House of All Nations Read online

‘What for? For trying to get the police to export her—throw her out, expel her, you know what I mean.’

  ‘I was keeping myself,’ cried Henrietta rudely, ‘and you had no rights over me.’

  ‘Keeping yourself! H’m. How; that’s what I should like to know. We’d all like to know … ’ He turned to Jules Bertillon. ‘Her poor mother was nearly frantic.’

  Henrietta mimicked him cruelly, ‘My poor mother was nearly frantic! The ladies came in to tea. “And where is dear Henrietta now, darling? In Paris, how charming. And is she at school there? No? How odd! What can she be doing in Paris? She has gone into the theater! Oh, my poor darling: how terrible you must feel. But do you hear from her? And—where does she live, dear? Are you—are you perfectly sure—but how worried you must be!” Yes, poor mother. Poor mannequin.’

  Achitophelous leapt to his feet. ‘There! You see: is that a way to talk to a parent, about a parent? It’s no daughter, it’s a monster. A mannequin. Her mother is the most beautiful, the most charming, kind—I wish you could know my wife, Mr. Bertillon.’

  Henrietta jeered, ‘Beautiful! She’s ugly: her life is one long frustration. She is a wax figure of repressed impulses.’

  ‘This ridiculous language,’ cried Achitophelous, pressing his hands to the side of his head. ‘You hear that! That’s the way she talks day and night. She thinks she knows everything. Frustrations! A little frustration would have done you good, my lady.’

  With splendidly curling lips, Henrietta declared, ‘This is an age of revolution: children cannot know their parents any more—their parents represent all that is old, hideous, and repressive. The old shell must be cast aside: the new race must spring to the light like—h’m, like—butterflies do.’

  ‘Thus,’ said Achitophelous, with deep irony, ‘yes, I am a grub. I work for you, rear you, keep you in luxury. Your mother gives you milk, she puts your hair in curl, she looks through your laundry, and she is a grub. You see, Mr. Bertillon. Have you got any daughters, Mr. Bertillon? No. It is a good job, a very good job. I bring her to St. Moritz last autumn to see a very nice young man, young Rhys of Rotterdam. It was all settled. Two hundred thousand francs I was giving her at the wedding and eight hundred thousand when she became twenty-five. He has his father’s business. What does she say? I won’t marry a bourgeois. A bourgeois!’ He sank down into the chair again.

  He leaned forward, with heavy sarcasm, ‘And what will you marry, may I ask?’

  ‘The man I love,’ said Henrietta, ‘and perhaps not once but many times. I am beautiful. Anyone would marry me.’

  ‘You would live with someone perhaps, like any little servant-girl.’

  He was shocked when she answered, ‘Of course: and I don’t have to worry about babies: anyone at all would marry me.’

  He took up the tone of the sarcastic pupil again. ‘And who would keep these illegitimate babies, may I ask? Not me.’

  ‘My husband.’

  He laughed cruelly. ‘Yes. Bolshevism to you, my lady, is illegitimate babies. That is all you think about. Sex.’

  She cried indignantly, with tears in her eyes, ‘I am much more worried about the Kuomintang and about the wicked oppressions in Indo-China than I am about sex.’

  ‘The Kuomintang!’ Achitophelous pounced. ‘It has been crushing your Reds. Why? No discipline. Life is discipline. All my life has been discipline. Look at your hands! Filthy. Look at your nails. Not polished. Look at your hair: all out of curl. You haven’t been to the manicure for a month. Is there anything in Karl Marx, may I ask, which says, you mustn’t go to the manicure? The Kuomintang is nails, the Kuomintang is hands, the Kuomintang is rebellion against parents. Li-Li-Hsian is scurf-in-the-hair, dead Peng Pai is sex. They didn’t worry about their particular job. This is what you have to worry about, and you don’t. Look at me! Do I like to clean my teeth in the morning? No, I don’t.’ He smiled comically, at this confession. ‘But I do it. Why? Because I know that success is discipline, whether you’re a—bourgeois,’ he shook with laughter, ‘or a Bolshevik. Pah!’

  Henrietta spoke in a cool voice, from the green depths of the chair, ‘All you say is only aimed at getting me to give up knowing Adam Constant the teller and I won’t. You would rather have me marry a rich, stupid boy who can only think of profits, profits—’ she caricatured richly the flung-out hands of the expounding businessman; ‘You are perverted by profit. You might have been a fine man,’ she said with great sadness, ‘but look at you! The new world will never see any more such human monsters as you. Underneath, I daresay, you are all right: you might have been a decent man: but you have been corrupted. You are a white slaver. You want to buy and sell me. You want to sell me to Rhys for his son’s pleasure.’

