian Shaw family group, but of course as
they were all shod as usual he was not rewarded by being able to
remark any milk coming out of the big toe ofJulia.
Blackshirt now entered the most massive ' broadcast ' he had
yet fallen into—it was a four-square pierpointean record.
" With stately step my lord Osmund approaches the portals
of his personal Age-hcll. It is marked with the mystical 4 to the
left hand of a Zero—that ugly orty sound too after it—oh Hell
in other words. Oh Hell ! "
Dan had an eye upon Lord Osmund but he did not see him
move—there was no writing on the wall—there was no low tem
perature ! Hell was mild today.
" There is the big Never-never door—Osmund prepares as it
clangs to upon his enormous Eighteenth-century backside to drop
all esperanza so he hates to see that grinning great glossy kitten
hopping about his family-circle— there's no denying it she is on
the womanly side—she has kind eyes ! They are a bit on the
kind side. But above all, Julia is a fifty-tonner—that's too much
ballast to carry for a family-circle of widely-advertised Juniors
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 5oi
whose age-tonnage is already far too much for the child class-events
in the contemporary literary Regatta. Julia is no junior, she lets
down the family-group with a great bump ! "
Dan looked for those kind eyes long and earnestly but he was
so sorry for Lord Phoebus all the time he could not find them, so
he looked up at Blackshirt wistfully, who said—
" I have heard this from Pierpoint."
Blackshirt appeared to think his glance had been one of in
credulity perhaps—so he told him where it came from, that giver
of all good things, the great PIERPOINT.
" Julia Dyott (heaven rest her soul) is the worst possible adver
tisement. Why need Harriet twenty years ago in choosing this
woman-mate have chosen one older even than herself. That is
how these distressed brothers argue. It would be so much nicer
ifJulia were younger than Harriet. What is the use of advertising
oneself if one has that skeleton always in one's family cupboard !
How could Harriet have been such a fool—why could she not
have foreseen that twenty years hence she'd form part of a family-
group who might become great Gossip-juniors. That's the idea."
Dan could see that that would be more pleasant, he sym
pathised very much with everybody about this, but it must be
confessed that he was not at all at his ease at the thought of the
skeleton hidden away in some family cupboard in this house he was
in—he thought at once of Mrs. Bosun's closet !
" When they go with a squad ofpress-photographers to present
a copy of their playlet Pity the Young ! to say Ellen Terry—' from
Youth to Age ' it would be inscribed—it would be so much nicer if
old Julia were not there to show the world what old Harriet's taste
was twenty years ago ! That is the point. It is capital, so it
seems a neck-or-nothing point. These people are exceedingly
sentimental. They take this advertisement question very seri
ously. It is their long suit—and a very long suit indeed ! And
they feel that someone has blundered ! "
Pity the Young—Dan could not help feeling that that was a
sentiment of which it was impossible to have too much, and he
fell to pitying some of the young very much just then.
" No, Julia's a bad break of Harriet's. Why Harriet couldn't
have foreseen—she must grow old herself she should have under
stood, so couldn't afford to attach that. This is quite the most per
plexing feature in this otherwise straightforward problem."
5o2 APES OF GOD
Dan looked perplexed. He wrinkled his brow to show he was
ploughing up his brains. But he gave it up—anyway he was
quite sure Blackshirt would unravel it—he looked very worried
about it at present, but he would soon clear it up Dan was
positive.
" So there stands that walking blot on the scutcheon—already—
might not Osmund wheeze through his hanoverian nose—rendered
sinister enough by the incessant ding-donging of Time, for their
own personal family birthdays—without inviting somebody in,
whose birthday-chimes every twelve-month deafened the whole
neighbourhood for a full half-hour—and fell in the same month as
the climacterical carillon of Harriet ! For Osmund and for
Phoebus—why Julia is their Cross ! "
Dan brightened—Hark now he hears them ding-dong bell—forty
ding-dongs—baked in a pie ! Dan's ears quite rang with the
pretty vibrations !
" I have this from Pierpoint. For Finnian Shaw lore, Pier-
point is unequalled."
Blackshirt threw himself back, and he took a B.D.V. from a
corrugated iron cigarette-case secured upon Bank-holiday at
Hampstcad in a luckydip. This was the conventional microphonic
pause in the ' Broadcast ', Dan was quite accustomed to that, he
liked it. And when Blackshirt said these bad brothers Dan knew
that the pause was over.
" These bad brothers " said Blackshirt " for ten years " and
he held out both hands, which Dan could see were fortunate
enough to possess ten fingers still " these bad brothers have moved
heaven and earth to effect the expulsion of that compromising
effigy—that old woman of the sea."
He pointed his cigarette at the nice pleasant smiling middle-
aged woman from whom Lord Phoebus attempted to hide a little
toy he held in his opposite armpit—and she the tactless tomboy
romped round to snatch it out.
" Then the miracle happened ! " boomed Blackshirt and made
Dan jump and almost cross himself. " The one little touch of old
mother nature that makes the whole little kindergarten world of
men kin—that manifested itself of all unlikely places in the bosom
of that imitation Battista Sforza old Harriet ! She would not turn
her back upon her life-time friend ! "
The Blackshirt whistled softly Auld Lang Syne and Dan looked
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 5o3
up in some astonishment. This display of musical ability in such
an unbending realist was unexpected to say the least.
" But it spoilt the Finnian Shaw family-group ! "
Dan looked hard at Julia, who was making jokes with Harriet,
thinking spoil-sport—he owed her a grudge for making Phoebus so
melancholy.
" It is the old antagonism—nature versus art. Man proposes—
Time disposes ! "
Blackshirt whistled The Old Folks at Home. Dan mentally
joined in the chorus of that—the old school-song it was and he
loved it. This was a new side of Blackshirt—what he longed for
Blackshirt really to do was to whistle John Brown's Body. Of all
songs he liked it best.
" Perhaps Harriet has only been soured by the wear and tear
of life ! " Blackshirt exclaimed, making a generous gesture—his
expression betraying an intention to see something good in every
thing. " Do not at all events let us be the first to throw stones at
glass-houses of the future ! "
Dan gazed into the glass-houses of the future and he saw the
gigantic leaves of the tropical narcissus or palm-groves as at Kew
Garden.
" You see how things are now " said Blackshirt as one man to
another. " Over there you can see it. It's as plain as print.
Osmund and Phoebus can scarcely bring themselves to speak to
Miss Dyott. On the other hand Time's forty horse-power chariot
comes hurrying down upon Osmund—soon to be galloping off in
his rear. Osmund feels it's too much under these circumstances to
ask him to stomach Julia ! No ! "
Blackshirt gave a long animal yawn. Dan immediately had
to smother a spasm set up in sympathy and then felt fatigued all
at once. He strangled several more and Blackshirt licked his lips.
The Blackshirt in a loud impatient voice then said—
" But they are puppets not people—they live in a sort of
musical box. Don't be afraid to look over at them—I notice you
seem afraid to—you have a perfect right to look ! "
This was new to Dan, that there were rights and wrongs—it
was surely always wrong to stare he had been taught—but to
please Blackshirt he cast a melting eye over upon Osmund just
once, and hung his head next minute to make up for it.
" Life justified as Joke. Imagine that principle. The Finnian
5o4 APES OF GOD
Shaw brothers exemplify it. You have the right to laugh here. —I
have the right to laugh. We all have the right to laugh. It is
better than that—you go against nature ifyou do not ! It is your duty
to laugh ! "
Dan had wanted to laugh for some time so he gave a smile
and let the Blackshirt see it so he would know he had complied.
Lord Osmund all of a sudden called out very crossly indeed—
" Eustace, do close that door again—it's being opened by
somebody ! "
It certainly had come open and everyone looked up indignantly
at it.
" Do see who they are Eustace first—we really can't have
them in here ! There are far too many people here already—some
will have to leave or we shall all be suffocated—I can scarcely
breath as it is ! "
" There is Zagreus " said Blackshirt to Dan pointing at the
door.
" Oh ! Who is it ? " in a still crasser tone Osmund shouted.
" Yes—that is all right Eustaco -but do try and see no one else
gets in ! I can hear more of .nem coming up. In a moment they
will be here ! "
" No it's all right Osmund " Eustace replied, coming back
from the door. " It really is all right ! I've looked out of the
door—no one is in sight ! "
" But I can hear them coming up ! —The band has stopped and
they are liable to come up here because they want to sit down
and are too lazy to go out into the garden."
" I think you're wrong Osmund. There is no one in sight ! "
Eustace argued with Osmund.
" It's not a question of sight ! I can hear them distinctly ! "
Dan's heart beat fast. With him someone was in sight—and
alas he was not alone !
Horace was coming across the room at .aJiighstepping stroll,
and as he did so he stooped sideways still advancing with knees
up, to speak with the little upstart cad he had with him and was
never parted from—that Margolin—who came forward in his
customary unbridled manner of under-bred effrontery ! That
this was prejudicial to Horace's dignity was almost certain. For
Dan he had no eyes at all that went without saying—open ship
wreck of every observance of cordial regard—and of tenderness
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 5o5
for his genius—had long ago been made by Horace : and he him
self (Dan knew but too well) by his lack of push had been the
firmest abetter of his own decay, he could not find the words like
other people to plead his cause with Horace—not ofhis deserts but
of those of genius !—and he even could have wished to be some
such blockish and rash person as Blackshirt—to plead his cause
with boot or fist horrible as that was—because he could not bear
to stand by and watch all that he had once been for Horace
become nothing but a name ! It was scarcely a name any longer
indeed ! When an unprofitable grammarian at Wexford he re
called, just such another upstart Emanuel Rooney by name it was,
had come between himself and the headmaster who had had a
great liking for him at first. But a big boy had one day on account
of a row attacked Rooney when he wasn't looking and broken his
leg with a thumping kick. He almost had it in his heart to wish
that Blackshirt would fall foul of Margolin once, and box his ears
perhaps make his nose bleed, that would serve him jolly well right !
But Dan followed this vein no more, for with the suppressed
excitement his own nose started to bleed then—and he lay back his
head upon the window-ledge and looked up at the ceiling, swal
lowing the blood and secretly sniffing.
" Zagreus ! " Dan heard a voice calling and he looked down
his nose and saw it was Osmund calling his false friend over with
a friendly hooked forefinger.
Horace turned back Dan saw. While his two followers stood
behind him he talked with much fierce ringing laughter on his
side, with Lord Osmund. He bent down and he examined one or
two of the more prominent of the toys—fragments of gingerbread
work—the Callot entitled Parterre ou Jardin de Nancy—an Eigh
teenth Century japanese bronze mirror—a trojan face-urn—a
eledgy cup from Burgoland, and the rest—stroking them and
laughing and sounding them with his nails, but Lord Phoebus
removed the gingerbread work and the clay pieces out of his reach.
—The musical snuff-box he subtilised. Then, reaching out his
hand, he appeared to recover it from the decollete of the Vol-
pemini and everyone applauded very much indeed. It was lovely
to have a conjurer in the room amongst one and one sprang up
and crowded round him. But Zagreus did no more tricks, and
one lay down again.
5o6 APES OF GOD

IX. 'BLACKSHIRT EXPLAINS RATNER, "RATNER

"BLACKSHIRT.
With a broad and evil grin (the first that night and Dan hoped
the last) which carried a wink with it too, Blackshirt said—
" Zagreus is popular ! "
This pierpointean watched the other pierpointean, and Dan
took his head off the ledge.
" What wonder—what strange revolution, has brought him,
you ask ! No revolution ! It is period-prestige ! "
Dan put the pocket handkerchief that was damp with tears to
his nose and removed the blood.
" The great practical-joker of the Nineties—Zagreus was that
—that is enough ! This man has laid violent hands too upon the
hem of Oscar's garment—Zagreus has done that—it is more than
enough ! "
Dan knew that Blackshirt was now saying horrid things about
Horace again, but he did not care he confessed.
" It is reported he actually kidnapped Wilde—in those days
Zagreus was I suppose a sort of hearty. Only the police saved
Wilde from tar and feathers. That is the story. Now he gets
kudos out of his attack ! "
A growing excitement was visible upon the face of Starr-
Smith.
" That is the sacrosanct period-of-periods—the Victorian
death, the birth of Decadence ! Ah that pioneer naughtiness of
the ' Naughty Nineties,' that Made the World Safe for Homo
sexuality ! "
A loud peal of super-pierpointean laughter stormed the ears
of the assembly. The swaying figure of Zagreus became the focus
for ail eyes whatever. Blackshirt looked black indeed at this—
Pierpoint had refused always to allow Starr-Smith to imitate his
laugh—talk he might, to his heart's content—laugh, never !
" Zagreus snaps his fingers at them. But it is Pinpoint'sfingers
he snaps ! He gets his tricks where I have got my tricks !—Apart
from that ! " Blackshirt snapped his fingers. " Horace Zagreus
is not unlike these Finnian Shaws himself ! "
Blackshirt gave a snort in place of the laugh he might not give.
" Zagreus is like the Finnian Shaws—he is Peter Pan ! "
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 507
Dan looked over wistfully at Horace. He could not defend him
against the Blackshirt—he could not defend him against himself !
" Zagreus does not strike one as old."
Blackshirt gazed at that tall and graceful figure with a back
made for the Stulz swallow-tail, that had bought the right to
laugh like Pierpoint from their common master.
" Has that struck you ? "
Blackshirt looked at Dan almost as if he expected an answer.
" He doesn't look more than a forty-tonner ! " Blackshirt
added in a voice that was confidential. " That's because he's an
albino."
Dan's head ached slightly from the nosebleeding.
" You know the Bible in Spain ? Borrow was an albino."
Dan had never heard Blackshirt mention anything connected
with religion until now and he listened for his next remark with
attention.
" Borrow reminds, me of Zagreus."
Talking about borrowing—as it was money again Dan lost
interest—but into the midst of his day-dream burst a white horse.
" In T.P. I read last week how Borrow rode his white charger
into the hall of the manor-house of an enemy-neighbour. Was
not that like Zagreus ? Probably he looked like him."
His heart breaking, Dan lifted his head—as if anyone else who
had ever lived could resemble Horace !
" Look at him now—with that East End monkey-on-a-
stick ! "
Horace was in the act of introducing the disgusting little Mar
golin-fellow to Lord Osmund (who did not seem to like any too
well the doubtful privilege !). Dan could just hear, even—by
straining very much both ears—the word—yes—yes the word
genius !
" He's not going to take him on, so he needn't think it ! "
Dan felt unaccountably drawn toward the Blackshirt ! What
ever unfortunate directions his remarks might on occasion take,
he was so essentially right-minded !
" I shouldn't be surprised if that son-of-a-bitch Ratner had
put him up to it ! "
At the name Ratner Blackshirt showed his aversion by biting
at a hangnail, doubling his head upon his shoulder to get up at
it and chew it off.
5o8 APES OF GOD
" Why does he drag all these Jews from Whitechapel round
with him—especially Julius Ratner, holy mother ! "
Again Dan was surprised, this time definitely gratified, to hear
Blackshirt employing an expression that suggested that he might
not be a stranger to the consolations of religion.
" It was Pierpoint recommended Ratner."
The Blackshirt stared gloomily over at Pierpoint's rattish
nominee.
" It was a joke," he added quickly, and blew his nose in lieu
of spitting.
Dan could see it was a joke. Hurriedly he gave a smile to
show he saw the joke it was.
" Yes. Zagreus has no sense of humour at all—although he
laughs so much ! "
And as he referred to this privileged laughter of Zagreus,
Blackshirt's visage was at its bitterest.
" He has kept Mr. Ratner religiously at his side ever since."
Again Blackshirt—this time directly—had referred to religion !
" He is my anti-genius ! Zagreus says. // is a good thing to vomit
at least once a day. You have heard him I expect. It would not be
a bad thing to call in some cringing scarecrow—if it would only
scare off the geniuses ! But it doesn't, does it ? "
Dan could not decide if this was intended to be offensive to all
genius or only to such as was not real genius at all.
" Pierpoint says that Zagreus gets money out of Ratner—that
he says is the secret—I am quite prepared to believe that, from
what I know of Zagreus. It is very likely. All the same, is it
necessary to take one's money-lender about everywhere with
one ? "
Dan had never had a money-lender, so he found it impossible
to express an opinion as to what was the best thing to do, to take
him about or not. But he was strongly of the opinion that a
gentleman should keep such things to himself.
" With him most of his friends are money-lenders—that is
unless they are genuises ! —Ratner I am told is very jealous of the
young men by whom Zagreus is always surrounded. It is he, it
appears, who is responsible for Zagreus treating them so badly.
Zagreus would not admit it, but he influences him. There is
Willie Service now—he is treated worse than any chauffeur.
Ratner does all that. It is for similar reasons that I have so much
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 5o9
trouble with him, as secretary to Pierpoint—only Pierpoint sends
him to hell, usually."
There was a pause, during which Blackshirt watched Zagreus
with his new genius Margolin, and his dismal money-lender-in-
ordinary, turning over this question as to the desirability of having
one's money-lender on one's staff, and other questions, and then a
new topic agitated the blackshirted breast.
" I don't know whether Zagreus has paid the costumier," he
said with a sudden fiery anxiety. " Do you happen to know if
Zagreus has paid the tailor ? "
Dan was startled at this question—he had always had his suits
bought for him and was there not possibly a hint of responsibility
(devolving upon Aim) in this point-blank question ? No one had
ever mentioned such a thing to him before, about suits.
" I know he hasn't paid us a penny yet ! We designed his
dress for him—we gave him a number of sketches. All this
symbolical personnel you know costs money ! You can see that
can't you ? "
The Blackshirt appeared suddenly to become very excited—
the storm burst over Dan's head—this time it was no ' broadcast '
either. Blackshirt was exclaiming against his destiny in a spon
taneous and straightforward manner.
" I've had about enough of it ! Pierpoint is altogether too
good-hearted—I respect that but he is so unpractical ! What
happens when I intervene ? That is all the thanks I get ! Zagreus
is sometimes downright treacherous ! "
Dan was sure that he misjudged him and let him see as much,
by his face's very grave expression, at once—casting one long
loyal look in the direction of Horace.
" Why do you suppose I am here with two more, who are
volunteers, as ' fascists ' of all things, to-night ? Nothing to do-
with Fascismo—the last thing—can you guess ? It's because I
picked up three khaki shirts for a few pence and dyed them black
—the whole outfit for the three of us did not cost fifteen bob !
That is the reason."
Dan looked in melancholy reverie sideways at the stomach of
this particularly mercenary young man—how anybody could be
so mercenary he did not know unless it was being a secretary.
" Because I stand between him and them I get the mud—if it
were not fpr me, where would Pierpoint be tell me that ! No
 APES OF GOD
where ! His finances were in absolute chaos when he picked me
up—it was / saved him from bankruptcy ! I pulled him out of
the most fearful chaos."
After the way that Blackshirt had saved him—from a worse
fate than bankruptcy—he could not doubt his word with regard
to this lesser act of bold salvation.
" Take again that old spirit that wills the evil over there that
follows at the heel of Zagreus (and does the good—in the matter of
financial credits, if Pierpoint is right, and as business adviser)
consider what I have to put up with from him. As Pierpoint's
political-secretary and man of business, as I am—he persecutes
me as far as possible. Pierpoint says Mr. Ratner has Zagreus in
his power. That is over a big loan—that was a year ago. Pier
point has told me something about it. It's my belief that Pier
point owes him something too. As it is, Ratner's Press do a little
printing for us—we have to make use of him, you know how that
is at times don't you—though I have suggested alternatives to
Pierpoint. But Pierpoint will not hear of it. He argues that we
should only get another Ratner. It is an evil that we know and so
on. We argue a lot. Well then, I have disputes with that man
there every quarter over money. Sometimes monthly—he plagues
my life out. And then he goes and complains to Pierpoint. He is
always the injured party. It is my manners. He says I am so rude
to him and Pierpoint does not understand. He insinuates that I
am violent—you may well smile ! He creeps round and whispers
to Pierpoint that my violence as he calls it is damaging—I do harm
to Pierpoint's cause ! ' A violent young man ' is how he described
me—it appears that if Pierpoint allows me to continue as political-
secretary and to look after his money-affairs that all Pierpoint's
affairs will go to the devil ! This ' violent young man '—yours
truly !—will drive everybody away—with his quarrelsome natural
fieriness of temper—and suspiciousness. At that I laugh outright.
At that I really laugh outright ! "
And the poor Blackshirt almost did what was forbidden him—
laugh—and a twisted and grimacing face was the consequence.
" Yes—it was the suspiciousness that had done it—that I well
enough understood—suspiciousness as regards Ratner of course ! I
was lacking in proper trustfulness ! Oh please—I could not keep
my temper again it seemed ! I wish I had not. I wish / had
not ! "
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 511
And Blackshirt's second harsher had not had such a force to it,
that if Dan had had a hat on, it might have hit it off his head—
while he looked over at the rival business-man in such a way as
boded no good to him my word.
" I who a dozen times when he came about his bill—he came
only because he wanted to press Pierpoint, so that he could find
out how he stood—if he'd got the cash I suppose—I saw through
his game ! always overcharging us—needing to be watched every
half-second or he'd slip in a matter from the account paid six
months back—Just to be tiresome, intending to get me into trouble
—had I thrown the old spy-rat out on his head a hundred times
it would have been no more than he asked for. Asks for—he
pleads for it ! The ugly old reptile willsyou to hit him—the dirty
old masochist ! Well I am Welsh. I talk quickly, as all Welsh-
people do. I know that sometimes I have the air of being excited.
—Sometimes that is more than others. But does that signify I am
out of temper ? What about ? I agree perhaps such a man as
that may get my goat. Perhaps. One day I shall be violent on
purpose. I shall accept ! "
Dan drew away a little from the Blackshirt, as he had become
restless and electrical discharges were coming out of him, he
thought (as he considered the problem of the alleged ' violence '
that was his, or whether it was celtic impetuosity no more than
that).
But Blackshirt's anger rose if anything, if anger it was, as
Zagreus and Co. were steadily approaching and his business foe
became larger and more distinct—with a decided grin too upon
his unlovely mask of a Theatrical-Agent-in-a-small-way-of-shoddy-
business—which he brought over hanging coyly upon his fat neck
like a bilious tulip. The eye-in-profile darted up at Blackshirt
too to provoke him, and the sallowest smirk of the most superior
gentlemanly Julius was pasted all over his face—advertising his
settled opinion of the comic nature of this amateur-secretary.
Zagreus came up and he was smiling very cordially at Dan.
He said in the friendliest way in the world—
" Daniel you make a girl in a thousand—I declare you are too
good to be true—are you perhaps really a girl after all Daniel ?
Is it possible Dan your mother made a mistake ! "
Blushing Dan sat tight. His eyes were fixed in stoical anguish
upon the floor, his legs were locked together in despair, his hands
 5" APES OF GOD
clasped before his knees and slowly wrung upon his knee-pans in
silent grief. If Horace approved of him as a girl that was some
compensation for the horrible situation in which he found himself
but he could scarcely think that he did and this was mockery too
he expected.
The Blackshirt shot up like a Jack-in-the-box and Dan heard
him hoarsely remark—
" A word with you Zagreus ! "
They moved off and went into another recess together. Stand
ing in front of Dan, Ratner affected to read in a book. The
sleepless inquisitor's lateral eye, with its mercurial stability sensi
tive as a compass, lay in wait for his blackshirted antagonist.
Throwing himself down upon the cushioned window-seat, by
the side of Dan, Margolin closed his eyes. To be a genius took it
out of you, the false as well as the true. He buried his small
frowning face in the wash-leather of a cheap cushion. Suddenly
he opened his eyes and said to Dan as if emerging from a long
blank slumber—
" Where have you been ? "
Dan did not wish to be accused by Margolin of being a violent
young man but he dropped his head a little sharply and closed his
eyes quickly, with no snapping, but firmly.
" Been up in this room long Dan ? " asked Archie, as one
genius to another.
Oh how Dan could wish that Horace would not leave him
alone with this hateful little intriguing cad—he would not suffer
himself to listen however to the hateful little cad's impertinent
questions now. 1
Blackshirt and Horace were away for some time, it seemed very
long to Dan—possibly thought he the Blackshirt was telling Horace
about the expenses of a new genius. Now they had strolled out,
deep in conversation, from the other recess : and Blackshirt often
looked back towards Margolin, and Horace laughed as Blackshirt
did so very heartily in his loud easy way—as if what Blackshirt
said was a capital piece of fun and pierpointean irony and it
deserved a crack of first-class laughter to respond to the rich
tickle of it—Horace tossed his head about and stamped upon the
floor with his corn-cob wand as if applauding Blackshirt. They
were after all both of them mad about Pierpoint—but Dan did
hope that his new friend might succeed in impressing upon
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 5i3
Horace the necessity of retrenchment and might stop him from
having another genius just yet—and that he would completely
show-up Margolin who was now (he knew) nothing more than a
jewish unbeliever.
Archie Margolin lay back upon the cushions of the window-
seat very pretentiously, like a little Sultana. From the midst of
his asiatic abandon he cocked his fingers and then sent over a
whirling Safety Match, which fell beside Blackshirt.
" Here Dan ! " Margolin explosively claimed Daniel's atten
tion without obtaining it at all. " Who is that ? Is that your
friend ? "
To have Margolin beside you was to have a cheddite cartridge
in your pocket—the lips of Margolin detonated, they did not
speak. How he made thoughts must be like the back-firing of an
internal combustion mechanism, instead of a man's brain. This
was certainly the most restless toy that genius-fan ever had for a
pet—his nervous Match-habit expressed Arch, in terms of
Behavior to perfection.
Ratner smiled at Margolin and Margolin allowed his eyes to
rest, drowsy and sultanaish, impassibly upon the person of Ratner.
" Here ! " coughed Arch again—peevish and imperious, with
a spasm of mock-impatience, facing about. " That's a stout
fellow Dan ! Is he your friend over there ! "
" It's Starr-Smith ! " Ratner muttered coyly into his book—as
if he had not intended to be heard, as he stood facing the book-
cavities.
" Oh that's Starr-Smith ! " choked Archie jocosely in burly
inanition, at the Starr in front of the Smith. " Stout Fell-/ou> .' "
In his role of sly book-worm Ratner did not look up but said
as he read, for the benefit of Dan—
" Starr-Smith is Pierpoint's business-manager."
Ratner sneered to himself lazily lifting his Hp to show a fang.
The calling of Starr-Smith was to Ratner (of course himself no
business-man, but a poet) a jest that no one could miss.
" Business-man ! " Archie blurted " here Ratner is it Snuff—
that's a business-man—it's a good name ! It must be Big Busi
ness ! "
" Very Big ! " Ratner sneered in indulgent croak at Arch,
down into this nest of geniuses. " Pierpoint calls him his political-
secretary."
5i4 APES OF GOD
" Political-secretary ! " Arch hadn't heard of it, not political-
secretary.
Ratner changed his face which became grave but knowing,
to utter something from-the-horse's-mouth. The eye-in-profile
coldly picked its way among facts—inside information was about
to be imparted—but it would be picked and analysed from A to
Z. It had the sanction of public opinion—all enlightened persons
would assent to Ratner's descriptions. Not common-knowledge-
Known to all the most knowing.
" I am very fond indeed of Pierpoint ! " Ratner said, for this
was the A.B.C. of success—it must be accepted as an axiom that
what Ratner uttered was the damaging admission of a reluctant
friend. The ' fondness ' must come first—the belittlement after
wards it stood to reason. That was so as to have the right to
defame. To be ' fond,' you must know—it must moreover be very
well that you know—for you to have the time to become fond.
After that matters are simple ! everything said henceforth will
have the stamp ofauthority—that of a truth wrung from unwilling
lips. Hence was to be seen that air of wisdom from-the-horse's
mouth—but whose fangs when it was Ratner's mouth precluded
the idea of the presence of a real horse still less a Houyhnhnm—
and since always it was the thing that is not that came out of those
jaws, that was as well.
" Is he a business fell-low ! " asked Archie with the frowning
pomp of his miniature stature.
" No Archie ! " in a growl croaked Ratner, with an awful
graceful wriggle in the opposite sense. " Pierpoint is a philo
sopher !"
" Oh a philosopher " spluttered Arch.
" Yes—I suppose so."
" Oh—so he's not a business fell-low ! "
" No—I'm afraid he's not a business-fellow Archie ! He is
very unbusiness-like."
" Is he ? So am I ! "
" Starr-Smith is Pierpoint's business-manager—his ideas of
business are very funny. He makes Pierpoint almost a laughing
stock—he does the most extraordinary things."
" Isn't he a business-fell-low ? "
" No Archie—he is a very unbusinesslike fell-low ! "
" Which one ? "
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 515
" Both are very unbusinesslike fellows ! "
" What did you say the other was ? "
" Pierpoint is a very vain fell-low."
" Here am J vain Ratner ? "
" No Archie. Pierpoint likes Starr-Smith because Starr-Smith
treats him as if he were a little tin-god."
" Little tin-god—go on ! "
" Little tin-god ! " (responsive hysteria of a more frustrated
and semi-dignified sort from the Rat). " Starr-Smith imitates
everything Pierpoint does. As a business-manager Starr-
Smith ."
" He's not clever is he ! "
Ratner croaked drearily.
" It's worse than that ! "
" Is it really ! "
" As everyone knows Pierpoint is hopelessly unbusinesslike."
Ratner gave every evidence of a hopeless attempt to disguise, in
his own face, all the tell-tale indications of a hopelessly unbusinesslike
man—of a poet. " Everyone expects that of Pierpoint." (Everyone
expected it as well of Ratner—his bashful smile made that quite
plain.) " But Starr-Smith is even worse than Pierpoint—between
them they make a mess ofeverything." He spoke as if the separate
syllables of his words were clammy and apt to stick together really
—this gave the effect of the reluctance needed. " I do some print
ing for them," he looked very bashful and unbusinesslike indeed.
" But I only do it because I am a friend of Pierpoint's. Other
people tell me however—Starr-Smith is the same with every
body."
" Is he ? Go on ! "
Ratner then with meditative eye pointed out, as it were, how
Blackshirt was upsetting Horace Zagreus at this moment, as per
usual and in illustration of his remarks.
Pretending that something had gone phoney with his right
eye, Archie rubbed it until it became very red and looked at
Ratner out of it, who sneered and turned away. Dan stared
stoically into the Land of his Dreams, up that Long Long Trail
A-winding. In that dream he thought he heard Starr-Smith say
' On Account ! ' and he saw Horace shake his head.
516 APESOFGOD

