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Title: A Soldier of Humour
   [The first story in Lewis's 1927 collection The Wild Body:
   A Soldier of Humour and Other Stories]
Author: Lewis, Percy Wyndham (1882-1957)
Date of first publication: 1927
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1928
Date first posted: 1 December 2010
Date last updated: 1 December 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #667

This ebook was produced by Barbara Watson
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

This ebook was produced from images generously made
available by the Internet Archive




A SOLDIER OF HUMOUR

by Wyndham Lewis




PART I

Spain is an overflow of sombreness. 'Africa commences at the Pyrenees.'
Spain is a check-board of Black and Goth, on which primitive gallic
chivalry played its most brilliant games. At the gates of Spain the
landscape gradually becomes comes historic with Roland. His fame dies as
difficultly as the flourish of the cor de chasse. It lives like a
superfine antelope in the gorges of the Pyrenees, becoming more and more
ethereal and gentle. Charlemagne moves Knights and Queens beneath that
tree; there is something eternal and rembrandtesque about his
proceedings. A stormy and threatening tide of history meets you at the
frontier.

Several summers ago I was cast by fate for a fierce and prolonged little
comedy--an essentially spanish comedy. It appropriately began at
Bayonne, where Spain, not Africa, begins.

I am a large blond clown, ever so vaguely reminiscent (in person) of
William Blake, and some great american boxer whose name I forget. I have
large strong teeth which I gnash and flash when I laugh. But usually a
look of settled and aggressive navet rests on my face. I know much
more about myself than people generally do. For instance I am aware
that I am a barbarian. By rights I should be paddling about in a
coracle. My body is large, white and savage. But all the fierceness has
become transformed into _laughter_. It still looks like a visi-gothic
fighting-machine, but it is in reality a _laughing_ machine. As I have
remarked, when I laugh I gnash my teeth, which is another brutal
survival and a thing laughter has taken over from war. Everywhere where
formerly I would fly at throats, I now howl with laughter. That is me.

So I have never forgotten that I am really a barbarian. I have clung
coldly to this consciousness. I realize, similarly, the uncivilized
nature of my laughter. It does not easily climb into the neat japanese
box, which is the cosa salada of the Spaniard, or become french esprit.
It sprawls into everything. It has become my life. The result is that I
am _never_ serious about anything. I simply cannot help converting
everything into burlesque patterns. And I admit that I am disposed to
forget that people are real--that they are, that is, not subjective
patterns belonging specifically to me, in the course of this joke-life,
which indeed has for its very principle a denial of the accepted actual.

My father is a family doctor on the Clyde. The Ker-Orrs have been
doctors usually. I have not seen him for some time: my mother, who is
separated from him, lives with a noted hungarian physician. She gives me
money that she gets from the physician, and it is she that I recognize
as my principal parent. It is owing to this conjunction of circumstances
that I am able to move about so much, and to feed the beast of humour
that is within me with such a variety of dishes.

My mother is short and dark: it is from my father that I have my
stature, and this strange northern appearance.

     _Vom Vater hab' ich die Statur_ . . .

It must be from my mother that I get the _Lust zu fabulieren_. I
experience no embarrassment in following the promptings of my fine
physique. My sense of humour in its mature phase has arisen in this very
acute consciousness of what is _me_. In playing that off against another
hostile _me_, that does not like the smell of mine, probably finds my
large teeth, height and so forth abominable, I am in a sense working off
my alarm at myself. So I move on a more primitive level than most men, I
expose my essential _me_ quite coolly, and all men shy a little. This
forked, strange-scented, blond-skinned gut-bag, with its two bright
rolling marbles with which it sees, bull's-eyes full of mockery and
madness, is my stalking-horse. I hang somewhere in its midst operating
it with detachment.

I snatch this great body out of their reach when they grow dangerously
enraged at the sight of it, and laugh at them. And what I would insist
upon is that at the bottom of the chemistry of my sense of humour is
some philosopher's stone. A primitive unity is there, to which, with my
laughter, I am appealing. Freud explains everything by _sex_: I explain
everything by _laughter_. So in these accounts of my adventures there is
no sex interest at all: only over and over again what is perhaps the
natural enemy of sex: so I must apologize. 'Sex' makes me yawn my head
off; but my eye sparkles at once if I catch sight of some stylistic
anomaly that will provide me with a new pattern for my grotesque
realism. The sex-specialist or the sex-snob hates what I like, and calls
his occupation the only _real_ one. No compromise, I fear, is possible
between him and me, and people will continue to call 'real' what
interests them most. I boldly pit my major interest against the
sex-appeal, which will restrict me to a masculine audience, but I shall
not complain whatever happens.

I am quite sure that many of the soldiers and adventurers of the Middle
Ages were really _Soldiers of Humour_, unrecognized and unclassified. I
know that many a duel has been fought in this solemn cause. A man of
this temper and category will, perhaps, carefully cherish a wide circle
of accessible enemies, that his sword may not rust. Any other quarrel
may be patched up. But what can be described as a _quarrel of humour_
divides men for ever. That is my english creed.

I could fill pages with descriptions of myself and my ways. But such
abstractions from the life lived are apt to be misleading, because most
men do not easily detach the principle from the living thing in that
manner, and so when handed the abstraction alone do not know what to do
with it, or they apply it wrongly. I exist with an equal ease in the
abstract world of principle and in the concrete world of fact. As I can
express myself equally well in either, I will stick to the latter here,
as then I am more likely to be understood. So I will show you myself in
action, manoeuvring in the heart of the reality. But before proceeding,
this qualification of the above account of myself is necessary: owing to
protracted foreign travel at an early age, following my mother's change
of husbands, I have known french very well since boyhood. Most other
Western languages I am fairly familiar with. This has a considerable
bearing on the reception accorded to me by the general run of people in
the countries where these scenes are laid.

                  *       *       *       *       *

There is some local genius or god of adventure haunting the soil of
Spain, of an especially active and resourceful type. I have seen people
that have personified him. In Spain it is safer to seek adventures than
to avoid them. That is at least the sensation you will have if you are
sensitive to this national principle, which is impregnated with _burla_,
or burlesque excitants. It certainly requires _horse-play_, and it is
even safer not to attempt to evade it. Should you refrain from charging
the windmills, they are capable of charging you, you come to understand:
in short, you will in the end wonder less at Don Quixote's behaviour.
But the deity of this volcanic soil has become civilized. My analysis of
myself would serve equally well for him in this respect. Your life is no
longer one of the materials he asks for to supply you with constant
entertainment, as the conjurer asks for the gentleman's silk hat. Not
your life,--but a rib or two, your comfort, or a five-pound note, are
all he politely begs or rudely snatches. With these he juggles and
conjures from morning till night, keeping you perpetually amused and on
the qui vive.

It might have been a friend, but as it happened it was the most
implacable enemy I have ever had that Providence provided me with, as
her agent and representative for this journey. The comedy I took part in
was a spanish one, then, at once piquant and elemental. But a Frenchman
filled the principal rle. When I add that this Frenchman was convinced
the greater part of the time that he was taking part in a tragedy, and
was perpetually on the point of transplanting my adventure bodily into
that other category, and that although his actions drew their vehemence
from the virgin source of a racial hatred, yet it was not as a Frenchman
or a Spaniard that he acted, then you will conceive what extremely
complex and unmanageable forces were about to be set in motion for my
edification.

What I have said about my barbarism and my laughter is a key to the
militant figure chosen at the head of this account. In those
modifications of the primitive such another extravagant warrior as Don
Quixote is produced, existing in a vortex of strenuous and burlesque
encounters. Mystical and humorous, astonished at everything at bottom
(the settled navet I have noted) he inclines to worship and deride, to
pursue like a riotous moth the comic and unconscious luminary he
discovers; to make war on it and to cherish it like a lover, at once.


PART II

It was about eleven o'clock at night when I reached Bayonne. I had
started from Paris the evening before. In the market square adjoining
the station the traveller is immediately solicited by a row of rather
obscene little hotels, crudely painted. Each frail structure shines and
sparkles with a hard, livid and disreputable electricity, every floor
illuminated. The blazonry of cheap ice-cream wells, under a striped
umbrella, is what they suggest: and as I stepped into this place all
that was not a small, sparkling, competitive universe, inviting the
stranger to pass into it, was spangled with the vivid spanish stars.
'Fonda del Universo,' 'Fonda del Mundo': Universal Inn and World Inn,
two of these places were called, I noticed. I was tired and not
particular as to which universe I entered. They all looked the same. To
keep up a show of discrimination I chose the second, not the first. I
advanced along a narrow passage-way and found myself suddenly in the
heart of the Fonda del Mundo. On the left lay the dining-room in which
sat two travellers. I was standing in the kitchen: this was a large
courtyard, the rest of the hotel and several houses at the back were
built round it. It had a glass roof on a level with the house proper,
which was of two storeys only.

