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Page 34
'Well, I'll wait,' said I.
I sat down near him and waited, trying to create some kind of order
out of the chaos in my mind, and half automatically watching and
considering him as he played his dance--Edmund Pair playing a dance
for prostitutes and drunken sailors. He was not greatly changed. There
were the same grey eyes, deep-set and wide apart, under the same broad
forehead; the same fine nose and chin, the same sensitive mouth. The
whole face was pretty much the same, only thinner perhaps, and with a
look of apathy, of inanimation, that was foreign to my recollection of
it. His hair had turned quite white, but otherwise he appeared no
older than his years. His figure, tall, slender, well-knit, retained
its vigour and its distinction. Though he wore a shabby brown Norfolk
jacket, and his beard was two days old, you could in no circumstances
have taken him for anything but a gentleman. I waited anxiously for
the time when we should be alone--anxiously, yet with a sort of
terror. I was burning to understand, and yet I shrunk from doing so.
If to conjecture even vaguely what experiences could have brought him
to this, what dark things suffered or done, had been melancholy when
he was a nameless old musician, now it was appalling, and I dreaded
the explanation that I longed to hear.
At last he struck his final chord, and rose from the piano. Then he
turned to me and said, composedly enough, 'Well, I'm ready.' He,
apparently, had in some measure pulled himself together. In the street
he took my arm. 'Let's walk in this direction,' he said, leading off,
'towards the Christian quarter of the town.' And in a moment he went
on: 'This has been an odd meeting. What brings you to Bordeaux?'
I explained that I was on my way to Biarritz, stopping for the night
between two trains.
'Then it's all the more surprising that you should have stumbled into
the Brasserie des Quatre Vents. You've altered very slightly. The
world wags well with you? You look prosperous.'
I cried out some incoherent protest. Afterwards I said, 'You know what
I want to hear. What does this mean?'
He laughed nervously. 'Oh, the meaning's clear enough. It speaks for
itself.'
'I don't understand,' said I.
'I'm pianist to the Brasserie des Quatre Vents. You saw me in the
discharge of my duties.'
'I don't understand,' I repeated helplessly.
'And yet the inference is plain. What could have brought a man to such
a pass save drink or evil courses?'
'Oh, don't trifle,' I implored him.
'I'm not trifling. That's the worst of it. For I don't drink, and I'm
not conscious of having pursued any especially evil courses.'
'Well?' I questioned. 'Well?'
'The fact of the matter simply is that I'm what they call a failure. I
never came off.'
'I don't understand,' I repeated for a third time.
'No more do I, if you come to that. It's the will of Heaven, I
suppose. Anyhow, it can't puzzle you more than it puzzles me. It seems
contrary to the whole logic of circumstances, but it's the fact'
Thus far he had spoken listlessly, with a sort of bitter levity, an
affectation of indifference; but after a little silence his mood
appeared to change. His hand upon my arm tightened its grasp, and he
began to speak rapidly, feelingly.
'Do you realise that it is nearly fifteen years since we have seen
each other? The history of those fifteen years, so far as I am
concerned, has been the history of a single uninterrupted
_d�veine_--one continuous run of ill-luck, against every probability
of the game, against every effort I could make to play my cards
effectively. When I started out, one might have thought, I had the
best of chances. I had studied hard; I worked hard. I surely had as
much general intelligence, as much special knowledge, as much apparent
talent, as my competitors. And the stuff I produced seemed good to
you, to my friends, and not wholly bad to me. It was musicianly, it
was melodious, it was sincere; the critics all praised it; but--it
never took on! The public wouldn't have it. What did it lack? I don't
know. At last I couldn't even get it published--invisible ink! And I
had a wife to support.'
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