X. THE OLD COLONELS.

The whole room suddenly reverberated. A footman announced
in tremendous accents—
" COLONEL PONTO !
CAPTAIN ALPHONSO TEACH ! "
Another footman post-haste upon his heels roared out—
" ADMIRAL BENBOW !
GENERAL WALKER-TROTTER !
MAJOR UPDICK !
COMMANDER PERSE ! "
There was an indescribable roar on all hands as these names
were announced. Lord Osmund rose. Everyone sprang up and
shouted at once. Lord Phoebus came rushing out of the stairs
with Eric Mastrodonato and Basil Spatworthy and also Martin
McGregor, Patrick Leslie and Cecil Dawson—who had gone up
into the tower upon orders from Osmund to fetch Phoebus to keep
people out—who kept getting in, in twos and threes, and Phoebus
was the best doorkeeper. Eustace could not manage crowds. He
had not the knack—he did not carry the same weight and was not
brutal enough with them.
So the osmundian world shook to its foundations—all roared
at once as the guests announced came out behind the footmen, in
a string. First of all through the open door came Colonel Ponto.
He was in the company of Captain Alphonso Teach. The first
footman shouted out again—a liveried rooster, the h«ad protrud
ing at a break-neck pitch, to deliver his message—
" COLONEL PONTO !
CAPTAIN ALPHONSO TEACH ! "
Dan was the only person in the room who was not standing.
Matches flew through the air towards the gallant officers and
gentlemen who were making their entrance, especially Colonel
Ponto, dressed in the full regimentals of Colonel Newcome on
parade (chosen by Lord Osmund himself for Colonel Ponto, as
the character in fiction best suited to his manly beauty, and the
outfit had been sent him by post). Captain Teach in full mess
kit of the Deccan Light Foot looked very well indeed as a pukka
sahib and a credit to Anglo-India.
Of the next batch, shouted in by both footmen (foot-to-foot,
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 517
emblazoned buttock by emblazoned buttock) Commander Perse
was first. His clean-shaven, salt-tanned, non-pareil senior-ser
vice face required no uniform to advertise his calling. So he
rolled in in squarely-built black broadcloth mufti evening-kit, to
withstand all weathers—a Summit-collar, Sandeman Port, Ward
room tailor's-dummy in a million—and everyone must have the
conviction at the first glimpse of him—this royal-blue aquatint—
that a topgallant was tattooed upon the stiff upstanding pillar of
his back—that a mandril picked out in blue and scarlet swarmed
up one of his sea-legs—that a rude specimen of what Jack Tar has
one-each-of in every port bulged with her brawny limbs upon
the other—that a Capstan Navy-cut british sheet-anchor was sus
pended upon his left breast almost certainly—that is in that por
tion alone not overstocked with a rank growth of male hair, above
the beating-spot of his heart-of-oak. All this was obvious. It
would have been a great pity to paint the lily—naval dress would
have been a mere fancy-dress with this essential Sea-salt.
But Admiral Benbow had come definitely disguised as some
exotic description of mariner, and there was a quite distinct
murmur of disappointment. Had he been so ill-advised, although
a stout man, as to represent Lord Nelson ? Why had the old fool
spoilt himself? There was a note of anger in the exclamations
provoked by this discovery.
Major Updick and General Walker-Trotter, two first-class
tomato-pink veterans (with dazzling white-lead moustaches of the
best coarse bristle) were in their appropriate uniforms by request.
Both had been snatched straight out of the Club Window in that
Club-Land-that-was—in the very act of exclaiming " Demme
Sir ! the country's going to the dogs ! "—and brought hot-foot to
Lord Osmund's Lenten Party, the Sandeman Port scarcely dry
upon their furibond moustaches, to say Demme sir ! all over again
there—that needed no underlining.
But in the wake of the naval and military procession crowded
a horde of vulgar sightseers, some of them actually young women,
extremely difficult to handle—it was in vain that Phoebus and
Eustace attempted to push them back—it was a moment of great
pandemonium, people got out of hand and all was at sixes and
sevens.
" You really must go away you know ! " loftily baying Lord
Phoebus ran hither and thither, the picture of misery. He pushed
5«8 APES OF GOD
first this person, then that. "We can't have so many people in
here—no really we can't—these are private apartments ! You
really have no right here at all ! This part of the house is not
for the public. You really must go back at once to the Saloon
and dance ! "
The young women smiled at Phoebus and at his hollow bay of
loud complaint, as if he had been a part of the exhibition, and
were one of the minor side-shows, to be enjoyed at the same time
with those marked Ponto—Benbow—Updick— Teach.
" Eustace ! Tell them they will be turned out if they come in !
This is too much !—Close the door ! No they can't remain here !
Look at them ! Close-the-door ! This is my room ! This is not
public ! " Phoebus howled and stormed among the intruders. It
was in vain, for they imitated each other, and some of them would
not take him seriously at all. A great number of nameless guests
got in, flushed from their ridiculous exercises downstairs. After
wards it was impossible to expel them—although, acting as party-
police, several rosetted Osmundians did attempt to drive towards
the door several unathletic-looking, unaccompanied, palpably
friendless persons, who evidently had no business in any respectable
house, several of whom appeared to smell.
Listening to the shouting footmen, Ratner said to Horace—
" They must have made up the names ! "
" They have been most diligently picked, of course," said
Horace " for their name, and military appearance. There are
not two Teaches in the world ! And what moustaches ! "
Mr. Zagreus brushed up fiercely his own postiche circus-pro
prietor's lip-crop.
All of Horace's party had now, including Blackshirt, been
stampeded into the recess : Horace bent down to Dan, with a
certain gallantry—as if in recognition of the feminine suggestions
of the get-up and said in his ear, quite close to his face—
" Starr-Smith wishes to take you over for the rest of the even
ing." He added in a lower tone, in a portentous whisper—
" Pierpoint wishes it ! "
Dan clasped and unclasped his hands in bitter protest.
" I am going down to prepare for our show. I will send for
you when I am ready."
Dan made the effort of his life—he half-rose—it was his last
card !
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 519
" Oh can't I come ! " he cried, and then fell back with a big
banging blush, ready to sink into the floor with shame.
" No. Starr-Smith wishes you to stop with him."
Dan sank back still further, almost in a heap. He had played
his card—he had lost ! Horace had pushed him offon the Black-
shirt.
Zagreus stood to watch for a moment the drumrning-in of the
fatuous carefully-picked Old Colonels and performing Sea Dogs
—each one redder, riper and more unreal than the last.
" The Yeomen of the Guard " said Ratner.
" What a pack of old fools " the Blackshirt remarked with a
disgusted violence.
" They kept them downstairs until now—in a locked room ! "
Zagreus told the Blackshirt smiling, watching for the response.
" Did they—in a locked room ! "
" Yes. Under lock and key. We tried to get into the room as
a matter of fact—it was locked."
" Well ! "
" Yes. A footman came hurrying up to us, to know what we
wanted. He explained the situation—it seemed to provide him
with considerable amusement I must say that."
" So I should suppose."
" As they arrived one by one they were thrust in there and
asked to wait—till there were enough of them, that I believe was
Osmund's idea, to make a grand slam."
Ratner continued to grin—not at what Horace was saying to
excite the Blackshirt, but at his own thoughts, was advertised by
that fulsome steadfast yellow leer. He allowed it to stop there (so he
announced in the eyes that were part of it) because it was too much
trouble to take it off. But the dank bloom of the grin gave to the
face that nice superior feeling.—Nothing especially funny to him
about the retired senior-officers. Locked up in their waiting-
room—well yes, but what of that ? Nothing in the footman's
face (encountered downstairs) to laugh at or grin at. A stupid
young footman liked to have the job of putting old red-faced
bigwigs under lock and key. Of course. Standing in full farce
of his powdered hair, plush and knee-breeches—stuffed into a
stuffy state-suit (in mockery, so it must feel to have that on your
back) —a gentleman's braided costume in 175o thereabouts, today
reserved for the underdog—that was a sort of insult who could not
 52o APES OF GOD
see that ! Also of course it was the symbol of the external pomp
of the underdog—empty of power, but with a fine court suit !
Fine Clothes for The Under-dog ! The real unseen master naked—
upon some distant Beach—Venice or Florida. No need to explain
to Ratner how such a powdered young man would like to have
Lord Osmund too in a locked apartment. Who wouldn't—that
was normal, but it was quite trite. The footman as a matter of
course would relish it. To have everybody with the power to put him
into a braided uniform (such as formerly worn by aristocrats, but
only by poor bottom-dogs at present) with power to powder his
hair white like age—it was but too self-evident that (standing to
attention, at the end of an epoch) the young footman would not
be far from wishing to tie Lord Osmund up in a gunnysack, to
drop him down to the bottom of some disused 175o well.—Such
ideas had neither hands nor feet—they were the mist of possi
bilities that willy-nilly formed, of their own accord, in the brain,
immediately behind the things you saw, if you had eyes to see.
There was nothing in that to provoke, or to sustain, such a know
ing smile as alone he could give. Such child's play was not
commensurate with such craft. Such pictures could fill one
sometimes with an intoxication of secret power, like a prophet—
of course formerly one had felt that and the rest : but the fumes
of this secret knowledge had come up into his face—bit by bit
they had hardened into this splenetic grin. Only this coy splenetic
grin ofJulius Ratner was left as witness. All that was passed now
with him—he did not care ! But the grin he left up above upon
his face, because it was far too much trouble to take it off, and it
was calculated to annoy people at large, who thought it was
meant for them.
The jubilant roar from the osmundian chorus, which had
denoted the long expected entrance of all these relics of mediocre
Death-or-Glory (this menagerie of Uncle Tobies—all as good as
wounded at Namur, or shot down at Trafalgar, it was all the
same) died down. This became an excited buzz as the seasoned
leaders, and their Jugend Bewegung satellites, like swarms of bees
(joined by many unorthodox intruders, rudely pushing and
laughing) gathered around one or other of the grinning fossils—
old pensioners, ex-hearties of Death or Glory.
Colonel Ponto was surrounded and at first pinioned against
the wall by an admiring group of pushing and pinching persons.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 521
At first Harriet and (a little less prominent) Julia, led them but
they deserted him for the General. One rather ageing epicene-
contortionist howled in Ponto's face, as he walked backwards in
front of him—
" Do tell us again Colonel how you were killed at Colenso ! "
Monty Mayors, exploding with the glee of his high blood-
pressure, bellowed in Ponto's ear—
" Oh yes Colonel—do tell us how you were killed at Colenso
again ! "
" Oh Colonel do tell us that—do tell us all once more how you
were killed at Colenso ! "
They all took turns to plead with the steadily advancing Ponto.
" That is a divine story Colonel Ponto—was it in the Zulu
War you won the Victoria Cross !—was it ! Was it the Victoria
Cross ? "
- " The Victoria Cross—how lovely—did he get the Victoria
Cross at Colenso ? "
" When he was killed ! "
" Was old Ponto really killed ! "
" No. It was in the Zulu War ! It was in the Zulu War
wasn't it Colonel Ponto ! "
" Am I not right in saying Colonel it was at Rorke's Drift !
Do say I am—just this once please Colonel ! "
" Colonel Ponto—it was in the Zulu War ! Do say it was, I'm
sure you're right ! "
" Did you kill yourself Colonel Ponto ! Was it yourself ! "
" Did you kill a Zulu Colonel ! "
" Yes tell us how you killed a Zulu ! "
" Did you do it with a dagger ? "
" No it was a bayonet you silly ass ! Ponto was armed ! "
" His sword did it ! "
" No he did it ! "
" Did the old Zulu show fight—or was he too afraid of you
Colonel to defend himself? "
" I should have been ! "
" I'm positive I should have asked for quarter on the spot
wouldn't you ! "
" I believe the Colonel must have terrified him so much that
he just died of fright ! "
" And then they gave the Colonel the Victoria Cross ! "
 APES OF GOD
" Did Queen Victoria give you the Victoria Cross Colonel ! "
" Of course she did ! She always gave away her own
crosses ! "
" Oh I do think that is exciting ! Do tell us Colonel how
Queen Victoria handed you her Victoria Cross ! "
" I wish the Colonel would go downstairs and kill a few of
those Jazz-band Zulus right now ! I'm sure he'd get the Victoria
Cross all over again if he did ! "
" I wish he would too—it's the world's worst band ! "
" Couldn't you see your way Colonel to shoot up a few Zulu;
we have downstairs ! Do say^w Colonel ! "
" Yes Colonel Ponto—oh do say you will ! They have been
making the most diabolical noise you ever heard ! "
" We'd see you got the Victoria Cross again if you could see
your way clear to fight your way through the band Colonel
Ponto ! "
" We would help you ! "
" Yes we would be behind you Colonel Ponto—to a man ! "
" Only we'd just do it for the love of the thing ! "
" Yes we'd do it purely for the love of the thing ! "
" We don't mind the Zulus really—but we wish they wouldn't
make so much noise ! We do wish you'd kill them Colonel !
We should be terribly grateful to you if you would ! "
" Oh do Colonel Ponto ! We will come with you ! "
The Colonel was a baffled Santa Claus—one who had expected to
find a nursery asleep, but instead he had discovered waiting for
him a wide-awake hornet's nest of fierce adults—who had made
up their minds to impersonate their sleeping offspring—hold up
the Old Bourgeois frosted Toy-fair Papa, when he came out from
under the mantelpiece—and steal for themselves all his lovely
toys, intended for the sleeping children, to stuff their own outsize
voracious stockings and socks—led to the assault by a forty-ton
grandmother—a witch and a Chelsea poetess. The gigantic face
with the high-complexion of Montagu Mayors, eager and bald
to a fault, flamed with its grin upon Ponto's left shoulder. One
of Mayors' arms was hooked in the arm of Jasper Sommber-
bell who was a fine shrivelled prancing little nancy-mannie of
thirty-nine (but the nine written as zero, minus its horrid tail, made
thirty). The Colonel's large bottle-nose growing fiery in the heat
of the circular apartment, the coarse white bristles of his mous
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 523
taches protruding in a straight line from his trembling lip, he
ploughed his way forward heavy-hearted and hot. Set in a net
work of sunburnt seams, two flint-blue eyes burst out of these
withered pockets, with a coarse intensity, stiff with the stupid effort
to keep-smiling in the face of this thunderous latter-day ambush.
" Behold the world's stoic nincompoop ! " shouted Blackshirt
angrily a key higher than the bombilation and bursts of osmun-
dian joyfulness, as the Old Colonel slowly drove past the recess,
encumbered with his violent cortege. " Stoic about what ? His
bottom .' Old sheep ! Hoots ! Step it out ! Crack ! "
Propagandist for oppressed respectability, whose picture he
was, the old driven head-of-sheep or military mutton plodded on
whither he was led, as best he might—but Dan turned away his
head. He felt this was a persecution and his great irish heart very
faintly and for form's sake bled. Horace had now gone.
" That old gilt-edged serf of an anonymous System that he is
—what can he do ? He is as important as a half-pay commis
sionaire—to open taxis and be tipped ! That big-business whose
armed servant he was has for its trade-mark the Union Jack oh
yes—a rare international emblem !—the old son-of-a-bitch is no
better than a nigger if that—he is less than Uncle Tom. He has
not the nigger-kindness even ! He is the sheep—that kills ! That
is the sheep that kills ! Who kill ?—oh just anybody at all he is told
to—by anybody at all who has learnt the proper word of command
in good enough english to put the old robot in motion (halfhis kings
spoke french—some spoke dutch, some german—in future they
may speak anything so long as they know the word of command
Quick March it is enough ! The sheep will do his duty ! Never
fear—he can be depended on to do his duty .') Dangerous old sheep
—that deserves all he gets and more. Bourgeois-robot !
Shoooooot ! "
But as he shoooted his bourgeois-robot off, he was mastered by
a fine impulse to express in a more rounded and hand-and-foot
manner the matter of his diatribe. So Blackshirt sprang up, with
the briskness of a Wild West wind, right in the very rear of the
departing Old Colonel—rushing in amongst the followers and
sightseers that pressed upon the heels of the privileged firing-
party. He rushed in and he planted a well-directed kick upon
the broadest part of his small clothes which caused Ponto to
spring off the ground in nervous dismay. His movement of
5^4 APES OF GOD
alarm was that suggestive of something having been removed
from (rather than of something having been conferred upon) the
seat of the person in question—such as a direct booted hit upon
the backside causes to those of a receptive habit rather than of an
active habit. So to protest by posterior shrinkage—in the passive
recoil forward of the belly opposite—Ponto bucked, the wrong
way round.
Not omitting to keep-smiling (true sportsman even when in the
part of the hunted instead of hunter—oh a ' good-loser ' !—a
gentlemanly domestic—a first-class old whipping-boy—the world's
easiest blockhead to bleed—the gull for which every shark must
have prayed since the world began) Ponto looked back over his
shoulder in the act of bucking, into the enormous shining morning-
face of Monty Mayors (who had honoured him, in his belief, with
the roguish sub-rosa accolade). With that full-fledged full-moon
smile following him—a gigantic red lunar threatening satellite—
his own timid keep-smiling smile, of pained reproach, did mingle—
signalling about that root in the B.T.M.—an it's-not-done-old-man
look from one public-school-boy to another went with it—to
which Mayors (who had been a staff-major in France) responded,
in bluff public-school fashion too—used to the Trenches. The
great red threatening satellite (its high blood-pressure doubled)
even turned upon the crowd with a fierce exclamation—passing
on the its-not-done look with great staff-officer gusto to them.
Monty Mayors rebuked everybody in the holiday-crowd for the
unauthorized hoofing of Ponto. The old bulldog was not their
property ! Kindly keep your feet to yourselves ! Blackshirt the
culprit had already returned to the recess.
Ponto shook himself like a mangy old dog to shake out the kick
he felt there sticking to him—the blow below the Lonsdale Belt,
against Queensberry Rules, that gives the knock-out to self-
esteem nothing more.
" Take that ! " remarked Blackshirt, when he sat down by
Dan, and Dan blushed for his performance, for he did not think
he should have kicked the Old Colonel who was in distress.
" Take that ! " again said Blackshirt with satisfaction, for he
did not seem at all to take it as Dan did. Even he did not speak
again for some moments. Honour was satisfied.
But the blackshirted advocate rapidly returned to his argu
ment, after his pause for the degustation of the kick.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 525
" The sheep that kills ! " he repeated—a little dreamily for him
at first. " The sheep that kills—it is his respectability that is his
abominable passe-partout—that respectability of his that makes
murder respectable. What a facade ! Consider the crooks that
shelter behind him ! No armaments-chemist could exist without
him—you can send such as Ponto out with poison-gas in a bomb
in an airplane—he can poison with your gas-bomb a thousand
people asleep in a village which has refused to pay you tribute, and
such is the magic of his ridiculous rectitude, it does not look like
murder—everyone will say that it is only war. He is perfection—
that middleclass mask of respectability is worth its weight in gold
—some super-Crippen, any super-poisoner or mass-murderer can
operate behind it with impunity. Why, behind such a mask
some Archimedes might proceed to the destruction of the world—
it is not unthinkable ! "
But still Dan did not believe altogether in the kick. His
averted countenance betrayed a concealed aversion for the kick
in spite of everything—also Blackshirt had begun talking about
War again, and as he never listened to that he had nothing fresh
to divert him from the ethics ofBlackshirt's sortie against a defence
less Old Colonel. But Blackshirt saw that he was disposed to
criticize his sortie, so he said—
" You did not approve of my kicking him ? "
Dan would not commit himself to an expression ofdisapproval.
He confined himself to the collateral criticism of a melancholy
gazing abstraction—directed at about the level of the kickable
hind-quarters of the passers-by.
" Pierpoint would laugh at you if you spoke of pitying such a
person ! " Blackshirt's face was wrung with the ghost of a sup
pressed pierpointean laugh. " Old toothless battle-dog—why
should I not kick him—except that one soils one's shoe in kicking
that well-fed, well-groomed old pulp of his. It is the stupidest
clockwork. You may believe me when I tell you that."
But the Old Colonel was returning, and Dan experienced
some alarm, for he feared that Blackshirt might again set upon
him, and to be candid he feared that then that toothless battle-dog
might give him Dan a toothless bite by mistake—and he certainly
thought, as he looked at him, that he had a very fierce appearance !
But a distraction occurred which momentarily relieved Dan of
these more urgent reasons for alarm.
526 APES OF GOD
Bloated by the heat and blinded by the glitter of the assembly,
and fatigued by the effort incessantly to advance against undisci
plined odds and in the teeth of a drum-fire of furious remarks,
Ponto (before he was aware of his proximity) ran head-on into
General Walker-Trotter. General Walker-Trotter was if any
thing more stupefied by his surroundings than was Colonel Ponto.
The General merited the extra bit of rank—for his face was a
more indomitable scarlet even than that of the Colonel, whereas
his moustache had that bluish tinge that all the best Old Colonels'
moustaches have, and without which the true collector would
have at once turned down any Old Colonel, as a palpable forgery.
Ponto had the egg-blue in the middle too. But it was not the
true blue of General Walker-Trotter, and its blending with the
urine-green of the extremity left much to be desired.
Lady Harriet—as General Walker-Trotter stumbled forward
upon a genuinely old-porty gout-infested leg—vociferated in his
ear. General Walker-Trotter was as deaf as a post—genuinely on
the deaf side—but Lady Harriet shouted to show him he was
deaf, and if he wasn't he ought to be, and she bellowed at him
her mouth thrust out like a trumpet—
" Gen-er-al ! I say General. Do tell us once more how you
got through the Kyber Pass—with TEN-PICKED-MEN ! "
" TEN-PICKED-MEN ! Surelyyou remember General Walker-
Trotter ! You must remember that ! "
" Yes you surely must remember ! Don't you remember
General—PICKING the men ! "
" Of course he remembers ! "
" No he doesn't remember ! " Lady Harriet announced,
breathless from the attack, shaking her head very ruefully at him
indeed. " General Walker-Trotter doesn't remember ! "
" No—he doesn't remember ! He's forgotten ! " exclaimed
Stephen Boyce. " It's quite escaped his memory ! "
" It has completely gone out of his head ! "
" He can't for the life of him recall ! "
" Yes " said Lady Harriet for dramatic effect, in her lighter
voice for ordinary use—for those who had ears to hear—young
drums, a good scent, sharp sight—very depressed. " He's for
gotten ! He has forgotten ! "
With dismay in her face Lady Harriet regarded General
Walker-Trotter.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 527
But her sepulchral announcement had damped the party
entirely : somebody burst out in a burning lisp of arch reproach—
" Oh I do think that's terribly disappointing ! The General
has completely forgotten ! "
And it was at that moment that Colonel Ponto and the
General collided, amidst a rapturous burst from both those
affecting the General and those who had selected the Colonel—
though it was agreed that the Colonel was the better man of the
two, and that he charged with far more dash.
But General Walker-Trotter, and also Colonel Ponto, both
believed it had been himself that had been the cause of this
accident.
There was a great deal of throaty I'm-sorry-sirring ! and of /
Begyour pardon sirs ! Then in their hoarse Club-voices they sought
to explain the origin of the regrettable contretemps. Each
attempted to excuse himself to the other, until the crowd stamped
in their delight at this heaven-sent accident.
Dan shrank from the turmoil in dismay, while, a little wrink
ling smile upon her flat white lips, the aged Sib tottered into the
recess. Panting she deposited her spent carcass in the corner, as
far back as possible, so as not to get trodden upon.
The Blackshirt sat, a constantly sombre contemptuous witness,
upon the other side of Dan.
" Don't you think this is great fun ? " Sib panted at Dan.
" One of those old fools trampled upon me just now. I suppose
he imagined himself on the battlefield. His eyes were very blood
shot—I felt rather frightened for the moment."
Dan blushed deeply at these uncalled-for remarks and surrep
titiously he sought, by slight and inconspicuous movements, to
put an inconsiderable distance between himself and this talkative
member of his supposed sex. At any moment there was the danger
that she might ask him some horrible boudoirish question, that no
one but a real woman could answer. Oh ifHorace had only allowed
him to go downstairs and help him, this would not have hap
pened !
But with increasing ill-humour Blackshirt darkly watched this
heavy circus—his eyes followed the confused and perspiring old
' battle-dogs,' the performing Snobs of Thackeray in their ulti
mate decay, parading up and down in duty bound, covered with
decorations which each stood for some uproarious joke—a Zulu
 528 APES OF GOD
pleasantry, an Ashanti burlesque, a farce at Maggersfontein—
the emblem of the Sport of Kings which had come to be the Sport
of Crooks, turned into a new indoor-sport of sorts, of a parlour-
order.
Their complexions (as much as the pallor of rice-powder,
their regimental red) marked them down as clowns. At length he
relieved his feelings as he said hoarsely to Dan—
" How this picked body of old bourgeois gulls annoys me—oh
how they annoy me ! "
And Dan looked up with alarm, for he had noticed nothing
fresh, and now it seemed Blackshirt was about to lose his self-
control again. Should Blackshirt engage in some rash enterprise,
like the last or worse—what might not become of the girl-he-left-
behind-him ? With this old woman here—there was no knowing !
He looked askance at the Sib off-duty.
" This is depressing ! " exclaimed the Blackshirt again—and
he became a little more definitely fascist. " This sentimental
savagery depresses me ! " He spat. " Which is the worse of the
two—the tame old butts being dragged up and down this floor
like naval targets, or those equally clownish gunners ? I don't
know. Both are bad diseases of the same sad system. Oh ! Let
us as a symbolical gesture join the servants downstairs, in their
hot kitchens and stinking sculleries—they at least are the English
and, though servants too, something unspoilt—but this is a tetter,
this is a rot, that shows us all underneath it to be stagnant. Stagnant
we are, but still potent—if this is a disease of our national old-age,
then it can only be that we are not the nation ! That is something
else. This is an utter infirmity !—but it is not us—it is the System.
As for us, we have all been betrayed—much more even than
plundered—by these mountebanks—on both sides of this bitter
carnival. They have sold us till there is nothing to sell except
our bodies now—to hire out into a coolie-world ! That they are
doing too ! They are busy at this moment cheapening us, so that
next they may sell us to the Blacks ! "
Dan was in absolute agreement with all Blackshirt had said
about not going down into the hot kitchen, full of Sassenachs and
rude pushing domestics, and agreed that even coarse unpleasant
words as he had used—suggestive of cutaneous eruptions—were
not too forcible to describe what he had observed upon the surface
of the stock in the stock-pot and he felt he would never be able
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 529
to eat another meal for weeks now not a square one—certainly
not one with soup. He glanced at his neighbour and she was fast
asleep.
" What is the solution ? " with a heavy fluttering sigh Black-
shirt asked of the air. " Is it that the nation is after all the wrong
notion ? Perhaps it is. I stand outside the anglo-saxon world,
that is by reason of my blood. I have no bond of sympathy with
the Creeping Saxon really at all—never in anything but name
have they been our masters. The real masters of England have
died out. Old germanic serfs, figureheads, is all that is left—such
do more harm than good—they are excellent decoys on the grand
scale—there is no longer an English Nation ! "
However Blackshirt seemed to soar out of his despondency and
to find his anger again, and Dan trembled as he spoke anew—
jumping as he said look.
" Look how they are driven up and down—their offence is to e-i-
be the summit of a hierarchy. As the last ridiculous survivals of
a military caste they are driven and manhandled.—So that old
feminising maenad Harriet leads the attack—that tricoteuse so
much socially upon the wrong side of the Barricade—making the
most of both worlds bad luck to her ! "
And, very fascist this time, Blackshirt almost openly hurled
his fascist curse at this female enemy of the liberties of the com
munity of Freemen. He would have burnt her in effigy as a witch
as soon as look at her.
" Oh this sentimental savagery, that delights to think of itself
as ' rebel '—what is one to say to that ? What are these bands of
people doing but rehearsing upon these old dummies the darker
and bloodier insults of Terror and of Revolution—all the time !
But is it not evident that they are rehearsing their own destruction,
too ? For does not this old harpy Harriet here owe everything—
the little brassy tinkle of her verses for the grown-up nursery in
cluded—to the civilised order of the Western World—which in all
her actions she insults, along with her fat walking-adenoid of a
brother, Osmund ! What would she be tell me that—except some
embittered middle-aged char—derided for the airs she gave
herself about her grandeurs past—if it were not for the remnants
of Order—which, as an interesting ' rebel,' she is in every case
committed to flout ! "
And the Blackshirt pointed his fist made into a pistol with its
 53° APES OF GOD
index, at Lady Harriet Willoughby Finnian Shaw, and Harriet
noticing this in the midst of her sport nodded to him to say yes—
what a good time she was having ! —for she remembered the
Anthology in the midst of her military sport.
" But these lousy old dishonoured chiefs and captains " and
Blackshirt thrust out his blackshirted chest, " if they had a touch
even of the French fury—if they had, not the bravery of the intel
lect, but a horse's sense—they would remind old Harriet of the
dirty money that alone permits her to expand herself in brutish
amusements of this order, but for which in return she gives nothing
—they would at once snatch off their ridiculous medals or their
equivalents (got for England Home and Beauty fighting simple Boer
farmers) and fling them at her too. But no—they are as dull and
sheepish as she is violent and splenetic. They are locked up in
this System just as they were locked up in that waiting-room-
worst of all, anyone now can lock them up—who has the money to
buy the key. They would kill Harriet on tlie spot if she were
proscribed in the due form by their Hairdresser. They would
blow their own brains out if they had their salaries paid by a
Soap King and were given the order—' Self-Kill ! Quick-
March ! '—and another bar to their D.S.O. was attached to the
act ! "
Dan became thoroughly uneasy. His feet pained a great deal
—his digestion grew somewhat deranged by the impact of the
meaningless words. He gave the Blackshirt one mute glance then
he looked down again.
" That is the politics of what you see. Such politics are nothing.
Mixed up with vanity as they are, they are in fact the politics of
personal vanity. Personal vanity is no politics itself—it attracts
politics. Every pastime has its attendant politics—witness homo-
| sexuality, that is another instance. To-day a politics ofRevolt goes
J with that. You know that ? It is immaterial."
Dan could not see why these horrid scientific words should be
used in ' broadcast ' at all but he knew that they were and he had
grown to expect it, but it always made him feel uncomfortable.
" The public good is here the glitter only of the social desires
of ah ageing group of wealthy romantic amateurs called Finnian
Shaw—expressed in the terms of oppression ofyouth. ' Youth ' is
in this case bluff of course. Having analysed the explicit politics,
let us turn to that. It is the personal vanity you must cut out and
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 531
pin down. He.e wc have it. It is very simple. The Old Colonel
is as it were a Christmas-card figure. Now the vanity is simple."
Blackshirt paused and Dan observed that he moistened his lip
with his tongue, as Horace moistened his lip with his tongue. It
was the sign that the climax of a great ' broadcast ' was at hand.
" Harriet and Osmund—you see them, Osmund and Harriet
—they are compelled to perpetuate the politics of the child-parent-
war. The child-parent-war is put across by means of the emotions
aroused by the age-complex and the youth-complex dominating the
first Post-war decade. The child-parent-war is the war next in
succession to the sex-war. You have heard of sex-war? Yes.
(For the break-up of the aryan Family-idea, two ' wars ' have
been arranged. The sex-war covers the man-woman relationship :
the child-parent-war, or the age-war, covers the child-parent rela
tionship. This is a parallel ' revolt.' When these ' wars ' have
been brought to bear in social life with full effect, the Family will
have entirely disintegrated.) Now the middle-aged Harriet
Finnian Shaw, when she has carefully picked an Old Colonel—
one to be a good ripe fruity foil—she goes ahead. You see her in
action engaged with an Old Colonel—an Old Colonel too good to be
true. She is up-and-coming—she does not lack fire. There she
is ! There is the Old Colonel ! I have not invented them—either
her or the Old Colonel—you can see them with your own eyes—
you may touch them ! In her books you may read of them. All
right ! Many other people here arc the same. Rejuvenated by
the carefully picked Old Colonels, they fling themselves impul
sively about, freshened up as a group by the chorus of sham-
choristers. To give the ' child '-colouring the Finnian Shaws
attract an undergraduate-looking rabble : with that monkey-
glanding of their social body, they go out to hunt (in their family
game-preserves—beneath the oaks of Old England) the Old
Colonel. He is a deep-scarlet, white-bristled, puffing old bird."
Blackshirt pointed at Ponto.
" Regard this sport, if you desire a more philosophic or tech
nical definition of it, as a Time-sport. You may do so because it
depends upon a pathologic sensitiveness to the notion of Time.
The Old Colonel is a dracontine monstrosity. He is a creature of
Time. He is a blood-red ghost of the Time-tracts, snorting about
that historic undergrowth of the Dark Backward and Abysm.
The Finnian Shaws themselves are half in the Past. They know
53* APES OF GOD
the Time-paths. They go to hunt the Old Colonels in the same
frame of mind as the big-game sportsman. They are celebrated
Globe-trotters—tourists of an earth conceived chronologically as
history—as a Time-ball—an eclectic historical playground. Or,
better, they are semi-victorian sportsmen of the dark-continent of
Time—a temporal Africa. It is there they pursue the Old Colonels
of the epoch of Pendennis—it is there they will leave their bones.
They will die—one by one—still hunting the Old Colonels and
trapping the Old Spinsters. A fantastic destiny !—That is all. In
what I have told you, you may forget the politics if you like. It
is a dreadful back-cloth. It is a red mist—a red dawn-mist you
understand ! "
Near the foyer of the universal carmagnole let loose for the
Old Colonels there was an intense disturbance too—for there was
dished up the cream of the entertainment. It was Commander
Perse R.N. was there—so uncommonly well-equipped to represent
the pensioned back-numberdom of the King's Navee—in any Club
Window whatever of the Pall Mall of Balaclava or the Piccadilly
of the young Dizzy (and if people have not remarked its dis
appearance, but still believe that there is Clubland with great
windows in which squat eupeptic veterans, shouting Demme sir !—
flourishing the Times in their red-enamelled or tropically-tanned
fists, preparing to write upon the Club notepaper their hackneyed
letter—why that is not to be wondered at, seeing that the Press is
interested to perpetuate this illusion—in spite of the fact that the
" country " referred to by the Old Colonels has long ago been
devoured by " the dogs " of one breed and another, and there is
nothing but a gaunt bone left). This Gallant Officer had been
led to the largest arm-chair with every exaggerated exhibition of
solemn-faced respect as befitted his age and rank, by the happily-
prancing Lord Phoebus—and then Commander Perse R.N.—
with one hand in the correct position to advertise lumbago, a
stiff leg thrust out to show he was not so young as he used to be
(when he was a middie at Aboukir Bay or out beating up a
Plate-Fleet or convoying that out of Pernambuco) slowly assumed,
with a salvo of asthmatic puffs, a sitting position.
It was quite upon the extremity of the settee (heaved-to upon
the Commander's weather-bow) that Lord Osmund sat. Smiling
his slyest good-natured encouragement, he cooed in his nose at
this tit-bit of a nautical veteran. Meantime a pack of Chatter
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 533
boxes and Gossips all passionately sub-Osmund, clung on to the
back of the Commander's arm-chair, like street-arabs upon lamp
posts at a Lord Mayor's Show. But as many as possible (the
greatest favourites) sat upon the floor, cross-legged, at the Com
mander's feet, and fixed their worshipping eyes and their glances
of abject juvenile respect—with mouths in which butter-would-
not-melt half-open—upon the face of this aged Neptune. At the
very last moment an enormous jewish man rushed up. He was
of great breadth and stature, and none other than Monty Mayors
himself—who had, in a tremendous panic at being late, forsaken
the exhausted Ponto at the last moment—his face (of that dark
apple-red, of high-blood pressure) was flushed—it shone where
apples do--and inextinguishably he wore a gigantic whole-time
smile of outside self-welcome—and if his head was completely
bald (though only thirty-five said he mesmerically) he had two
large dimples—altogether a man bound to be popular if he
wished to. Thrusting aside a sprawling figure, with frantic
rummaging fists, Monty Mayors rapidly cleared a space upon the
floor for himself. Then, with a resounding crash, he flung himself
at full-length before the Commander—a massive hip rising so high
into the air that Raymond Freedlander, who was small, could no
longer see the Commander at all.
These arrangements completed, the seance was quite ready
to start, and a hush fell upon the charmed circle by the main
grate.
" Do tell us Commander Perse " thereupon boomed Lord
Osmund, " how you ran your sloop aground—do you remember
—when you were pursued by Malay pirates in the Gulf of New
Guinea ! "
As pleased as pleased—on top of the weather—certified master
of any situation—the right man in the right place—a square peg
in a square hole, and willing and ready to give a square british
deal if ever man was—the bluff Commander, with a last pat at
his lumbago, rolled in a throaty quarter-deck growl, that was two
degrees better than the most blusterous Conrad—
" When I was in the Gulf of New Guinea ! Is it the yarn of
how I drove Hesperus ashore in the Gulf of New Guinea—when I
was chased by Pirates out of Ass-sam ! Is that what you young
people want me to tell you ! " And the Commander grew more
and more fruity and avuncular—the most fine old crusted Chil
534 APES OF GOD
dren's-Hour-B.B.C.-Uncle would have been a damp squib beside
him.
" That's a long yarn, my lads, a long yarn—but I'll do my
best to tell it you ! " The Commander spoke in that ringing voice
of one whose word has once been martial-law.
The reverential audience at the Commander's feet writhed with
delighted chuckling and with splutters expressed their mad mirth
under-hatches—and the larger Mayors-boy even literally burst,
like a big punctured tyre, and went off into an exhibitionist-spasm
of hysteria—rolling his bald head like a big red ball-bearing in
the large cup of his meaty red fist, that had fought the Boche for
four long years at Corps Headquarters.
" Now then Monty ! " said Lord Osmund reprovingly to the
Mayors-boy— (not open fits of laughter please—the sham spell
bound circle of tiny nursery tots, crouched around Nanny or
Granny spinning her yarns of long ago, should not be broken—
not so that the prosing Aunt Sally should be put out of counten
ance ever).
But the Admiral of the Fleet had come up behind Osmund
and he had been staring with a surly weather-eye wide open upon
the Commander. Everyone had been very disappointed at once
with the appearance of the Admiral of the Fleet when he had
come in : it had been a great disappointment. He was a mangy
old sea-dog one had universally agreed. At a glance one could
see that he was a rotten old over-praised and over-advertised
Admiral.
At all events one had fought shy of him and left him to stalk
about by himself as he deserved, which may have embittered
Benbow, for he looked black. He must have been a rather out-
of-the-way Admiral perhaps, for he now touched Osmund upon
the shoulder and Lord Osmund looked up very surprised indeed
—for he had never in all his life been touched by an Admiral
before—or even by a Colonel. So he stared a little hard at the
half-pay Vice-Admiral, with even a note of misgiving in his
querulous questioning eye-over-his-shoulder. But what was Lord
Osmurid's consternation as it were, when the Admiral made a
sign to him—which conveyed that the Admiral would have a
word with his lordship apart. Lord Osmund rose at once and
went aside with the Admiral.
This was a disturbing episode—the good Commander, against
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 535
Osmund's return, did nothing but crack a few jokes about hard
tack and Jacob's Ladders, and all the children roared together
with Christmas Matinee laughter. But Lord Osmund came back
speedily, and it was at once remarked that he looked rather
grave. He stood before the settee and he said to Commander
Perse—-
" Commander Perse, were you ever a member of the Teneriffe
Club ? "
" Why no I can't say I was Lord Osmund ! " the Commander
said with a great deal of heartiness.
" Never been in it ? "
" Ah that's another matter ! " the Commander bluffly crashed.
" Been in it ! " he bellowed. " Why what sailor I should like to
know has not ? "
Admiral Benbow, stationed behind Lord Osmund, was
examining the Commander very closely indeed, that was plain
to everybody. He now stepped forward and addressed the Com
mander directly, in the bluntest manner possible.
" What was your last ship sir ! "
" To whom have I the pleasure of addressing myself? "
" Never mind who I am sir ! What was your last ship sir—
—that is what I asked. Was it by chance the good ship Bun
combe sir ! "
" Buncombe sir ! Why no sir ! I've never heard of that ship
sir ! "
" I thought perhaps you had sir ! But you have not yet
informed me what ship you last sailed in sir—or perhaps you'd
rather not ! "
" Why no sir—why should I object sir ? Not at all ! My last
ship was a sloop of war—it was Hesperus."
" Hesperus sir ! Such a ship was never heard of, outside ofyour
fertile imagination sir ! "
" I beg your pardon sir—this is most extraordinary behaviour,
sir, whoever you may be ! "
" Shall I tell you whoyou are sir ! "
" Sir, do you accuse me of prevarication ! "
" No sir, I declare you to be an impostor sir ! "
" An impostor ! "
" Yes sir an arch-impostor ! "
" But this is unheard of sir ! "
536 APES OF GOD
" It is, you are right."
Turning with majesty towards the startled and delighted
assembly, the Admiral then said—
" This man you may be interested to know gentlemen was for
a good number of years the hall-porter at the Teneriffe Club !
He was known there as Perce, which was short for Percy."
Sensation.
The Commander sprang to his feet at this with an alacrity
strangely contrasting with his period-descent into the chair—with
all the picturesque precautions against the tweaks of the correctest
Club-land lumbago. Also as he rose he sent flying several of the
more clinging of his listeners, and actually he kicked Monty
Mayors lightly upon the mouth—which Monty Mayors had wide
open with affected surprise.
" Sir, I don't know who you are ! " he bawled in a much less
genial fashion. " But what I do know is that I do not propose, as
an officer and a gentleman, to sit here and hear myself insulted ! "
Exit at top speed bogus-Commander.
All the excited tongues were now loosened at once. But Com
mander Perse was a local figure greatly respected for miles round
—as a very breezy naval personality. On several occasions the
Commander had been entertained by Osmund and never failed
to kill everybody with laughter—he was one of the very best of
their exhibits, and no one had ever suggested there was anything
wrong with him or detected a flaw. And Lord Osmund did not
seek to disguise his resentment with the Admiral—from the start
the Admiral had been at best a kill-joy ! Then after all suppose
it were a mistake ! But the flight of the Commander suggested
that there was some foundation for the scepticism of the Admiral.
Who could .this daring impersonator of Old Commanders be—
that was the question ? But then the Admiral, who would not
leave bad alone, or leave a shred of illusion to anybody, remarked
that he was not even particularly old. Osmund was by now quite
positive that he did not care for this Admiral, although he had
always been very fond of Admirals in the past.
" All that lumbago was put on " insisted this most depressing
of all Admirals. " He was a hale and hearty middle-aged man
when I last saw him in uniform—that of a commissionaire—a few
years ago. He put on that lumbago for your benefit gentlemen ! "
Monty Mayors rose to his feet very annoyed at the kick in the
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 537
mouth and after him everyone else who was curled up on the
ground got up and gradually everyone became very cross and at
last decided to go and stop Perce and perhaps have him arrested
or to duck him. But they most of them passed on to the party
devouring Ponto or Teach instead, who by this time were very
docile and exhausted and did not move very much.
But from the focal point by the fire, where the impostor had
been discovered, even simulating lumbago, discouragement soon
had extended throughout the room : and though Lady Harriet's
voice could still be heard vociferating Ten Picked Men, the
collapse of the Commander had thrown a shadow over the entire
proceedings. Lord Osmund became a quite listless figure—he
snubbed the Admiral of the Fleet, who eventually left the scene
altogether and went downstairs to do a little stiff nautical dancing
with any Lady Hamiltons who presented themselves. Lord
Phoebus dreamily took up one of his toys—a small crinolined doll
that squeaked and fainted—and the Blackshirt and Dan relapsed
into an unbreakable silence side by side, the Sib slightly snoring
now, her mouth open. Only Harriet still nagged away at Ponto
in a corner.