A half-dozen stoves with sinks, each managed by a separate crew of grim,
oily workers, formed a semi-circle. Hands were as cheap, and every bit
as dirty, as dirt; you felt that the lowest scullery-maid could afford a
servant to do the roughest of her work, and that girl in turn another.
The abundance of cheap beings was of the same meridional order as the
wine and food. Instead of buying a wheelbarrow, would not you attach a
man to your business; instead of hiring a removing van, engage a gang of
carriers? In every way that man could replace the implement that here
would be done. An air of leisurely but continual activity pervaded this
precinct. Cooking on the grand scale was going forward. Later on I
learnt that this was a preparation for the market on the following day.
But to enter at eleven in the evening this large and apparently empty
building, as far as customers went, and find a methodically busy
population in its midst, cooking a nameless feast, was impressive. A
broad staircase was the only avenue in this building to the sleeping
apartments; a shining cut-glass door beneath it seemed the direction I
ought to take when I should have made up my mind to advance. This door,
the stairs, the bread given you at the table d'hte, all had the same
unsubstantial pretentiously new appearance.

So I stood unnoticed in an indifferent enigmatical universe, to which
yet I had no clue, my rug on my arm. I certainly had reached immediately
the most intimate centre of it, without ceremony. Perhaps there were
other entrances, which I had not observed? I was turning back when the
hostess appeared through the glass door--a very stout woman in a garment
like a dressing-gown. She had that air of sinking into herself as if
into a hot, enervating bath, with the sleepy, leaden intensity of
expression belonging to many Spaniards. Her face was so still and
impassible, that the ready and apt answers coming to your questions were
startling, her _si seors_ and _como nons_. However, I knew this kind of
patronne; and the air of dull resentment would mean nothing except that
I was indifferent to her. I was one of those troublesome people she only
had to see twice--when they arrived, and when they came to pay at the
end of their stay.

She turned to the busy scene at our right and poured out a few guttural
remarks (it was a spanish staff), all having some bearing on my fate,
some connected with my supper, the others with my sleeping accommodation
or luggage. They fell on the crowd of leisurely workers without ruffling
the surface. Gradually they reached their destination, however. First, I
noticed a significant stir and a dull flare rose in the murky
atmosphere, a stove lid had been slid back; great copper pans were
disturbed, their covers wrenched up: some morsel was to be fished out
for me, swimming in oil. Elsewhere a slim, handsome young witch left her
cauldron and passed me, going into the dining-room. I followed her, and
the hostess went back through the cut-glass door. It was behind that
that she lived.

The dining-room was compact with hard light. Nothing in its glare could
escape detection, so it symbolized _honesty_ on the one hand, and
_newness_ on the other. There was nothing at all you could not _see_,
and scrutinize, only too well. Everything within sight was totally
unconscious of its cheapness or of any limitation at all. Inspect me!
Inspect me!--exclaimed the coarse white linen upon the table, the
Condy's fluid in the decanter, the paper-bread, the hideous mouldings on
the wall.--I am the goods!

I took my seat at the long table. Of the two diners, only one was left.
I poured myself out a glass of the wine _ros_ of Nowhere, set it to my
lips, drank and shuddered. Two spoonfuls of a nameless soup, and the
edge of my appetite was, it seemed, for ever blunted. Bacallao, or cod,
that nightmare of the Spaniard of the Atlantic sea-board, followed. Its
white and tasteless leather remained on my plate, with the markings of
my white teeth all over it, like a cast of a dentist. I was really
hungry and the stew that came next found its way inside me in gluttonous
draughts. The preserved fruit in syrup was eaten too. Heladas came next,
no doubt frozen up from stinking water. Then I fell back in my chair, my
coffee in front of me, and stared round at the other occupant of the
dining-room. He stared blankly back at me. When I had turned my head
away, as though the words had been mechanically released in response to
my wish, he exclaimed:

'Il fait beau ce soir!'

I took no notice: but after a few moments I turned in his direction
again. He was staring at me without anything more than a little
surprise. Immediately his lips opened again, and he exclaimed
dogmatically, loudly (was I deaf, he had no doubt thought):

'Il fait beau ce soir!'

'Not at all. It's by no means a fine night. It's cold, and what's more
it's going to rain.'

I cannot say why I contradicted him in this fashion. Perhaps the
insolent and mystical gage of drollery his appearance generally flung
down was the cause. I had no reason for supposing that the weather at
Bayonne was anything but fine and settled.

I had made my rejoinder as though I were a Frenchman, and I concluded my
neighbour would take me for that.

He accepted my response quite stolidly. This initial rudeness of mine
would probably have had no effect whatever on him, had not a revelation
made shortly afterwards at once changed our relative positions, and
caused him to regard me with changed eyes. He then went back, remembered
this first incivility of mine, and took it, retrospectively, in a
different spirit to that shown contemporaneously. He now merely
enquired:

'You have come far?'

'From Paris,' I answered, my eyes fixed on a piece of cheese which the
high voltage of the electricity revealed in all its instability. I
reflected how bad the food was here compared to its spanish counterpart,
and wondered if I should have time to go into the town before my train
left. I then looked at my neighbour, and wondered what sort of stomach
he could have. He showed every sign of the extremest hardiness. He lay
back in his chair, his hat on the back of his head, finishing a bottle
of wine with bravado. His waistcoat was open, and this was the only
thing about him that did not denote the most facile of victories. This,
equivalent to rolling up the sleeves, might be accepted as showing that
he respected his enemy.

His straw hat served rather as a heavy coffee-coloured nimbus--such as
some browningesque florentine painter, the worse for drink, might have
placed behind the head of his saint. Above his veined and redly sunburnt
forehead gushed a ragged volute of dry black hair. His face had the
vexed wolfish look of the grimy commercial Midi. It was full of
character, certainly, but it had been niggled at and worked all over, at
once minutely and loosely, by a hundred little blows and chisellings of
fretful passion. His beard did not sprout with any shape or symmetry.
Yet in an odd and baffling way there was a breadth, a look of possible
largeness somewhere. You were forced at length to attribute it to just
that _blankness_ of expression I have mentioned. This sort of blank
intensity spoke of a possibility of real passion, of the sublime. (It
was this sublime quality that I was about to waken, and was going to
have an excellent opportunity of studying.)

He was dressed with sombre floridity. In his dark purple-slate suit with
thin crimson lines, in his dark red hat-band, in his rose-buff tie,
swarming with cerulean fire-flies, in his stormily flowered waistcoat,
you felt that his taste for the violent and sumptuous had everywhere
struggled to assert itself, and everywhere been overcome. But by what?
That was the important secret of this man's entire machine, a secret
unfolded by his subsequent conduct. Had I been of a superior penetration
the cut of his clothes in their awkward amplitude, with their unorthodox
shoulders and belling hams, might have given me the key. He was not a
commercial traveller. I was sure of that. For me, he issued from a void.
I rejected in turn his claim, on the strength of his appearance, to be a
small vineyard owner, a man in the automobile business and a _rentier_.
He was part of the mystery of this hotel; his loneliness, his aplomb,
his hardy appetite.

In the meantime his small sunken eyes were fixed on me imperturbably,
with the blankness of two metal discs.

'I was in Paris last week,' he suddenly announced. 'I don't like Paris.
Why should I?' I thought he was working up for something now. He had had
a good think. He took me for a Parisian, I supposed. 'They think they
are up-to-date. Go and get a parcel sent you from abroad, then go and
try and get it at the Station Dept. Only see how many hours you will
pass there trotting from one bureau clerk to another before they give it
you! Then go to a caf and ask for a drink!--Are you Parisian?' He asked
this in the same tone, the blankness slightly deepening.

'No, I'm English,' I answered.

He looked at me steadfastly. This evidently at first seemed to him
untrue. Then he suddenly appeared to accept it implicitly. His
incredulity and belief appeared to be one block of the same material, or
two sides of the same absolute coin. There was not room for a hair
between these two states. They were not two, but one.

Several minutes of dead silence elapsed. His eyes had never winked. His
changes had all occurred within one block of concrete undifferentiated
blankness. At this period you became aware of a change: but when you
looked at him he was completely uniform from moment to moment.

He now addressed me, to my surprise, in my own language. There was every
evidence that it had crossed the Atlantic at least once since it had
been in his possession; he had not inherited it, but acquired it with
the sweat of his brow, it was clear.

'Oh! you're English? It's fine day!'

Now, we are going to begin all over again! And we are going to start, as
before, with the weather. But I did not contradict him this time. My
opinion of the weather had in no way changed. But for some reason I
withdrew from my former perverse attitude.

'Yes,' I agreed.

