“Oh, good land! what a turn you gave me! I couldn’t have jumped more,” Mrs. Gainsborough exclaimed, “not if one of the lions in Trafalgar Square had said pip-ip as I passed!”
“You didn’t think I was English, did you?” said the stranger. “I forget it myself sometimes. I’m a terrible warning to the world. I’m a pose that’s become a reality.”
“Pose?” Mrs. Gainsborough echoed. “Oh, I didn’t understand you for the moment. You mean you’re an artist’s model?”
The stranger turned his eyes upon Sylvia, and, whether from sympathy or curiosity, she made friends with him, so that when they were ready to go home the eccentric Englishman, whom every one called Milord and who did not offer any alternative name to his new friends, said he would walk with them a bit of the way, much to Mrs. Gainsborough’s embarrassment.
“I’m the first of the English decadents,” he proclaimed to Sylvia. “Twenty years ago I came to Paris to study art. I hadn’t a penny to spend on drugs. I hadn’t enough money to lead a life of sin. There’s a tragedy! For five years I starved myself instead. I thought I should make myself interesting. I did. I became a figure. I learned the raptures of hunger. Nothing surpasses them—opium, morphine, ether, cocaine, hemp. What are they beside hunger? Have you got any coco with you? Just a little pinch? No? Never mind. I don’t really like it. Not really. Some people like it, though. Who’s the old woman with you? A procuress? Last night I had a dream in which I proved the non-existence of God by the least common multiple. I can’t exactly remember how I did it now. That’s why I was so worried this evening; I can’t remember if the figures were two, four, sixteen, and thirty-eight. I worked it out last night in my dream. I obtained a view of the universe as a geometrical abstraction. It’s perfectly simple, but I cannot get it right now. There’s a crack in my ceiling which indicates the way. Unless I can walk along that crack I can’t reach the center of the universe, and of course it’s hopeless to try to obtain a view of the universe as a geometrical abstraction if one can’t reach the center. I take it you agree with me on that point. That point! Wait a minute. I’m almost there. That point. Don’t let me forget. That point. That is the point. Ah!”
The abstraction eluded him and he groaned aloud.
“The more I listen to him,” said Mrs. Gainsborough, “the more certain sure I am he ought to see a doctor.”
“I must say good night,” the stranger murmured, sadly. “I see that I must start again at the beginning of that crack in my ceiling. I was lucky to find the room that had such a crack, though in a way it’s rather a nuisance. It branches off so, and I very often lose the direction. There’s one particular branch that always leads away from the point. I’m afraid to do anything about it in the morning. Of course, I might put up a notice to say, this is the wrong way; but supposing it were really the right way? It’s a great responsibility to own such a crack. Sometimes I almost go mad with the burden of responsibility. Why, by playing about with that ceiling when my brain isn’t perfectly clear I might upset the whole universe! We’ll meet again one night at the Chouette. I think I’ll cross the boulevard now. There’s no traffic, and I have to take a certain course not to confuse my line of thought.”
The eccentric stranger left them and, crossing the road in a series of diagonal tacks, disappeared.
“Coco,” said Sylvia.