III

“Welcome, Angus,” Jael called, seeing Fitzjerald’s form filling the door way. “We are a small lot tonight. Low in our minds. Disagreeably inclined. Come, tell us a new thing.”

Fitzjerald saluted by lifting her hand as if to kiss it, which he did not do. It was a gesture only, but invariably he greeted her in that way. In speech he was rude to her, more so than anyone else, but in manner he was old-fashioned and courtly, and although she pretended to be mildly amused, really she liked it.

Everyone treated her with certain marks of respect, especially Dwind, who got a nice salary at the Lothian College, and Dr. Rabba, who lectured there; but the convention of conduct here was bad manners.

From the couch De Grouse shouted cheerily and Grinling said hello. Fitzjerald did not respond. It was not expected. Nothing was expected.

Having made his little ceremony with Jael he said, “Hello, Lillibridge,” “Good-evening, Madame,” and passed around to a row of copper pots on a warming table against the far wall. At the end of the warming table was another with plates, silver and so forth. Each guest helped himself to food, of which there was a great abundance, excellent, always ready. A man that might be called a butler, wearing a sack suit, appeared from time to time bringing water and pieces of linen or to remove what was no longer wanted.

Fitzjerald helped himself generously, brought his plate to the table, and sat between Grinling and Madame.

“No new thing, Jael,” he said, speaking for the first time. “I’ll ask you a question. Someone asked it of me. Why do you live in Jones street?—here?—like this?”

Jael regarded him thoughtfully.

“Well, Mr. Father Confessor,” she said, “why do I?”

“I’m serious,” he said.

“So am I,” she said. “That’s it. I might have answered you lightly. Why do you live as you do?”

She knew how Fitzjerald lived. So did the others know. He lived, as anyone would say, wretchedly, in a square hole at the end of a furrier’s loft, with a portable oil stove, three sticks of furniture, a bowl of ink and some books on the floor.

“Fair,” he said. “I happen to know. The main thing is to express my contempt as I please.”

“Contempt of what?” Jael asked.

“Of many absurdities. Of everything I am not and have not got. People. Wealth. The strut of success. Vulgar taste. The triumph of mediocrity. The whole human scene as God left it. And that is what—”

He was stopped by a clangor that jarred the dishes, hurt the teeth, smote the eyes, and died slowly away in waves of appalling reverberation. Madame screamed and covered her face.

“Praise be!” said Jael. “Somebody at last has hit my gong in a regular way. I never could.”

Miss Lillibridge got up to see.

Fitzjerald called after her: “Oh, Lillibridge, I forgot. He wants a whisk broom. I see one right there. Throw it at him, please. He fell down in the dust.”

“A friend of yours?” Jael asked.

“No. We only arrived at the same moment.”

Miss Lillibridge, standing in the upper hall at the top of the staircase, threw the broom down and said, “Come up.” With that she returned to her seat.

“Who is it?” Jael asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “A stranger.”

There was a clumsy silence. The only audible sound was a bubbling in one of the copper pots. Fitzjerald did not go on with his speech because it would be interrupted by the stir of an arrival, and for the same reason no one else spoke. One, two, three minutes passed. Everyone began to listen for the footfall that came not on the stairway. Fitzjerald of course knew why. That is, he had guessed correctly that it would take Mr. Capuchin some time to decide how to behave in the circumstances. First a long wait in the hallway, very injurious to his self-esteem, and then, after his unbalanced attack upon the gong, a whisk broom at his head.

Fitzjerald was thinking to himself: “Man with a tic in his brain—Always brushing himself—Symbolic unconscious gesture—Something he wishes he didn’t know about himself—Something he wants to be rid of—The broom—Won’t know what to make of it.”

Then Jael herself rose and moved toward the door. As she did so Capuchin was heard ascending. They met, and he handed her a letter, not in an envelope, at the same time pronouncing his name.

“Oh,” she said, first shaking hands with him and then glancing at the letter. “You move quickly. I heard only this afternoon that you were starting for New York, and here you are.”

She had brought him in.

“These are all nice people,” she said, waving her smoking blue tube at them. “They have nice names, but you would forget them at once. Only Miss Lillibridge. You won’t forget hers. This is she. You may sit between us. Here. We shall want to talk. Help yourself from the pots. Everything’s there. We are all self-serving.”

Pointing him to the copper pots, she sat down, vaguely smiling. “It’s Mr. Capuchin,” she said, and then turned to Fitzjerald.

“Yes, Angus. Contempt of the whole human scene as God left it. And that was what—there you stopped. What was what?”

“What all of us are doing,” he said.

“You mean I live in Jones street to be contemptuous?”

“Are you serious or being feminine?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but go on.”