Our eyes met, doubtfully. He had not forgotten my late incivility, and I
remembered it at the same time. He was silent again. Evidently he was
turning over dully in his mind the signification of this change on my
part. My changes I expect presented themselves as occurring in as
unruffled uniform a medium as his.

But there was a change now in him. I could both feel and see it. My weak
withdrawal, I thought, had been unfortunate. Remembering my wounding
obstinacy of five minutes before, a strong resentment took possession of
him, swelling his person as it entered. I watched it enter him. It was
as though the two sides of his sprawling portmanteau-body had tightened
up, and his eyes drew in till he squinted.

Almost threateningly, then, he continued,--heavily, pointedly, steadily,
as though to see if there were a spark of resistance anywhere left in
me, that would spit up, under his trampling words.

'I guess eet's darn fi' weather, and goin' to laast. A friend of mine,
who ees skeeper, sailing for Bilbao this afternoon, said that mighty
little sea was out zere, and all fine weather for his run. A skipper
ought' know, I guess, ought'n he? Zey know sight more about zee weader
than most. I guess zat's deir trade,--an't I right?'

Speaking the tongue of New York evidently injected him with a personal
emotion that would not have been suspected, even, in the Frenchman. The
strange blankness and impersonality had gone, or rather it had _woken
up_, if one may so describe this phenomenon. He now looked at me with
awakened eyes, coldly, judicially, fixedly. They were faceted eyes--the
eyes of the forty-eight States of the Union. Considering he had crushed
me enough, no doubt, he began talking about Paris, just as he had done
in french. The one thing linguistically he had brought away from the
United States intact was an american accent of almost alarming
perfection. Whatever word or phrase he knew, in however mutilated a
form, had this stamp of colloquialism and air of being the real thing.
He spoke english with a careless impudence at which I was not surprised;
but the powerful consciousness of the authentic nature of his _accent_
made him still more insolently heedless of the faults of his speech, it
seemed, and rendered him immune from all care as to the correctness of
the mere english. He was evidently to the full the american, or
anglo-saxon american, state of mind: a colossal disdain for everything
that does not possess in one way or another an american accent. My
english, grammatically regular though it was, lacking the american
accent was but a poor vehicle for thought compared with his most
blundering sentence.

Before going further I must make quite clear that I have no dislike of
the american way of accenting english. American possesses an indolent
vigour and dryness which is a most cunning arm when it snarls out its
ironies. That accent is the language of Mark Twain, and is the tongue,
at once nave and cynical, of a thousand inimitable humourists. To my
mind it is a better accent than the sentimental whimsicality of the
Irish.

An illusion of superiority, at the expense of citizens of other states,
the American shares with the Englishman. So the 'God's Own Country'
attitude of some Americans is more anglo-saxon than their blood. I have
met many outlandish Americans, from such unamerican cities as Odessa,
Trieste and Barcelona. America had done them little good, they tended
to become dreamers, drunken with geographical immensities and
opportunities they had never had. This man at once resembled and was
different from them. The reason for this difference, I concluded, was
explained when he informed me that he was a United States citizen. I
believed him on the spot, unreservedly. Some air of security in him that
only such a ratification can give convinced me.

He did not tell me at once. Between his commencing to speak in english
and his announcing his citizenship, came an indetermined phase in our
relations. During this phase he knew what he possessed, but he knew I
was not yet aware of it. This caused him to make some allowance; since,
undivulged, this fact was, for me at least, not yet a full fact. He was
constrained, but the situation had not yet, he felt, fully matured.

In the same order as in our conversation in french, we progressed then,
from the weather topic (a delicate subject with us) to Paris. Our
acquaintance was by this time--scarcely ten minutes had
elapsed--painfully ripe. I already felt instinctively that certain
subjects of conversation were to be avoided. I knew already what shade
of expression would cause suspicion, what hatred, and what snorting
disdain. He, for his part, evidently with the intention of eschewing a
subject fraught with dangers, did not once speak of England. It was as
though England were a subject that no one could expect him to keep his
temper about. Should any one, as I did, come from England, he would
naturally resent being reminded of it. The other, obviously, would be
seeking to take an unfair advantage of him. In fact for the moment the
assumption was--that was the only issue from this difficulty--that I was
an American.

'Guess you' goin' to Spain?' he said. 'Waal, Americans are not like'
very much in that country. That country, sir, is barb'rous; you _kant_
believe how behind in everything that country is! All you have to do is
to _look_ smart there to make money. No need to worry there. No, by
gosh! Just sit round and ye'll do bett' dan zee durn dagos!'

The american citizenship wiped out the repulsive fact of his southern
birth, otherwise, being a Gascon, he would have been almost a dago
himself.

'In Guadalquiveer--wall--kind of state-cap'tle, some manzanas, a bunch
shacks, get me?--waal----'

I make these sentences of my neighbour's much more lucid than they in
reality were. But he now plunged into this obscure and whirling idiom
with a story to tell. The story was drowned; but I gathered it told of
how, travelling in a motor car, he could find no petrol anywhere in a
town of some importance. He was so interested in the telling of this
story that I was thrown a little off my guard, and once or twice showed
that I did not quite follow him. I did not understand his english, that
is what unguardedly I showed. He finished his story rather abruptly.
There was a deep silence.--It was after this silence that he divulged
the fact of his american citizenship.

And now things began to wear at once an exceedingly gloomy and
unpromising look.

With the revelation of this staggering fact I lost at one blow all the
benefit of that convenient fiction in which we had temporarily
indulged--namely, that I was American. It was now incumbent upon him to
adopt an air of increased arrogance. The representative of the United
States--there was no evading it, that was the dignity that the
evulgation of his legal nationality imposed on him. All compromise, all
courteous resolve to ignore painful facts, was past. Things must stand
out in their true colours, and men too.

As a result of this heightened attitude, he appeared to doubt the
sincerity or exactitude of everything I said. His beard bristled round
his drawling mouth, his thumbs sought his arm-pits, his varnished
patterned shoes stood up erect and aggressive upon his heels. An
insidious attempt on my part to induct the conversation back into
french, unhappily detected, caused in him an alarming indignation. I was
curious to see the change that would occur in my companion if I could
trap him into using again his native speech. The sensation of the
humbler tongue upon his lips would have, I was sure, an immediate
effect. The perfidy of my intention only gradually dawned upon him. He
seemed taken aback. For a few minutes he was silent as though stunned.
The subtleties, the _ironies_ to which the American is exposed!

'Oui, c'est vrai,' I went on, taking a frowning, business-like air,
affecting a great absorption in the subject we were discussing, and to
have overlooked the fact that I had changed to french, 'les Espagnols
ont du chic  se chausser. D'ailleurs, c'est tout ce qu'ils savent, en
fait de toilette. C'est les Amricains surtout qui savent s'habiller!'

His eyes at this became terrible. He had seen through the _mange_, had
he not: and now _par surcrot de perfidie_, was I not _flattering_
him--flattering Americans; and above all, praising their way of
dressing! His cigar protruded from the right-hand corner of his mouth.
He now with a gnashing and rolling movement conveyed it, in a series of
revolutions, to the left-hand corner. He eyed me with a most unorthodox
fierceness. In the language of his adopted land, but with an imported
wildness in the dry figure that he must affect, he ground out, spitting
with it the moist dbris of the cigar:

'Yes, _sirr_, and that's more'n zee durn English do!'

No doubt, in his perfect americanism--and at this ticklish moment, his
impeccable accent threatened by an unscrupulous foe, who was attempting
to stifle it temporarily--a definite analogy arose in his mind. The
Redskin and his wiles, the hereditary and cunning foe of the american
citizen, came vividly perhaps to his mind. Yes, wiles of that familiar
sort were being used against him, Sioux-like, Blackfeet-like manoeuvres.
He must meet them as the american citizen had always met them. He had at
length overcome the Sioux and Cherokee. He turned on me a look as though
I had been unmasked, and his accent became more raucous and formidable.
The elemental that he contained and that often woke in him, I expect,
manifested itself in his american accent, the capital vessel of his
vitality.

After another significant pause he brusquely chose a new subject of
conversation. It was a subject upon which, it was evident, he was
persuaded that it would be quite impossible for us to agree. He took a
long draught of the powerful fluid served to each diner. I disagreed
with him at first out of politeness. But as he seemed resolved to work
himself up slowly into a national passion, I changed round, and agreed
with him. For a moment he glared at me. He felt at bay before this
dreadful subtlety to which his americanism exposed him: then he warily
changed his position in the argument, taking up the point of view he had
begun by attacking.

We changed about alternately for a while. It was a most diverting game.
At one time in taking my new stand, and asserting something, either I
had changed too quickly, or he had not done so quite quickly enough. At
all events, when he began speaking he found himself _agreeing_ with me.
This was a breathless moment. It was very close quarters indeed. I felt
as one does at a show, standing on the same chair with an
uncertain-tempered person. With an anxious swiftness I threw myself into
the opposite opinion. The situation, for that time at least, was saved.
A moment more, and we should have fallen on each other, or rather, he on
me.