XL THE THRESHOLDS
Ratner followed Archie in sluggish step, a foot behind, into
the American Bar. They stood inside. The Finn roared—
" I am not the worsh for drink ! Who said I was wursh ! "
He was struggling in the corner where it was dark, his eyes
shining like a cat's at night, and attempting to remove his waist
coat. Three little whispering men were pinning him against the
wall and as often as he drew the waistcoat off a check-shirted
shoulder, they drew it on again, expostulating under their breaths.
He must not undress !—they really could not allow him to un
dress !—Knut slipped through a door that stood open behind
them, and the three little fretful shapes of white-breasted men.
out of whose grasp he had popped, went too, in a scandalized
scuttle—a trio of face-saving demireps.
With an indifference massively-mental Archie surveyed this
paltry event. There were perspectives in Time as in Space. And
Arch's eyes seemed to cast everything that was present back into
538 APES OF GOD
diminishing distances. Abstract and empty blocks made up his
foregrounds. Life's funny flux only existed as it were at the end
of a telescope reversed to make objects insignificant. He shot his
Match—it flew for him down a perspective of Chirico.
From the Bar-threshold Archie had watched a short-lived
event, upon which the door closed with a bang. He had sped a
Match—it was his comment upon all actions engaged in by men
that had not that orthodox block-like emptiness. He turned
about, he passed through the door and stood upon the threshold
beyond it, just within the passage. Ratner turned after him—he
followed him through and stood at his side. One looked down the
passage to the left, the other looked down the passage to the right.
The band manufactured its melodic treacle, thumped in imita
tion of abrupt machinery—a titanic treacle-can factory. Shock
after shock—then more sad sickly sugar.
They moved aside to admit people' to the American Bar.
" Have you a light ? " asked Archie in a husky undertone.
" Yes " croaked the other one thrusting a damp hand into a
slit of his dumpy Harlequin get-up, and gave Archie a book of
matches. The first Archie tore off and dispatched at a person
dressed as a character from a Sovkino Film. He lighted a cigarette
and handed the book of matches back to Ratner.
" I shall go out into the garden," Archie said not looking at
Ratner as he said it, and he did not move. In a moment Ratner
turned his head in the opposite direction. Then Margolin
stealthily left his side, as a man steps away from a sleeper.
When Ratner had heard him disappear, he looked back. The
crowded door of the great saloon was facing him across the
passage. He walked over to it and stood for some time upon its
threshold.
He seemed asleep, he was rocked by the press of people and
their contacts were purely mechanical. There was no friction,
no fights, upon this sea-bottom. Nothing stung. No one was
eaten. Such was the physical law. Mentally there was another
one—sting, eat, fight ! Several passing Belles Dames sans Merci
remarked a coy eye intercepting their own (and anxious to tell
them a Complex) coming out of a small man with a sad fat yellow
drooping face. His melancholy fish-eye swam after several female
forms a little distance. But he abruptly left his slumbrous mooring
upon the threshold and took two steps into the crowd.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 539
" Hallo Jimmie !"
A short depressed bald middle-aged man showed great plea
sure at seeing what he called ' Jimmie.'
" Hallo ! " in a bitter velvety bass and smirk to match growled
Ratner. This was his normal life. In the presence of this person
he began to act, becoming the normal Ratner and he was with
friends.

XII. NOW JONATHAN BELL WAS AN OLD JOHN 'BULL

A heavy coyness descended upon Ratner. Always coy, with
these old friends—these tried, trusty and well-beloved fools—
Ratner's great coyness was at its coyest. Elsewhere this great
coyness often languished, when he became a listless sullen Joo
enough, without any coyness.
Jonathan Bell was a small capitalist—a small useful class. Some
times " For Jonathan Bell " a book would be published, as Ameri
cans do. Ratner published sometimes a book " ForJonathan Bell."
At his own valuation (sex-star of first magnitude—a Dark Star
but Class A for Sex) the Rat had shone in the firmament of 'John '
beside the Scorpion, as unchallenged as the Ram, ever since
Armageddon's bloody night had become an institution—'Jimmie '
a ' poet,' a notable practical bookman, a poetical-publisher.
Whatever Jim wished ' John ' to see, ' John ' saw. But tactful
Jimjulio slyly swallowed as well, by pretending to, much that John
set store by—just sentimental odds and ends—there was recipro
city—in brief these two were friends. Two good friends of long
standing they were—one fool and one knave—as simply as the
bold images of an Alphabet, or the Jack of a Poker-pack—but the
fool had his slyness, though the knave was no fool.
Bell's wife was there tonight as a picturesque plein-air drudge
—echo of student-days doubtless when all the London art-girls
were John-mad and gypsyish—she was an indistinct Chelsea
gypsy. As much as her faded face could greet the bilious grease-
spot that swam into her ken (in the person of Julius) she mildly
greeted it, and all together they passed on down the room and
Ratner (easily master in any such mild man-and-wife com
bination) —so cnglish, so carliest-blooniercd-tandcm—took the
harmless pair out of doors into the garden, become accessible
54o APES OF GOD
through the french-windows thrown open, with a view of the
bandstand.
" I didn't expect to find you here " says Bell.
" I didn't expect to find myself here ! " says Ratner, and he
looks simultaneously bitter and coy—much more coyer even than
before—as bitter as sour-grapes hung a hundred light-years away
up in an old star could make an embittered fox.
And immediately Bell and his respectable art-student gattin—
both nice honest nobodies and true—knew that—well, as per
usual !—they well-nigh wagged their fingers as they were ex
pected to, at the shrinking smirking Coy-one—they nearly clicked
their tongues and tossed their heads at naughty-naughty—that
incorrigible ' Jimmie ' ! They foreboded, nay they as a matter
of routine foreknew, that (direct-or-indirectly) something affecting
the more skittish of the endocrines, the gonadal glands of internal
secretion, was at stake, was on foot—those secretions about which
they knew so much from incessant hearsay, from indefatigable
analysis—from every imaginable meaty angle, both from above
and from beneath—whose doctrinal gushings gave birth, if to
nothing else, always to a ' Complex.' Know them ! Indeed they
camped in these sluggish ratherish canals—they had followed the
rat-like libido in all its cloacal windings !
Jonathan Bell was an old John Bull and a foolish John Bull
was he ! Good honest Jonathan Bell was good honest fool
enough, and Ratner loved and respected him for it—Ratner did
not respect sharp people or sharp mental sharks, that would be
self-respect, which was impossible—and Ratner loved no one but
fools, and the respectability it was ofJonathan Bell that made him
loved by Ratner and many others and of course respected—for
being, without effort, so respectable—and in consequence so loved.
When was a fool not a fool ? Ultimately these complements agree
and are found to be one.
Good oak-timbered ' John ' Bell was " the rudest man in
London "—no one was blunter, more straight-from-the-shoulder
—but he was a born audience for a Complex. Bluff and muddled did
blunt ' John ' ever ask himself how it was all those love-sick
blondes he heard about pursued ' Jimmie ' night and day, with
their unwanted attentions ? How was it the blondes that came
' John's ' way did not lie awake at night whispering ' John ' to a
hot pillow ? But ' John ' Bell was modest—as well as being true
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 541
blue he did not insist upon Lothario, where himself was concerned
at all. But one thing there was that certainly never occurred to
'John ' Bell and that was that the love-sick blondes he heard
about and sometimes was told he had caught sight of in the
distance, were really being plastered and treated for the heart or
heartlessness with the flattering specifics of ' Jim ' in tireless
ratnerish pursuit—what time ' Jim ' loudly protested to ' John '
that it was awful and all the blondes in the world were hard upon
his heels—that he did so wish they'd stop and give him a breather !
In confidence, in his coyest droop (confiding as man-to-man to
'John '—and then as man-to-woman to Mrs. Bell) ' Jimmie '
would tell how sometimes he hated it and then sometimes again he
rather liked it ! Sometimes (he confessed) he wished he could go
away somewhere—where he would never see a woman again, for six
months !—But Mrs. Bell had pointed out in private to Mr. Bell
that Jim Rat grew fat ! She had drawn the attention of the
masculine eye to that accretion of yellow adipose (especially
at the neck) but Bell put on weight himself and grew balder
daily.
Although glad to hear that Jim Rat grew fat, ' John ' Bell was
a man of his ease !—Now 'John ' Bell was not fond of change and
he feared the truth did ' John ' Bell, which he fought tooth and
nail wherever met—and this sounded like truth pardie !
Now change was the last thing that ' John ' Bell would brave,
and change-of-life in friends spelled change-of-life in self, and
' John ' would not have much to do with such suggestions, that
came from women, and 'John ' was a man of his word.
Now ' Jimmie ' wished ' John ' to believe. Now ' John ' did
not wish to be troubled to resist and not to believe—ever—in any
thing. Now ' John ' would rather believe any one who very much
wanted him to believe, than give himself the trouble to disbelieve
—to be sceptic (oh what great energy) ! Now 'John ' had always
inclined to believe—let others value—leave me, as for me, in peace !
Peace in MY Time Oh Lord! And there was Peace ! And the
price paid was always—belief !
But to cease to give hospitality to Jimmie's valuation of
'Jimmie,' was not that to turn a deaf ear to sweet self, for 'John '
Bell ? For ' John ' Bell to alter his views of his friends—why that
would be for ' John ' Bell to alter all that he saw in himself !
Other changes, of changing view-points, were involved in this too
54a APESOFGOD
—much too drastic for comfort—far too truthful for peace. (Your
friend is your mirror—take care !)
A change of view is a change of life ! Out upon such changes !
Out upon such face-abouts ! No ! ' John ' Bell would stick to his
friends ! (At ' friends '—a tremolo—loud cheers from all Bell's
' friends ' !)
So ' friend ' Jimmie (though at all times certainly so un
accountably, even for others uncomfortably, unhappy-in-lovc)
knew of one ear that would never be closed against a good fruity
Complex ! And that ear was the ear ofJonathan Bell, Patron of
Author and Client of Publisher—Long Live John Bell ! And the
dried up little fig of an ear of Mrs. Bell—that too would listen and
give-ear to the complex—though that was because Jimjulio was
a successful private-presser and abetter of her good honest hus
band, hearty Jonathan Bell (not quite Bull after all).
So Jonathan Bell, frowning nervously, and Mrs. Bell, and last
but not least Split-Man, sat together at a tin-table, beneath the
lenten trees, waiting for coffee. Professional as the catholic .Con
fessor—the Doctor, or the Kislar Aga—Jimjulio bent his heavy
piercing and doctrinal eye upon these two dumb heads of sheep
—preparatory to propaganda. He bent his shining eye upon them
before teaching them about himself—about themselves—about a
quantity of third parties. What part did the gonadal glands
play, amongst animals that went upright, separated into female
and male, immersed in complex sentimental transactions that
obscured the gonadal glands ( (Einstein, if that impresses you,
was upon the side of the endocrines.) Answer ! A master-part !
And he would bring them back to the (g)Land—back to their glands
—and see that they never moved far away from their glands (for
he travelled in sex-literature, and sex-politics, and SEX in all
its many forms was the great hobby and profitable business of
his earthly days—for everyone who wanted to get away from his
glands for half an hour that he knew—to drink a cup of tea or
write a letter—Ratner would put the matter in its right light and
no sentimental nonsense. Then the triumph of The Glands (like
The Sex) spelled ' Power.' And Adler-like (being a minor Adlcr)
Ratner admitted ' power-complex ' as basis of ego. (Sex was
really all bluff—power the thing). And he would glandify every
thing as far as his personal social puddle was concerned, so that
he might rule the waves—so that he could pull the sex-strings, he
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 543
would, that made the figure work—in the way he required it to
work—not in the way it might happen to want to work ! No !
And the fat impending upon the eye —in a straight line across the
eyeball, as straight as the path of the print across this page (the
upper lid nothing but a rudiment, lost in the bulging drop-curtain
of swarthy suet) gave Ratner such a lowering look (he felt as he
got ready) ofvulpine craft, as he was grinning—that he anticipated
the expression of surprise that came into the face of honest 'John,'
and he understood that there was something that called for imme
diate correction. So instinctively he turned his head sideways—
and he opened his left eye as wide as it would go, seeking to impart
an appearance of absent-minded candour to the face out of which
the sex-wisdom was to rattle and drop.
Some heavy he-jokes and the strong meat of a little jor-men-
only observations, passed between ' Jim ' and ' John '—Mrs. Bell
contributed a rather mouldy slice of a care-worn smile, to be a
sport. The lynx-eyed Sex-professor began to touch upon various
topics of his choice—he touched upon this that and the other—
with a heavily-confidential, retiring and apologetic, patronising
omniscience.
There was a peroxide fellow-publisher in a small way, just gone
into business. Had ' John ' heard ? Yes ' John ' knew. Jim-
julio told ' John ' he had seen the Press. Of course he had seen
the Press. ' John ' gathered he had had some hand in selling her
an old Press and he had. (Jimjulio had long smelt out the land.)
But business was not business. Oh no. Or any business got well
hidden under the couple of yards of skirt-material of the peroxide
person of the new woman publisher. (Name Paula Kennedy.
Married. Separated.) What after all does the Press matter
John Bell—or any old Press ! If you press Mrs. Kennedy, in the
right place, the Press is yours in theory John Bell ! How did the
funds behind the venture come ? That is the essential point, my
little Johnny ! Via the peroxide attractions ! How by the same
token are the funds to go ? They can only be extracted if at all
by pressure of the person—not by attending to the Press ! No—
there is no occasion to talk about old iron, when there is that
short-cut my good honest Jonathan—academic to think of Capital
as some solid, non-volatile. ' Capital ' is the human heart—
heart-blood, the ridiculous brain of average men and average
women, and last but not least don't forget it ' John ' Bell (for all
544 APES OF GOD
' John ' Bells have unreclaimed, darkly-untutored tracts, where
there is still the ' cult ' of ' spirits,' and where Astaroth would be
stoned) last not least gonadal centres my boy, ofmen and ofwomen
—and Jimjulio never talked about old iron or about office-furni
ture or even such baubles as gold and silver, to give 'Jim ' his
Joo—but always about flesh and blood—fleshily about blood, and
about flesh fishily—and the blood was always hot blood—if he
was to be believed. Kaltes Blut (similar to his) Joo misliked, so he
disregarded. The world of cold-bloods was out of the picture.
He was out of the picture—out of the machine—he only recog
nised those that were in it—the sausage-meat—the bluffed not the
bluffers. So.
Well then with Mrs. Kennedy a problem to 'frown and also to
laugh over was here—a proper sex-puzzle. Well Ratner frowned,
and he laughed too—coquettish, in spite of his frowning-self, in a
rush of quick sneering rattles. He ogled Mrs. Bell—he blushed
coyly at the simple husband. The stern and unpalatable facts of
economics were transmuted (express for the dull ears of honest
' John ' Bell) into coarse and juicy morsels at once—all hot and
scent-stunk, fat and dripping, from the pantry of ' Analysis ' :
and oh poor ' John ' would not have to have second sight he
wouldn't to divine that here was material for another fine old mess,
perhaps the fruitiest yet—into which a seasoned Lothario or a
Restive-old-Bretonne might well get himself my word even at his
time of life—and what a fine old litter of Complexes ' afterwards !
" Well I don't like fat women " said honest ' John ' with a
ponderous emphasis, as though a fat woman had just dropped on
the top of him and forced out of him the uncompromising con
fession. Something was expected of him of course ' John ' under
stood, and that he got over like this—once and for all—the great
' fatness ' of Mrs. Kennedy would excuse ' John ' Bell for the
rest of the time from licking his bull-dog chops at her unseductive
peroxide efligy and he was glad, for he had seen her—there could
be no illusion !
" No I know you don't ' John ' ! " Ratner assented.—' John's '
sex should be waived by special decree—that was settled—all
right—-a personal interest, no more.
" So I couldn't sleep with her ! " ' John ' stood aside—but
let there be no misunderstanding—with any other woman (except
an exceedingly fat woman)—' John ' Bell's your man !
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 545
Ratner croaked and sneered, he was all easy indulgence—he
rewarded this super-simple old ' John ' Bull with the approval
conveyed in his laugh of a patron. But after that he smiled cir
cumspectly—for he did not quite like to hear the words don't want
to sleep from any lips—they were boastful and not in the best of
taste !
Then Ratner began to look thoughtful, as befitted what he
was about to say.
" I don't like fat women " he then weightily confessed. And a
hundred greasy beds—a long (unsatisfactory) perspective—were
intended to rush into the ken of the person privileged to hear—
deeply impressed.—The Burden of Fat Women—Ratner gave him
self a somewhat cross exhausted expression—as if but just issued
from a twelve-hours' closely-contested event—in which he had
been matched (alas overmatched—coyness itself !) with a ' fat
woman '—the ringside of course the four walls of the ' fat
woman's ' sumptuous sleeping apartment—sumptuous, for of
course the ' fat woman ' herself (a motherly soul moved to
paroxysms of maternal lust you would have to understand at the
sight of old Joo) would have provided The Purse—and it would
have to have been a fat Purse—that went without saying !
" It's such hard work ! " Joo jibed in piteous howling accents,
cut short by an unexpected eruption ofphlegm. (The damp lenten
air of the garden. Too many cigarettes !)
" Yes that's what / find ! " 'John ' Bell agreed in a hearty
grumble.
" You have to go on and on ! " Joo crossly remarked—the
licentious subject announcing itself in his face by an expression
as if he had a bitter taste in his mouth of gall and wormwood.
" I know " mumbled ' John ' Bell frowning at the ground.
" They're sluggish ! "
" It takes them usually half-an-hour ." Ratner removed
the phlegm with a handkerchief.
" Some never get there at all ! " shouted ' John ' Bell—in full
tally-ho cry against the fat women.
Mrs. Bell gave the two lads her benediction with a fraction of
a dry smile, as she watched the dancers upon the gravel, and upon
the sodden lenten grass beyond the gravel.
As the band was very crashy and urgent alas, and as Mrs. Bell
had exclusively watched the dancers, there was nothing for it, Jim
 APES OF GOD
Rat. With the same bitter and bilious facial acidity—which
threw into relief the lines that depend from the wing of the nostril,
sluggishly Jim Rat rose and Mrs. Bell, too, supposed she must.
So Mrs. Bell and Ratner began to perform beneath the eyes of
' John ' Bell who did not dance at all, upon the gravel path, at
which 'John ' gazed with his nervous frown. So very much in
spite-of-himself (coyness intensified— a symbolical action to dance
with a woman) and in spite of Mrs. Bell, Ratner allowed himself
to be dragged into graceful exercises—as if engaging in a fox-trot
with his grandmother, the arm was slipped with a catch-as-catch-
can rudeness around the waist of this faded Jane.
So she had the lovely experience and the ritual terminated that
was finished. And Mrs 'John ' and her fat split partner were back
again beside Jonathan Bell at the table, where the coffee had
come.
" This coffee is rotten ! " ' John ' Bell exclaimed.
" I expect it is " said Joo, tasting it with caution. " Yes, very
bad."
" It is the worst coffee I've ever tasted " said Mrs. Bell.
There was a pause, of gastric disappointment, during which
'John ' Bell's bowels rolled, grim and short.
" They have done it on the cheap " said Ratner. " The
dinner was very bad."
" Were you here to dinner ? " asked 'John ' very impressed.
" Not as a guest." Ratner was lofty and bitter, rebuking
'John ' Bell so snobbish and eager.
"Oh "said 'John' Bell.
" I am a super in that play " Ratner told him. " It is in the
Zagreus' troupe. Have you seen the program ? Here it is."
Something flatteringly obscure—subaltern and self-effacing—
was insinuated into his statement by Split-man—with a stressing
of coyest of modest understatements—a ' split ' nothing he was—
a chorus-person—no pompous principal, a coy underling.
" You dined here ? " asked Mrs. Bell.
" We had some dinner."
Ratner returned to Mrs. Kennedy with 'John '—that getting
up and trotting, part of the demonstration, over—now he trained
his eyeball, straight and true, again upon ' John ' Bell, and
touched 'John's ' trigger once or twice to make sure if the powder
had not got damp. 'John' Bell's body gave a few ashamed
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 547
lurches of mirth, it showed it was a devil : Ratner told it a story
about the peroxide fellow-publisher that made it jolt about until
it coughed. But it continued to cough and toss about. So, as the
naked all-bald upper-story was exposed to the night-dew, Mrs.
Bell looked about to see if a treacherous mist was not creeping
up and so better to step inside again for ' John ' Bell. But it was
not so they stayed.
" I like your dress," Ratner said to 'John.' " Who are you ? "
" I ?—Democracy ! "
As he spoke and smiled this introspective ' John ' Bell's settled
frown increased, with the smile, or diminished—only a laugh dis
persed it. He was always nervous. A scoffing croak at Democracy
was all Ratner said—he awaited 'John ' Bell's further remarks now.
" I thought I'd come as the figure of Democracy " 'John '
Bell announced, with some scholarly unction at the title of a
little-known Masque (indeed a Masque under a political cloud for
three centuries) " out of Albion and Albanius."
Both the Bells, sly scholars (to whom their occasional support
of a work of genius or erudition was the meat and drink of mind
and not as this friend's private-pressing at all) looked at Ratner
—who did not know what Albion and the rest was and did not
care. He said nothing. He smiled back with superiority at the
sly scholars—the funny bloomered-tandem of british middle-age
and middleclass.
So ' John ' Bell swelled out his chest and very fond of his own
voice he rolled over the tin-table at Ratner a bit of Albion and the
rest.
" But you forget the noblest part,
And Master-piece of all your art—
You told him he was sick at heart.
And when you could not work belief
In Albion of the imagined grief ;
Your perjured vouchers, in a breath,
Made oath, that he was sick to death.
And then five hundred quacks of skill
Resolved, 'twas fit he should be ill.—
Now heyfor a commwealth
We merrily drink and sing !
' Tis to the nation's health,
For every man's a king ! "
548 APES OF GOD
But ' John ' Bell was intoxicated by the sound of his own
voice and he had not the least idea what this was. A passage had
been shown him, he had never stopped to consider what was said
—he had found it rolled well. Now he sat back, frowning, replete
with the sound of the passage. But Ratner sneered gloomily—
that was all John got out ofJoo.
" What is that ? " asked Ratner with a note ofsleepy curiosity.
" That ? " said ' John ' Bell. " Albion and Albanius."
Again he drew thirty cubic inches of damp atmosphere into
his lungs and was then able to give out the following without
stopping much. In the kind of senatorial garment, he resembled
a seated Roman making a solemn plea.
" Our plots and delusions
Have wrought such confusions,
That the monarch's a slave to the crowd.
A design we fomented—
By hell it was new !
A false plot invented—
To cover a true.
First with promised faith we flattered.
Then jealousies and fears we scattered.
We never valued right or wrong,
But as they served our cause.
Our business was to please the throng,
And court their wild applause.
For this we bribed the lawyer's tongue,
And then destroyed the laws."
Ratner, his jocose mask stationary, watched from his eye-in-
profile. He attempted to detect if ' John ' Bell did know what he
was saying or not—when it became evident to Ratner that 'John.'
Bell was not present to what his booming parrot-tongue said at
all, then he laughed—at this innocent Democrat—who mouthed
such virulent passages against the person of what he impersonated.
" Who wrote that ? " asked Ratner.
" Dryden " said 'John' Bell.
" Is it ? " Ratner seemed surprised that should be Dryden.
But he knew nothing at all about Dryden.—Ratner saw Margolin
look at him as he passed—Margolin was by himself, he was head
ing for the Saloon.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 549
" I think I must go " said Ratner to the two Bells. " I think
our part of the performance is almost due."
" Shall we see you afterwards ? " asked ' John ' Bell surprised.
" Perhaps we can meet."
" It depends what the time is."
" Yes it is a little late already."
A little abruptly perhaps Ratner left them—they thought it
was abrupt. Bell thought he'd been taken short.—Julius Ratner
followed Archie Margolin into the great dancing saloon.

