He found himself outside a flaring house, with the words ‘Wine Shades ‘in a blaze of wind-fluttered gas above the door, and painted placards in the window: ‘Wines from the Wood. Fine old Sherry, 10d., 8d., and 6d. per dock glass.’ He had never tasted sherry. Sherry surely was the drink of many heroes. Shakespeare and Jonson drank it at the Mermaid. He entered the place, called for his wine—‘Your best,’ he said, as he threw his shilling on the counter—and sat down on a high stool to drink it. Before his glass was empty he had flashed back into high spirits again. He resumed his walk in a new exultation, and this time he knew enough to attribute it to the wine. What a superb boon it conferred upon the mind! How easy it seemed to soar out of sadness and loneliness into these exalted regions of friendship with all created things. He walked through the winter night with no knowledge of the route he took and with no care. He could ask his way home at any time.
He came to the Metropolitan Music Hall in the Edgware Road, and suffered himself to be borne in by the crowd at the doors. The place and its like were strange to him. The performance seemed wholly contemptible and absurd. Men and women screamed with laughter and roared applause at jests which were either inane or hateful. A noisy man in a long-waisted overcoat, whose skirts swept the stage, a blonde wig, flying yellow whiskers, and a white hat at a raking angle, sang an idiotic song with patter interspersed between the verses. He described a visit received from Lord Off-his-Chump, Lady Off-her-Chump, and all the honourable Misses Off-their-Chumps. The witticisms convulsed Paul’s neighbours and left him saturnine. He conceived a loathing and despite for the creature on the stage which he had never felt before for any living thing. The popular laughter and applause fed his personal hatred and disdain. He made an involuntary sound of contempt as the ‘lion comique’ went off.
‘Ah!’ said a voice beside him. ‘You don’t like that?’ Paul turned and looked at the man who had accosted him. He was evidently a foreigner, and his complexion was so jaundiced that he was the colour of a guinea. What should have been the whites of his eyes were of a deep yellow. His nose had a hook, high up, right between the eyes, and his lofty forehead, narrowing to a peak, was ridged like a ploughed field. His hair and beard and moustache were all crisp and curling, and their blackness was faintly streaked with gray.
‘You don’t like that?’ said the stranger again. ‘No,’ said Paul. I don’t.’
‘The cruel thing about it,’ said the stranger, ‘is that other people do.’
‘Yes,’ said Paul; ‘that is the cruel thing about it.’
He had the suspicion of strangers which is natural to most rustic folk in London, and his manner was purposely dry.
‘It strikes me,’ said the yellow man, ‘that you and I are about the only sensible people here. Come and have a drink.’
‘Thank you,’ Paul returned, ‘I don’t drink with strangers.’
‘Oh, well,’ said the other, ‘that’s a wise thing, too. Have a cigar?’