He buried his face again in the sinister potion in front of him, and
consumed the last vestiges of the fearful food at his elbow. During
these happenings we had not been interrupted. A dark figure, that of a
Spaniard, I thought, had passed into the kitchen along the passage. From
within the muffled uproar of the machinery of the kitchen reached us
uninterruptedly.

He now with a snarling drawl engaged in a new discussion on another and
still more delicate subject. I renewed my tactics, he his. Subject after
subject was chosen. His volte-face, his change of attitude in the
argument, became less and less leisurely. But my skill in reversing
remained more than a match for his methods. At length, whatever I said
he said the opposite, brutally and at once. At last, pushing his chair
back violently with a frightful grating sound, and thrusting both his
hands in his pockets--at this supreme moment the sort of blank look came
back to his face again--he said slowly:

'Waal, zat may be so--you say so--waal! But what say you to England,
hein? England! England! England!'

At last it had come! He repeated 'England' as though that word in itself
were a question--an unanswerable question. 'England' was a form of
question that a man could only ask when every device of normal courtesy
had been exhausted. But it was a thing hanging over every Englishman, at
any moment he might be silenced with it.

'England! ha! England! England!' he repeated, as though hypnotized by
this word; as though pressing me harder and harder, and finally 'chawing
me up' with the mere utterance of it.

'Why, mon vieux!' I said suddenly, getting up, 'how about the South of
France, for that matter--the South of France! the South of France! The
bloody Midi, your home-land, you poor bum!' I gnashed my teeth as I said
this.

If I had said 'America,' he would have responded at once, no doubt. But
'the South of France!' A look of unspeakable vagueness came into his
face. The South of France! This was at once without meaning, a stab in
the back, an unfair blow, the sort of thing that was not said, some sort
of paralysing nonsense, that robbed a man of the power of speech. I
seemed to have drawn a chilly pall with glove-tight tightness suddenly
over the whole of his mind.

I fully expected to be forced to fight my way out of the salle  manger,
and was wondering whether his pugilistic methods would be those of
Chicago or Toulouse--whether he would skip round me, his fists working
like piston rods, or whether he would plunge his head into the pit of my
stomach, kick me on the chin and follow up with the 'coup de la
fourchette,' which consists in doubling up one's fist, but allowing the
index and little finger to protrude, so that they may enter the eyes on
either side of the bridge of the nose.

But I had laid him out quite flat. The situation was totally outside his
compass. And the word 'bum' lay like a load of dough upon his spirit. My
last word had been _american_! As I made for the door, he sat first
quite still. Then, slightly writhing on his chair, with a painful
slowness, his face passed through a few degrees of the compass in an
attempt to reach me in spite of the spell I had laid upon him. The fact
of my leaving the room seemed to find him still more unprepared. My
answer to his final apostrophe was a blow below the belt: I was
following it up by vanishing from the ring altogether, as though the
contest were over, while he lay paralysed in the centre of the picture.
It had never occurred to him, apparently, that I might perhaps get up
and leave the dining-room.--Sounds came from him, words too--hybrid
syllables lost on the borderland between french and english, which
appeared to signify protest, pure astonishment, alarmed question. But I
had disappeared. I got safely into the kitchen. I sank into that deep
hum of internal life, my eye glittering with the battle light of humour.

In the act of taking my candle from the hand of a chambermaid, I heard a
nasal roar behind me. I mounted the stairs three steps at a time, the
hotel boy at my heels, and the chambermaid breathlessly rushing up in
his rear. Swiftly ushered into my room, I thrust outside the panting
servants and locked and bolted the door.

Flinging myself on the bed, my blond poll rolling about in ecstasy upon
the pillow, I howled like an exultant wolf. This penetrating howl of my
kind--the humorous kind--shook the cardboard walls of the room, rattled
the stucco frames; but the tumult beneath of the hotel staff must have
prevented this sound from getting farther than the area of the bedrooms.
My orgasm left me weak, and I lay conventionally mopping my brow, and
affectedly gasping. Then, as usually happened with me, I began
sentimentally pitying my victim. Poor little chap! My conduct had been
unpardonable! I had brutalized this tender flower of the prairies of the
West! Why had I dragged in the 'bloody Midi' after all? It was too bad
altogether. I had certainly behaved very badly. I had a movement to go
down immediately and apologize to him, a tear of laughter still hanging
from a mournful lash.

My room was at the back. The window looked on to the kitchen; it was
just over the stairs leading to the bedrooms. I now got up, for I
imagined I heard some intemperate sound thrusting into the general mle
of mechanical noise. From the naturally unsavoury and depressing
porthole of my room, immediately above the main cauldrons, I was able, I
found, to observe my opponent in the murky half-court, half-kitchen,
beneath. There he was: by pointing my ear down I could catch sometimes
what he was saying. But I found that the noise I had attributed to him
had been my fancy only.

Inspected from this height he looked very different. I had not till then
seen him on his feet. His yankee clothes, evidently cut beneath his
direction by a gascon tailor, made him look as broad as he was long.
His violently animated leanness imparted a precarious and toppling
appearance to his architecture. He was performing a war-dance in this
soft national armour just at present, beneath the sodden eyes of the
proprietress. It had shuffling, vehement, jazz elements, aided by the
gesticulation of the Gaul. This did not seem the same man I had been
talking to before. He evidently, in this enchanted hotel, possessed a
variety of personalities. It was _not_ the same man. Somebody else had
leapt into his clothes--which hardly fitted the newcomer--and was
carrying on his quarrel. The original and more imposing man had
disappeared. I had slain him. This little fellow had taken up his
disorganized and overwrought life at that precise moment and place where
I had left him knocked out in the dining-room, at identically the same
pitch of passion, only with fresher nerves, and with the same racial
sentiments as the man he had succeeded.

He was talking in spanish--much more correctly than he did in english.
She listened with her leaden eyes crawling swiftly and sullenly over his
person, with an air of angrily and lazily making an inventory. In his
fiery attack on the depths of languor behind which her spirit lived, he
would occasionally turn and appeal to one of the nearest of the
servants, as though seeking corroboration of something. Of what crime
was I being accused? I muttered rapid prayers to the effect that that
sultry reserve of the proprietress might prove impregnable. Otherwise I
might be cast bodily out of the Fonda del Mundo, and, in my present
worn-out state, have to seek another and distant roof. I knew that I was
the object of his discourse. What effectively could be said about me on
so short an acquaintance? He would, though, certainly affirm that I was
a designing ruffian of some sort; such a person as no respectable hotel
would consent to harbour, or if it did, would do so at its peril.
Probably he might be saying it was my intention to hold up the hotel
later on, or he might have influence with the proprietress, be a regular
customer and old friend. He might only be saying, 'I object to that
person; I cannot express to you how I object to that person! I have
never objected to any one to the same fearful degree. All my organs boil
at the thought of him. I cannot explain to you how that island organism
tears my members this way and that. Out with this abomination! Oh! out
with it before I die at your feet from the fever of my _mauvais sang_!'

That personal appeal might prove effective. I went to bed with a feeling
of extreme insecurity. I thought that, if nothing else happened, he
might set fire to the hotel. But in spite of the dangers by which I was,
manifestly, beset in this ill-starred establishment, I slept soundly
enough. In the morning an overwhelming din shook me, and I rose with
the stink of southern food in my nose.

Breakfast passed off without incident. I concluded that the Complete
American was part of the night-time aspect of the Fonda del Mundo and
had no part in its more normal day-life.

The square was full of peasants, the men wearing dark blouses and the
bret basque. Several groups were sitting near me in the salle  manger.
An intricate arrangement of chairs and tables, like an extensive
man-trap, lay outside the hotel, extending a little distance into the
square. From time to time one or more clumsy peasant would appear to
become stuck or somehow involved in these iron contrivances. They would
then, with becoming fatalism, sit down and call for a drink. Such was
the impression conveyed, at least, by their embarrassed and reluctant
movements in choosing a seat. I watched several parties come into this
dangerous extension of the Fonda del Mundo. The proprietress would come
out occasionally and stare moodily at them. She never looked at me.