XIII. CAPTAIN "BLUNDER/BUSS AND HIS MAN SQUIS

As Ratner entered the great dancing saloon he found (just in
the way the Red Sea was chopped in half by his god Jahveh—to
make a dryshod passage for his chosen boys and girls) a wide
path bisecting the multitude—into this brilliantly lighted hedge
of legs and faces came Split Man—not at all like a Chosen Child
but with a sour blink—by no means flashing a Phoenix, but rather
darkling a night-hawk—or some jaded falco, fit for nothing. But
he beheld a stately procession bearing down upon him with fatal
tread (but still stepping with cattish precision as if the ground had
lately been wet or disgustingly dirty) and lo this was even my
lords Osmund and Phoebus, followed by a select retinue of great
propriety—Children of the Chapel but dressed as men, youthful
(but circumspect underlings) or learned (but Star-doctors of
Manly Beauty) and these were passing unconcerned through the
grinning ranks, in the direction of the garden.
Ratner took his place within the wall of people, he contri
buted his dark tusky grin to the rest of the mock-respect. Jazzing
God Save the King the negro band hummed the hymn—guests
removed their caps if they had been covered (though behind some
half-capping occurred) some stood to attention, in the rear some
(a blustering group) rendered the Red Flag, in the manner of an
anthem.
A footman overtook Lord Osmund, and stuck like a stuffed
bird with a wire up its centre, but top-heavy, within a yard of
his master, with his megaphone windpipe with the throttle off,
let fly at his lordship the title and the name of a newcomer.
" Captain Blunderbuss and His Man Squib ! "
552 APES OF GOD
of the fireplace to tell the stories of Cockeye. Some stories were
verbatim gems, some had assumed the dramatic form in the telling.
A Cockeye Canon existed by this time. Manner and words both,
of the fairy stories the such very adult children told each other of
Father, were conventionalised. It was in the expectation of
plenty that this seasoned caucus of celebrated poetical ' rebels '
sat down to rerelish, perhaps for an untold number of retellings,
the freaks of that opulent clown—he who had, as it were, given
birth to his own private audience—whereas Osmund had his by
adoption.
Upon the settee were the heavy-weights—Osmund, Volpe-
mini, and Sib. Lady Harriet sat by Miss Julia Dyott (all smiles)
in two chairs, while Monty Mayors had flung himself with such
force upon the ground in front of the fire that he had slightly
injured two not very hardy aesthetes, who had been wanning
themselves upon the rug. Two or three only of the male chorus
lay there now as they were frankly afraid of Monty Mayors and
another very heavy man who was liable to follow Monty's example.
Floor-lyers and rug-fiends were collected in the crevices of the
large fireplace and between the massive pieces of furniture how
ever. Lord Phoebus was curled up by the coal-scuttle, the Kate
Greenaway doll that had the vapours was bare-back astride his
bandaged knee.
" Do you remember Harriet how Cockeye said he wanted to
see more aplomb in the plumber ! "
" Yes—I—do ! " in the crashing hiss of her dramatic counter
tenor boo, Lady Harriet Finnian Shaw replied with her customary
energy. " And how the plumber led Cockeye up the garden
too ! "
" Yes the plumber showed more aplomb than Cockeye bargained
for I think ! "
" I think the plumber did ! "
At the mention only of ' the plumber,' it was a great favourite,
the entire upper lip and nose of Lord Phoebus wrinkled up, as if he
were about to sneeze—though the crash never came. Nothing but
a contented cooing high up in his nose followed—but all the
chorus convulsed itself—writhing in the crevices and upon the
backs of the heavy furniture, squeaking and baying.
" The Gil-hooter ! " impulsively Harold Pope, clasping both
hands together tightly, cried out in a rich operatic cri-de-coeur.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 553
"Oh yes dooooo let's hear that—when Cockeye went into the
garden ! "
" The gil-hooter is a perfect story ! "
There was a hush of sorts, of high-strung expectation. Lord
Osmund waited smiling Tor a moment as if to remember a tune,
though all were so word-perfect that such a pause was a flourish
only—he knew the gil-hooter by heart certainly.
" What is that hooting noise I wonder—there is that bird
again ! " Lord Osmund said, affecting to pay attention to some
sound in the distance, cocking his ear for it.
" Yes whatever can that bird be, that always hoots about this
time ! Can it be an owl do you suppose ? " Harriet responded
with a very puzzled look indeed.
" Yes I wonder if it is an owl ! There it goes again ! Do you
hear it ? It always hoots about this time, out in the garden—I
think I will go out and see if I can find it."
" I think it's rather a pretty sound don'tyou ! " bayed up Lord
Phoebus.
" Yes—but a little melancholy—don't you agree ! "
" Yes it is rather sad ! I wonder if the poor bird has lost
anything ! " asked Harriet.
" It may—who knows !—have lost itsyoung ! " said Osmund,
wise and owlish.
" Oh I do hope it hasn't ! "
" I don't think it can be that Harriet ! "
" Why don't you think it could be that Osmund ? "
" Because I don't think it would mind losing itsyoung ! "
" Oh Osmund—the poor bird not mind losing itsyoung ! "
" I don't see why it should—human beings don't mind losing
theiiyoung at all ! "
" No I suppose that is true Osmund—they don't seem to, do
they, mind losing their young very much ! "
" Not at all—as far as I have been able to remark ! "
" No I think you are quite right there Osmund—it can't be
itsyoung I think ! "
" No not itsyoung ! "
" Could it be the old birds perhaps that the poor bird has lost
—it may be very young and have lost the father-bird, don't you
think that is possible ? "
" Yes it might be that ! "
 554 APES OF GOD
" I feel positive it's something of the sort ! The father-bird is
dead—that's it. And so it hoots ! "
Interruptions at this point throughout the audience—the
smiling actors, of this family scene, sit silent. They coo to them
selves, while expressions of delight break out on all hands,
applauding the performance.
" And then what does Cockeye say ! " Harold Pope ex
claimed.
Osmund (in the role of Cockeye) " I'm sure I don't know
what all you children mean ! "
" No ! I don't suppose you do ! " the truculent Harriet
retorts upon this imaginary Cockeye.
Osmund (as Cockeye). " Not mind losing its young ! "
Harriet. " Yes—it tr difficult to believe isn't it ! "
Osmund (as Cockeye) " I don't understand how the bird can
be supposed not to be sad if it has lost hsyoung ! "
Harriet (as Harriet) " No I can't make it out at all—not at
losing its young ! "
" You see ! " muttered Blackshirt to Dan in whose company
Dan had been induced to draw near to the inner circle, in
common with a dozen or more other outsiders who had remained
in the room.
" They of course are ' the young,' that I suppose you have
understood ! Young is what they chiefly desire to appear—and
that aged counterpart of themselves, Cockeye—he certainly is
old—in fact very old—that is his function in the fairy-tale. The
main point of this Commedia dell' Arte lies in this agreeable contrast.
They certainly still have a father—even if aunts are getting a bit
scarce. It's peculiar isn't it? However, it does appear, if you
study it carefully, that it is lovely to be ' children ' when one is
middle-aged—though a bore at other times, as I daresay you have
found."
And he gave Dan a polite look, which was lost upon Dan, for
Dan could have wished that he would not hiss so loudly, as
Harriet twice had turned in their direction as if geese had been
surreptitiously introduced into the room, and he was sure that
what he was saying was not what he should have said so near to
them as this.
" Cockeye " Blackshirt argumentatively burst out low down
on the scale, his voice singing Cock-eye-yer as the first meaty term

v.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 555
in a chain of passionate reasoning, to be breathlessly followed—
" he—my information is of the best—is nothing but an ancient
model of this lot here—probably double as cunning, as is to be
expected at twice-forty."
Blackshirt hoarsely whispered twice-forty in Dan's ear, behind
his hand.
" But according to the rules of the child-parent-war-game Cock
eye must be honoured with the prodigious charge of having been
at the bottom of the European War. You see that don't you ?
That does Cockeye far too much honour. That Osmund, or that
Cockeye, is quite capable of causing a world-war if he got the
chance, that is most probable. But this unimportant old land
owner—however waspish and destructive, like his offspring—was
certainly not responsible for that one. That makes no difference !
The highly-emotional requirements of the child-parent-war-game
have to be satisfied. Of the caucus of supposed decrepit old
elders who sent the Young Men of 1914 to their death in the
Trenches, Cockeye is their Elder. So it is automatic that Cockeye
should become for them the Old Man who made the War. It is very
simple. In 1914 that hussar-captain at the time, Lord Osmund,
he was sent to his death in the Trenches (Osmund had the good
taste not to stop there long—a fortnight or so I think). Lord
Pha-bus left Harrow and became a hussar and was marked down
at once for the Trenches too (but Lord Phoebus was not at all well
so didn't go). All this was Cockeye's doing—according to the
rules of the child-parent-war-game. This makes the good emotional
stuff of honest melodrama, but, as you will remark, it makes
historical nonsense. It serves to give old Cockeye a diabolical
political importance he does not deserve. Whoever or whatever
caused the European War, it was not Cockeye that did it, with
his bow and arrow—not Cockeye, whoever it was ! "
And he shot a dark inquisitorial arrow from his dark Welsh
man's eye at the caparisoned bosom of Harriet. But Harriet was
busy playing ' Cockeye ' with Phoebus, she was taking the part of
the Marchioness.
" You must bear in mind " said Blackshirt quickly " that it is
always the War that in fact they are talking about. The child-
parent-war-game was manufactured in the War-time. Harriet
and Osmund took up the cry—they did not invent it—that it was
the Old Colonels, in league with the Old Politicians (and all the shel
556 APES OF GOD
tered Elders too old to be soldiers, in the decline of their days, who
thirsted for their children's blood) who were responsible for the
European War. There would be no harm in that if it did not
serve to screen the actual villain. It is important, you must
agree, that the true cause should not be lost sight of. But both the
sex-war, and the child-parent-war, each of them advance with a
romantic bitterness their bogus claimants, for the honour of being
the arch-villain of the European War. The authentic villain rubs
his hands I should think as he looks on—and watches from his
ambush these subsidiary Wars of our Peace-life, which have come
out of the stinking bowels of the big one—and plots, who can
doubt it, a bigger !—So these are most maddening old women—
who still go on with their stupid stories, of their boring old parent,
so like themselves, so sly, so complaining, so boring—who ever so
mischievously, and sweetly, they have nicknamed as they have—
and they still retail the legend of his wickedness with regard the
War-time ' young.' That such very mature persons should find
a never-cloying satisfaction in this impulsive nursery-philosophy
(borrowed during the World War from somebody far cleverer
than themselves) is depressing, is it not ? It is depressing. It is
exceedingly depressing."
Dan could not understand why people were always talking
about the War—he was so small at the time in Ireland—for him
in school-books it was always mixed up in his mind with the Wars
of the Roses, and still was, because of Roses in Picardy. That was
a song they had sung he knew of war-roses blooming, but the
Rebellion had made him totally forget the War and its roses and
everything about it until he had come to London really. It was
a great War for England he supposed—it must have been.
The typical gil-hooter dialogue had been acted—the Finnian
Shaw Family Repertory Company looked upon it as a tit-bit. It
brought out the ' y6ungness ' well—it turned upon the destruc
tion of tender fledglings. For the benefit of any person there not
an absolute intimate it must next be interpreted, by Harriet and
by Osmund. That was now done. What had just been heard,
that was, you must know, a conversation that had once occurred
at Balbriggan—that was what they had just said, when they were
speaking. The gil-hooter was a hooting sound. This sound was pro
duced by Cockeye himself. Yes, by Cockeye. It occurred within
the nose of Cockeye. It was a strange hooting sound. A sort of
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 557
hooting. They themselves to start with had been puzzled by it.
The children of the Marquis (it was explained) would always
affect (when they heard the sound) to believe that it was a noise
made by some bird. It was a bird (so they would affect to believe)
that was hooting, out in the garden. Cockeye would on some
occasions get up from the table (it was only at meals as a rule that
they saw Cockeye) —he would go over to the window, and there
he would stand peering out, to see if he could detect it, in the
branches of some tree—although he himself (he was accustomed
to affirm) could not hear its cry.
After the gil-hooter (a universal favourite) came Cockeye as a
Cornet in the Yeomanry Cavalry or was it The Volunteers—he
was then all side-whiskered and legginged—a shako two sizes too
large for him. That all came from the old irish butler—he had
witnessed Cockeye's earliest exploits, in the Curragh or in
Gloucester, he described it with relish—he would tell how Cockeye
(provided with flasks ofcordial) would drive out in a buggy, he was
armed to the teeth with a whole arsenal of bloodthirsty weapons.
His best story recounted how at a Volunteer-Review Cockeye's
rifle went off just as the Prince Consort had inspected his platoon,
which caused an uncommon alarm amongst all those present.
When Lord Osmund had described the explosion of the gun
and he had made quite a loud bang to show what happened, Dan
fairly laughed outright but Blackshirt seized him by the arm,
and said with a very stern expression—
" Come ! "
Blushing to the roots of his hair Dan was led away—it was
plain Blackshirt considered he had disgraced himself or both of
them by laughing like that—he questioned if he would ever let
him listen to stories after that as he was unable to control himself.
" We will go to the Library ! " when they were outside Black-
shirt said.

XV. THE LIBRARY

At the thought of the Library Dan was deeply depressed but he
supposed he had to go with Blackshirt and read the books.
" I have a map of the house " Blackshirt told him. " Pier-
point gave it to me, I don't know where he got it."
558 APES OF GOD
The piece of paper Blackshirt took from his pocket was dirty,
Dan wondered if Pierpoint was a dirty man : For some reason
this appeared extremely probable to him—he was a philosopher
was the reason.
Dan stopped, why did they not go down the main stairs ? But
Blackshirt passed on without paying any attention and they went
straight forward briskly into a maze of passages, but at last he
opened a door and they went into a large room full of books to
the ceiling.
" This is the Library," said Blackshirt, and he started looking
at the books to make himself at home.
All the books were made of leather, and there were big
windows just as he had expected. But upon a table was a lot of
bright buttercup-coloured books. They were like Melanie had
and they were made of bright paper. Seeing all these buttercup-
coloured books seemed to make Blackshirt very cross. He threw
one down violently and pushed several as if he wished they had
not been put there upon the table—he kept returning, one in
particular he went on pushing about. There were other books
upon this long table that were much more pretty—in bud-green,
sapphire, scarlet or violet.
Turning away from the table, Blackshirt went back to the
doorway.
" Heraldry a favourite subject " he said, beginning at the
beginning, near the doorway. " I expect armes parlantes of Fin-
nian Shaw number one—canting or punning charges—probably
an oar and to keep it company a ship—or perhaps a shore. Shaw
you see."
Blackshirt seemed very disgusted and if it upset him so much
Dan wished he hadn't after all brought him to see the books it
wasn't necessary—but was not that perhaps too missish ?
" Treatises upon Gothic " Blackshirt said, moving on.
" Baroque. It is a fixed idea. History, and so family. With
that, apotheosis atperiod. It is a pure case of the chronological state
nj mind the Time-craze " said the Blackshirt, pointing his finger
at another shelf, peering at the name of each book—was he short
sighted ?
" Yes." Dan followed like a lazy disagreeably overgrown school-
miss from shelf to shelf. He played slowly with one of the many
bonny-blue-ribbons that dangled dreamily upon the period-frock.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 559
" This is Phoebus's bit. He is the historian. These are the
furnishings for his romantic historical treatises." He rattled his
forefinger along the swelling breasts of a column of fine upstanding
volumes.
" Finnian Shaw archives." He tapped a few with his knuckle.
" Cockeye's collection I expect. The literary marquis ! Here is
the literature of a Crusade. All the Crusading bag of tricks—as
if tallow-kings cared for Holy Sepulchres—at most interested in
the wax-candles for the chapels or high-altar ! "
An expansive sensation at this point entered into Dan for all
that this kind Blackshirt was. The entire pedagogic presence of
his surly guide was suddenly dear to him—for a word uttered by
chance had brought back to Dan the very feeling of the perfect
presence of Horace ! Oh he would give anything now for a good
stiff' ' broadcast ' ! He even would have been capable of crying
Long live Pierpoint !—for was he not a dark horatian figure ?
" We arrive at Osmund, man of letters ! " Blackshirt ex
claimed, as he drew up in front of a modernist galaxy of parti
coloured book-backs, towards which he waved a hand. Upon the
hand there was a small silver ring.
" Verses and plays—nc «n lettes and novels—quite a writer ! "
Oh the Ape! thought Dan with eagerness as he saw what
Osmund did. But alas the days of logs scribbled-in by candle
light were over—he drew back discouraged.
Blackshirt took bodily out of the shelf a thick pack of books.
He carried the books intact to the big table. Spine up, he stood
them, a huddled pack of masterpieces. He removed his hands—
a flanking book fell down, the rest remained upright.
Dan approached, gently inquisitive—gently he wondered
what Blackshirt was going to do now with the books—was he
going to carry them away and hide them in the garden ? But the
actions of his blackshirted guide belied this entirely—for he was
rolling up his blackshirted sleeves a little. This must betoken
some fierce demonstration.
In fact the books had been placed upon the table for dissec
tion. Something of the sort became immediately apparent to Dan.
Blackshirt was the great anatomist. Dan saw that. This was a
noted anatomist ! He was about to undertake the description of
the situation, structure and economy of the organised discourse of
this particular mind as discovered by these books. Or this would
56° APES OF GOD
perhaps be a lesson in Pathologic Anatomy. Dan was the breath
less apprentice.—So much, after his manner, Dan understood.—He
knew without any telling, from the light in his eye, that Black-
shirt was going to be rude to the books, about that there could be
little doubt.
But Blackshirt went straight to the heart of the. matter. The
cardiac region as it were was attacked then and there, his learned
knife in hand. Brutally he opened up the third volume, finically
he picked it up out of the pack—he opened it up, his two thumbs
in its innards. He planted it plumb on its scarlet back, for it was
a bright book. He then planted his index-finger upon it, scorn
fully in mid-page, and stuck it in till he nail-marked it.
" Lord Osmund Finnian-Shaw suffers from a Thymus
surplus ! "
Dan saw their stout host in a funny surplice of course at once
though he knew there was more behind it.
" The whole family is a clear case of the domination of the
Endocrine proper to Infancy ! That is called the Thymus Gland
of Internal Secretion. This gland is supposed to disappear or be
come inactive in the adult-life. It is the gland provided for the
tender-years. In the Finnian-Shaw family this particular Endo
crine persists. Into the ripest years, it is ridiculously active. It
pumps the humours of childhood into that great body of Osmund.
As a family they suffer from an over-dose of Thymus—the child
like Endocrine."
Dan did not know what to say to this but he felt sorry for the
entire family, suffering from some subtle tumour.
" Hence the obsession of that fat Old Maid—that spectacular
Aunt Mary ! Osmund that is."
Dan looked down at the book, affected by the pierpointean
ritual—the rolling up of the sleeves, the pointing of the finger, the
solemn passes. He firmly believed that he should presently see a
little Old Maid trip out of the open book and he kept his eyes
dreamily fixed upon it, expecting this elfish apparition.
" The obsession of that fat Old Maid ! "
Blackshirt wetted his unoccupied thumb, in order to turn a
page, and Dan craned his neck to watch—for he thought the
little wizened old fairy woman was perhaps hiding under it, and
he thought that it was Blackshirt's intention to turn it suddenly
up, as one would cant up a seaside rock, beneath which marine
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 561
animals were secreted. But he turned it right over : and there
was nothing there. It was disappointing.
" Old Maidenhood ! " he said to Dan ; and Dan looked
again, but without result. " The bogey of Women, when Vic
toria was queen. Or really it is merely oldness—for after all he is
not a female, technically a virgin. So it is Old Age that haunts
him—but in the way that that would present itself to an un
married victorian lady, past the years propitious for wedlock.
That is it. He suffers from the bane of Spinsters. But it is in a
maudlin way—reminiscent of some parsonage in A.D. 185o, in
the England of Trollope."
Then Blackshirt added, looking down at the book.
" He is very sentimental."
Dan looked down as well—and he experienced an uneasy
compassion, for he knew that somebody was terribly unhappy
(though not technically a virgin) but he could not discover the
cause.
" You have seen the Old Colonels.—Here are the Old Maids.
The Old Dowagers."
Dan was all attention for Blackshirt said he had seen Old Colonels
and he thought he meant in the books— he expected at any
moment to see a procession of tin-soldiers across the page where
Blackshirt pointed.
" This is a novel."
Dan knew that some books were called novel and this was one.
As Blackshirt did not offer an explanation of what novel meant he
turned away, and then Blackshirt said—
" Otto Weiniger would tell you that Osmund was eight-tenths
female in composition : perhaps that is why in fact he suffers
from these sentimental hauntings. He is feminine. He is senti
mental."
Otto-somebody might tell that to Blackshirt but whether he
would tell it to Dan was not so certain, but Blackshirt seemed
positive that he would—he looked quite convinced about it.
" Or you may prefer to say that Osmund is simply haunted by
the thought—to grow old !—in the manner of the average Society
Hostess. You need go no farther than that—Society is his native
element."
The average Society Hostess conveyed little to Dan, but his
eyes began positively to start out of his head when Blackshirt

