The Business of Life

"Oh! Perhaps you speak Chinese!" he sneered.

She looked at him gravely, not answering.

He laughed: "Now, Miss Nevers, you have intimated that we are liars and swindlers. Let's see how much you know for an expert! You pretend to be an authority on things Chinese. You will then understand me when I say: 'Jen chih ch'u, Hsing pen shan – '"

"I do understand you, Mr. Waudle," she cut in contemptuously. "You are repeating the 'three-word-classic,' which every school-child in China knows, and it merely means 'Men when born are naturally good.' I think I may qualify in Chinese as far as San Tzu Ching and his nursery rhymes. And I think we have had enough of this dodging – "

The author flushed hotly.

"Do you speak Wenli?" he demanded, completely flustered.

"Do you?" she retorted impatiently.

"I do," he asserted boldly.

"Indeed!"

"I may even say that I speak very fluently the – the literary language of China – or Wenli, as it is commonly called."

"That is odd," she said, "because the literary language of China, commonly called Wenli, is not and never has been spoken. It is only a written language, Mr. Waudle."

The Cubist had now gone quite to pieces. From his colourless mop of bushy hair to the fringe on his ankle-high trousers, he presented a study in deep dejection. Only his round, pale, parrot-like eyes remained on duty, staring unwinkingly at her.

"Were you ever actually in China?" she asked, looking around at him.

The terrified poet feebly pointed to the author of "Black Roses."

"Oh!" she said. "Were you in China, Mr. Waudle, or only in Japan?"

But Mr. Waudle found nothing further to say.

"Because," she said, "in Japan sometimes one is deceived into buying alleged Chinese jades and crystals and porcelains. I am afraid that you were deceived. I hope you were honestly deceived. What you have sold to Mr. Clydesdale as jade is not jade. And the porcelains are not what you represented them to be."

"That's where you make a mistake!" shouted Waudle loudly. "I've had the inscription on every vase translated, and I can prove it! How much of an expert are you? Hey?"

"If you were an expert," she explained wearily, "you would understand that inscriptions on Chinese porcelains are not trustworthy. Even hundreds of years ago forgeries were perpetrated by the Chinese who desired to have their works of art mistaken for still more ancient masterpieces; and so the ancient and modern makers of porcelains inscribed them accordingly. Only when an antique porcelain itself conforms to the inscription it bears do we venture to accept that inscription. Never otherwise."

Waudle, hypnotised, stood blinking at her, bereft of speech, almost of reason.

The poet piped feebly: "It was not our fault! We were brutally deceived in Japan. And, oh! The bitter deception to me! The cruelty of the awakening!" He got up out of his chair; words and gestures were once again at his command; tears streaked his pasty cheeks.

"Miss Nevers! My dear and honoured young lady! You know —you among all women must realise how precious to me is the moon! Sacred, worshipped, adored – desired far more than the desire for gold – yea, than much fine gold! Sweeter, also, than honey in the honeycomb!" he sobbed. "And it was a pair of moon vases, black as midnight, pearl-orbed, lacquered, mystic, wonderful, that lured me – "

"A damned Japanese in Tokio worked them off on us!" broke out the author of "Black Roses," hoarsely. "That was the beginning. What are you going to do about it? You've got us all right, Miss Nevers. The Jap did us. We did the next man. If you want to send us up, I suppose you can! I don't care. I can't keep soul and body together by selling what I write. I tell you I've starved half my life – and when I hear about the stuff that sells – all these damned best sellers – all this cheap fiction that people buy – while they neglect me – it breaks my heart – "

He turned sharply and passed his hand over his face. It was not an attitude; for a fraction of a second it was the real thing. Yet, even while the astonished poet was peeping sideways at his guilty companion, a verse suggested itself to him; and, quite unconsciously, he began to fumble in his pockets for a pencil, while the tears still glistened on his cheeks.

"Mr. Waudle," said Jacqueline, "I am really sorry for you. Because this is a very serious affair."

There was a silence; then she reseated herself at her desk.

"My client, Mr. Clydesdale, is not vindictive. He has no desire to humiliate you publicly. But he is justly indignant. And I know he will insist that you return to him what money he paid you for your collection."

Waudle started dramatically, forgetting his genuine emotion of the moment before.

"Does this rich man mean to ruin me!" he demanded, making his resonant voice tremble.

"On the contrary," she explained gently, "all he wants is the money he paid you."

As that was the only sort of ruin which Mr. Waudle had been fearing, he pressed his clenched fists into his eyes. He had never before possessed so much money. The mere idea of relinquishing it infuriated him; and he turned savagely on Jacqueline, hesitated, saw it was useless. For there remained nothing further to say to such a she-devil of an expert. He had always detested women anyway; whenever he had any money they had gotten it in one way or another. The seven thousand, his share, would have gone the same way. Now it was going back into a fat, rich man's capacious pockets – unless Mrs. Clydesdale might be persuaded to intervene. She could say that she wanted the collection. Why not? She had aided him before in emergencies – unwillingly, it is true – but what of that? No doubt she'd do it again – if he scared her sufficiently.

Jacqueline waited a moment longer; then rose from her desk in signal that the interview was at an end.

Waudle slouched out first, his oblong, evil head hanging in a picturesque attitude of noble sorrow. The Cubist shambled after him, wrapped in abstraction, his round, pale, bird-like eyes partly sheathed under bluish eyelids that seemed ancient and wrinkled.

He was already quite oblivious to his own moral degradation; his mind was completely obsessed by the dramatic spectacle which the despair of his friend had afforded him, and by the idea for a poem with which the episode had inspired him.

He was still absently fishing for a pencil and bit of paper when his companion jogged his elbow:

"If we fight this business, and if that damn girl sets Clydesdale after us, we'll have to get out. But I don't think it will come to that."

"Can you stop her, Adalbert – and retain the money?"

"By God! I'm beginning to think I can. I believe I'll drop in to see Mrs. Clydesdale about it now. She is a very faithful friend of mine," he added gently. "And sometimes a woman will rush in to help a fellow where angels fear to tread."

The poet looked at him, then looked away, frightened.

"Be careful," he said, nervously.

"Don't worry. I know women. And I have an idea."

The poet of the Cubists shrugged; then, with a vague gesture:

"My mistress, the moon," he said, dreamily, "is more to me than any idea on earth or in Heaven."

"Very fine," sneered Waudle, "but why don't you make her keep you in pin money?"

"Adalbert," retorted the poet, "if you wish to prostitute your art, do so. Anybody can make a mistress of his art and then live off her. But the inviolable moon – "

"Oh, hell!" snapped the author of "Black Roses."

And they wandered on into the busy avenue, side by side, Waudle savagely biting his heavy under-lip, both fists rammed deep into his overcoat pockets; the Cubist wandering along beside him, a little derby hat crowning the bunch of frizzled hair on his head, his soiled drab trousers, ankle high, flapping in the wind.

Jacqueline glanced at them as they passed the window at the end of the corridor, and turned hastily away, remembering the old, unhappy days after her father's death, and how once from a window she had seen the poet as she saw him now, frizzled, soiled, drab, disappearing into murky perspective.

She turned wearily to her desk again. A sense of depression had been impending – but she knew it was only the reaction from excitement and fought it nervously.

They brought luncheon to her desk, but she sent away the tray untouched. People came by appointment and departed, only to give place to others, all equally persistent and wholly absorbed in their own affairs; and she listened patiently, forcing her tired mind to sympathise and comprehend. And, in time, everybody went away satisfied or otherwise, but in no doubt concerning the answer she had given, favourable or unfavourable to their desires. For that was her way in the business of life.