  She folded her hands, with considerable satisfaction.

  Achitophelous looked very grave. ‘What can you know about such things? I do not want to buy and sell you, Henrietta. You are free to marry the man you love, if he is a decent fellow. You must not say such things. You know nothing.’

  ‘Adam and I know about everything. We discuss everything. We know more than you and Mother will ever know. We discuss everything because we want to be free.’

  ‘You mean free love, that’s all.’

  ‘There is nothing wrong in free love if it suits you. I don’t think—’ she began to speak more slowly, with less assurance. She smiled with a childish pathos at Jules Bertillon. ‘I told Adam all about it. I won’t give myself to a man until I have a true and deep affection for him. But I have needs, too.’ Her voice was troubled.

  Achitophelous cast a quick glance at Jules Bertillon, frightened at this admission. Jules Bertillon knew half the likely bachelors in Paris. He started forward.

  ‘Henrietta, what do you know about sex? Answer me that. Do you know anything about it? Are you still a virgin? Can I give you to the son of my friend without being ashamed of myself?’ He looked at Jules, in despair. ‘You see. I am afraid she will go to the dogs. She will be a bad woman. She is too like myself.’ He bit his lip.

  But Henrietta was not listening to his asides. She answered his question. ‘I am not obliged to discuss this with you. I am a woman. I can only discuss such things with my lover.’

  Achitophelous was receiving shock upon shock. He was Oriental and had an Oriental view of women. He wilted, and said sadly, ‘With a stranger you discuss it, but not with your father.’ He sat up. ‘Before you love a stranger you have to show that you can place your love firmly at home with those it belongs to. You are not yet nineteen. Love your father and mother. Show them blind, instinctive, unquestioning, perpetual love. I bring you up and in return I only ask this one thing. But I insist on it—blind, instinctive love. If you can’t love me that way, you are no good to me. You can get out. You are no daughter. You are anybody’s girl.’

  Henrietta sneered, ‘You brought me up, with money. I was an item on your household-expenses account. Item: two roller towels. Item: three new saucepans. Item: an apron for my wife. Item: schooling for Henrietta. Mother and I furnished your home rather nicely. I hate all things that are bought with money. I am not grateful for them. You cannot buy any sort of love with money.’

  ‘Oh ho?’ said Achitophelous slyly, a smile stealing into his face. ‘Well, does Karl Marx say that, too?’

  Henrietta flushed, in confusion. ‘What I mean is—’

  Achitophelous became businesslike. ‘I won’t argue with you. You’re in my power. You must learn discipline. The workers have a right to protest. They worked for it. They worked at what they didn’t like to get their bread and they can say to any man at all, ‘I demand my rights.’ You’re not like that. You never worked. Would that appeal to Lenin?’

  Tears were in Henrietta’s eyes, tears of shame and anger. She knew she had been foolish and could not bear the ridicule. Achitophelous drove home his advantage, blow after blow. ‘When you can come to me and say, ‘Father, for three yea
rs I have done everything you asked me. I have gone to the dances you asked me to, I have met the young businessmen you asked me to, I have gone out riding, driving, flying, whatever it is, with them. I have gone to Deauville, Biarritz, the Comtesse de Voigrand, and the Ritz-Carlton, with them. I have got myself properly dressed at Molyneux and had my hair attended to. I have looked after myself. I am a virgin. I have passed my examinations. I can keep house. I can give a big dinner to businessmen.’ Then if you say, ‘I have a nice young fellow with a good position, willing to marry me,’ why, I’ll let you marry him. I don’t want to force you, I want you to marry for love, if you can. And if you’ve told me the truth, if all that is true, I’ll—I’ll, well I’ll let you marry anyone—a taxi driver even. I’ll buy him a fleet of taxis and put you in business, if he’s such a handsome fellow.’ He laughed roguishly, leaned over the arm of her chair. ‘Why, why—even a grocer. I’d buy him a stand and say, ‘Here, be happy … ’ You can marry the—head of the Communist Party, even.’

  Henrietta said, ‘All this is to stop me seeing Adam Constant. You don’t get me with that drivel.’