1
56a APES OF GOD
began to talk about ghosts. He could not help wondering if the
Library was haunted—because Libraries were usually haunted.
" Here are the Old Maids—the Old Dowagers ! " Blackshirt
called his attention again to their presences, but Dan felt rather
chilly and wished there was a gas-stove.
" In this book a group of dull old women is made into foot
balls for his tongue—having kicked all the old hags in the stomach
in the last chapter, he kills most of them off. This, properly
analysed, is a sort of blood-sacrifice—on paper. The god ofwhom
Osmund is the terrified priest demands it. He feels the god might
have him, if he should present himself emptyhanded ! So.
Blood-sports in books. You must get hold of that simple idea. A
reflection of the War—to which at the time because of its bloodi
ness the Finnian Shaws so rightly objected ! The Trenches
amongst the pages of the novels—Trench-warfare in the mud of
Satire."
Blackshirt shut the book with a report like a Trench-mortar.
Between finger and thumb, he picked out a second from the pack.
He burst it brutally open, pinned it upon the table, scrutinized its
title—colophon—index and finis—as if it had been a passport or
carte <T identiU.
" Yes " he said—having fastened his finger upon its dazzling
white Dutch Mould-made stomach. " Here again we have Old
Age. This treats of Old Age as well as the other. But any book
here—examine them !—has that for leit-motiv. Would you like to
pick one out and try ? You take my word for it? You would
really find that as far as this is concerned I am to be trusted. This
one now is a group of lampoons. They are called Portraits of
Fiction. In it caesarean operations are performed upon a dozen
old-gentleman-spinsters—sentimental dilettantes of the type of
Osmund, but twenty years more advanced than he in the same
depressing path. Here they are on their last legs—with painted
lips, eyeglasses, cockroach eyebrows, and bellies full of wind."
Dan felt terribly sorry for all these old effetes—on their last
legs, with bellies full of wind, and began to feel a little sorry for
Lord Osmund—who did not seem able, try as he would, to get
the right shampoo (shampoon Blackshirt called it but that was
because he had a cold in the head he supposed).
Blackshirt was turning back with expert fingers to the opening
pages of the book that was the object of this demonstration. After
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 563
reading there for a moment, he picked up another book. After
that lie examined the opening pages of a third book, and after
that of a fourth. In each case he referred to the title-pages.
Then he put them down. At last there were four books lying
together face-upward, in a row.
'* Yes " said Blackshirt, satisfied with his expert examination.
" These are books published over a space often years. The hero
in every case is naturally Osmund himself—with an author of
this description—since it is nothing but the most trivial personal
motives that cause him, as a society-lion, ever to write a book
you see. That you may always take for granted. In this book "
and he pressed his finger on it " which is a recent one—the hero
has become a very distinguished-looking man of thirty-five. In this
one however " and he pressed his finger upon another " the hero
is a very handsome and noble person of twenty-seven. But this
was written five years earlier than that ! "
Blackshirt blew his nose with the evacuatory gesture of a man
spitting to express his contempt. Then he turned to Dan impres
sively and placed his hand upon his whistle, which was in his
left-breast-pocket.
" I am masculine to a fault ! " said he. " I too find it difficult
to understand. At first I was entirely at sea. But here is the
evidence. You can't get away from that ! Everything I have seen
tonight confirms Pierpoint's diagnosis—things pan out exactly
as he says ! "
The Blackshirt was triumphant—it had once more been
demonstrated that Pierpoinl was infallible.
" As to Cockeye " said Blackshirt with studied contempt " he
is an old bird of the same feather. Here is a nest of middle-aged
iledglings. It would be found upon examination that they pout
and peck with identical movements—they and Cockeye ! Harriet
at sixty probably will be sitting in one bath-chair, Cockeye will be
sitting in another. She will be shaking her fist at Cockeye, while
he ripostes by cutting down her allowance for air-balls and acid-
drops. The age-war or the child-parent-war-game will still be in
full swing. She will not have children herself now. On the other
hand Cockeye is fond of life. So provided the old wretch of a
parent-bird keeps alive there is no reason why Harriet should not
represent the younger generation until she dies of apoplexy- she
will almost certainly succumb to a violent lit of temper."
564 APES OF GOD
Blackshirt took a few steps in the direction of Dan, and
lighted a cigarette, employing a match-box in gun-metal which
he drew from the pocket where his whistle lay, at the end of
its cord.
" You see this match-box ? " he said.
Dan took it from his hand. He examined the match-box with
a certain alarm—for anything that had reposed in a pocket of
the Blackshirt was not to be trifled with Dan very strongly felt,
and he returned it to its owner—with a noticeable haste.
" Do you see this device ? " The Blackshirt pointed to a black
crest in one corner of it. " That represents the sentimental mug
of an abstract youth—he is hellenic and hermaphrodite."
Dan gazed sadly at the hermaphrodite youth.
" That is the seal, for identification, of the C.B.Y.—Com
munion of British Youth. I was the secretary of that organisa
tion, when Pierpoint discovered me. From that boy-scout
religion I was rescued by Pierpoint.—So youth-movements are no
novelty to me ! "
Blackshirt thrust out his chest—at all youth-movements, at
the C.B.Y. in particular. With a concrete god (as now he had)
he swelled against all abstractions.
" I only tell you that. That is of no importance. But when
1 was mixed up with the C.B.Y. I had a lot of experience. As
pirants for youth-honours in hundreds passed through my hands.
It was my duty every day to drive away middle-aged men, panting
with enthusiasm, who wished to enrol. We had the communist
rule of 25. I was twenty-two. Every week I drove away dozens
of pot-bellies, hundreds of heads of grey-hair, swarms of bald
persons—you would not credit the numbers ! Birth certificates
were useless —they ustd to alter them to suit their fancy. Indeed,
the great difficulty was to get any genuinejwuMj to join up. That
should have caused no surprise—for what youth in his senses wants
to go about shouting—' Oh look—I am a youth ! ' Our director
the man behind the scenes—he was an ex-bankcr, called —he had a
scotch name - of fifty bright young summers.— 1 tell you this to
show you that 1 know what I am talking about."
Dan thought Blackshirt was reproaching him with a lack of
attention or scepticism and he attempted to correct this bad
impression at once. He fixed his eyes upon Blackshitl's hands,
sometimes upon one, sometimes the other.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 565
" The Finnian Shaw family-group I should describe as a sort
of middle-aged youth-movement. It is confined to a particular
family and their dependants. This they have become in their
capacity of ' rebels ' against authority. The dangers of the War
first must have driven them into that attitude. The idea of
' youth ' supervened— afterwards. It coloured with a desirable
advertisement-value their special brand of rich-man's gilded
bolshevism. In the fairy-tales they have spun about this theme
ever since, Cockeye has always been the wicked Giant who tried
to kill them during the big bad naughty World War. You see the
idea ? Psychologically the habit of mind illustrated by them is
not without significance. It is a formidable absurdity. It will
bear thinking about a great deal."
Dan sank back sitting upon the table and he frowned, in his
attempt to follow the story of this fairy-tale—about the Wicked
Giant ' Cockeye.' But he was unable to do so, because the War
kept coming into it as usual. That spoilt the story and indeed
made it quite meaningless for him.
" Osmund however feels the giant-limbs of Cockeye waxing
upon himself. Thinks he—' I shall soon be a full-blown Giant
now ! ' The portcullis of the Roaring Forties frowns immediately
in front of him. Once in there—thinks Osmund—I shall be of
the race of Giants—a Cockeye ! And it is impossible to disguise
the fact that Harriet is already a Giantess ! A female Cockeye.
She still romps outside the cockeyed Bastille where dwell the
sinister communion of Wicked Giants ! But the nearer Lord
Osmund draws to the Castle of the Giants, the more gloomy he
becomes. Imagine a child, as he read in some fairy-book,
growing and growing—until he was forced to recognize that he
was now a giant like the one in the story ! Here beneath my hand
are the written records of these people's intense 'alarm. It is the
Thymus gland doing its fell work ! "
Blackshirt placed his hand in an insulting caress upon the
motley pack of books. He withdrew, between thumb and index
as if with forceps, a third volume from the pack.
" This is the last—it is the best. That is speaking simply as a
pathologist."
Blackshirt opened it up, he planted his palm upon its centre
and crushed it flat upon the table.
"A longish novel!" he remarked, jaunty and solemn.
566 APESOFGOD
" The subject is an ideal illustration—the brilliant diagnosis
which I have in my pocket by Pierpoint is confirmed to the
letter."
Dan looked over his shoulder, but to his great disappointment
he could see no illustrations at all.
" This is the story of a beautiful young flaxen british poet, he
goes to America. Of the most noble stock—already, in spite of
youth, famous. He decides to take a trip to New York. Although
so young he is not very well—the sea-air will do him good.
Impulsively he embarks at the last moment—overnight he makes
up his mind—within twelve hours he is packed and has been put
in a train by his valet. Osmund's heroes always have valets
because Osmund has a valet. They all have a tendency to corpu
lence. There is nothing they have, Osmund has not got, or is
supposed to have got—in fact they possess many things O. is only
supposed to have. Daydreams of his mind you see—the naive
personalities of this gilded riff-raff are advertised like a soap or
sewing machine. When this young poet then boards the super-
liner, bound for New York City, he is shown into an inferior D
deck stateroom, which he is compelled to occupy with another
passenger. It is the height of the season—the liner is full, this is
all that the Company is able to offer him. It was by a stroke of
luck that this arrangement was possible. A stroke of luck indeed !
Ill-luck for the poor young poet—for this accident in the sequel is
seen to blast the whole of his young life ! When first shown into
the stateroom he is to occupy, he does not see his fellow-passenger.
He dresses hurriedly and is soon enjoying the delights of a floating
Ritz, as befits his rank and wealth. It is after midnight when he
retires to his sleeping quarters. He is still unaware who the person
may be with whom he is to share the cabin. When he enters the
cabin, he remarks that the other berth is now occupied. But all
he can see is a long white beard hanging out of the bed—a Cockeyed-
affair in fact. The morning come, he gets up and his neighbour
gets up too and mumbles Good Morning and he says Good Morning
Sir !—all is quite in order. But as these two face one another the
hero of the story feels himself seized with a terrible faintness !
For here, locked up with him in this confined space, far out upon
the ocean, is a person that he recognises to be himself—no other !—
only an Osmund of about seventy-five—a contemporary of Cock
eye—with long white beard complete ! With this other self he
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 567
then spends the eight days of the voyage out. His flaxen hair turns
quite white as a result of this experience."
Blackshirt smiled ironically. Lord Osmund's tale was told—
Dan felt a little seasick as he was a bad sailor—he wished Black-
shirt would tell him more about the Giants and Giantesses and not
so much about the sea.
" Now I have displayed for you, Daniel Boleyn " said the
Blackshirt grandly " the Pierpointean Analysis—that is our pro
cedure. I have revealed the dominant impulse beneath these
many painfully personal utterances of Lord Osmund Finnian
Shaw, in his role of author. I have now shown you the Library.
I have shown you the soul of our host. There is no occasion to go
through the works of his sister Harriet or his brother Phoebus.
They are of a piece. This is a united family ! The neurosis in
question reaches its maximum development in Osmund. It is
least acute in Harriet. That condition is natural in Harriet (an
authentic old maid) which is sickly and unnatural in Osmund—
masculine sex upon his identity card.—That is all."
Leaving the books lying there—the three he had last dissected,
still opened up, side by side upon the table, cut down the centre
as though with a knife—Blackshirt turned on his heel and Dan
followed him out of the Library with a sense of the greatest relief,
congratulating himself upon not having been asked to read all these
books—just told a few fairy-stories and then taken away again !

XVI. ALBINO BLUSHES

As Blackshirt and Dan who could be taken for an eloping
couple, came round a dark corner, a door was ajar. The whisper
ing of intriguers and reports of protest, spitting and a slap,
sounded behind the door. As they drew abreast, the door
bounded open, and rushing out upon them as if from its veritable
lair was the Bonassus. Dan gave a faint shriek, naturally, he fell
back at the sight of the Bonassus. Blackshirt stood his ground :
it was in its shirt only, but still with its red ears on. Dan was
not really very alarmed because he knew it was human now but he
was startled at its rushing out in this savage manner all the same.
Upon the heels of the Bonassus, streaming after it down the
gallery, went three little white-fronted men with high-pitched
voices.
 568 APESOFGOD
" Kanute—Kanutc ! " they yodelled as they ran.
One of them scolded—
" You mustn't go down there do you hear ! Come back at
once ! "
Another said—
" I shouldn't run so quickly if I were you—the pigeon will
escape ! "
But they were lost to sight. Turning to the left Dan was
relieved to find himself upon the main staircase—he had complete
confidence in Blackshirt that was understood but he recognized
that Blackshirt was foolhardy, and with nothing but a small map
scribbled upon an odd and end of notepaper he had gone into
the large unlighted parts of the house singlehanded and they
might have stepped over the edge of something and never come
back, or been involved in a disconcerting cul de sac. Upon his
Street-map of London Dan marked dark streets with a cross and
never entered them, by day or night.—Upon the big staircase,
half-way down they stopped—it gave them a prospect of the
great dancing saloon and its main ormolu chandelier—it was full
of servants now setting chairs in rows and taking in by sections a
small stage.
Blackshirt fed his eyes with the prospect, narrowly observing
the preparations, for some time—a little black-breasted Napoleon
upon the slopes of a gilded Alp. He swelled in a hemispheric
fascistic chestiness—about forty cubic inches of tidal air passed
into his lung-sacs.
" Did you know that the albino blushed in his eyes ? " he
asked Dan.
Dan blushed all over his neck and hands, giving the albino
points on the spot—giving Horace points, on neck and hand.
" Light passing through the iris and pupil of an albino comes
out red—on account of bloodvessels at the back. That is why their
eyes blush, at the same time their face blushes."
Dan's eyes felt very hot, as if they had been filled with
Cayenne.
" Because Zagreus is an albino " said Blackshirt " he blushes
with his eyes—I once saw Zagreus blush, it was when Picrpoint
told him he was too rich."
Dan observed dark lanugo upon the blackshirted wrists after
the cuffs, and upon the hand, as he was adjusting his heavy
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 569
legionary's whistle, and he wondered if he was quite english or
irish.
Blackshirt took up again the unhurried descent of the em
blazoned stairway, and they found themselves pell-mell among
the personnel, they were struck with the four-square spikes of
chairs.

XVII. DAN AND THE TROPICAL MAN

" Will you have a drink ? "
Blackshirt having made this remark, he entered the American
Bar and Dan went too of course. The prospect of refreshment
made Dan look up. It was then he saw the Negro ! This was a
genuine Tropical Man ! There were even two, but the other was
on duty at the other end of the Bar. It was the Tropical Man in
front of him that he saw.
Gazing at this black bugbear across the Bar, Blackshirt placed
one hand upon his hip. The other he placed upon his whistle.
He fixed his eye upon the Tropical Man before him. Blackshirt
was no friend of The Tropics. Again Dan remarked the dark
lanugo upon his wrists and turned away his head with alarm—
some of the hair from the terrifying Black looked as if it had stuck
to the wrists of the Blackshirt.
" His skin is only a smoked glass as it were you know." The
Blackshirt nodded at the Negro. " That is the principle. You
need not be afraid of him ! "
And he demonstrated to Dan the true attitude, devoid of
alarm, to be adopted if you should encounter unexpectedly a
truly Tropical Man.
But Dan could not be otherwise it was no use talking—he was
quite unable to master his consternation at the presence (just
across the counter) of this Tropical Man. The savage grinned at
him—for the creature seemed to recognize the fear he inspired in
Dan. Oh why had God made these Tropical Persons—was God
too at heart perhaps unkind ?
" Champagne ? " asked Blackshirt.
Champagne it was evidently to be and the Black creature
executed their orders with an animal dexterity that, Dan dis
covered, fascinated at the same time that it repelled. Drinkers
57o APES OF GOD
kept coming in. The black hands were moving all the time, deft
and black.
Dan drank the champagne. But as he swallowed the first
sips, an evil spirit would seem to have come to life in him, out of
its spurious sparkle. His sufferings had been too intense for it to
be safe to give him champagne immediately. As he put it away,
in bolder sips—that celebrated drink, to which so often in the past .
his intellect had been compared by Horace, under happier cir
cumstances—in an abrupt uncomfortable way (it is true) he sud
denly felt possessed of a magical strength. He even looked for a
second at the Tropical Man (that savage so near him as to be
unsafe) and the Negro immediately exhibited a row of chalky
incisors (which more philosophical savages knock out, to look
unlike animals) and filled up Dan's glass again. Dan emptied
the glass at one wild toss.
Blackshirt saw this happen in the mirror with a dull surprise.
" Well ! " he said. That was all. And then he looked away.
But Dan felt the lumps of depression begin to break up inside
his constipated heart. The Black Man refilled the glass. At
once Dan took it up and at one toss he dispatched it as he had
the first.
" Here ! " Blackshirt now considered him attentively. It
dawned upon him with a disagreeable suddenness that something
was amiss, and that there was some threatened indiscipline or some
minor case of something worse.
This situation was one fqr which the political-secretary pos
sessed no fool-proof rule of thumb whatever. But between the
Black bugbear and Dan there was now an alarming rapproche
ment. Dan even softened his eye to allow it to dwell upon this
friend-in-disguise—got up in that black skin that was smoked
glass—who had in his keeping the fierce drinks, those that stupefy
the oppressed, whatever their pigment.
Dan advanced his glass, to the foot of the Negro's hand. The
Negro put the fire-water in it, and Dan dispatched that too. A
kaleidoscope of exploded depressions kicked inside in crude can
can. In Dan's melting heart as the sparkle of the liquid-dynamite
dropped into the body, rushed round, and upset the brain—the
depressions took on a giddy veneer.
But two more glasses followed the second and it was in quick
succession—it was a series now.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 571
" What's the big idea ! " asked the Blackshirt slowly. And
he examined his big girl-charge (this beskirted six-footer, like a
folk-dancing impostor) she put away the bad fizz. He could detect
nothing (such for instance as a will-to-drink—a streak of depravity
—or some brain-wave that had taken the wrong turning). It
could after all merely be an ill-directed thirst. He shrugged his
shoulders. For never had it occurred to him to ask the correct
procedure if your dummy suddenly appeared to make up its
mind to inebriate itself, and he regretted now that he had not.
Dan without looking up at either the Tropical Man or his own
fair classic mask in the glass pushed up his goblet, his eye upon
the stoppered magnum. With the unaffected attractiveness of
practically all his fellow-Blacks the Bar-tender filled up the glass.
All Dan's movements were followed closely by Blackshirt in the
looking-glass however. With particular care he noted the reck
less throwing back of the head—he watched for signs of satisfaction
upon the face immediately afterwards. But this was all to no
purpose. In his cups this baffling deaf-mute was exactly as he
was out of them. What an enigma !
" Well ! " Blackshirt said again, and he finished his own drink
soberly and thoughtfully.
" Well ! " echoed the Black. " Well—well— Waaal ! "
The Blackshirt gave the Negro a severe glance. He did not
want any of his Tropical nonsense !—he put his hand aimlessly
upon his whistle. But with Dan two months of sorrow broke into
a mass of hours—the hours danced inside, falling into a shower of
minutes—there was a carnival of black moods—with the move
ment of unattached black rocks shaken against by a champagne
of waters. His brain became simply a torrent. The dark facts
shot intact up to the flashing surface—there was Horace horrid—a
black fact—and kinder Horace than he had ever been—but for
ever, naturally, Horace and nobody else was in the picture. Then
a certain pleasant glow made itself felt. At length there was a
soft something. A still small voice in Dan said Whoops ! instead
of Alanna !
Blackshirt threw himself back upon his stool and simply stared
the simpleton out of countenance in the glass. With the faintest
smile a sub-rosa one—a don't till Blackshirt! one—his face spoke
volumes, of occult mischief, and Dan pushed up the glass. The
kind Black hand carried it to the tap. The tap dripped from the
572 APES OF GOD
last. Filled, back it came, stamped with bogus fizz-foam—up it
went—the lips chopped into the cheap foam—Dan dropped it
down his throat. The glass went to the counter, in one sweep, it
was pushed up for another—the Black hand filled up—the cup
foamed—Dan drank—his upturned face came down (perpen
dicular features that expressed nothing)—he returned the goblet
to the Black—the Black to him and vice versa.
" Well ! " said the Blackshirt. He scratched his black head.
If he had only been told now—it was vexatious ! Nothing had been
said. This had been sprung upon him—there was no word to the
effect that the dumb brute drank. Blackshirt turned his face
round to Dan, and showed him how blank it was, how Dan was
dumbfounding, in addition to a deaf-mute, and dum at that,
and with lustreless eyes he stared at his strange charge dully.
Again he put up his hand to scratch the close-cropped bristles at
a loss.
Evidently this dummy's habit was to do this—it was its
cunning. It got into a Bar in a dream—once there it intoxicated
itself. What action to take in cases of dummies etc. etc. ?—he
would hand this hard case back to its master. It was not his
funeral if the thing went gay all of a sudden—he had not brought
it to this party.
A further prompt glass was put away by Dan. The Negro
then looked under the counter. He drew out a second magnum,
uncorked it with a dull pneumatic bang, filled a glass and placed
it beside the first, transferring the stop-cock.
Dan drank the fresh glass.—As he put it down he frankly gave
a friendly giggle, and the Tropical Man giggled back. But at
this sound Blackshirt jumped. He had had enough of this !
Rapidly getting down from his stool, he looked with such solemnity
into the face of his charge that Dan bit his lip.
" Yes ? " Blackshirt asked.
He peered into the expressionless dummy-countenance—with
especial closeness at the lips that had let pass the unmistakable
giggle. Nothing was forthcoming from this deceitful dummy-
countenance, it persisted in its expression of mild dismay. Just
maiden meditation very slightly flushed. He turned to the
Tropical Man, who was quite hysterical. Blackshirt sternly
pointed to his own glass. He drank and turned again to Dan.
But now the mysterious fool had changed. An anamorphosis
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 573
produced by blackshirted pressure from without was resulting in
a dangerous torpor.
" Come ! " he commanded hoarsely. " The garden."
But at ' garden ' Dan smiled openly. The Blackshirt started
back a couple of stage-paces of pure astonishment—taken un
awares. Then he approached Dan again, his jaw set, and he
forced him roughly off the stool at once. Dan rose, the Black-
shirt was on his guard. As Dan was pushed he swayed gracefully.
There was a moment during which they both swayed hither and
thither, in front of the Bar, beneath the eyes of the Tropical Man.
Then arm-in-arm with Blackshirt (who grasped his intoxicated
dummy firmly under the arm-pits, hoping for the best) Dan moved
away, with the step of an automaton—stiff, but still goat-footed.

