"Don't be absurd, old boy! I'll expect you to do the same for me, with interest, when I'm down on my luck! Not a word more! Five o'clock, you think? Good! Well, so long, old dear! Take a Turkish to smoke on the way home!"
"Er—thanks! So long! Till to-morrow!"
At the appointed time next day, at the very door of Mrs. Lipson's boarding-house, Philip was seized with a sudden vehement impulse to turn his back upon his new friend, simmering enthusiastically somewhere beyond those kosher portals. Where after all was it leading to? The most insensitive nostril could not fail to register the faint odour of corruption which hung about Wilfrid Strauss. Somehow that impeccable grey tweed suit was more shoddy than the corduroys of that poor old devil trundling a wheelbarrow beside the gutter. Yet whither did all the other roads lead? Whatever the landscape on the journey, whatever pitiful doctrine guided you, where else but to a Wheatley cemetery, damp clay, a towsled dog barking emptily? And how was Strauss less valiant a companion thither than Harry and Alec and the rest? If he preferred to chase, not the shadow, but the glittering substance, who could blame him? A fine specimen he himself had become! Hardly a person in Doomington to talk to; at home the unresponsive books—Swift and Lamb beginning to gesticulate as little intelligibly as his faded poets; at school, still the unsealed barriers! Nothing left but to moon about the streets, remembering, regretting—hoping never. What, indeed, was there to hope for? The old loyalties were annulled, the old dreams crumbled! Heigh-ho, thank God for Wilfrid Strauss and for noise, Life! It was a chap's duty to himself to know what Life meant before Life had done with him, thrown him aside into that long, narrow dustbin....
He knocked. The sound came sharp and clear like a challenge against the tedium which had been stupefying him for so weary a time.
Strauss was delighted, charmed. He had been troubled by spasmodic doubts as the afternoon wore on. Would Massel turn up after all? There was something in the lad he couldn't quite fathom, something which might turn Philip away from him in the mysterious manner so many people he had particularly wished to please had, from time to time, turned away. He hoped he'd turn up if only to save him the strenuous necessity of discovering somebody else likely to show him the ropes economically. Besides, there was something distinctly pleasing about the youth. If only he'd dress a little better.... Anyhow, he was going to be useful if merely as a guide—though one couldn't call him exactly a business man. He'd more than repay the price of a tea and a theatre now and again. And if he'd only allow himself to be initiated into the business, what confidence he would arouse in the most chary breast!
There was a value in Philip's friendship Strauss did not recognize so consciously. It gave him a peculiar satisfaction to observe the deference that Philip naively paid to his exhibition of nis vanities; a satisfaction increased by the knowledge that Philip was a "college lad." It was amusing to gibe at "college lads," to be sure, and one didn't actually desire to be a "college lad," yet one could not help vulgarly and secretly envying them.... In any case, it's easy enough to get rid of a chap when he's outlived his use. Hadn't he already made that discovery often enough? Time enough for that ... "Come in, old man, come in! Risk a whiskey and soda?"
The tawdry gaieties Strauss had in his command followed in bewildering succession. Books seemed to become less and less important as the furtive weeks passed by. If a memory of his mother came palely before him, he would the more speedily betake himself to the company of Wilfrid Strauss. It was difficult to retain those old musics of Shelley when the brass bellowed windily across the Regent Roller-Skating Rink, and the girls cackled in your ear. No long time elapsed before Strauss had made the rounds of the less reputable cafés, the more shady music halls, and, finally, the Doomington Zoological Gardens, with their alfresco dancing at the borders of the lake. The delights of the gardens were only vitiated for Philip by the inexorable custom which demanded that each male should at rigid intervals kiss his paramour—"strag" was the recognized term—in the ludicrously inadequate shelter of a laurel shrub.
There followed more than these. There followed Kate and her lazy eyes and the yelp of her animal laughter.
"Deeper, deeper, deeper!" became the insistent burden in Philip's brain. Closer round his feet the mud was gathering. Yet against this one thing he long managed to stand out, though Strauss would return to him, rubbing his eyes sleepily, or smacking his lips with luxurious appreciation. Delicately Strauss would suggest how illogical his position was, how, seeing it was necessary to take the plunge sooner or later, why not now, old sport?
Why not? More and more cynical his solitary mind was becoming, ever the more solitary as Strauss and he were more closely entangled in the cult of their pleasures. What else did women mean? They would die, he would die, securely enough all of them, whatsoever happened in the interspace. Alec's old philosophy was gaining new confirmation. What inhibitions did Life hold by which a youth should not probe for the honey of experience, each flower, chaste or poisonous, that opened to the sun or moon?