  Achitophelous turned to Jules. ‘Mr. Bertillon! Mr. Bertillon! What am I to do? Rhys wanted very much for his son to marry her. He was willing to give him a million francs himself right away.’ He shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. ‘Only one daughter and that one an outlaw, almost a criminal.’

  Jules straightened himself and said gently, in a judicial tone, ‘Mr. Achitophelous, I can, I think, settle everything to everyone’s satisfaction. No, I can’t forbid Adam Constant to see your daughter. He is a teller in my bank and I cannot tell him anything about his private affairs. I didn’t know he was a communist, but even if he is—’

  ‘You can dismiss him,’ pleaded Mr. Achitophelous. ‘Don’t you see? She’s ignorant.’ He dismissed his daughter with a supercilious shrug. ‘If he hadn’t a job, she wouldn’t love him. If she had nowhere to go with him.’

  Henrietta cried in indignation, ‘I go nowhere with him.’

  ‘No,’ said Jules. ‘You see, he’s a very good teller. And I don’t mind communists. I think they’re nuts, that’s all. But decent nuts. Because they’re not serious. I pay them good wages. And the women clients like him.’ An expression of anxious astonishment crossed Henrietta’s face. ‘That is something in a society dump like mine,’ smiled Jules. ‘The girls are the very dickens to manage, in money affairs, and a nice-mannered youth with genteel sex appeal like Adam Constant is an asset.’ Henrietta smiled faintly. Jules threw her a cool glance and went on coaxingly, to both of them, ‘I’ll arrange it. Leave it to me. You will both be happy.’

  Achitophelous looked pleased but still dubious. ‘If you do, Mr. Bertillon, I will—er—I—er, you will have my eternal gratitude.’

  ‘You take things too seriously, Achitophelous,’ ended Jules. He got up. ‘If you’ll just wait there, a moment, I’ll go and get one of my directors, Michel Alphendéry. He’s a very fine fellow, knows more than a university professor and is very humane. He sees everybody’s point of view. He’s much better at human things than I am. And—’ he smiled broadly at Henrietta, ‘he’s a communist, too.’

  ‘Yes!’ cried Henrietta with childish glee. She lay back in her chair. At the door, hidden from Henrietta, Jules turned and winked at Achitophelous. Achitophelous composed his features and took a turn up and down the room. Jules was away some time.

  ‘Nothing,’ said a soft voice from the depths of the armchair, ‘nothing will prevent me going to the Salle de la Mutualité, with Adam Constant.’

  After a moment, Henrietta laughed, ‘My eyes are wide open.’

  She opened her splendid dark eyes wide and looked at him. He gave her a thunderous look, by no means paternal. ‘Eyes opened by Adam? Nice conversations you must have, about—pah!’

  Henrietta said, ‘We talk about nobler subjects. The cause of the people. And how detestable it is to be the spoiled daughter of a richman!’ She was egging him on, having had a very good lunch.

  Achitophelous laughed offensively, ‘Oh, he is worried about that, is he? He seems smarter than I thought.’

  Henrietta cried, ‘He is, but not the way you mean, the horrible, criminal way you mean. Oh, such degradation! My father can only think foully. It’s possible for even a capitalist to be refined,’ she told him severely. ‘In fact’ (she sighed), ‘as Adam Constant says, that is our great weakness: we have neither art, learning, science, nor refinement yet on our side. You have them all. We have nothing but history.’ She broke off, looked at her father. ‘Do you want to hear what he said yesterday?’

  ‘It won’t make me a penny, but I should very much like it.’ He smiled and put his hands behind his back.

  She pouted her breast unconsciously and recited, ‘The earth parched by privilege will be planted by our seed.’

  ‘Well,’ said Achitophelous, looking at her speculatively, under his eyebrows, and taking a promenade, ‘well, a nice prospect. That’s what he offers you? Let me tell you, sentiments like that are cheap as dirt. He can’t keep you on that sort of literature. You’re a fool. A young fool. One of you is a sucker.’

  Jules came back with Michel Alphendéry. ‘Achitophelous, are you at it again? This is Mr. Alphendéry.’

  ‘You are a friend of Adam’s,’ said Henrietta trying not to be shy.

  Alphendéry said, ‘Well, Jules has told me all about it—or not quite all, I suppose. Now, have I got to convert the father or the daughter? I can do either.’

  ‘The father.’

  ‘The daughter!’

  ‘I’ll talk to your daughter, Mr. Achitophelous,’ said Alphendéry cheerfully. ‘Can I take her to lunch tomorrow?’