XVUI. POST-CHAMPAGNE
It was dark, and with the dark came sudden cold—Dan felt
the Blackshirt knock against him, he could not keep him off.
What an unsteady reeling man ! He surmised that the Black-
shirt had looked upon the wine when it was red—or perhaps
champagned—but Dan was glad for this relieved him of a certain
embarrassing sense ofsomething not quite right with himselfthat he
certainly felt as he got into the garden. Just after that the people
were dancing in wigs upon the green. They came out of the dark
—many powerful lights shone now upon Dan—he put up his hand
to his face to banish the lights before it. Outside, Blackshirt went
off when it was light. Dan drew nearer and nearer to the cataract.
Inside hi? head the cataract made a loud subterranean sound.
But his cavern floated—he carried the roaring sound along with
him in his head, up to the waterfall, and as he drew near he saw
the giant mouth of the gramophone. He saw the sound coming
out—it was unmistakable—here it was deliciously cool and fresh :
seizing the sides of the metal crater, he hung his head over the
edge and could not help attempting in fun of course to catch some
foam upon the sides of his cheeks. But it began turning round.
He feared he might fall in—he felt quickly quite sick in the full
blast of the cold sound that came out. Then he fell a little
unexpectedly down beside the instrument. As he lay there he
noticed that his skirt was up over his knees too far for the girl he
was thought to be. With a gesture that was convulsive, because
it was nothing short of an effort—but with painful frowning out of
574 APES OF GOD
wounded modesty—he thrust down the obstinate cloying gar
ment that went under him and so was pinned to the ground (and
would not run up and down like a roller blind at all as it should)
so could not be made to comply easily—but a stooping man had
passed a hand beneath him, and two passers-by joined themselves
to this man and began passing their hands under him. Soon he
was most uncomfortable. He struggled of course—what girl
would not and he must too—but all together they dragged him
up out of the ground. He lay upon the bosom of the first, while
the others moved most eccentrically (to left and right) beside
them—now there were two men however for one, and a double
bosom as it happened—between the cleft-bosom he plunged face-
downwards head-on towards the earth—he did not see how he
could possibly save himself from falling. The man took a fall
too. He had him by the neck.
Blackshirt was furious.
" Didn't I tell you to stop where you sat till I got back ! "
Now he was in Blackshirt's arms—he smelt of drink he
thought—ah these men (he smiled) they're all the same ! Been
back to the Bar no doubt—that was plain enough—not surprised
at that at all ! He held him much more passionately than the
other man—what a passionate nature ! or perhaps it was drink.
" Can you walk ! Keep still can't you ! Can you walk ? "
Could he not walk. He could—and would—run ! He ran.
Blackshirt overtook him and they got up. But they fell down
again . When they were on their feet however they went very rapidly
under the trees where it was .dark. Blackshirt told him it was all
up with him or words to that effect. But he made up his mind to
get out of the garden for he knew the Mazes were now open and
if they continued to circle about aimlessly and so quickly as they
were at present doing, without reason, they could not fail to fall
into them. If Blackshirt had a map it might be out-of-date like
the one Melanie gave him of Hyde Park, the first time. So worse
than useless. He would not answer for what might not happen to
himself.
" All right—don't go that way ! Come this ! "
Well, he asked nothing better—that was the way he had wanted
to go ! He could not follow what Blackshirt was so cross about.
But if he only knew how lucky he was to be out with a girl-in-a-
thousand (Oh Horace ! Your words—but so unkind!) he would
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 575
think twice before giving way to such petulance. Now he would
steady himself against this big tree—for he was not walking so
well as he might it had to be conceded, and his toes were also
particularly sore—that was the running he expected, when they
fell over. Attempting to pick one up in his hand—grasping his
foot with it low down—he knew he was falling. Yes—indeed
soon it was so. Bump. Still the same foot up in his hand, he had
come down heavily. He was down upon the grass and could not
let go.
He thought he would go to sleep now and he slept at once.
But up till then he had been convinced that it was late. As he
woke he did not at all know what the time was. Horace was
standing not far away with Split-man—for whom he had a fixed
and most prejudiced hatred there was no denying it, ever since
the kitchen.
" There he is ! "
It was the horrid coarse mock-gentleman's voice of the Split-
Man. He seemed to be whispering something to Horace, and
Horace said " Yes I know " and Dan thought " tell him off."
Dan still had hold of his bad foot. He sat up and his back
scraped a tree. He stopped and he felt the tree stop. They sat
pressed together. The tree was a heavy tree.
Horace was not looking at him. He was not sorry really. He
was looking away into a field. Sweet Horace ! Too good to be
true ! He longed to call Horace ! quietly but he restrained the
impulse easily though he could have attracted his attention by
the merest sound.
Dan noticed the limits of the estate—Horace and Split-Man
and he were quite near a gate. Horace perhaps would come
over to him in a moment, he might enquire after his health. Why
health ? Horace often did. He wished it had occurred to him to
stand up—when he got home he would have some good stiff
coffee, for tea was a morning's slop he long had renounced—
sugared coffee with strong red toast—maybe a new bald shining
egg upon it (slash the yoke—that juice was horrid !). If Horace
spoke he would pretend he had sat there (for quite some time).
Why not ? What was the use of rising ? Ladies never rose—it
was at Horace's wish that he had become a lady.
But Willie Service appeared in the black field. He was fol
lowed by Harry Caldicott, the old devil. Willie Service was in
 576 APES OF GOD
his shirt-sleeves. His white car-cap was reversed—that looked
like the yankee A.B.'s gob-cap that way. Horace was in a
towering passion.
" Where have you been ? " said he.
" What's that to do with you ! " said Willie.
Mindyour own business ! thought Dan on the ground and in the
dark he smiled to himself.
" Who said you could leave the premises ! " Horace said quite
the boss, to his car-slave.
" You didn't ! " Willie Service seemed to say—he said
something.
Willie Service was very angry. That was because he had been
found out. He was so angry he was quite unlike—never seen
Willie so !
" What—is this service—is this for wages ! "
Horace seemed in a towering passion—never seen Horace so !
—because of what Willie Service had done.
" Ab-loootions ! " boomed the beau, hurrying.
" If you want to know I've been having a dip in the lake."
" Well I don't wish you to go to the lake with gentlemen at
the party and have dips."
Willie had been standing on the other side of a sunk fence or
ha-ha and now he leapt it and Harry Caldicott negotiated it. But
Horace left the scene. First he said bitterly, as he was leaving.
" You have got the key of my box."
" Yes ! "
" How can I get at my screens for the big Vanish ! Madre di
dio ! " Horace shook his fist at the deshabille of his domestic, but
then suddenly he turned with a two-fisted threat upon the poor
old Split-Man (his familiar, bogey-man, money-lender, clown all
in one) who jumped—menacing him like a Fantee about to
destroy his fetish, because some matter had miscarried.
But Willie Service jumped back over the ha-ha or the sunk
fence and was lost to sight in the black field. Horace had gone
and now Dan was all alone, and as there was a soft bunt in the
earth just upon where he was—where one of the roots had risen
to the left, the rest dropping down to compensate—or an ant's
nest had been left and caved in or something else productive of
great softness—he was comfortable, and he pressed up against the
rough back of the tree—there was no front, all being back it is
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 577
understood in a round tree. He might at this point like Arethusa
have vanished into the earth himself, a fair fountain as at Eblis
might have gushed up brightly where he sat to ponder before
sinking—to mark the spot of the Vanish—to be discovered
subsequently by Blackshirt in place of Dan. But he did not
go, he sat on tranquil enough, the master of his fate—though
his foot, which he still held, was terribly sore indeed and
troublesome.
What should he see but a great grinning satyr though staring
down at him (as if it were Arethusa there indeed and she been
prevented from sinking by some hitch—from hatching her spring
—and, sitting on, had been surprised by a violent denizen of the
backwoods, horned though human, who looked and looked with
the most eager shining eyes). Then the satyr bit its finger as if it
had been a stick of toffee. From its mouth welled forth a volume
of rich sound.
" Oh Madam—if I am not de trop !—if you have sought these
sylvan shades—in search of solitude—then I intrude ! "
Dan could scarce forbear to smile, and yet he had never been
in such a fix before—that he would answer for—never had such a
trap been set for his innocence and he caught napping.
" Intrude ! " shouted the Blackshirt.
Evidently he had been behind the tree.
The Blackshirt blew his whistle.
" Intrude—you again, Harry Caldicott ! "
The old period-beau took a lethargic sniff of stately snuff.
" My scheme for accompanying your chauffeur " he drawled
in the most brazen way—" up out of the water—where the poor
lad all but drowned—it was I that rescued him—rendering first
aid—reanimating the corpse I may say—that having .proved
impracticable—I am strolling here for my health—before return
ing to the rout."
" Return to it at once—Harry Caldicott ! " thundered the
Blackshirt sternly at him. " This is no place for you ! It is not
healthy—here—for you—Harry CaW-i-cott ! "
Dan shuddered at the impact of the Adelphi norwester, but
was very proud of his champion he had to confess. This was the
second time !
" On the contrary ! "
" Go—Harry Caldicott ! Go—while the going is good ! "
578 APES OF GOD
" I am sorry ! " the beau sneered " very sorry. I see that I
intrude ! "
Shrugging his braided period shoulders the obscene interloper
passed on, and was immediately lost to view—taking a prodigious
pinch of contumelious snuff to temper his exit.
Where Blackshut went again Dan could not pretend to deter
mine. But he thought it was in front of the tree. He conjectured
that he always went—when he was not there—in front of the
tree.
But Blackshirt came round upon the other flank of Dan and
kicked him. Dan placed his hand upon the place where he had
experienced the blow and slowly rubbed it—looking down, his
lips a-quiver for it had been to say the least unkind.
" Get up ! " said Blackshirt.
When Dan heard him he thought at first that he would
probably be rude, but Blackshirt kicked him again.
" Ifyou're well enough to get offyou're well enough to get up ! "
he exclaimed.
Well ! he would not like to be married to a man like this who
was jealous into the bargain ! He was very strong and without
removing himself from the tree Dan climbed up it three or four
foot backwards, and now he was taller than Blackshirt, at whom
he smiled provokingly.
" Yes you may smile ! " Blackshirt retorted. " He smiles best
who smiles last ! We know all about the Silent Woman—I sup
pose you think you're a great guy ! "
Evidently Blackshirt thought he was a deep one—and he
thought he had been fooled entirely because Dan had not said
much. Taking him by the arm very roughly like a little black
cop in fact, he shook him off the tree. Kneeing him disgracefully
in a most offensive way, he propelled him and Dan staggered off
with him and they staggered into the house. All the lights in the
garden followed them into the passage like troops of fireflies and
the stars of rockets, and quite dazzling at first. The Jack o' the
Clock did not speak but it looked volumes and everybody seemed
rushing to the lavatory as they passed. The other Bar was
crowded with people. The ascent of the stairs was partly on all
fours and Blackshirt was brutally cross—they burst into Lord
Phoebus's room and Dan fell upon the floor—oh dear, it was a
bump !
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 579
" Oh now they're getting intoxicated ! " he could hear Lord
Osmund at once—so he lay very still. " Eustace, you might be
more careful and not let them in when they can't stand ! I do
think when they can't stand you might see they don't get in ! "
The master of the house was clearly annoyed, and Dan pre
tended to be dead.
" She's slipped " he heard Blackshirt say.
" I can see she's slipped ! " he could hear Lord Osmund calling
back. " I noticed that she'd slipped I "
To him shamming-dead Blackshirt hissed in his ear, as savage
as possible—
" Get up or I'll wring your neck ! "
Well I must say ! thought Dan and it would be quite evident
now that he wasn't dead after all. He climbed in a very muscular
way up the back of a chair the wrong way round hurting his back
on a tin-tack, and when he was up again Blackshirt seized him
and stumbling terribly they went over more dead than alive to
the window-seat, where Dan left Blackshirt, who swayed about,
as black as thunder.
" Sit there ! " the Blackshirt said, with great unnecessary
blackshirted sternness—as they were up in the quarters of Phoebus
again he was pointing at the window-seat, where Dan already
was—he was only showing off he knew. He strolled over at once
to talk with Lady Harriet—that sparse hair was of a more spidery
sparseness, of the old blond poll—the shrew-mouth thinner—eyes
closer together, as Harriet saw him arrive. The diadem imposed
upon della Francesca's masterpiece was slipped a little drunkenly
to one side too, in the violence of the late sport. But Lord Osmund
was headachy. His lordship had just taken a triple aspirin—
Phoebus had retired to the upper floor of his stucco tower.
Dan, out of an eye that was sleep-weighted, saw the door
beyond Lord Osmund open with stealth. But Lord Osmund
although so indisposed was very sensitive to the movements of the
door. Touch it only and he would look up with passion—how
ever fatigued. As he saw him prick his ear—then turn and shout
—Dan could not refrain from smiling to himself. One by one,
the Dark Caucus, the " unimportant conspirators " (who had
learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing) came in, and closed the
door, like everybody else. As they hugged the wall Dan did not
see them after that for a moment, although he knew quite well
58o APES OF GOD
they were there, but they advanced in indian file—signalling to
one another as they made progress.
" I suppose you see what's happening ! " Lord Osmund called
angrily to Eustace. " I suppose you're aware what's happened
now Eustace ! "
" Yes I do '. " said Eustace.
" Oh I'm glad of that!"
" I saw them at once ! "
" This is too much ! " Osmund's throatiest complaint thrilled
the assembly.
In the bombastic attitude of a beardless Henry viii, legs spread
wide apart, with a great effect of burgess overbearingness, he
stood and contemplated the intniders. He waited till they were
well in, then he commenced to express himself.
" I'm not going to have that, anyhow ! I know it's narrow-
minded—but I do draw the line somewhere ! "
And Lord Osmund took several threatening steps in the direc
tion of the Mysterious Three and stopped.
Lady Harriet had been very thin-lipped and peak-nosed with
the Blackshirt, for the circumstances of his recent entrance had
not escaped her—with his intoxicated wife probably, she supposed.
Now Frank Brunner who was standing there had explained to
Lady Harriet what Lord Osmund's anger meant. This was the
first she had heard of the Mysterious Three. But no sooner was
she in possession of the facts than her passionate attitude alto
gether eclipsed that of her brother. The 3 were in fact pursued
with the icy gimlets of her gothic eyes. Next her drawling bay
made itself heard and she shouted—
" People seem to take this room for a garderobe or a place for
making assignations ! "
" I know ! " said Osmund.
" I may be old-fashioned, but I really think they might show a
little"consideration for their hosts ! "
" You ask them to a party, and they invade your private rooms
as if the place belonged to them ! "
" I know. Without a-by-your-leave ! "
" I know ! There are notices up everywhere. But they can't
read apparently ! "
But there was a prolonged gasp from Osmund—and he was
joined by Harriet in a loud astonished roar.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 581
" Well /—I must say ! "
" Naturally ! Now they are going upstairs ! "
" I shouldn't wonder if they were going to look for a place to
lie down in ! " Harriet screamed in thrilling counter-tenor.
" Nor should I ! " Lord Osmund answered in his sneering
bay, as he went forward, with his fat man's massive strut.
" They're tired of the party—so they think they will go to bed !
It's not a bad idea at all ! "
" Exactly ! I only hope they find an apple-pie bed ! "
" I only hope Phoebus meets them at the top with a rousing
welcome ! "
" I hope they break their necks—that may be a warning to
them next time ! "
" I knew this would happen ! Eustace has been letting people
in all the evening ! "
Lord Osmund reached the foot of the stairs. He bellowed up,
holding his outspread hands on either side of his mouth.
" Hallo I say ! do you mind terribly ! I'm terribly sorry to
have to trouble you—but this is a private house ! No ! It's not
a public-house ! No ! I really am exceedingly sorry ! Yes. Come
down again do you mind ! "
The various people collected in the room had now begun to
move over to the foot of the stairs. Harriet screamed from the
fireplace—
" Tell them Phoebus is asleep. Say there is a dangerous watch
dog on the stairs ! "
" Trespassers will be prosecuted ! "
" Yes ! There is a reward for anybody giving information ! "
The crowd drew closer as the three trespassers came out. One
by one they came out of the staircase but it was impossible to say
what their impression had been of what had occurred or what they
proposed to do. There was a great confusion for some moments
Then Osmund burst out of the crowd.
" How stupid of me ! " he called to Harriet. " They are
friends of Rupert's ! "
He held in his hand a large ticket, upon which the compelling
words A COACHFUL were printed.
Harriet was standing in front of Dan's recess and Osmund
came up to her with the ticket.
" They can't speak English ! " he said.
582 APESOFGOD
" Why didn't Rupert tell us they were coming ! "
" They are from Budapest. They speak french luckily."
" Budapest ."
" Yes from the Pester Dewlap or the Pester Lloyd George or
something ! "
Then Lady Harriet and Lord Osmund moved away, and the
crowd began to disperse. Into Dan's recess came the Sib and the
old Don doddering together and the Sib looked with a grimace of
recognition at Dan. They sat down.
" What were they ? " asked the Don.
" Three hungarian reporters."
" Oh was that all ! "
" They have come to London to study Gossip-column tech
nique."
" What is that ? "
" I don't know ! "
" Are they Magyars ? " Pronounced by the Don Mod-yor.
" Something like that. They had note-books full of notes."
" What was that for ? "
" I suppose they are pioneers of Gossip—I suppose there is no
Gossip in Budapest ! "
" How heavenly—do you suppose so really ? "
" That's what they said. They had come here to study ' Le
Gossipe.' "
A hooting sound came from the direction of the Finnian Shaw
inner circle. Osmund and Harriet, for the benefit of the distin
guished would-be Gossip-guests, were doing in french the gilhooter.
" II me semble que c'est un oiseau—qui a perdu ses jeunes ! "
" Mais non ! cela ne peut pas etre un oiseau qui a perdu ses
jeunes ! "
" Mais si ! C'est pour cela qu'il est si triste ! "
" Mais qui done ! Soyez raisonable ! Triste et parce qu'il
avait perdu ses jeunes ! "
The Sib breathed heavily and sweetly, attempting to coo.
" How sweet they are ! " she burst forth softly, like the powder-
burst of a desiccated vegetable in the sun.
(And it was to be presumed that Cockeye would be the first
name in the first Gossip-column of the first Budapest Daily first to
adopt ' Gossip '—and that soon perhaps an endemic magyar
Cockeye would be discovered !)
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 583
Blackshirt had left the room but now he returned accompanied
by another Blackshirt, and they both directed their steps marching
in time to where Dan was, who was fast asleep. Seizing him very
brutally by the shoulders, they raised him from the window-seat.
One Blackshirt holding his legs, the other his head, they removed
him from the room. There were loud cries of " ABDUCTION !
ABDUCTION ! " but that was all.
As he swung between the two hearties, his head rolling upon
the bosom of his own particular Blackshirt, Dan smiled a drunken
smile at the bold word Abduction rolling up from sofas and settees
—in his hammocky progress, ever so comfortable, he smiled. If
they only knew !

XIX. KILLED BY KINDNESS

With all the effrontery of which he was master Dan blushing
brushed the marks of rough-usage off his person but did not quite
venture to look very much at the men with their horrid language,
going up and down in a great hurry, who trampled where he was.
There was no protection—his girl's dress was worse than none.
Their feet caused him great pain, but they were footmen, and Lord
Osmund had looked down at him, that was from the stage. He
made a peculiar cooing sound in his nose and went back into the
Stage.
Dan was behind the stage and he had heard Horace rebuke
the Blackshirts. That was for throwing him down. In the stage
he could hear Horace shouting.
It was dirty and Dan crouched in against the high metal case
for the properties. People came and went for they went up into
the stage or round it at the side, usually to the left hand, and there
was a door at the back out of which they went too. How silly !
They thought he was resting and as he was a girl they took no
notice. It was just as if he were a girl—he could not forbear to
smile behind his hand, which seemed very large and rough.
All the people were the other side of the stage, where the hall
was he was in. He could hear more people coming all the time,
until there must have been so many that all their voices together
were like one person's. It never stopped. All the people came
into the hall evidently and that was to see Horace. When they
 584 APES OF GOD
saw Horace they stamped. He knew they had all seen Horace
because they called Zag-rooosss. Horace laughed. Dan felt sea
sick. The swaying movement as he was carried made by the
Blackshirts was awful, in his stomach, and that was the main
difficulty.
A volume of sound of a low orchestra of voices hung like a
cloud. From time to time it thundered suddenly. That was when
Horace went up into the stage, or before he came out. While he
was in there, there were often great laughs outside. Then there
was clapping Dan thought would never stop. That was praise
for Horace ! Dan clapped a little, too, himself. But a footman
saw him. Then he blushed violently at the footman, but he
stopped. He pretended he had been dusting his hands. He felt
quite angry with this servant.
When Horace had done something clever he came out of the
stage. He drank a glass of water. Then he went back into the
stage. A bell rang and everybody stamped their feet. He could
hear Horace talking. Then everyone stamped and their voices
rose and seemed to burst—it lasted sometimes a minute. He
listened, he was really tremendously proud of Horace.
Dan's head was splitting. He was less sea-sick but it was
worse. His thoughts all rolled about in his head. Over and over
again he said Killed with Kindness ! He said it—Killed with Kind
ness—and he considered heavily what it meant—to be killed
because one was kind—to be killed with that seemed so strange a
thing really.
Whenever Horace had been standing there waiting to go into
his stage with perhaps Split-Man, he had shown him kindness—
he did not think once he had been really rude. That was all—
and it was quite certain.
Before he had never felt his thoughts loose as they were now
and they all rolled about like separate objects. He dreaded their
collisions and tried to keep his head without moving, but still it
moved, and the thoughts grew bigger and after that went down
again to their original sizes. So it was all right again really.
What he really wished to think was, if he couldn't remember
Horace being rude. Ofcourse one could. But time and place was
lacking. Some notorious rudeness of Horace ! he knew he was
longing to recall such an occasion and could not do so—though he
knew quite well it was there all the time—there had been no lack
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 585
of Horace rude—it was Horace kind that it should be (one would have
thought) difficult to discover. Wanted ! A really bad case of
Horace's rudeness ! But he did at last find a very bad and pain
ful specimen of Horace's rudeness—Horace at his horridest it was
—and he was immediately his old self. His head ached no more.
He closed his eyes. The broad peace of the self-forgetting of the
deep smile of the handsome militant drunken-dummy of Black-
shirt ! At this point it consented to return and be worn on his
face—that deep self-forgetting militant dummy-laughter !
After this Horace hurt him several times with kindness. But he
minded less. When Horace would go into his stage with a jolly
word of kindness—oh he would long to follow ! He bit his lip to
stop from weeping. He longed for nothing but continual bad cases
of utter rudeness—without provocation !
When Horace patted the rabbit that he held in a silk-hat he
felt sorry for it. A tear came into his eye. After Horace had gone
back into the stage with the rabbit he poked one finger between
the bars of the pigeon-box. The pigeons naturally saw the finger,
they picked their feet up—they were suspicious of the tender
groping claw of Man.
Horace was very much praised for what he did to the rabbit.
He came back looking pleased Dan thought—he held the rabbit
up on his chest and stroked it. When he saw how kind Horace
was with the rabbit Dan melted again and melted so much that
he gave an obvious sob. He knew he was crying. When Horace
asked him if he felt all right so kindly after that, he gave a gulp.
Only that was a hiccup, as it turned out, and he laughed outright.
Horace laughed too.
" When I stamp ! " said Horace giving Archie the end ofa string.
Horace went back into the stage taking a vase of beautiful flowers
that closed up out of his sleeve. Dan could see into the stage
because the curtain was open where it was lifted up upon a white
cupboard that lay there. There was a great deal of noise. He
was watching Margolin. Suddenly the little cad pulled the string.
At that there was quite an uproar. Horace came rushing out of the
stage and Margolin too. Horace was taking his jacket off. They
were fixing something in it. They both went away, but they did
not return to the stage. They went out at the left.
Next to the crates for the live-stock, the rabbits and pigeons,
stood the skeleton-table—Horace only travelled one table, so he
586 APES OF GOD
said, and Dan thought that must be right. Upon this stood
decanters and glasses for conjuring. There was one scarlet and
one-sky-blue handkerchief for simple Vanishes—also the cele
brated Egg-Bag. A few gasketted paper-bags and other articles
to be spirited away were there too. But Dan singled out the
decanter upon the left. He reached out an arm and he grasped
it, to see how it smelt. Taking the stopper out, he put it to his
nose and it stank. Scotch or Irish. He sniffed the hole. He put
it to his lips—the whisky which he had recognized did a quick
Vanish, but there was not much. He held it upon his knee,
slowly he hiccupped with dignity and Margolin put his head
through the curtain—he had not seen him go into the stage, but
he was behind the curtain.
Dan just nodded his head slowly up and down and smiled at
Margolin, and that was all he did—while his rival looked down at
him as he lay with the empty decanter in his hand, and after a
moment Margolin nodded too. Then he took his hand away from
the curtain and it came out again at-the-cock and he sped a
Safety Match at the head of Dan and it struck him a light tap
upon the right temple. And again as if nodding to himself Dan
gave a few pensive smiling assents. And then the head above shot
back and the curtain closed.
After that Ratner came out of the stage. He stood looking in
a mirror and doing something to his face. Horace came out of
the stage. He was talking to Ratner. After some time they went
into the stage and a bell rang fast. For a long time he saw nobody.
He only heard a great deal of noise. He put his fingers in his
ears. Then he closed his eyes and it seemed that he slept quite
well, his cheek by the pigeons, who made a soothing sound inside
the box.

XX. GOD ALWAYS DESIRES TO MANIFEST HIMSELF

A great mass-roar had gone up—of imprisoned wind trapped
in pneumatic animal systems, released by button-pressing—at a
signal to roar. The curtains shook. The Split-Man had been
restored to life, made whole by the bogus magician. Then there
was a further roaring, upon which the Split-Man appeared to Dan
and he came down the steps towards him.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 587
To be present to a great crowd—a central actor in the dream
of all its brains—for a specified moment, had stamped the excited
mask ofJulius Ratner. Dan hoped he would not come up to him.
The face of the Split-Man had that drugged look of stupid power
of the Consul Romanus, seen by the Opium-eater. Dan shrank from
such a cruel look !
At all events one half of a Roman Triumph (the optical side
of it split away from the rest) had been his, Jimjulio's—rather than
Julius—and the lips of Ratner showed plainly that they had
tasted one of the satisfactions of power—to be seen—since does not
all power that is real exact that it shall be visible—does not God
always desire to manifest himself ! But the Rat had offered—as
much as a divine rat might, in a spangled temple of Cloacina—
his visible self to the regards of all. To be seen—h was to be dis
tinctly present to the many retinas of an important horde that
was the very life that was flesh and blood—upon any terms that
this should be granted—that plum of plums, that essential thing !
The Rat had tasted that nectarine ! His body glowed as if from
a massage. He had come down the step-ladder flushed in conse
quence, from a flesh and blood event—a time-truth, that was some
thing historical — unobtrusively he had molested the eye of a
considerable gathering with the photograph of his fat split-
person—that they had been compelled to cinematograph ! To
be the technical principal, that had not been his Rat's lot. He
had been as it were the victim—as it were of a peculiar magical
street-accident. But masses of eyeballs had opened their lids to
an event—brains had clicked their indifferent responses. That
much-advertised- mock-execution—of a perpendicular dismember
ment (leaving the pudenda intact upon the left leg)—had not he
been half of that pictorial integer, the half that was victim ? Then
afterwards the great surgeon of these claptrap mysteries had made
him whole just like a bogus Saviour, with the touch of a stick. It
was a description of miracle—upon the historical plane of visible
truth. No one had fathomed the trick of the illusionist—Ratner
had been that man-cut-in-halffor a wager and then stuck together
again. But it was his body oh yes—of that favourite of his—Julius.
And the overpowering coyness—the discreet, the respectful
humbleness—the circumspection in all the well-studied move
ments of the accommodating body—limbs that were raised or
dropped, in passive abandon, to suggest an act of love, of which
588 APES OF GOD
he was the hypnotized victim—anxious to remove any bodily
obstacle to the aggressor—then afterwards, in coy retreat, hand-
in-hand with Horace, that bald bashfulness of the yellow grin, of
foot-lit suet, fanged with a fierce peep of rabbit-teeth—as, but so
deferentially (as convention demanded) Ratner had hung back
in the rear of his principal (wishing to walk off to wings, restrain
ing himself to give pleasure to Authority)—with a sly saffron
smirk, and bowed so gentlemanly—self-possessed—that was as near
as a Rat could get to the great fact of power—to be a victim—
some bashful accessory.

XXL THE VANISH

Exhibitionism satisfied in this manner upon the housetops—
pausing to be seen by the massed citizenry, a coy ogle dropped by
Mr. Rat— in a bald ratnerish super-ogle—after a humble flourish
of his mephisto-mocking rat's-tail—he sat down beside Dan and
wondered what the time was. The sooner we leave now the better
was the idea, the not-so-well-known-as-he-ought-to-be porno-
publisher-poet now chopped in half and stuck-up with the
stick-fast of wizardry. The cream of the Show. He yawned.
The cmpty-dccanter had been replaced by Dan. Merely, from
his lustrous eyes of super-velvet, he threw Julius Ratner a bewitch
ing glance of radical vacuity, which broke its dreamy wave upon
the dark anfractuous sneer of his fanged friend. But Horace came
down the steps and Dan gazed away into that lovely oblivion
where the Great Beyond is situated, also the Place Where The
Rainbow Ends. Margolin followed Horace carrying a sword.
" Do you feel up to it or not ? " Horace asked of him, softly
holding his conjurer's baton of ivory, and Dan smiled broadly.
i'p to him ! For sure Horace ! And he got up shortly with
good grace, and he stood expectant. Very gently he smiled at
Margolin . Was not he a flower of Horace's raising—a rare fungoid
bud of his ? Was he not now the moron of Horace ? He very very-
very much was by way of pitying Margolin—moron of Horace—\
am Horace's moron—he is Horace's moron—Dan was not sure
which, but he pitied a moron of Horace from the bottom of his great
irish heart he was sure ! And he would go up and perform as if
nothing had happened at all, a smile on his lips, and those curious
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 589
in what related to Horace and him would never guess what he had
suffered never—they would not be apprised by him, by gesture or
by look !
Horace was removing from inside his sleeve a fishing line and
a loop of catgut, which he placed upon the table. Margolin
picked it up and examined it at once.
" I shall have to Vanish you " said Horace to Dan. " You
know you will have to Vanish."
Horace seemed not to know how he could do whatever he
liked with his moron ! Vanish—Dan asked nothing better !
Vanish—but of course ! And he put his foot on the ladder and up
he went and before he knew where he was he was inside the stage,
and Horace was there looking at him. Horace looked at him for
a long time.
The other side of the stage-curtain, which was one wall of this
room (which was beautifully painted to resemble the Vatican)
cut them off from a world of disorder. What an uneasy apart
ment ! It was like a roaring in a wall ! All that was people !
They were thick behind, it moved continually. He heard a shout
out of the rest of the loud talking. It had the musical quality of
a verse of poetry but it was spoken in a strange chanting accent.
Dan thought that some foreigners might speak in verses as he had
spoken latin—he had heard they did he was positive.
SEE, SEE, OUR OWN TRUE PHCEBUS WEARS THE BAYS !
Pretty and peculiar thought he, to call our own true Phabus the
more sympathetic of their hosts—that one that had the lovely
doll in fact that the fifty-tonner had snatched at.
Still Dan was alone with Horace in the empty chamber.
Behind him was the Vatican. Was it the Vatican now—was not
that the Vatican? (It was a baroque backcloth—it revealed a
vista of bold converging colonnades.) A large white cupboard was
all the room contained. And Dan could not but feel uneasy.
Most fixedly Horace regarded him, and Dan could not escape
from a terrible sense of impending calamity. For it did not
require very much intelligence, to conclude—from all that he
saw, and from the rather strange manner of Horace—that even
tually it was the intention of Horace to put him into the big white
cupboard !
Now—after smiling once or twice, in what in another person
 59<> APES OF GOD
would have been a rather deceitful way—Horace led him up to
the cupboard. Smiling (for Horace) still more deceitfully (where
Horace had got these deceitful ways from it was not difficult to
guess !) he gave him his hand—he no longer made any disguise
of the fact that he intended that he should go into it.
He allowed himself to be assisted up into the cupboard. What
ebe was there to do ? And he certainly made no protest when
Horace brutally—thrusting him in with both hands—without
another word closed and made fast the door of this sinister
cabinet. But by this time thoroughly frightened, he pushed up
against it, in mute moist-eyed despair, and so violent was the
trembling of all his body that he shook the cupboard to its founda
tions, which were not very solid, and Horace opened the door
again.
Ashamed as he was of what he had done, he still could not
master his shuddering legs once they had started and the thing
continued to rattle.
But Horace told him kindly but sternly to flatten himself and
press a button in the roof. He shrank against the inner wall of
the cupboard and pressed the button, when a blind flew down at
his back. Once more he found himself darkly occulted, but in a
still more confined space. Horace told him to press again upon
the button and he pressed as he was told. Thereupon he was as
before in the centre of the cupboard. Horace was standing there
outside and looking in at him. Did he see, Horace asked him,
what he was to do, did he think ? And he said yes—he flattened
himself and touched the button. Then he was once again in the
dark. A further press on the hidden button, the blind flew up,
and again he stepped out into the centre of the cabinet.
Now Horace made him gpt out of the cupboard and then get
in again. He told him to hide himself and he hid himself. Horace
called softly Come out ! Dan pressed upon the hidden button and
he came out.—That was the Vanish. He smiled at Horace and
Horace was very very kind and he smiled. They went back to
the cupboard, Horace whispered to him to hide. Hide ! he whis
pered. And Dan hid. Come out ! said Horace and Dan came
out. And Dan liked the game so much he did it again—and as
often as he did it Horace whispered Hide ! and he hid—or Come out !
and he pressed the button and there he was.
Now they went back out of the stage. They were all together
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 59t
below. Margolin went up into the stage and came back. Then
Horace and he went into the stage again. A bell rang and the
curtain began going up, noiselessly from the ground into the air,
and there beneath it or where it had been he saw in the dark a
great collection of faces, and he was before the audience with
Horace at his side. He saw Blackshirt at once, he could not help
but smile, it seemed so funny Blackshirt being in the crowd,
watching what Horace and he did. Horace and he were quite
at home and in no hurry to do anything. He stood on the edge
of the room and smiled down at Blackshirt, shaking his head a
little sadly as he did so. And Horace was playing with a stick
which he was making crawl all over him like a snake.
A footman brought in the pigeons and Horace began to play
with the pigeons. He hid one in a hat. Another he produced from
his mouth and this looked so funny that as it burst out of
Horace's lips with its wings Dan laughed outright, he could not
help it.
This must have disturbed Horace, for the pigeon struggled
and suddenly it flew away, escaping from his hand and outside
into the room. There was a wild scream as it flew up. In the
greatest alarm Dan gazed out at everybody moving and turning.
Quite in the distance he perceived the body of the Bonassus being
carried out of the great lighted door, beside the gallery, at the
opposite extremity of the place—where he could easily see Lord
Osmund and Lord Phoebus, with Lady Harriet and other ladies
and gentlemen sitting in the gallery where the band had
been.
" He thinks the pigeon escaped from his mouth ! " somebody
said beneath him and Dan looked down at once. " It is a Trinity
Complex ! "
Now Horace began talking to him, and soon (as he had
expected) Horace began leading him towards the cupboard. He
did not feel so alarmed seeing that now all those people were there,
but he felt a little giddy and he missed his footing as he was
getting into the cupboard.
But Horace helped him up with considerable politeness—
taking into account that he was a lit-lady—and he got in again.
" When I close the door hide ! " said Horace. " And when you
hear me say Come out, press the button and I will open the door."
And Horace showed all the people the inside of the cupboard,
592 APES OF GOD
hitting it with his stick, and Dan stood there in the middle of it
smiling and then Horace closed the door.
He flattened himself and pressed the button and there he was.
Horace opened the door again as he could hear, and there was a
great deal of noise as the people expressed their astonishment at
not seeing Dan. They had quite expected to see Dan standing
there. And Dan smiled to himself. All of them had decidedly
been imposed upon ! But it was very tight. Horace closed the
door again and then he began hitting the cupboard from the out
side. That was to show it was empty. (Horace was in some ways
deceitful ! ) He had not noticed that his nose had started bleeding
but now it bled all down the front of him. He could hear it
dripping on the floor. The noise outside increased all of a sudden
and Dan could hear the word BLOOD ! They were all saying
BLOOD. Then Horace said Come out ! and he gladly pressed
the button and went into the middle of the cupboard, wiping the
blood from his face. At that moment Horace opened the door
and there he stood and he could see now it was light inside the
cupboard that he was covered with blood.
Horace held out his hand and he fell rather than walked out
of the cupboard. The most horrid loud laughs with a great deal
of stamping and rude calling out followed them and Horace led
him out of the stage. They went down the steps and he lay down
on the floor on his back. He heard Horace say—" He bled in the
cupboard in the middle of the Vanish. The blood came through
between the boards." Both Margolin and Ratner gave the most
horrid laughs and then he fell asleep. That ;nded the Vanish.