A train would shortly leave for the frontier. I bade farewell to the
patrona, and asked her if she could recommend me a hotel in Burgos or in
Pontaisandra. When I mentioned Pontaisandra, she said at once, 'You are
going to Pontaisandra?' With a sluggish ghost of a smile she turned to a
loitering servant and then said, 'Yes, you can go to the Burgaleza at
Pontaisandra. That is a good hotel.' They both showed a few ragged
discoloured teeth, only appearing in moments of crafty burlesque. The
night before I had told her that my destination was Pontaisandra, and
she had looked at me steadfastly and resentfully, as though I had said
that my destination was Paradise, and that I intended to occupy the seat
reserved for her. But that was the night before: and now Pontaisandra
appeared to mean something different to her. The episode of the
supper-room the night before I now regarded as an emanation of that
place. The Fonda del Mundo was a mysterious hotel, though in the day its
secrets seemed more obvious. I imagined it inhabited by solitary and
hallucinated beings, like my friend the Perfect American--or such as I
myself might have become. The large kitchen staff was occupied far into
the night in preparing a strange and excessive table d'hte. The
explanation of this afforded in the morning by the sight of the crowding
peasants did not efface that impression of midnight though it mitigated
it. Perhaps the dreams caused by its lunches, the visions conjured up by
its suppers, haunted the place. That was the spirit in which I
remembered my over-night affair.

When eventually I started for the frontier, hoping by the inhalation of
a picadura to dispose my tongue to the ordeal of framing passable
castilian, I did not realize that the american adventure was the
progenitor of other adventures; nor that the dreams of the Fonda del
Mundo were to go with me into the heart of Spain.


PART III

Burgos, I had intended, should be my first stopping place. But I decided
afterwards that San Sebastian and Leon would be better.

This four days' journeying was an _entr'acte_ filled with appropriate
music; the lugubrious and splendid landscapes of Castile, the extremely
self-conscious, pedantic and independent spirit of its inhabitants, met
with en route. Fate was marking time, merely. With the second day's
journey I changed trains and dined at Venta de Baos, the junction for
the line that branches off in the direction of Palencia, Leon and the
galician country.

While travelling, the spanish peasant has a marked preference for the
next compartment to his own. No sooner has the train started, than, one
after another, heads, arms, and shoulders appear above the wooden
partition. There are times when you have all the members of the
neighbouring compartment gazing with the melancholy stolidity of cattle
into your own. In the case of some theatrical savage of the Sierras, who
rears a dishevelled head before you in a pose of fierce abandon, and
hangs there smoking like a chimney, you know that it may be some
grandiose recoil of pride that prevents him from remaining in an
undignified position huddled in a narrow carriage. In other cases it is
probably a simple conviction that the occupants of other compartments
are likely to be more interesting.

The whole way from Venta de Baos to Palencia the carriage was dense
with people. Crowds of peasants poured into the train, loaded with their
heavy vivid horse-rugs, gaudy bundles and baskets; which profusion of
mere matter, combined with their exuberance, made the carriage appear
positively to swarm with animal life. They would crowd in at one little
station and out at another a short way along the line, where they were
met by hordes of their relations awaiting them. They would rush or swing
out of the door, charged with their property or recent purchases, and
catch the nearest man or woman of their blood in their arms, with a
turbulence that outdid our Northern people's most vehement occasions.
The waiting group became twice as vital as average mankind upon the
train's arrival, as though so much more blood had poured into their
veins. Gradually we got beyond the sphere of this Fiesta, and in the
small hours of the morning arrived at Leon.

Next day came the final stages of the journey to the Atlantic sea-board.
We arrived within sight of the town that evening, just as the sun was
setting. With its houses of green, rose, and white, in general effect a
faded bouquet, its tints a scarcely coloured reminiscence, it looked
like some oriental city represented in the nerveless tempera of an old
wall. Its bay stretched between hills for many miles to the ocean, which
lay beyond an island of scarcely visible rocks.

On the train drawing up in the central station, the shock troops
furnished by every little ragamuffin caf as well as stately hotel in
the town were hurled against us. I had mislaid the address given me at
Bayonne. I wished to find a hotel of medium luxury. The different
hotel-attendants called hotly out their prices at me. I selected one who
named a sum for board and lodging that only the frenzy of competition
could have fathered, I thought. Also the name of this hotel was, it
seemed to me, the one the patrona at Bayonne had mentioned. I had not
then learnt to connect Burgaleza with Burgos: this was my first long
visit to Spain. With this man I took a cab and was left seated in it at
the door of the station, while he went after the heavy luggage. Now one
by one, the hotel emissaries came up; their fury of a few minutes
before contrasted oddly with their present listless calm. Putting
themselves civilly at my disposition, they thrust forward
matter-of-factly the card of their establishment, adding that they were
sure that I would find out my mistake.

I now felt in a vague manner a tightening of the machinery of Fate--a
certain uneasiness and strangeness, in the march and succession of facts
and impressions, like a trembling of a decrepit motor-bus about to start
again. The interlude was over. After a long delay the hotel tout
returned and we started. My misgivings were of a practical order. The
price named was very low, too low perhaps. But I had found it a capital
plan on former occasions to go to a cheap hotel and pay a few pesetas
more a day for 'extras.' My palate was so conservative, that I found in
any case that my main fare lay outside the spanish menu. Extras are very
satisfactory. You always feel that a single individual has bent over the
extra and carefully cooked it, and that it has not been bought in too
wholesale a manner. I wished to live on extras--a privileged existence:
and extras are much the same in one place as another. So I reassured
myself.

The cabman and the hotel man were discussing some local event. But we
penetrated farther and farther into a dismal and shabby quarter of the
town. My misgivings began to revive. I asked the representative of the
Burgaleza if he were sure that his house was a clean and comfortable
house. He dismissed my doubtful glance with a gesture full of assurance.
'It's a splendid place! You wait and see; we shall be there directly,'
he added.

We suddenly emerged into a broad and imposing street, on one side of
which was a public garden, 'El Paseo,' I found out afterwards, the Town
Promenade. Gazing idly at a palatial white building with a hotel omnibus
drawn up before it, to my astonishment I found our driver also stopping
at its door. A few minutes later, still scarcely able to credit my eyes,
I got out and entered this palace, noticing 'Burgaleza' on the board of
the omnibus as I passed. I followed the tout, having glimpses in passing
of a superbly arrayed table with serviettes that were each a work of
art, that one of the splendid guests entertained at this establishment
(should I not be among them?) would soon haughtily pull to pieces to
wipe his mouth on--tables groaning beneath gilded baskets tottering with
a lavish variety of choice fruit. Then came a long hall, darkly
panelled, at the end of which I could see several white-capped men
shouting fiercely and clashing knives, women answering shrilly and
juggling with crashing dishes; a kitchen--the most diabolically noisy
and malodorous I had ever approached. We went straight on towards it.
Were we going through it? At the very threshold we stopped, and opening
the panel-like door in the wall, the porter disappeared with my
portmanteau, appearing again without my portmanteau, and hurried away.
At this moment my eye caught something else, a door ajar on the other
side of the passage and a heavy, wooden, clothless table, with several
squares of bread upon it, and a fork or two. In Spain there is a sort of
bread for the rich, and a forbidding juiceless papery bread for the
humble. The bread on that table was of the latter category, far more
like paper than that I had had at Bayonne.

Suddenly the truth flashed upon me. With a theatrical gesture I dashed
open again the panel and passed into the pitchy gloom within. I struck a
match. It was a cupboard, quite windowless, with just enough room for a
little bed; I was standing on my luggage. No doubt in the room across
the passage I should be given some cod soup, permanganate of potash and
artificial bread. Then, extremely tired after my journey, I should crawl
into my kennel, the pandemonium of the kitchen at my ear for several
hours.

In the central hall I found the smiling proprietor. He seemed to regard
his boarders generally as a gentle joke, and those who slept in the
cupboard near the kitchen a particularly good but rather low one. I
informed him that I would pay the regular sum for a day's board and
lodging, and said I must have another room. A valet accepted the
responsibility of seeing that I was given a bedroom. The landlord walked
slowly away, his iron-grey side-whiskers, with their traditional air of
respectability, giving a disguised look to his rogue's face. I was
transferred from one cupboard to another; or rather, I had exchanged a
cupboard for a wardrobe--reduced to just half its size by a thick layer
of skirts and cloaks, twenty deep, that protruded from all four walls.
But still the little open space left in the centre ensured a square foot
to wash and dress in, with a quite distinct square foot or two for
sleep. And it was upstairs.

A quarter of an hour later, wandering along a dark passage on the way
back to the hotel lounge, a door opened in a very violent and living way
that made me start and look up, and a short rectangular figure, the size
of a big square trunk, issued forth, just ahead of me. I recognized this
figure fragmentarily--first, with a cold shudder, I recognized an
excrescence of hair; then with a jump I recognized a hat held in its
hand; then, with an instinctive shrinking, I realized that I had seen
these flat traditional pseudo-american shoulders before. With a really
comprehensive throb of universal emotion, I then recognized the whole
man.

It was the implacable figure of my neighbour at dinner, of the Fonda del
Mundo.