  Achitophelous shot him a suspicious glance, but after a minute’s study, said, ‘Yes, why not? With pleasure.’

  Henrietta bridled at being the center of attention and became a little fatuous. But Achitophelous turned to Jules. ‘Well, that’s done. Have you got a man called Mouradzian round here?’ He stopped in the middle of a sentence when Henrietta took her leave, and shook his head. ‘A son,’ he said to Jules, ‘is a gilt-edged security, but a daughter is goods that have to be given away with a bonus. Have you sons?’

  ‘Four,’ said Jules carelessly, ‘do you know Henri Léon?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Achitophelous, troubled, ‘he’s all right. Sell, he can. He can sell last week’s bait for tomorrow’s halibut. He’s all right. Is he in business down here then?’

  ‘Oh, he’s a friend of mine,’ said Jules. ‘You want to see Mouradzian?’ He reached for the telephone. ‘Tell Mouradzian to come up here.’

  Achitophelous sank into a chair. ‘My wife is pure as an angel,’ he said heavily. ‘Where did Henrietta get such traits? Her mother is like snow. Such a temperament!’ He flushed and giggled. ‘She gets it from me, all right.’

  * * *

  Scene Four: Whoopee Party

  In the evening the women had their war paint on and Léon was in fine feather. He had spent a couple of hours at the Turkish bath with Paul Méline. They sat late in the restaurant of the Café de la Paix. Léon liked its loaded serving tables and gilded pillars. As a poor boy he had dreamed of fleshpots like this one: this was his way of telling himself he had arrived and that he was really a rich man and everything his to command. He was showering questions on them, interspersing questions with anecdotes of his career.

  He seemed to be carrying Mrs. Weyman off at a hand gallop. Once he even burst into song, a Roumanian folk song, in his sweet fluted voice, at the request of Raccamond. The married pair were of use to him as a social screen, in case anyone turned up who knew Mrs. Léon.

  Aristide tried to speak of the bank, said slowly, ‘Comte Jean de Guipatin is working with me there: he’s related to the Bourbons; there’s Comte Hervé Lucé, a fifteenth-century family; Prince Julius Campoverde, an Italian aristocrat—all customers’ men.’
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  Alphendéry strolled into the café. Léon called him and asked, ‘Who are your customers?’

  ‘Our money comes from South Americans who make money every two or three years in some new mining grab or nitrates steal or currency flop, and a few old Spanish land hogs, a few Hollywood sky-rockets, a few Eton playboys, a few Theosophist bankers, a spa owner, a hotel speculator, a German steelworks heir, and the like. Not a bad little collection: we can survive.’

  Léon settled back his head in his collar, threatened, ‘Seems nothing but a society outfit: rich young yellowbellies. No good. These counts: are they kosher? Do you think any of them have any real cash you can sound on the counter without bending it?’

  Alphendéry spoke energetically, ‘Some new, some old: consolidated squirearchies, new political money wedded to the U.S.A., conserved Napoleonic dough, society figures who remember where they came from and how far: not too rusty, not too incautious. Opportunist, clever, unscrupulous, and talented money. People who eat their cake and have it. The best for business: steady income, new sources, no baccarat, no scroungers, no expectations, no frozen funds. A few Chicago streetwalkers with packing-house fortunes, married to phony counts, a few French hereditary bankbooks, a few postwar youngsters, motordrome and flying aces, born in a bedeviled world, crazy to make a fortune, amoral, playing for big stakes: the latter hang around Jules Bertillon as if he were their long-lost brother. That sounds shaky, but it’s sounder than you guess. Jules says, “I can work with any ace: he understands me. If I’m ever held up, it will be for speeding.” ’

  Léon laughed but said thoughtfully, ‘Birdmen: Luftmenschen?’ He seemed to believe Alphendéry’s tale. He mused, ‘But no big money. Not related to Morgan’s? I heard something. You have a cousin of the Rothschilds in one of your branches, Aristide tells me.’

  ‘Have we?’ said Alphendéry: ‘Perhaps. Everyone has. The Rothschilds have given up keeping their second cousins.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ said Léon. ‘I wouldn’t keep them if they wouldn’t.’ He laughed suddenly. Alphendéry said, ‘I have to go. My old mother’s leaving for home—Strasbourg—tonight. Good night, ladies. Good night!’ He jumped up. They all saw that his clothes were good but his hat was shabby.