XXII. THE PLAY

" Do you feel up to it ! " Horace said. He gave him a basin
and towels and he was to wash his face. Horace nibbed the front
of his dress to get the blood stains off and they all went into the
stage. The room was different now, except for the picture at the
back of the Vatican and he sat down before a large mirror in
which he saw all the room. " I shall come in " said Horace, and
he sat looking in the mirror, while the bell rang. The curtain
went up again from the floor slowly, and there were all the people
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 593
in the dark as they were before. Blackshirt was there who seemed
nearer and he encountered his eyes at once and he thought he
looked very angry now. He probably wished to ' broadcast.'
Poor Blackshirt ! Dan smiled kindly at him—but Horace came
in and said, in a loud and measured voice—
" But be she fair indeed, a pure sanguine complexion, neok
soft and plump—body, hands, feet all fair and lovely, an absolute
piece : let her head be from Prague, paps out of Austria, belly
from France, feet from Rhine, buttocks from Switzerland—after
she hath been married a small while and the black ox hath trodden
on her toe, she will be so much altered thou wilt not know her ! "
Dan did not know which way to look. Lower and lower hung
his head, to hide his blushes, at these descriptions. This catalogue
of things—those things that were never mentioned—shouted out by
Horace beside him there, before everybody—never could he have
imagined anything so bad—and the blush burst a blood-vessel.
Steadily Dan began bleeding again down upon his snow-white
triangle—the man-tempting flesh-fragment cut out of the horrid
frock, and so damp and trickly down inside. But Horace had
stopped and there was a fierce outcry.
But out ofone eye (hemmed in by a cruel blush) Dan was able to
remark a noticeably dark form, and then another, standing and
shouting beneath. All the people were turning round. A black
arm was held haughtily on high, in the fashion of the fascist
salute. A voice of angry authority cried out and Dan recognized
at once the tone of that overbearing address that had put to flight
the offensive Harry. It was the voice of his blackshirted deliverer,
that made itself heard beneath.
" Stop ! " it called. " Stop ! Horace Zagreus ! I forbid you
to proceed any further ! "
Full scandal lazzi shook the house and Dan gently bled upon
his marble chest—red nose-tears of blank dismay. Mr. Zagreus
had gravely stopped in his declamation. With arms akimbo he
awaited the arrival of the interrupter.
" I hold up your performance of this play " the figure that was
Blackshirt said " until I have had a word with you ! "
" What is this Starr-Smith ! " Dan heard his master ask, in
tones that were both stern and mild. And the Blackshirt replied
—for he was standing now just at the foot of them, in company
with the other Blackshirts—
594 APES OF GOD
" Zagreus ! I have been forced to do this to bring you to
reason ! " And he vaulted up and stood a few feet from Dan
while his friends remained below. Margolin and Ratner and also
one other person, in blue overalls, had come out of the wings, and
they all stood together.
" You cannot treat Pierpoint in this way ! " the Blackshirt
objected.
" I don't understand you Starr-Smith ! " Horace was almost
but not quite smiling.
" I have explained before you started. But you would not
listen."
" Yes I listened."
" You listened. But you have gone on with it ! "
" Of course I have. I had announced it."
" What right had you to announce it ! It was not yours
Zagreus to announce ! "
" I have explained to you Starr-Smith."
" If it rested with Pierpoint he would allow himself to be
plundered by anybody. They would pick his brains—and then
not pay ! "
" That is not fair Starr-Smith ! "
" It is my business to see that he isn't ! "
" Oh yes ! "
" You are playing the same game Zagreus as the people whom
he denounces—and whom you denounce."
" I denounce all that he denounces ! "
In solemn tones Horace assented.
" That is it ! But you are as bad as the rest ! "
" No you are quite wrong. I would do nothing to injure our
master."
" Is this not an injury ! "
" To me, yes. You have now spoilt my performance ! I have
learnt my part for nothing ! "
" I can't help that Zagreus ! "
" Well there it is—you won't let me do the play, so we must
ring down."
" I am afraid so."
" I will see Pierpoint tomorrow and explain. It doesn't
matter."
" I will explain too ! " Starr-Smith cried excitedly and Dan
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 595
moved in against the wall, still bleeding and he had no hand
kerchief.
" All right—you see him too Starr-Smith. We'll both see
him " Horace laughed good-naturedly.
" Whatever he says, I know I have done right."
" Starr-Smith ! " Horace exclaimed, demonstrative and with
a slight gesture of his hand. " You are the only man in this room
that I like ! "
As he heard this Dan felt a dagger plunged into his heart and
he bled more freely than before at the nose.
" No " said Horace, " what you feel for our master does you
great credit ! "
" I am obliged to you for that Zagreus. But fair play is fair
play."
" I have explained to you Starr-Smith in confidence my diffi
culties and yet you attack me publicly in this way. Is that fair
play Starr-Smith ? "
" Yes ! Yes it is ! Tell me why you have not ."
But with a rapid gesture Horace Zagreus stopped him and he
turned now to his assistants.
" Ratner—pull down the curtain. Curtain ! "
But Ratner did not seem to have heard Horace at all, for he
stood there as before and all he did was, holding himself in an
attitude of coy restraint, to direct his offensively smothered I-hope-
you-don't-see-it (I'm-doing-my-best-to-hide-it) grin of superior-
cunning, first at Horace, then at Blackshirt, and so back again.
Horace looked at Ratner, awaiting the appropriate response to
the stimulus, and a complete silence fell upon the assistants, and
all the outcry and disturbance outside the stage broke in violently
upon them.
" Take that grin off your face ! " Blackshirt shouted suddenly
at Ratner.
" What have I done ? " Ratner protested archly as ifhe had been
waiting for that. He looked at Horace for an explanation at once.
" I do not answer you ! " Blackshirt exclaimed violently.
" No ? " said Ratner.
" No ! " said Starr-Smith.
" Don't lose your temper Starr-Smith with only half a man ! "
Zagreus was in the best ofhumour—and said to himself, as a matter
of fact, a few lines more of his part, under his breath.
596 APES OF GOD
" Half a—kaka ! " Blackshirt vociferated, brandishing his
arms as if they were clubs. He grew more and more welsh with
every word and that celtic light in his eyes had been lighted which
nothing but a hard kick upon the especially-inflated portable
stomach of a leather football can put out—upon a damp welsh
afternoon—and Dan could not help it, he gave a smile.
But Ratner was simply turning tippet and the pogromed
animal of another day came out, and the grinning face was
frankly used as a bait to the blackshirted ruffian, to draw blood—
an auto-blood-letting—he ogled the other inviting a good stiff
blow and the Blackshirt felt it being drawn out of him by that
hypnotic fish-eye in profile starkly—and he started back as he felt
the infernal attraction, sullenly drawing in his horns.
" You aren't violent are you Starr-Smith ! " Ratner croaked.
And as he heard the exultant provocative croak of his Split-Man,
Zagreus turned quickly away, as if giving it up as a bad job, and
awaiting the event with his back turned.
Blackshirt stood his ground. For several full seconds he held
back but Ratner's eye had the better of the argument. Steadily
it milked away at him in puissant glances of seductive insult-
drawing that famous violence out of him. Slowly it was driven
into his little fists—it clenched them up, and it locked in a bull
dog grip his big pugnacious teeth—tightened up his thigh muscles
—charged him irresistibly with opposite electricity. It was as
good as done. Then Ratner, with perfect judgment, spoke two
words.
" Are you ! " said Ratner.
And it was all over with poor Blackshirt, for he leapt up as he
started to move forward—for he had not understood how his body
had acquired a peculiar rigor—the shock was considerable.
" I will show you what violence is, that I will quickly show you
too—you will tell me when you know—I wonder ! Take that for
your violent now—take that too look you—when next—and that
now ! Ah ! "
Dan shrank back and hid his face. The feet of all the people
in the stage began thundering on the boards together it seemed,
and everyone's breath came fast and hot. Dan heard horrid blows
upon india-rubber that squeaked. There were loud sounds as if
sacks of vegetables were being swiftly transferred from one point
to another—bangs and bumps that made his heart jump into his
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 597
throat—stamping, and the rush of blustering projectiles or a
sudden football-match. And then suddenly there was a larger
thump, and a great peace succeeded the thump—and everybody
breathed hard, but that was all. Dreading what his eyes might
reveal to him, he lifted them timidly up and he saw that Julius
Ratner had quite disappeared from the stage. This was another
Vanish he said to himself with candour, and he looked at the
cupboard but it stood open, and everybody was looking out of
the stage.
" Let him now say I am violent I allow him to. I am violent ! "
the Blackshirt suddenly shouted.
" Oh ! " said Horace who had been reading a letter with his
back turned.
" Yes ! Violent is just what I am ! "
Horace walked over to the edge of the stage and looked down.
Dan remarked that all the people had come in a great crowd up
to the stage, and were bending down examining something
underneath.
" It's all right " said Horace very coolly and he went into the
wings and the curtain began to move down—he was doing it and
Margolin went in after him.
" Look out Starr-Smith ! " Horace called.
Blackshirt was leaning out of the stage and talking to the other
Blackshirts. He looked up and as he saw the moving curtain he
jumped off the edge. The curtain came down to the floor.
It was quite light outside the stage now. Horace went out
on the other side of the curtain and Dan heard him say, while
people stopped speaking to hear him—
" You see Ladies and Geatlemen that a difficulty has arisen.
A little drama has succeeded to a slight difference of opinion.
One of my assistants has been knocked off the stage by a member
of the audience, who objected to the manner in which the play was
being produced. My assistant, I am glad to say, is not hurt, I
think." (There was a pause—someone was heard to say " He
says he is all right "). " I have much pleasure in announcing
that Mr. Starr-Smith has won by a knock-out. Lord Osmund
Finnian Shaw has been kind enough to let it be known that he will
match Mr. Starr-Smith against Dempsey, for a purse of a hun
dred guineas ! In any event, this resourceful member of the
audience, in substituting his own melodrama for mine, has proved
598 APES OF GOD
an excellent entertainer. I suggest that he be offered a hearty
vote of thanks. That Ladies and Gentlemen will conclude the
performance ! "
There was a great deal of noise and they were evidently praising
Horace very much and Dan was very glad for this and got up and
sat in the open cupboard. Horace came out of the corner of the,
curtain, and he said to Dan—
" Help me carry that cabinet."
He pointed to the cupboard, in which Dan sat.
He and Horace took the big cupboard down the steps and
Margolin came round from the front of the stage.
" Is Ratner all right ? " Horace asked him.
Dan was weak because the cupboard was terribly heavy with
the loss of blood and he dropped it. He sat down. Margolin
came round and picked it up, and they went oft with it.
Margolin seemed full of genius and he smiled and smiled at
Horace and he smiled back at him as Dan dropped the cupboard.
" Some ladies are putting butter on his eye ! " with great
split-tyre-like splutters Archie told Horace, and they laughed at
the thought.
Then Ratner came round the corner. He had a handkerchief
tied round his head with blood on it, and Dan thought he looked
like a pirate. He was smiling, he looked very coy and pleased.
He had not seen him since he disappeared.
Horace sat down on the big case and Willie Service was there.
" Did he hurt you ? " asked Horace, taking a cigarette out of
his case.
" No Horace.—He nearly broke my neck. I cut myself."
Ratner pointed to his head.
" You must go and see Mrs. Bosun ! " said Horace.
" Must I ? "
Ratner croaked and grinned horridly—the coyest stoic ever
bred upon a roman receipt for ills of a very unroman complexion
—as pleased as Punch when that puppet had bludgeoned a cop
or tripped up a turnkey. Margolin himself was in such high
spirits and limitless form, that Dan turned away his head, with a
pained expression, as if his eyes were not very strong and a light
were attempting to dazzle them.
Horace laughed, sitting on the box.
" They say a cat has nine lives ! " he said.
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 599
Ratner replied with a sepulchral croak of fierce disdainful
masochism. He turned away from Horace as if to prevent him
self from laughing with bitter exultation, in mock-politeness.
Willie Service stood silent, his car-cap canted over his eyes, and
he looked at Dan fixedly.
Lord Osmund came round the corner followed by Lord
Phoebus. The coyness, of the masochistic stoicism, of Ratner
became so marked, that both Horace and Margolin laughed
together. Dan smiled wistfully at the floor.
" Are you hurt ? " asked Lord Osmund with a commiseration
that was more lofty when he ended the remark even than when
he had begun it.
The painfully-grinning lips of Ratner, with the discreet peep
of rabbit-fangs, dripped with coyness, as he answered—
" Oh no thank you Lord Osmund ! I fell on my head ! "
(My head Lord Osmund—it was my little headie-beddie that
had that great fall !—your lordship's own little julian Humpty-
Dumpty !)
" I saw you do that ! " said Lord Osmund however. A much
nearer view of the victim did not seem to prejudice Lord Osmund
in his favour at all—he seemed to wish to be turning away. " But
I thought you might be hurt ! "
" It's nothing really ! " croaked Ratner bitterly—for he saw
that Lord Osmund took no interest in his version of Humpty-
Dumpty and that no amount of blood would wash out the painful
fact of his ratnership for his lordship.
" I'm so glad ! " said Lord Osmund with a slight sniff, looking
at Zagreus.
" So am I ! " abruptly bayed Lord Phoebus very loudly
indeed, his eyes flying away, like a haughty gazelle's—but easily
startled—in the other direction.
Lord Osmund and Lord Phoebus passed on and Margolin,
Service and Horace, began to pack what had been in the stage,
helped by two footmen and a boots.

BEWARE of PICKPOCKETS.
Two bedrooms had been allotted them but when they reached
the hall it was impossible to cross it. The main staircase was
 6oo APES OF GOD
besieged by a heavy crowd, which shouted complaints. Hostile
cries seemed to be breaking from everyone. Upon the stairs stood
Lord Osmund and Lord Phoebus at bay, two footmen and many
osmundians were there holding back the crowd and higher up
on the stairs the Finnian Shaw family seemed very angry indeed.
" I can't help it if you've lost your fur-coat ! " Lord Osmund
was shouting at Lady Truncheon, and the two bunters were in
tears, while Lady Truncheon had a noisy faction.
" One would have thought in your house Lord Osmund that
it was safe to deposit a coat .! "
" What ! With people of this sort about ! "
And Lord Osmund distributed a glance over the shouting
people.
" They are your guests aren't they ? These are guests you
have invited."
" All these people my guests ! I should be sorry to think so !
I have not the least idea who they are ! I know what they look
like ! "
" Is there no protection ! "
" Absolutely none ! I would not leave anything worth a
penny where they could lay their hands on it ! As it is we have
lost half our plate ! Luckily it all was bought at Woolworths ! "
" Then do I understand there is nothing to be done about my
coat ! "
" Certainly you are to understand that ! Can't you read ?
Haven't you seen the notices Beware of Pickpockets ! "
" I thought in such a house as this that notice was a joke ! "
" No joke at all, I can promise you ! " Lord Phoebus bayed
down at hei .
" It's disgraceful ! "
" It is ! " Lord Osmund said. " Very disgraceful ! "
" Your attitude is disgraceful ! "
" Is it Lady Truncheon ? "
" You are a cad ! "
" That's as it may be ! "
" I shall send for the police ! "
Lady Harriet appeared at the top of the stairs and she recog
nized Lady Truncheon and her eye gleamed.
" Yes that's right send for the police ! " Lady Harriet screamed
over the heads of her brothers. " I don't believe she ever had a
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 6oi
fur-coat ! Telephone for the police at once ! She's trying a bit
of blackmail, for a change ! "
From the doorway beyond, which led into the courtyard, an
enraged guest tore his way through a knot of sight-seeing
chauffeurs.
" My car has been taken " he bellowed. " What am I to
do ! "
" Buy another one ! " screamed Harriet.
" Go to the devil ! " said Lord Osmund, and he turned and
started to ascend his baroque staircase, with a contemptuous
waggle of his insolent behind, shrugging his shoulders as he went
at Phoebus.
" That's all very well ! " shouted another angry person
brandishing his hand. " But how about my things ! They've
taken my attache case and everything ! "
" And what about mine ! Here is my cloakroom ticket—but
the things have gone ! What's the use of a ticket ! It's pre
posterous ! "
Lord Osmund turned at the word preposterous and stopped a
moment to shout down—
" / haven't got your things ! "
" I didn't say you had ! "
" I should go and take somebody else's ! " shouted Harriet.
" You should look after your things ! I've seen with my own
eyes a half-dozen pickpockets at work ! I nearly lost the buckles
off my shoes just now ! " Osmund kicked out a gilt-shoed foot.
" A nice party ! "
" I agree with you ! A lovely party ! " Lord Osmund again
gave the crowd a comprehensive glance.
And all the world of Osmund sneered down upon the plun
dered guests.
" I'm glad you see that ! "
" Don't mention it !—Peters ! Peters ! "
" My lord ! "
" Close that Bar at once. And the other one ! Yes—both !
Don't serve them with any more drinks ! Half of them are
drunk. We don't want them here all night, picking each other's
pockets ! "
As the greatest confusion continued to prevail in the central
hall and one man continued to shout about his coat, another his
6o2 APES OF GOD
hat, another calling piteously for a car, for an attache case, and
Lady Truncheon sat down on the staircase and wept for her lost
sables, and everyone raised contrary cries, some for and some
against, and there was a drunken fight proceeding because one
woman accused another of having stolen her man—Horace led
his company back to the stage, and there they made their exit by
the small door to the rear of it.

When Horace shook Dan, with fast-shut eyes Dan clung to his
dream which the unkind hand sought to rob him of. It was a
sweet dream about Horace. But even in his dream Horace had
been horrid. He had disguised himself and he could not make
out which was Horace, as there were several persons that might
be he and he could not decide which to confide in—in other
words to entrust his genius to—which he had under his pillow and
which turned out to be a rabbit—a very pretty little thing and
when Horace at last got hold of it he caressed it very much.
As a cape upon his shoulder Horace had an overcoat, and in
his hand was an electric torch. Dan got up of course as he soon
parted from his dream when the real Horace commanded him to,
and he saw a small bottom in the window and it was Margolin
leaning out. Ratner sat upon his bed and his eyes were almost
completely closed with the unhealthy swellings of his sleep, and
scowled out from under the bandage very sluggishly at Dan.
Dan put on the footman's trousers that were there for him and
he felt so shy as a man at first and just like a girl, and when Horace
spoke to him he blushed.
When Dan was dressed they went out and the others were still
dressed as when he last saw them. As they went along the moon
lit passages, Horace's torch flashing about like a restless eye, Dan
thought he saw the doors moving. Looking back he caught sight
of white faces, which had come out of them suddenly to spy.
They went down the state-staircase. Horace crossed the -hall
to the American Bar. He opened the door, and flashed his torch
all over it, not in the bar but at the door. Then he closed it again.
After that he approached the double-doors of the Great Saloon
and he looked at them in the same way. These he opened up,
they were bolted. He flashed his torch—-he reminded Dan of a
burglar and took a few tools out of his pocket. Margolin held the
electric torch and he started to remove the left hand door, it was
 LORD OSMUND'S LENTEN PARTY 6o3
a big one, standing upon a chair to reach the upper hinges. But
the house began to echo with a hoarse whispering and the boards
creaked. From almost every shady recess or convenient corner
eyes seemed to be watching them at work.
When the door came off, Margolin and Ratner held it up on
end. Then Horace seized it, and together they began going with
it towards the entrance hall. In a bright haddock-pink dressing-
gown Lord Osmund stepped out of a lavatory where he had been
hiding. He said to Horace in a low voice as if he did not wish to
disturb anybody—
" Must you take it away ? "
" It is essential ! " Horace replied without stopping.
" I only thought it might not matter ! "
" No."
" Because I would rather you left it if it's all the same to you ! "
" I do want it however I think."
" Very well. Only you will bring it back ! "
Horace did not say he would bring it back and Lord Osmund
went away. They were near the front door. Margolin was
undoing the bolts. Noticing a flyflot hackencross design in a rug
at his feet, Horace drew Ratner's attention to it but Ratner
thought it was nothing Horace. Horace did not seem satisfied but
as the door was now open they passed on with the half of a door.
Dan looked up as every Irishman does when he goes out of
doors and he saw a great many gently lighted dove-grey clouds
and he knew that the pale white-rose of the new sun that lay in
the black spaces underneath was there, sending up its weak pre
liminary mirage, and the keen wind from the dove-grey cliffs
came down and blew in their faces. Ratner coughed. The moon
was a neat slice of ice that was upside-down and was a quite bril
liant fragment, and Zagreus gave it a glance again, for its own
sake this time for that ever-vivid meniscus.
They stopped all together, setting down the door, by the high
flank of the barn. Zagreus and Margolin laid down the door
between them upon the wet turf. Zagreus took from his pocket a
little flute and put it to his lips. Margolin leapt into the centre of
the large and panelled door and commenced a dance. Coyly
sneering, Ratner as well stepped up upon the door brought out
to be a stage and stiffly worked his legs about just as much as was
necessary for a puppet, and his performance looked like that.
6o4 APES OF GOD
But Dan wandered on to the door too, and he found himself,
with arms outstretched, accompanying the measure, placing the
points of his feet first here then there, and beating a sort of time.
As he looked up, Dan saw that the windows of the house were
full of people. They were in pyjamas with ruffled hair or their
bald heads shone palely in the last rays of the moon and the large
lamp swinging in the courtyard.
Willie Service sprang out of the ground and touched his hat.
They all fled from the borrowed door as a pistol shot rang out. It
was Cockeye's burglar-alarm, which fired a pistol, that was
supposed to frighten thieves.
XIII.