He moved along before me with wary rigidity, exhibiting none of the
usual signs of recognition. He turned corners with difficulty, a rapid
lurch precipitating him into the new path indicated when he reached the
end of the wall. On the stairs he appeared to get stuck in much the way
that a large american trunk would, borne by a sweating porter. At last
he safely reached the hall. I was a yard or two behind him. He stopped
to light a cigar, still taking up an unconscionable amount of space. I
manoeuvred round him, and gained one of the doors of the salle  manger.
But as I came within his range of vision, I also became aware that my
presence in the house was not a surprise to this sandwich-man of Western
citizenship. His eye fastened upon me with ruthless bloodshot
indignation, an eye-blast as it were crystallized from the episode at
Bayonne. But he was so dead and inactive that he seemed a phantom of his
former self: and in all my subsequent dealings with him, this feeling of
having to deal with a ghost, although a particularly mischievous one,
persisted. If before my anger at the trick that had been played on me
had dictated a speedy change of lodging, now my anxiety to quit this
roof had, naturally, an overwhelming incentive.

After dinner I went forth boldly in search of the wonderful american
enemy. Surely I had been condemned, in some indirect way, by him, to the
cupboard beside the kitchen. No dungeon could have been worse. Had I
then known, as I learnt later, that he was the owner of this hotel, the
mediaeval analogy would have been still more complete. He now had me in
his castle.

I found him seated, in sinister conjunction with the proprietor or
manager, as I supposed he was, in the lobby of the hotel. He turned
slightly away as I came up to him, with a sulky indifference due to
self-restraint. Evidently the time for action was not ripe. There was no
pretence of not recognizing me. As though our conversation in the Fonda
del Mundo had taken place a half-hour before, we acknowledged in no way
a consciousness of the lapse of time, only of the shifted scene.

'Well, colonel,' I said, adopting an allocution of the United States,
'taking the air?'

He went on smoking.

'This is a nice little town.'

'Vous vous plaisez ici, monsieur? C'est bien!' he replied in french, as
though I were not worthy even to _hear_ his american accent, and that,
if any communication was to be held with me, french must serve.

'I shall make a stay of some weeks here,' I said, with indulgent
defiance.

'Oui?'

'But not in this hotel.'

He got up with something of his Bayonne look about him.

'No, I shouldn't. You might not find it a very comfortable hotel,' he
said vehemently in his mother-tongue.

He walked away hurriedly, as a powder magazine might walk away from a
fuse, if it did not, for some reason, want to blow up just then.

That was our last encounter that day. The upstairs and less dreadful
dungeon with its layer of clothes would have been an admirable place for
a murder. Not a sound would have penetrated its woollen masses and the
thick spanish walls enclosing it. But the next morning I was still
alive. I set out after breakfast to look for new quarters. My practised
eye had soon measured the inconsistencies of most of the Pensions of the
town. But a place in the Calle Real suited me all right, and I decided
to stop there for the time. There too the room was only a cupboard. But
it was a human cupboard and not a clothes cupboard. It was one of the
four tributaries of the dining-room. My bedroom door was just beside my
place at table--I had simply to step out of bed in the right direction,
and there was the morning coffee. The extracting of my baggage from the
Burgaleza was easy enough, except that I was charged a heavy toll. I
protested with the manager for some time, but he smiled and smiled.
'Those are our charges!' He shrugged his shoulders, dismissed the
matter, and smiled absent-mindedly when I renewed my objections. As at
Bayonne, there was no sign of the enemy in the morning. But I was not so
sure this time that I had seen the last of him.

That evening I came amongst my new fellow-pensionnaires for the first
time. This place had recommended itself to me, partly because the
boarders would probably speak castilian, and so be practice for me. They
were mostly not Gallegos, at least, who are the Bretons of Spain, and
afford other Spaniards much amusement by their way of expressing
themselves. My presence caused no stir whatever. Just as a stone dropped
in a small pond which has long been untouched, and has an opaque coat of
green decay, slips dully to the bottom, cutting a neat little hole on
the surface, so I took my place at the bottom of the table. But as the
pond will send up its personal odour at this intrusion, so these people
revealed something of themselves in the first few minutes, in an
illusive and immobile way. They must all have lived in that Pension
together for an inconceivable length of time. My neighbour, however,
promised to be a little El Dorado of spanish; a small mine of gossip,
grammatical rules and willingness to impart these riches. I struck a
deep shaft of friendship into him at once and began work without delay.
Coming from Madrid, this ore was at least 30 carat, thoroughly thetaed
and castilian stuff that he talked. What I gave him in exchange was
insignificant. He knew several phrases in french and english, such as
'If you please,' and 'fine day'; I merely confirmed him in these. Every
day he would hesitatingly say them over, and I would assent, 'quite
right,' and 'very well pronounced.' He was a tall, bearded man, head of
the orchestra of the principal Caf in the town. Two large cuffs lay on
either side of his plate during meals, the size of serviettes. Out of
them his hands emerged without in any way disturbing them, and served
him with his food as far as they could. But he had to remain with his
mouth quite near his plate, for the cuffs would not move a hair's
breadth. This somewhat annoyed me, as it muffled a little the steady
flow of spanish, and even sometimes was a cause of considerable waste.
Once or twice without success I attempted to move the cuff on my side
away from the plate. Their ascendancy over him and their indolence was
profound.

But I was not content merely to work him for his mother-tongue inertly,
as it were. I wished to see it in use: to watch this stream of castilian
working the mill of general conversation, for instance. Although willing
enough for himself, he had no chance in this Pension. On the third day,
however, he invited me to come round to the Caf after dinner and hear
him play. Our dinners overlapped, he leaving early. So the meal over, I
strolled round, alone.

The Caf Pelayo was the only really parisian establishment in the town.
It was the only one where the Madrilenos and the other Spaniards proper,
resident in Pontaisandra, went regularly. I entered, peering round in a
business-like way at its monotonously mirrored walls and gilded ceiling.
I took up an advantageous position, and settled down to study the idiom.

In a lull of the music, my chef d'orchestre came over to me, and
presented me to a large group of people, friends of his. It was an easy
matter, from that moment, to become acquainted with everybody in the
Caf.

I did not approach Spaniards in general, I may say, with any very
romantic emotion. Each man I met possessed equally an ancient and
admirable tongue, however degenerate himself. He often appeared like
some rotten tree, in which a swarm of highly evocative admirable words
had nested. I, like a bee-cultivator, found it my business to transplant
this vagrant swarm to a hive prepared. A language has its habits and
idiosyncrasies just like a species of insect, as my first professor
comfortably explained; its little world of symbols and parts of speech
have to be most carefully studied and manipulated. But above all it is
important to observe their habits and idiosyncrasies, and the pitch and
accent that naturally accompanies them. So I had my hands full.

When the Caf closed, I went home with Don Pedro, chef d'orchestre, to
the Pension. Every evening, after dinner--and at lunch-time as well--I
repaired there. This lasted for three or four days. I now had plenty of
opportunity of talking castilian Spanish. I had momentarily forgotten my
american enemy.

On the fifth evening, I entered the Caf as usual, making towards my
most useful and intelligent group. But then, with a sinking of the
heart, I saw the rectangular form of my ubiquitous enemy, quartered with
an air of demoniac permanence in their midst. A mechanic who finds an
unaccountable lump of some foreign substance stuck in the very heart of
his machinery--what simile shall I use for my dismay? To proceed
somewhat with this image, as this unhappy engineer might dash to the
cranks or organ stops of his machine, so I dashed to several of my
formerly most willing listeners and talkers. I gave one a wrench and
another a screw, but I found that already the machine had become
recalcitrant.

I need not enumerate the various stages of my defeat on that evening. It
was more or less a passive and moral battle, rather than one with any
evident show of the secretly bitter and desperate nature of the
passions engaged. Of course, the inclusion of so many people unavoidably
caused certain brusqueries here and there. The gradual cooling down of
the whole room towards me, the disaffection that swept over the chain of
little drinking groups from that centre of mystical hostility, that soul
that recognized in me something icily antipodean too, no doubt; the
immobile figure of America's newest and most mysterious child,
apparently emitting these strong waves without effort, as naturally as a
fountain: all this, with great vexation, I recognized from the moment of
the intrusion of his presence. It almost seemed as though he had stayed
away from this haunt of his foreseeing what would happen. He had waited
until I had comfortably settled myself and there was something palpable
to attack. His absence may have had some more accidental cause.

