“Lōōk at that man!” he said plaintively, pointing to the statue. “What a futile thing civilisation is! You know, I have seen much more energetic South Sea Islanders, and delightfully clean, except for palm oil, which, after all, is only soap. But lōōk at that attitude! How bēāutiful! He has been leaning on his spade in six different attitudes, each more bēāutiful than the last, all this quarter of an hour, and now he is going to get himself a drrink.” For the statue moved away, and left the Millet boy to drag his weedy limbs and sheep-like face round and round the earth heap in a conscientiously monotonous, do-nothing shamble.
Nielsen continued. “He has no more anything than the Fijian, except clothes and dirt; and yet we have the habit of calling him a civilised being, and the other a savage, don’t you see? It is all a matter of habit, you know.”
He flicked the dust off his boots mournfully with a silk handkerchief.
Nielsen habitually gave people the impression of being affected; in reality he was not, it was in his case merely the grafting of the English manner upon the foreign; he impressed one as being cynical, in reality he was kind-hearted; he appeared to be mild, in reality he was explosive; he seemed to be continually dancing in attendance, in reality he was an original.
He was a man of good birth, and he had seen, in his forty years, a little of most things; he now lived by gambling on a “system.” It said much for him that he still lived, and well. Many people who gambled themselves tabooed him for that reason, oblivious of the fact, that, to live in that way, requires a patience and self-possession wanting in nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of a thousand.
They walked together through the gardens up to the Casino. There is a subtly peculiar character about the Casino gardens at Monte Carlo. They are not indeed particularly beautiful—there are many more so—but there is a subdued and fragrant naughtiness about them, they are full of suggestion. The aroma, acrid and penetrating, the atmosphere, vivid and enticing, of many unrestrained personalities seems to haunt them; in the midst of absolutely artificial surroundings one yet seems to revert to first principles, to those mysterious laws which make the world go round, hunting the ostrich of civilisation as it buries a lofty and well-intentioned head from the sight of its implacably eternal pursuers.
Presently they approached the Casino steps. Mrs. Travis was a little in advance, serenely conscious of good clothes, and puffing her lips in pleased anticipation. Jocelyn distraite, and slightly bored, walked with Nielsen, who chattered to her languidly, while Giles followed moodily behind.
In front of them strolled two Englishmen with a curiously jerky walk. Nielsen, commenting on them in a whisper to his companion, said gravely—
“Lōōk, they are new arrivals—they have the Monte Carrlo walk—two steps and a scrratch, don’t you know; all you English walk like that, you know, when you first come, it is the drry air.”
Jocelyn smiled at him, and answered in low tones.