THE GENERAL STRIKE

 DAN took out his log and he read the pathetic heading THE
FIRST APE. That had been his first APE OF GOD !
He dispersed a full-blooded scalding tear that stood in his
eye and another took its place, of a similar volume, volcanically
hot. It thudded upon the log—it scalded the FIRST APE. A
third tear rose upon the parapet of the lid. He discharged it—to
rid the lid of its weight and to see clear. Others followed. He
turned over the page. But he could read no more in that sad
historic log. For him the last Ape he was ever to meet had been
met with—his log was at last a museum of natural history—there
was every variety of ape-like creature, to show like Darwin out of
what men came—submen and supermen. For the last time he
had seen those potent gestures with which Zagreus or Starr-
Smith—great understudies of that invisible magnifico Pierpoint—
pointed towards some embodiment of impotence. And he must
say goodbye to all that genius too, which had been the star and
the wild plum—the lode-stone and the baksheesh—the spell and
the solatium. Amen !
And so he slowly tore that log in pieces. Then after that he
tore the letter containing the Encyclical, and all those other notes
and letters whatsoever, written to him by Horace in good faith,
before he had found him out—for he had been found out. His
fingers did their sad last work well, and strangled the log and
letters. They divided everything—everything in the world—into
smaller and smaller pieces—till no sentence at all was intact in all
that mass of flattering precept and objurgation. Alas !
Last of all came the last letter, that was the one just now to
hand, that bitter epistle. The last kick of that pragmatical
pedantry of his cruel task-master was the worst yet. With much
convulsive reluctance to take it up he sei2ed it and for a time it
lay open upon his knee.
Dear Dan—he read. Dear Dan ! (A great tear rushed out and
spat upon the page.)
Then he read for the last time how Horace said—" I am con
fronted with the necessity of immediately reducing my expendi
ture." (And another mighty six-foot person's tear hit the page
0o7
6o8 APES OF GOD
with a gravitational smack that rang out in the room.) " I find
I am compelled to pay off Willie Service and I fear that I shall
no longer be able to defray the very considerable cost of your pro
longed apprenticeship. But perhaps after all this is just as well.
You may not be so fitted for these severe exercises of the intellect
as I had at first believed. (We all make mistakes sometimes.)
Recently you have shown a strange and insubordinate spirit
which did not hold forth much promise for the future progress of
your studies. Absolute obedience, you will recall, was the capital
condition—the Society of Jesus itself could not exact a more
implicit abnegation than is required in such an undertaking as
that I proposed to you. Submissive at first, you have become of
late so violent and overbearing—so disposed to question the least
order or to misunderstand my intentions for you—and have often
taken the law into your own unpractised hands, that I confess at
times I have felt myself in the midst of some sentimental ' bottom-
dog ' Revolt, or that I had taken to my bosom a barbarian, instead
of one (as I had fondly believed) who had the makings of a disci
plined and rational person—destined to be a fine Frontkampjer of
the new idea. Finally, your disgraceful drunkenness at the
Lenten Party given at the country-house of Lord Osmund Finnian
Shaw, upon the occasion of that recent fiasco, opened my eyes,
there is no denying. Not content with flinging on a high stage a
person half your size and twice your age—unable to take his own
part, coming as he does of a celebrated race of financial wizards,
essentially unmilitary—feeble in body, who (although I am sure
not from lack of will) had never in his life done you any injury—
not content with that ruffianly act, by your brutal trampling
dance upon your departure you made a gigantic fissure in the
door borrowed from Lord Osmund for a little pas-de-quatre in the
best peasant-tradition of the land where he exercises power—and
that august irish gentleman has now (not unnaturally) sent me
in the bill ! And from Ratner—not unnaturally—I have another
bill for medical attendance and subsequent night and day nurses.
All was as merry as music—only you were out of key, moody and
spoiling for mischief !—No ! all things considered it is perhaps as
well that we are proceeding no further together. I must confess
that, latterly, the patent -danger attending your society has caused
me at times some misgiving, on the score of my personal safety.
As Pierpoint put the matter to me (when we talked it over)—' to
have such a great athletic brute as that around Zagreus,' said he
'—violent at the best of times, by all accounts, but into the bargain
an alcoholic—consuming, as Starr-Smith tells me, twenty glasses of
intoxicant without turning a hair !—That is neither desirable nor,
with due regard to safety, wise ! ' That was Pierpoint's view of the
matter. But when one further considers that even the whisky
used in my simple Vanishes was not sacred to you, but fair game
 THE GENERAL STRIKE 6o9
for your ungovernable thirst—for I had scarcely turned my back
when you had dispatched the better part of a pint, of the best
Glen Livet—well Dan I think you must agree that it is high time
I separated myself from a person who (for all your excellent
qualities—in some cases, I nave at times believed, amounting
almost to genius) in such a striking degree betrays that notorious
failing of your race. With such intemperate habits even the
greatest genius cannot go far.—In conversation with Starr-Smith
—who is a keen observer if nothing else—-I learnt of your behaviour
in the American Bar and elsewhere. According to that witness
you never opened your mouth once during the entire period you
remained beneath his charge but maintained a sullen and in
subordinate silence. In your intoxicated condition—so I am
informed by him—he experienced the greatest trouble in mastering
you—and Starr-Smith is a brave and muscular young man—he has
?layed centre-forward for Llandudno Wells on two occasions, and is
am told an intrepid half-back and fast hockey-crack. Yet he tells
me that several times in succession you threw him to the ground—
that when he requested you to rise, you attempted to defy him by
swarming up a tree (an ape-like proceeding) and then abruptly
changing your mind, you fell upon him, seized him about the waist
and flung him with such violence to the ground that you caused
him to break a rib. (For that I have another bill in my pocket.)
Starr-Smith affirms that alternately you would invite him to
dance, with an immodest effrontery (seeing how you were dressed
at the time) and take him up in your arms and crush him like a
polar bear. His report to Pierpoint was (as summarized after
wards for my benefit) that you are one of the most dangerous and
treacherous young men it would be possible to find—that you are
quite unsuited for such society as your duties with me would
naturally take you into.—But I will not say that I endorse all
these judgments and many more occurring in this abstract of
Starr-Smith's, and delivered by him in conversation. My picture
of you would be far less radical. Some bias, too, had I think
crept in—for I have, on occasion, known you to be quite docile
This view I upheld
when pressed by Pierpoint upon the matter. I daresay that the
fracture to his right rib influenced Starr-Smith to some extent,
and perhaps warped his judgment.—All the same you should take
this to heart—you should remember what a great ox-like fellow
you are you know (you must forgive me, but the fact remains) —
it is no joke to have you on one's hands when you are demented
with drink. It is excellent to have a giant's strength—to use it like
a giant is another matter and causes one to be unpopular—
you know the english adage I suppose about giants ! Remember
that the English invented parliamentary democracy. So, just
because you have been cast in a titanic mould, like some legen-
6io APES OF GOD
dary warrior of Ossian, that is no reason why you should make
everyone feel the weight of your legendary right arm. That is to
be a bully. This term used by the English to describe a giant who
insists on behaving like one—refusing to accept the necessary
conditions of urbane life within the herd—is very useful as a
term. But it is abusive. The als ob doctrine of a sportsmanlike
average, that is the perfect democrat—rather aim at that you
follow me ! I may still be permitted to advise you. You are not
asked to regard yourself as a pigmy.: on the other hand it is
expected of you to contrive to give the impression of being no-
bigger-than-anybody-else. Woe to you if you don't ! If you do not
acquire this simple democratic habit of make-believe, there is no
place for you in contemporary life—you may really take this
from me. (I have had some !) However, your violence of dis
position—that makes it worse, much worse—to put a passionate
savagery into being big. What I am talking about may only be
a part of your gigantic lack-of-tact. You may be less violent
than you seem Dan. But in that case you should remember that
if a giant blows his nose, that sounds just as if he were positively
roaring. So, if you seize a person around the waist in play with
what to you perhaps seems only a hearty non-committal hug—
then to the person so handled it will appear a rape and an assault.
He will put you down as violent—especially if you break his rib.
As to the intemperance—that is no doubt in the blood—that will,
I am persuaded, remain your greatest social handicap. As a
first step toward combating that, I suggest you get hold of some
suitable Temperance Tract. (Always avoid Temperance Hotels
however—they immediately drive a susceptible person to the
bottle.) So farewell. I wish you every success in your new life.
But never come to me for a character—not after the episode of the
decanter oj whisky !
P.S.—It may be of some interest to you to know (simply for
old times' sake) that I have a new tame devil, and have told Ratner
that I shall not require his services in future. I daresay you were
not aware of it, Ratner was of some little use to me in certain
financial matters, but I have been enabled entirely to discharge
my indebtedness to him and I may add that this is a considerable
relief, for he was apt of late to interfere. In talking this matter
over with Archie Margolin, he agreed with me that Pierpoint's
estimate of Ratner was in some ways fallacious, and Pierpoint
has now come to be of my opinion.—You know my system. I
believe that as genius represents all that is high, so there must be
something in every person's social life to stand for all that is the
reverse of that. (To this factor or representative of all that is
material, mean, and ill-favoured in our life I attribute a similar
function to that of the catharsis of the attic drama.) But now I
have the sleekest old demon you ever saw ! You can read all his
 THE GENERAL STRIKE 6n
thoughts, but as it were upside down. Virtue is the right way up
of everything—am I not right ? As ' A Jew ' he is really what Lord
Osmund's ' Old Colonels ' are—Elizabethan perhaps as they are
Regency. Such people scarcely exist any longer outside of books
—and newspapers. Starr-Smith told me how you kicked one of
the Colonels, and after that, so he said, he explained very thoroughly
to you just what they were—the Old Colonels. Well, you would
certainly kick my new acquisition ! But he would expect it.
Whereas Ratner was not quite flesh, fowl, nor good red herring—
that is of course his tragedy. My present find—about him
there is no nonsense ! He is adorably tortuous. When I ask him
to meet me at the north end of the Burlington Arcade, I always
take up my position at the South—and there he is to the minute
—but at the opposite point of the compass and the opposite hour of
the day—for I have found that he somehow works it out that
when I say 5 I really mean 2.3o or io, and of the two he takes
that jurthest of—that is his system.—He was found for me by
Archie Margolin—indeed he is a relative of his—he is a maternal
uncle. (I am informed by Archie that he belongs to one of the
worst and most diabolical sephardic stocks in all Galicia !) All his
instincts are topsy-turvy—where Ratner was merely split, this
one is inverted and introverted—he does not know what truth
means—he has no standards whatever ! He is not a bad man, he
is rather good-hearted and in many matters he is to my great
surprise extremely liberal. (My settlement with Ratner has been
at his instigation.) He is not humanly bad therefore, he is—how
shall I say ?—simply satanic. He is worth ten of old Ratner !
Ratner was a fake-intellectual. Again he was so disgustingly
gentlemanly and bourgeois. He was a minor Satan perverted by
his little literary vanity, and so really a sort of Ape of God rather
than a minor Satan. But this one is a perfect minor Satan of the
first water (no pretences whatever of intellect) and he feeds out
of my hand. (Oddly enough, he has a great admiration for his
nephew.—Margolin is, I think, the greatest genius—always bar
one—I have ever met ! He seems to understand everything ! He
is also the first Jew I have met who has genius—he is another
Spinoza ! The Jews dislike him, as they did the great Portuguese !
It is another proof that with these ancient races they are either
better than the average of other races, or else far worse—at all
events crazy.)
(Signed.) Horace Zagreus.
The apparition of himself that emerged from these descrip
tions filled Dan with great fear and stupefaction. Horace was
holy writ and his word was physical law, in consequence the facts
of the natural world were at fault, in this startling disparity
6ia APES OF GOD
between the Dan he knew and that version of Horace, of a Dan
that was man-eating. As a result of this he had the sensations of
madness now, for his brains performed somersaults, and he stood
quite giddy as if he had recently been champagning again.—Cer
tainly such a self was an apparition—of a dreadful giant—but
that simply must be the real and the true. But the Dan of his
past experience of himself now—that was a gentle spectre which
had been cast up to deceive him. A maidenly young man he had
been accustomed to see, instead of a blackguard and rib-breaker,
it was a fact. So who could this ruffian be who was the villain of
this awful epistle ? He was that fellow ! It was Dan who was
that who could doubt ? And thereupon he was so frightened of
himself and his wild ways, that he jumped when he so much as
moved a little brusquely, and expected that he might be the victim
from one moment to the next of his own lawless arms and hands.
There was still one matter attributed to him that was the
outcome perhaps of a mistake. He could not be sure if he was
the man or not. Was it in fact these arms (whose presence at his
side was so upsetting) that had indeed hurled the Split-Man off a
high stage and down into the body of the throng—subsequent to
the Vanish ? He thought not. No, he answered quite finally
for himself ; upon that head—he had experienced nothing of the
sort at the time and he would probably have known if he had
been doing it. No that was not him but some blunder, in the
recital. He began to be particular about the accuracy of the
events occurring in this epic, since he had been seen to occupy
such an outstanding part. So brooding very quietly over his
dark exploits, Horace, he believed he remembered, had not been
looking. Horace had been looking away when that happened.—
There was a chance therefore if nothing more that he had not
thrown Ratner off a high stage, but somebody else had, when no
one was looking. Oh what a brute he had been—except for that
(if he hadn't) ! And he simply blushed his head off at the mere
mention in the letter of his beastly drunkenness and standing up
quickly he tore up the letter with a brutality to be expected of the
brute Horace held up to him in the terrible letter—in order to be
obedient ! But feeling how beastly brutal he was being, he left
off being so savage. The last remaining pieces he tore up apolo
getically with the greatest restraint—for it was too awful to be
such a brute, and he scrutinized the remarkable muscles in his
 THE GENERAL STRIKE 613
hand—tracking them under the skin and lying in wait for them
as if they were hidden fishes, as they rose to the surface disturbing
the cuticle. Especially ferocious were those connected with the
thumb. He had never suspected before the presence of all these
monsters of muscles—only just inside ! Thoroughly horror-
struck, but determined to go through with it, he bent down and
got hold of the leading muscles of his calves, which were well
hidden but had great bodies like Scottish salmon, and in each
thigh there was at least a strapping life-size sturgeon. His body
was swarming. It was a plain brute's body nothing less. His
height he preferred not to think about—but he held himself
slightly crouched all day not to be too wildly upstanding.
One letter remained upon the table. They were notes from
Michael and Melanie. It said Michael would fetch him at seven
o'clock. Now it was not more than one or twelve. With the
scowl of a sheer brute in the only looking-glass—from which he
moved away in haste—he said it would be impossible to remain
with himself until seven—quite out of the question. The people
in the streets were bad enough but they were better than him.
Willie Service had left him—he probably knew about him. Harry
Caldicott had fetched Willie Service the day before and Willie
Service had not returned, he hadn't expected he would.
Before leaving Willie Service had taken Dan's suitcase to
pawn, with his one extra posh suit as well to make it worth while.
He had given Dan a half-a-crown. More roughly than he had
ever put anything in his pocket he pushed Melanie's letter away
anyhow in his trousers—poking it down into his pocket like a brute.
Also his London Street-guide was violently sequestered. His hat and
coat were thrown on and struck down, upon his head and shoulders,
without ceremony. That was all he had and he went out.
When he went out he thought the streets were quiet today.
Some days previous to that he had noticed a street he went into
was quiet. But he had hurried back because two gentlemen in
cars seemed to follow him with sunny suggestive smiles and he
had turned back without hesitation. He found he could cross the
first street quite easily. To be on the safe side he stood upon the
curb until there was absolutely nothing in sight. There was no
one near him and nothing in the street. Then he crossed. He
went into a big street where there was a chocolate omnibus. The
omnibus was quite full of policemen. He turned his head away
614 APES OF GOD
and he blushed a little—the sight of all these darkly-dressed
brutes all together, with their peaked helmets, made him hot—
he had never that he could recollect seen so many policemen
together before and he did not wish to catch their eyes. Another
omnibus appeared. He did not like to look at it, but it was very
crowded, and he noticed a policeman sitting beside the driver and
he looked very stern. He supposed that the driver had done
something wrong and he was sorry for the driver at once. Poor
driver !—the driver couldn't help being a brute !
A good many motor-cars were coming along the big street
and Dan could not help remarking that several gentlemen driving
in them alone looked at him, as if they knew him. He was posi
tive he didn't know them. One looked a little familiar but he was
positive he had never spoken to him. He could not understand
this unscrupulous behaviour. Usually people in motor-cars
minded their own business and it was only from pedestrians that
one had to fear any low familiarity coming from strangers, which
one was liable to meet with, and which made walking in London
so unpleasant. Naturally he turned his head away. But several
shouted rudely to him. They could not possibly be gentlemen.
Not gentlemen—only half-sirs and spalpeens conducted them
selves in that egregious manner in a public place !
At length a gentleman by himself (or with the deceptive
appearance of one) more forward than the rest, actually began to
go slower with his machine and came in with it quite near to the
edge of the pavement, until he could almost have touched him
and the fellow smiled in the most open way, as if he had been
acquainted.
" Would you like a lift ? "
He heard the gentleman's voice—if it was a gentleman's—but
he declined to believe his ears.
" Which way are you going ? "
It was an educated gentleman he could tell at once now, and
he did not doubt that he was somebody of means. But how he
could conduct himself in this manner he could not think—very
hurriedly turning Dan showed what he thought of him and stopped
to allow him to proceed with his machine. He was facing a large
window and he looked into a large shop.
" I will take you anywhere you like ! "
Surely this ill-bred assault upon the privacy of a passer-by
 THE GENERAL STRIKE 615
was unheard of even in London !—the gentleman had come to a
stop in his little machine, and was rudely accosting him without
on his side the provocation of a glance ! He declared this was the
summit of ill-manners !—Dan walked sideways a few feet, he was
pretending all the time to be engrossed with the purchases, as if
he wanted to buy what was there. Unluckily as it turned out,
this was the inside of a lady's bedroom, in the shop. There were
two ladies undressed. The ladies were nothing but wax and
puppets only but they were two terribly lifelike undressed women,
and wherever he looked their eyes seemed to be seeking him out
to smile at him. All sorts of nether garments for nude ladies were
there—some were horridly round and there were splits in them
with buttons—he blushed all the way up the backs of his legs.
He had a centripetal shame in him, for all this immodesty—
though in this case it was wax decoy-ducks, and not actual ladies.
For nothing in the world would he be found looking ! It would
be better he almost felt to confront that person who had halted
behind him in his car rather than to go on standing there. But
the gentleman had accosted some other passers-by and they had
got into the car with him. He could see it going on plainly in the
window-glass. There were other gentlemen passing slowly in
cars he could see—one or two wore smiles, and one beckoned to
a somebody invitingly. He rushed from where he had been
standing without looking up.
After this experience Dan hurried into a side street and there
he breathed freely at last. He resolved to avoid the central
thoroughfares as much as possible. He walked on in this way,
seeing big roads with cars or vans in the distance upon either hand.
One he crossed at a run. At last he quite lost himself, and then
he went on doggedly, suddenly feeling very brutal and scowling at
two passers-by who looked him up and down—scowling at their feet.
He thought he would cross the Hyde Park, as he saw it not far
off. But when he came up to it, it was closed. With a certain
astonishment he remarked that it was full of milkcans, as big as
himself. There were tents there too—so he had to go round the
Hyde Park and there was a great deal of bustle. He knew there
was a great Arch—it was called that, the Arch—not far away—he
had once taken refuge under it, when there was a rough crowd,
'and in his Street-map too there was a picture of it. If he walked
along these big railings he would come to the Arch.
6i6 APES OF GOD
Several times after he had started going along the big railings
in the direction of where the Arch was, he was compelled to suffer
a great deal of annoyance and rudeness from gentlemen, half-sirs,
and spalpeens, both in cars and in vans, and also he was sorry to
have to say from several well-bred ladies (as he could judge from
their voices). Once he was the object of the shameful solicitation
of two ladies who were quite elderly ladies, in a large and noise
less machine which crept up behind him. After this he left the
high railings dashing across the road as fast as his feet would
carry him, narrowly escaping. Without further ado he entered a
narrow street. Later he found he was descending a long respect
able street named apparently South Audley—it was printed on a
house. It was a very quiet respectable street. In fact there were
shutters in all the windows of the houses—but he knew this was a
street where rich well-bred persons had houses—evidently these
well-to-do influential persons were abroad at the moment, because
it had been somewhat cold and disagreeable.
Two policemen were hiding behind a pillar. He caught sight
of them at once, he could see their helmets. He crossed over the
road. They came out together from behind the pillar. He did
not look at them at all but they followed him a long way. He
walked quickly and they could not catch up. He crossed the road
three times back and forth. Then he turned to the left and that
shook them off he thought. They did not follow. He expected
they could not come out of the street as they had the duty of
guarding it. He was for the second time beside the Hyde Park.
He stopped and looked about him and immediately detected the
Arch in question, it might have been a stone's throw—it was large
and empty and quite by itself—some policemen were hanging
their coats upon the railings. Policemen were mounted on horses
near the Arch and they seemed to want to go into the Hyde Park.
There was a row of omnibuses in front of the Arch, and he could
see little vegetable-vans with little seats in them for passengers
too.
When he got to a spot where Service had told him they had
found malefactor's bones, because it was where murderers had
been buried when there were cruel chopping or hanging courts,
for more dangerous offenders—traitors and witches—he saw a
red bus and he passed it. Some men were standing beside it and
laughing in a cruel and repulsive fashion as if they did not wish
 THE GENERAL STRIKE 617
to laugh at all, at the driver—who had a policeman up with him
upon the box. The men who were in check caps were ridiculing
the driver for something, and he heard them pass some very horrid
remarks but the driver did not answer them, and the policeman did
not seem to mind. Someone said it was a picket. He thought the
policeman was pretending not to hear the men and pretending
that he could not see them, and then that he would suddenly
jump off and catch them in the act. But without saying anything
the bus started : the men in check-caps were shouting more and
more rudely and laughing in a fierce and scornful way, so the
driver drove off although some people were still getting in, and
Dan thought he was quite right to start, and the policeman went
with him, holding on to the box for all he was worth.
If he remained in the very big streets Dan was always accosted
by gentlemen who were riding up and down. So he went aside
into the very smallest streets, and at last he came to the house of
Melanie which was a great relief.
Melanie was not there but Michael was there—he seemed
quite surprised to see Dan and took him into a room where he
had been sitting with a dog. It was Rabs.
" Did you get my letter ? " he asked.
Dan showed it to him. The letter from Melanie was wrapped
up in Michael's letter. Dan put them down upon the table.
" Melanie wired me to-day—she says to take you away from
London at once and bring you to Azay-le-Promis. I have got
the tickets.—She's afraid of the Strike ! "
Michael smiled, and, his shoulders very high and his eyebrows
raised, he exhaled very slowly some turkish cigarette-smoke
through his nose as usual, tasting the strong smoke as if he had a
tongue in his stomach. He held his breath, looking arrogant and
dreamy. Then he puffed it out.
" It is a very bad strike " Michael said lazily to Dan—they
were sitting with Rabs between them. " It is a General Strike.
She- told me to tell you that London is not safe. She said it was
very unsafe. I was to tell you."
Michael smiled again. Dan did not smile—he was reflecting
that London (except for the shocking under-bred behaviour of
many of the motorists) was much safer than it had ever been since
he had known it—Melanie was wrong. Michael gazed at him,
smoke still coming out of his nose, weighing him in blue filmy
6i8 APES OF GOD
ironical scales, his eyebrows held high up, so that his eyes might
delicately measure the object they had focussed.
" This General Strike is a great bore," he said to Dan. " All
I hope is that the boat-train will be running. The trains are being
run by volunteers. How did you get here ? Did you get a lift ? "
By immediately looking at his two feet, Dan indicated that
he had walked—but at the question relative to ' a lift ' he simply
blushed and scorned to reply.
" On foot ? There are a lot of people going about in private
cars and giving people lifts. They take work-girls up and down
from the City." He smiled, but as Dan seemed very uncomfort
able at that topic, he then said : " The train is supposed to go at
nine or ten tonight. Are you ready ? "
Dan was ready.
" I have had to hire a car to take us to the station. What a
bore this Strike is !J There are no papers."
Dan never saw the newspapers, although he knew the names
of most of the principal ones, like the Daily Express and Daily
Telegraph, but he thought this must be something of the same
sort as the Rebellion and felt that it was perhaps just as well that
Michael was going to take him away with a safe-conduct to
Azay-le-Promis, in the South of France. For he felt he could
not again stand the sound of all that firing in the streets, if it was
a Rebellion.
» * *

The whole townland of London was up in arms and as silent

as the grave and it was reported that in its eastern quarters, in the
slum-wards such as Poplar, a Police-inspector and two Specials
had been kicked to death and there were more and more violent
riots in Hammersmith, where trams had been wrecked and street-
rails torn up by the mob, and the Police stoned and injured :
while it was confidently stated that in the North < rowds had
sacked the better quarters, in the big factory-towns, mines were
flooded, mills were blazing, and the troops were firing with
machine-guns upon the populace. The absence of newspapers
fostered every report of disorder.
It was a grand and breathless calm in the rich neighbourhoods
and at last peace had fallen (for the first time since the death of
 THE GENERAL STRIKE 619
the Nineteenth-Century Middleclass Elizabeth, Victoria) upon all
that private-thoroughfare where the mansion of the proud Folletts
reared its victorian battlements to the May-sky—all was dead
and pleasant. But it was a death of life—the throbbing circula
tion of incessant machines, in thunderous rotation, in the arteries
of London was stopped. A Follett footman came out and looked
down the street, and the gummy-footed cop in his helmet, who
stood by the letter-box of ceiling-wax scarlet, came over to the
footman, in strong silent pacing out of the broad road, rolling
from side to side, and said nothing, but put up his helmeted half-
face quickly and smiled a boyish smile. The footman said—
" Is that right—that they've done in an inspector, down
East ? "
The young constable rolled about knowingly and silently for
some moments, in labour with the gigantic official secrets inside
him, and was dumb. Then the young footman thought he knew
more than he would say. Slowly the constable replied however,
in the accent of his Somersetshire hamlet (where all are king's-men
more or less) —
" If you was to believe all wot you was told ! "
" Ah ! " said the footman.
" All I can say is " and he paused to roll about a little more
as if poising himself to lift a monster dumb-bell—" that 1 ain't 'erd
nothin'—'cept wot you see in the Gazette."
Then the young footman went back into the house.
The Private Road terminated in a high majestic gate. Now
it was locked, as if against a mob. A top-hatted long-coated gate
keeper stood inside it and beside him was a pale cockney police
man. He looked out into the trafficless thoroughfare, as if
watching it closely—having, unexpectedly, found it so still. Side
by side they stood and watched the occasional vans that passed
fitted with cross benches for passengers, and the two and four
seaters of the embattled Motorist-Middleclass, advertising their
useful intentions—carrying motorless clerks to wealthy offices.
The absence of weighty traffic made the avenue, secluded by a
by-law, noiseless and peaceful. The top-hatted gold-laced janitor
felt a touch of stronger responsibility to which the constable
responded Oh dear Mabel ! He did not feel responsibility. But
the gatekeeper inscrutably regarded, from under his top-hat, an
infrequent volunteer omnibus—he had nothing in common with
62o APES OF GOD
the omnibus, for he was a Lord-Mayor's-Show luxury-figure—his
super-world had nothing in common with omnibuses.
The top-hatted gatekeeper was royalist and rothschildean, and
the cockney constable was communist. But the constable did not
expect much from a Soviet of Constables (he had thought it best,
that was all, to be on the safe side) so he was fairly rothschildean
and royalist, though not so sternly so as the other guardian of the
Private Road beside him—who was a sterling class-A watch-dog
of the Pound Sterling when met with in regal bulk and ten-figure
quantity, and a cast-iron King's-man to the core. So the constable
who was languidly muscovite and luke-warmly royalist, and his uni
form was very heavy, seemed to take an interest in nothing, whereas
the top-hatted gatekeeper seemed sternly indifferent to everything.
Two figures greatly disproportionate in size had ascended the
avenue, from the farther extremity, where there was another gate.
At this moment they handed their hats to a waiting footman, and,
leaving Archie Margolin to be conducted into the drawing-room,
Mr. Zagreus stormed the stairs with all his peculiar stair-storming
theatrical impetuosity.
Knocking upon the door of Lady Fredigonde's own private
apartment, he paused for a moment, his eyes brilliant with a
suppressed anticipation of persuasive speech. Then looking up
quickly he flung the door wide open. Then he paused again—he
perceived Sir James unexpectedly seated there, in his indoor-
bathchair. After that, with a triumphant rapid step he entered
the room, looking to left and right.
" Sir ! " he thundered " I have brought to see you the most
astonishing genius. I really believe this time there is no doubt
about it ! // is the goods ! "
Mr. Zagreus stopped however, for Sir James it would appear
was asleep. He turned towards Lady Fredigonde, and she was
in her chair facing the sleeping baronet and upon him her eyes
were fixed in a static manner that also suggested sleep. In her
hand she held, it was remarked at once by Zagreus, a little silver
bell and her immaculately-capped head was decorated with the
ribbons of the savage tartan of her tribe.
" Shake him Zagreus ! " she exclaimed as Zagreus stopped.
" He is only shamming sleep."
" Do you think so ? "
" Yes. Shake him, I tell you."
 THE GENERAL STRIKE 6ai
" I don't think I will."
" Today he is very aggravating ! The Strike has upset him
I think."
" Oh—the Strike ' "
" I know. But he has a stupid theory that it is the work of the
Clydeside Scotch. My ribbons " she indicated her head " put
him beside himself with rage ! "
" He is, I believe, in fact asleep."
" Not a bit of it ! Don't you run away with that idea ! You
don't know him as well as I do ! Give him a good shake ! "
Mr. Zagreus laughed.
" Sir James might not thank me for waking him."
" Let sleeping dogs lie ! "
" I would not say that."
" No but I would—with the accent on the dog ! "
Mr. Zagreus looked at Lady Fredigonde with a quick inquisi
tive brightness, and then back at Sir James—he looked longer at
Sir James this time, and then swiftly he approached him, and
placed a hand upon his shoulder.
" Won't you wake up sir ! I have some news for you ! "
But as he allowed his hand to rest after that with more insis
tence upon the bowed shoulder, Sir James' head rolled over away
from him, and he dropped his hand suddenly and stood back.
" I believe Sir James has had a stroke," Mr. Zagreus said.
" Yes—a fit of temper ! " Lady Fredigonde replied.
" Shall I call somebody ? Where is Bridget ? "
" I told her not to return just yet.—As a matter of fact Zagreus,
Sir James is dead."
" Dead ? Do you think so ? I hope not. Then I had better
call his man ! "
" No do not do that Zagreus. I wish to say something to you
before you do that."
Like a wild horse that had consented to the rules of a circus—
always with the air of being destined, at a pistol-shot, to rush
away, returning to its savagery—yet civilly inclining its head
to the behests of some fantoche at which it never looks, but which
it only hears : so Zagreus stood untamed but politely transfixed.
In an opposite way to the horse, he fastened unmeaningly-brilliant
eyes upon the speaker's lips—but never heard at all, he only saw.
And that surprising flourishing figure named Zagreus for con
6'22 APES OF GOD
venience, albino tropically-bronzed, triply-armed with pierpointean
dialectic, was more than ever at this juncture, as he stood there
in suspense, a circus-oddity—with the upturned silver moustaches
(of a fierce equestrian magister, a dompteur of performing dumb
animals) incongruously stuck upon the stoic lips of a Choktaw
chief on-show, gaunt and erect in all his fluttering feathers.—-So
his eyes upon her ladyship's lips, his back to Sir James, he waited
before calling the servant.
" I think I had better tell you Zagreus that I believe I have
killed Sir James."
Mr. Zagreus said nothing—he might not have understood this
language—his eyes at their brightest, impassibly sparkling, he
remained intent to spring—at the bell—at her ladyship—out of
the window—or else off and away to the miraculous pastures
where genius wandered—his happy-hunting-grounds after all.
" I arranged that Bridget should steal this bell ! "
Fredigonde held up the bell a little, holding it by its tiny clapper.
" When Sir James desired to return to his own apartments, he
found he had no bell to summon his man. It was then that I
showed it him. But I would not ring it for him."
She slowly shook her head.
The expression of Zagreus did not change—his face was
alight with enthusiasm for genius, and that was all.
" His temper is so violent, that that is what he has done. He
has destroyed himself with rage ! " Her ladyship succumbed to a
fit of subterranean laughter. Then she said—
" For once he was compelled to listen to what I had to say.
And he died of rage at what he heard 1 "
Zagreus turned about and looked at the baronet, and he came
to the conclusion that in fact he was dead. Then he looked back
with the same absent brightness at the visible morse of the lips of
her ladyship, signalling to him.
" Zagreus ! " she said. He could see with great force she had
uttered his name—and he remarked the imperious flashing of her
eyes. " I intended him to die ! "
Zagreus smiled with a gesture of deprecation.
" I got possession of this bell with that in view ! "
Again she held up the bell a few inches.
" Did you get my letter ? " Zagreus asked Lady Fredigonde.
" I got your letter Zagreus. You asked for ten thousand
 THE GENERAL STRIKE 623
pounds I think. Yes it was ten thousand pounds. Then I had not
got that sum to dispose of. Not then."
Zagreus raised his eyebrows, as if in polite amazement.
" You said the last time we met that Dick Whittingdon might
be circumvented " he said.
" I have circumvented Dick Whittingdon, put your mind at
rest ! "
Mr. Zagreus smiled, with detached elation.
" Dick is no obstacle. I have him on the hip—I have gone
into everything."
" That is excellent."
" Zagreus. I have a proposal to make to you. Will you hear
it ? " she said.
The magnificent albino, erect, unearthly, electric with a slight
smile at her ladyship, folded his arms rather like the recumbent
effigy of a crusader suddenly set up on end, and he watched the
lips of destiny, that were so numbed with age.
" What is that ? " he asked politely.
" You will think it strange I expect."
" I will tell you if I do when I hear it."
" I am an old woman."
Mr. Zagreus simply indulged in the flashing smile that meant
nothing, of the superb shavian Methuselah of sixty-odd. He was
again steadfast and attentive.
" Can you picture a person of my years as one of the season's
brides ! " she blandly muttered.
" What kind of bride ? " he asked.
" A bride of love ! " crashed Fredigonde suddenly in the most
uncompromising manner, as if his question had smelt of criticism.
" I love you Horace ! I desire to be your bride ! "
There was then one wild uncanny flash of half-wit under
standing, coming into the bronze-embedded blue piratic eyes.
The folded arms of the crusader collapsed and fell apart, dropping
to his side, as if some superior tension had then been abruptly
relaxed. He approached Lady Fredigonde across the floor, as if
advancing upon his prey.
" Done ! " he exclaimed. " There is no woman I would
sooner marry ! "
" Not if they were young and fair ! "
" Not if they were positive Helens ! " he exclaimed again.
 APES OF GOD
" Of all the women that I know, I would soonest have you for a
bride ! "
The two crippled stumps of her arms went out —the short way
that they could, and aspired to rise the necessary inches to circum
scribe her splendid groom. A dark spasm visited the corpse-like
carcass beneath—strapped into position, in the giant chair which
might have been constructed to accommodate a circus-elephant,
who had been taught to sit down to table and discuss a two-gallon
tankard of ale, in imitation of humanity, as a compliment to the
squatting audience. In the head above, clear of this investing
corruption, that pushed up into the throat, the child-soul of that
sylph—once ' Lady Freddy ' of the brightest Gossip, the Chattiest
social column, piped in the chirping accents of first-love—
" Horace ! "
And Zagreus accommodated his great stature in such a way
that the robot-stumps of the extinct hands, of pinkish shrivelled
hide, could clip htm upon either side, and in a ringing voice he
shouted in her face, with a thrilling r-roll—
" Fredigonde ! "
Their lips met, and the love-light softened the old discoloured
corneous surface of the fredigondean eyeball, once a lacteous blue.
Over this conventionally she dropped her lids in token of virgin-
rapture.—In the street outside there was a frenzied rattle. Death
the Drummer ! That was his fierce opening castanette ! Imme
diately the mechanistic rattle penetrated to the inmost recesses of
these embraces. Her eyes started open with a bang, glaring at
the untimely summons, the sorry advent. It was that fatal step
she hated. The dove-light changed to the red-rose of battle.
There was a drum-tap. Like rain drops, there was a constant
tapping, a sharp drip upon the loud parchment. Then came the
first soft crash of the attendant cymbal—it was the prelude of the
thunder. And in the gutter the crazy instruments at last struck
up their sentimental jazzing one-time stutter—gutter-thunder.
Whoddle ah doo
Wen yoo
Are far
Amy
An/
am bloo
Whoddle ah doo
Whoddlah DOOOO !
 THE GENERAL STRIKE 625
In the great reception-room immediately beneath Archie
Margolin, as he heard the first notes of the street-instrumentalists,
stiffened, and, with elf-like nigger-bottom-wagging, he traversed
the oppressive spaces of this monster apartment—built for victorian
' giants ' in their first flower—smiling at himself as he advanced
(with his St. Vitus puppet-shiver) in the mighty viotorian looking-
glasses.