What exactly it was, again, he found to say as regards me I never
discovered. As at Bayonne, I saw the mouth working and experienced the
social effects, only. No doubt it was the subtlest and most electric
thing that could be found; brief, searching and annihilating. Perhaps
something seemingly crude--that I was a spy--may have recommended itself
to his ingenuity. But I expect it was a meaningless blast of
disapprobation that he blew upon me, an eerie and stinging wind of
convincing hatred. He evidently enjoyed a great ascendancy in the Caf
Pelayo. This would be explained no doubt by his commercial prestige. But
it was due, I am sure, even more to his extraordinary character--moulded
by the sublime force of his illusion. His inscrutable immobility, his
unaccountable self-control (for such a person, and feeling as he did
towards me), were of course the american or anglo-saxon phlegm and
sang-froid as reflected, or interpreted, in this violent human mirror.

I left the Caf earlier than usual, before the chef d'orchestre. It was
the following morning at lunch when I next saw him. He was embarrassed.
His eyes wavered in my direction, fascinated and inquisitive. He found
it difficult to realize that his respect for me had to end and give
place to another feeling.

'You know Monsieur de Valmore?' he asked.

'That little ape of a Frenchman, do you mean?'

I knew this description of my wonderful enemy was only vulgar and
splenetic. But I was too discouraged to be more exact.

This way of describing Monsieur de Valmore appeared to the chef
d'orchestre so eccentric, apart from its vulgarity, that I lost at once
in Don Pedro's sympathy. He told me, however, all about him; details
that did not touch on the real constituents of this life.

'He owns the Burgaleza and many houses in Pontaisandra. Ships, too--Es
Americano,' he added.

Vexations and hindrances of all sorts now made my stay in Pontaisandra
useless and depressing. Don Pedro had generally almost finished when we
came to dinner, and I was forced to close down, so to say, the mine.
Nothing more was to be extracted, at length, except disobliging
monosyllables. The rest of the boarders remained morose and
inaccessible. I went once more to the Caf Pelayo, but the waiters even
seemed to have come beneath the hostile spell. The new Caf I chose
yielded nothing but gallego chatter, and the garon was not talkative.

There was little encouragement to try another Pension and stay on in
Pontaisandra. I made up my mind to go to Corunna. This would waste time
and I was short of money. But there is more gallego than spanish spoken
in Galicia, even in the cities. Too easily automatic a conquest as it
may seem, Monsieur de Valmore had left me nothing but the Gallegos. I
was not getting the practice in spanish I needed, and this sudden
deprivation of what I had mainly come into Spain for, poisoned for me
the whole air of the place. The task of learning this tiresome language
began to be burdensome. I even considered whether I should not take up
gallego instead. But I decided finally to go to Corunna. On the
following day, some hours before the time for the train, I paraded the
line of streets towards the station, with the feeling that I was no
longer there. The place seemed cooling down beneath my feet and growing
prematurely strange. But the miracle happened. It declared itself with a
smooth suddenness. A more exquisite checkmate never occurred in any
record of such warfare.

The terrible ethnological difference that existed between Monsieur de
Valmore and myself up till that moment, showed every sign of ending in a
weird and revolting defeat for me. The 'moment' I refer to was that in
which I turned out of the High Street, into the short hilly avenue where
the post office lay. I thought I would go up to the Correo and see for
the last time if a letter for which I had been waiting had arrived.

On turning the corner I at once became aware of three anomalous figures
walking just in front of me. They were all three of the proportions
known in America as 'husky.' When I say they were walking, I should
describe their movements more accurately as _wading_--wading through the
air, evidently towards the post office. Their carriage was slightly
rolling, like a ship under way. They occasionally bumped into each
other, but did not seem to mind this. Yet no one would have mistaken
these three young men for drunkards. But I daresay you will have already
guessed. It would under other circumstances have had no difficulty in
entering my head. As it was, there seemed a certain impediment of
consciousness or inhibition with me which prevented me from framing to
myself the word 'American.' These three figures were three Americans!
This seems very simple, I know: but this very ordinary fact trembled and
lingered before completely entering into my consciousness. The extreme
rapidity of my mind in another sense--in seeing all that this fact, if
verified, might signify to me--may have been responsible for that. Then
one of them, on turning his head, displays the familiar features of
Taffany, a Mississippi friend of mine. I simultaneously recognized
Blauenfeld and Morton, the other two members of a trio. A real trio,
like real twins, is rarer than one thinks. This one was the remnant of a
quartet, however. I had met it first in Paris. Poor Bill (Borden
Henneker) was killed in a motor accident. These three had mourned him
with insatiable drinking, to which I had been a party for some days the
year before. And my first feeling was complicated with a sense of their
forlornness, as I recognized their three backs, rolling heavily and
mournfully.

In becoming, from any three Americans, three friends of mine, they
precipitated in an immediate inrush of the most full-blooded hope the
sense of what might be boldly anticipated from this meeting. Two steps
brought me up with them: my cordiality if anything exceeded theirs.

'Why, if it isn't Cairo! Look at this! Off what Christmas-tree did you
drop? Gee, I'm glad to see you, Kire!' shouted Taffany. He was the
irrepressible Irishman of the three.

'Why, it's you, that's swell. We looked out for you in Paris. You'd just
left. How long have you been round here?' Blauenfeld ground out
cordially. He was the rich melancholy one of the three.

'Come right up to the Correo and interpret for us, Cairo. You know the
idioma, I guess. Feldie's a washout,' said Morton, who was the great
debauchee of the three.

Optimism, consciousness of power (no wonder! I reflected) surged out of
them, my simple-hearted friends. Ah, the kindness! the _overwhelming_
kindness. I bathed voluptuously in this american greeting--this real
american greeting. Nothing naturalized about _that_. At the same time I
felt almost awe at the thought of the dangerous nationality. These good
fellows I knew and liked so well, seemed for the moment to have some
intermixture of the strangeness of Monsieur de Valmore. However, I
measured with enthusiasm their egregious breadth of shoulder, the
exorbitance of their 'pants.' I examined with some disappointment these
signs of nationality. How english they looked, compared to de Valmore.
They were by no means american enough for my taste. Had they appeared in
a star-stripe swallow-tail suit like the cartoons of Uncle Sam, I should
not have been satisfied.

But I felt rather like some ambitious eastern prince who, having been
continually defeated in battle by a neighbour because of the presence in
the latter's army of a half-dozen elephants, suddenly becomes possessed
of a couple of dozen himself.

I must have behaved oddly. I enquired anxiously about their plans. They
were not off at once? No. That was capital. I was most awfully glad that
they were not departing at once. I was glad that they had decided to
stop. They had booked their rooms? Yes. That was good. So they were here
for the night at all events? That was as it should be! You should always
stop the night. Yes, I would with very great pleasure interpret for them
at the Correo.--I cherished my three Americans as no Americans before
have ever been cherished. I was inclined to shelter them as though they
were perishable, to see that they didn't get run over, or expose
themselves unwisely to the midday sun. Each transatlantic peculiarity
of speech or gesture I received with something approaching exultation.
Morton was soon persuaded that I was tight. All thoughts of Corunna
disappeared. I did not ask at the Poste Restante for my letter.

First of all, I took my trio into a little Caf near the post office.
There I told them briefly what was expected of them.

'You have a most distinguished compatriot here,' I said.

'Oh. An American?' Morton asked seriously.

'Well, he deserves to be. But he began too late in life, I think. He
hails from the southern part of France, and americanism came to him as a
revelation when youth had already passed. He repented sincerely of his
misguided early nationality. But his years spent as a Frenchman have
left their mark. In the meantime, he won't leave Englishmen alone. He
persecutes them, apparently, wherever he finds them.'

'He mustn't do that!' Taffany said with resolution. 'That won't do at
all.'

'Why, no, I guess he mustn't do that. What makes him want to do that?
What's biting him anyway? Britishers are harmless enough, aren't they?'
said Blauenfeld.

'I knew you'd look at the matter in that light,' I said. 'It's a rank
abuse of authority; I knew it would be condemned at headquarters. Now if
you could only be present, unseen, and witness how I, for instance, am
oppressed by this fanatic fellow-citizen of yours, and if you could
issue forth, and reprove him, and tell him not to do it again, I should
bless the day on which you were born in America.'

'I wasn't born there anyway,' said Morton. 'But that's of no importance
I suppose. Well, unfold your plan, Cairo.'

'I don't see yet what we can do. Do you owe the guy any money? How does
it come that he persecutes you like this?' Taffany asked.

'I'm very sorry you should have to complain, Mr. Ker-Orr, of treatment
of that sort--but what sort is it anyway?'

I gave a lurid picture of my tribulations, to the scandal and
indignation of my friends. They at once placed themselves, and with a
humorous modesty their americanism--any quantity of that mixture in
their 'organisms'--at my disposal.

It appeared to me, to start with, of the first importance that Monsieur
de Valmore should not get wind of what had happened. I took my three
Americans cautiously out of the Caf, reconnoitring before allowing them
outside. As their hotel was near the station and not near the enemy's
haunts, I encouraged their going back to it. I also supposed that they
would wish to make some toilet for the evening, and relied on their good
sense to put on their largest clothes, though Taffany was the only one
of the three that seemed at all promising from that point of view. The
scale of his buttocks did assure a certain outlandish girth that would
at once reveal to M. de Valmore the presence of an American.

