"I got a good deal of amusement and interest out of watching the others," he went on. "The French were the worst—voluble, excited, indignant, grabbing the best places and all the food they could lay hands on in the buffet—the way they always behave when they're travelling; the next worse were the Germans—they were ruder and more inconsiderate than the French, but not nearly so efficient. The Americans all set themselves to westernise Europe and started getting off protests by cable to Paris, ordering special trains and booking three times the accommodation available at any hotel. The English were bored, aloof, taking themselves and their troubles very seriously and refusing to share them with anyone. Well, when the last bedroom had been snapped up, there were still enough of us benighted to overcrowd the waiting-rooms and buffet, we were all suffering from a sense of grievance, and there wasn't enough food to go round. I got wedged into a corner with a plate of meat and looked on. One of the Englishmen commented loudly on the noise that a German made in eating soup. The comment was understood, so the German laid himself out to shew the sort of noise he could make when he tried. The Englishman wrapped himself in a ferocious dignity, finished his meal and lit a cigar, sending a cloud of smoke in the face of one of the Italians. My attention was then attracted by a brawl in the middle of the buffet; someone had imprudently left his seat to forage for food, and someone else had promptly bagged it. As they bickered and gesticulated and finally pushed each other about and the onlookers took sides and joined in, I said to myself, 'Lord God! this buffet is just like the world, and these fools are behaving just as we all behave, and we should all despise and laugh at ourselves as much as I'm laughing now, if we had any detachment, self-criticism, humour, logic or God's common sense.'"
O'Rane's black eyes lit up at the memory of the scene.
"I was telling that story to our young friend," he continued with his baffling smile. "Chivalry? Nothing doing. Moral sanctions and first causes? Nothing doing. He didn't believe in God, he wasn't going to Hell, if he misbehaved himself, so why in the name of reason should he bother?... But I should think I fixed him over my Bâle story.... We had a hideous night (it was too cold to go and sulk outside—which made the symbolism more perfect; you can't sulk outside this world, unless you're prepared to cut your throat); and we might have made it quite tolerable, if only we'd had a little imagination and kindliness, if we'd struck an international bargain and surrendered the privilege of eating soup noisily in return for immunity from cigar smoke in the eyes, if the chairs had only been given to the women and old men, if someone had only lent a hand to a poor boy who was coughing himself sick with asthma...." He whistled reflectively between his teeth for a moment. "Life's like a club, sir; there are rules and conventions and an endless mass of tradition—the things we don't do; but the rules were made so long ago, the conventions only aim at an irreducible minimum. Even so, it's better than treating the world like a company trading for profit, but we must modernise the rules. As you know, I always want to delete 'efficiency' from the English language; efficiency in the Bâle buffet would have meant that an organised party of four, back to back, could have downed the rest, grabbed all the food and cleared the till.
"Keep your temper. Never answer (that was why they spat and swore).
"Don't hit first, but move together (there's no hurry) to the door.
"Back to back, and facing outward while the linguist tells 'em how—
"'Nous sommes allong a notre batteau, nous ne voulong pas un row.'
"So the hard, pent rage ate inward, till some idiot went too far ...
"'Let 'em have it!' and they had it, and the same was serious war,
"Fist, umbrella, cane, decanter, lamp and beer-mug, chair and boot—