“Envy and contempt,” he said, going on. “They translate in human conduct thus: Envy, ‘I am as good as.’ Contempt, ‘I am better than.’ These are the two fundamental forms of the social animal’s self-assertion; and which it shall be in the specific case, one or the other, is a matter of how one was born or what one was born with. Every imaginable way with this conflict has been tried. In the east it appeared to have been settled by a caste system, as among the Hindus, inferiors, betters and superiors stratefied by superstition and taboo on rigid lines supposed to be ordained in nature. But there you see it is breaking out again. In what we call democratic—”

He was interrupted by sounds from De Grouse and Grinling. “Civilization again,” one of them groaned. “Spare its old bones!”

Capuchin, who had taken his place at the board between Jael and Miss Lillibridge, moved his head sideways, glancing right and left, as one who, wishing to get into a shindy, casts around for a handy weapon. He thought they were going to put Fitzjerald down, ridicule him, trample on him, and he should have a chance to get in on it. But nothing came of it. The interruption was ironic and despairing. There was no one could talk against Fitzjerald. He would go on until he wished to stop. His voice came from deep roaring pouches, with an effortless booming.

So Capuchin returned to the contemplation of himself. He had got a dinner coat and wore it badly. He kept looking at the front of himself, shooting his cuffs, shooting them too far and getting them back with a wriggling movement. His dress was a mistake. Fitzjerald wore a blue cotton shirt; Grinling a soft flannel one. They made some point of carelessness in dress. The only one who had any style about him was De Grouse. His attire was fancy, not formal.

“—In what we call democratic civilization,” Fitzjerald continued, “nothing is fixed. No status can be fixed. The as-gooders of course have the great majority. To their number is added political power. The I-am-betters are hard put to it. In the last resort they become ludicrous. I think I am better than money changers, shop keepers, meat packers, superior to the great cult Rotarian. I know I am better than a coal digger. But if these others, I mean the money changers, shop keepers, meat packers, Rotarians, press me hard—and they are always coming up—if they begin to know too many things as I know them and to prate my language, then I am obliged to go and live near or among coal diggers in order to keep my contrast clear. To conceal from myself what I am doing I am very likely to ally myself with them against the cult Rotarian, whom they envy and of whom I am contemptuous. I become their champion. I talk of up-lifting them. Deity stuff. I am much more likely to fool myself than to fool them. I am not a coal digger. But I may start a revolution.”

He paused.

“Bring it back to Jones street,” Jael suggested.

“In a very prosperous state of democratic civilization,” Fitzjerald continued, “the competition becomes abominable. Anybody can get rich. The most impossible persons do. Therefore wealth, which has hitherto conferred the high-caste mark, ceases to have any aristocratic value. The I-am-betters who relied upon it are pressed from two sides. On one side the as-gooders competing with them successfully in display. On the other side those, like myself, who, having declined the competition, hold all wealth in disdain. I, sitting in my cave, exchanging now and then a precious bauble, intrinsically worthless, for the means with which to fill my belly and hide my back—I hold myself high among the I-am-betters.

“But they crowd us hard—the as-gooders. They run after culture and seize it even faster than we can discard it. Why is it the thing, if you are rich, to behave as if you were not? the thing, if you have manners, to get rid of them? the thing, if you have style of dress, to put it off? the thing if you have classical taste in art, to pretend to despise it and prefer instead the grotesques of ancient Africa, jazz, ugliness, anything different? Why? Because so many are rich. A fine house is nothing. Display is cheap. The new rich learn very soon how to buy polish, mental furniture and snobbery, as they buy motor cars or other merchandise. Standard culture is made compulsory. Children get soused in it at the public schools, where they learn polite manners, good English, the outlines of science, the latest dialect of art. From there they go in shoals to the universities, which become culture factories, producing it by mass methods, efficiently. There is irony in it. What shall these children do with what has been bought for them? Are they content to go on with the useful work of their fathers? They are much more likely to cultivate the contemptuous pose, pressing me again. De Grouse—I’m never sure about De Grouse, whether he is an artist, born such, or merely unreconciled to a second sonship in a dynasty of great wealth. Give him the benefit. But take Grinling. What was bought for him at Harvard makes him ashamed of the fact that his father got rich in the garment trade. You see what he does. He turns radical and writes disparagingly of wealth.”

Neither De Grouse nor Grinling seemed to mind. It was all within the code. Unlimited speech was their idolatry; they had the fervor of flagellents for it. Personalities no matter how extreme were inoffensive provided only they had a political bearing. If one wished to call another a liar or a scoundrel, he did it obliquely, by presenting the other to himself as a social product of that type.

“Is it proved,” Jael asked, “that I am living with coal diggers for contrast?”

“You are,” said Fitzjerald. “Rich women in fine houses with soft hands and nothing to do are very common. You would be horribly bored. Besides, there could be no distinction in it. So what? You establish yourself in this old house, in this dirty street, to cultivate the handicrafts and work with your own hands. They are callous from contact with refractory materials.”

Capuchin looked at Jael’s hands. They were as Fitzjerald represented. Thick, applicable hands, with primitive knowledge in them.