My army was in excellent form. Robust high spirits possessed them. I
kept them out of the way till nightfall, and then after an early dinner,
by a circuitous route, approached the Caf Pelayo.

Morton was by this time a little screwed: he showed signs that he might
become difficult. He insisted on producing a packet of obscene
photographs, which he held before him fan-wise, like a hand of cards,
some of them upside down. The confused mass of bare legs and arms of the
photographs, distorted by this method of holding them, with some highly
indecent details occurring here and there, produced the effect of a
siamese demon. Blauenfeld was grinning over his shoulder, and seemed
likely to forget the purpose for which he was being brought to the
Pelayo.

'I know that coon,' he insisted, pointing to one of the photos. 'I swear
I know that coon.'

My idea was that the three Americans should enter the Caf Pelayo
without me. There they would establish themselves, and I had told them
where to sit and how to spot their man. They should become acquainted
with Monsieur de Valmore. Almost certainly the latter would approach his
fellow citizens at once. But if there was any ice to break, it must be
broken quickly by Taffany. They must ply him with imitation high-balls
or some other national drink, which they must undertake to mix for him.
For this they could hand the bill to me afterwards. When the ground was
sufficiently prepared, Taffany was to sign to me from the door, and I
would then, after a further interval, put in my appearance.

Morton was kissing one of the photographs. Should he continue to
produce, in season and out of season, his objectionable purchases, and
display them, perhaps, to the customers of the Pelayo, although he might
gain an ill-deserved popularity, he would certainly convey an impression
of a different sort to that planned by me for this all-american evening.
After considerable drunken argument I persuaded him to let me hold the
photographs until the _coup_ had been brought off. That point of
discipline enforced, I sent them forward, sheltering, myself, in an
archway in an adjoining street, and watched them enter the swing door
'ra-raing,' as ordered. But I had the mortification of seeing Morton
fall down as he got inside, tripping, apparently, over the mat. Cursing
this intemperate clown, I moved with some stealth to a small gallego
Caf within sight of the door of the Pelayo to await events.

I fixed my eyes on the brilliantly lighted windows of the Caf. I
imagined the glow of national pride, the spasm of delighted recognition,
that would invade Monsieur de Valmore, on hearing the 'ra-ra' chorus.
Apart from the sentimental reason--its use as a kind of battle-song--was
the practical one that this noisy entrance would at once attract my
enemy's attention. Ten minutes passed. I knew that my friends had
located Monsieur de Valmore, even if they had not begun operations. Else
they would have returned to my place of waiting. I wallowed navely in a
superb indifference. Having set the machinery going, I turned
nonchalantly away, paying no more attention to it. But the stage analogy
affected me, in the sense that I became rather conscious of my
appearance. I must await my cue, but was sure of my reception. I was the
great star that was not expected. I was the unknown quantity. Meantime I
pulled out the photographs and arranged them fantastically as Morton had
done. From time to time I glanced idly down the road. At last I saw
Blauenfeld making towards me, his usual american swing of the body
complicated by rhythmical upheavals of mirth into tramplings, stumblings
and slappings of his thigh. He was being very american in a traditional
way as he approached me. He was a good actor, I thought: I was grateful
to him. I paid for my coffee while he was coming up.

'Is it O.K.? Is he spitted?'

'Yep! we've got him fine! Come and have a look at him.'

'Did he carry out his part of the programme according to my
arrangements?'

'Why, yes. We went right in, and all three spotted him at the same time.
Taffany walked round and showed himself: he was the decoy. Morty and me
coquetted round too, looking arch and _very american_. We could see his
old pop-eyes beginning to stick out of his old head, and his old mouth
watering. At last he could hold himself no longer. He roared at us. We
bellowed at him. Gee, it was a great moment in american history! We just
came together with a hiss and splutter of joy. He called up a trayful of
drinks, to take off the rawness of our meeting. He can't have seen an
American for months. He just gobbled us up. There isn't much left of
poor old Taff. He likes him best and me next. Morty's on all fours at
present, tickling his legs. He doesn't much care for Morty. He's made us
promise to go to his hotel tonight.'

I approached the palmy terrace, my mouth a little drawn and pinched,
eyebrows raised, like a fastidious expert called in at a decisive
moment. I entered the swing door with Blauenfeld, and looked round in a
cold and business-like way, as a doctor might, with the dignified
enquiry, 'Where is the patient?' The patient was there right enough,
surrounded by the nurses I had sent. There he sat in as defenceless a
condition of beatitude as possible. He stared at me with an incredulous
grin at first. I believe that in this moment he would have been willing
to extend to me a temporary pardon--a passe-partout to his Caf for the
evening. He was so happy I became a bagatelle. Had I wished, an
immediate reconciliation was waiting for me. But I approached him with
impassive professional rapidity, my eye fixed on him, already making my
diagnosis. I was so carried away by the figure of the physician, and
adhered so faithfully to the bedside manner that I had decided upon as
the most appropriate for the occasion, that I almost began things by
asking him to put out his tongue. Instead I sat down carefully in front
of him, pulling up my trousers meticulously at the knee. I examined his
flushed and astounded face, his bristling moustache, his bloodshot eyes
in silence. Then I very gravely shook my head.

No man surprised by his most mortal enemy in the midst of an enervating
debauch, or barely convalescent from a bad illness, could have looked
more nonplussed. But Monsieur de Valmore turned with a characteristic
blank childish appeal to his nurses or boon companions for help,
especially to Taffany. Perhaps he was shy or diffident of taking up
actively his great rle, when more truly great actors were present.
Would not the divine America speak, or thunder, through them, at this
intruder? He turned a pair of solemn, appealing, outraged dog's-eyes
upon Taffany. Would not his master repulse and chastise this insolence?

'I guess you don't know each other,' said Taffany. 'Say, Monsieur de
Valmore, here's a friend of mine, Mr. Ker-Orr from London.'

My enemy pulled himself together as though the different parts of his
body all wanted to leap away in different directions, and he found it
all he could do to prevent such disintegration. An attempt at a bow
appeared as a chaotic movement, the various parts of his body could not
come together for it. It had met other movements on the way, and never
became a bow at all. An extraordinary confusion beset his body. The
beginning for a score of actions ran over it blindly and disappeared.

'Guess Mr. de Valmore ain't quite comfortable in that chair, Morty. Give
him yours.'

Then in this chaotic and unusual state he was hustled from one chair to
the other, his muffled expostulations being in french, I noticed.

His racial instinct was undergoing the severest revolution it had yet
known. An incarnation of sacred America herself had commanded him to
take me to his bosom. And, as the scope of my victory dawned upon him,
his personal mortification assumed the proportions of a national
calamity. For the first time since the sealing of his citizenship he
felt that he was only a Frenchman from the Midi--hardly as near an
American, in point of fact, as is even a poor god-forsaken Britisher.

The Soldier of Humour is chivalrous, though implacable. I merely drank a
bottle of champagne at his expense; made Don Pedro and his orchestra
perform three extras, all made up of the most intensely national english
light comedy music. Taffany, for whom Monsieur de Valmore entertained
the maximum of respect, held him solemnly for some time with a detailed
and fabulous enumeration of my virtues. Before long I withdrew with my
forces to riot in barbarous triumph at my friends' hotel for the rest of
the evening.

During the next two days I on several occasions visited the battlefield,
but Monsieur de Valmore had vanished. His disappearance alone would have
been sufficient to tell me that my visit to Spain was terminated. And in
fact two days later I left Pontaisandra with the Americans, parting with
them at Tuy, and myself continuing on the Leon-San Sebastian route back
to France, and eventually to Paris. The important letter which I had
been expecting had arrived at last and contained most unexpected news.
My presence was required, I learnt, in Budapest.

Arrived at Bayonne, I left the railway station with what people
generally regard as a premonition. It was nothing of course but the
usual mechanical working of inference within the fancy. It was already
night-time. Stepping rapidly across the square, I hurried down the
hall-way of the Fonda del Mundo. Turning brusquely and directly into the
dining-room of the inn I gazed round me almost shocked not to find what
I now associated with that particular scene. Although Monsieur de
Valmore had not been there to greet me, as good or better than his
presence seemed to be attending me on my withdrawal from Spain. I still
heard in this naked little room, as the wash of the sea in the shell,
the echo of the first whisperings of his weird displeasure. Next day I
arrived in Paris, my spanish nightmare shuffled off long before I
reached that humdrum spot.




TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Minor variations in spelling and punctuation have been preserved.




[End of A Soldier of Humour, by Wyndham Lewis]
