The individual on the doorstep had fallen into slumber over his own knees. No greater air of prosperity clung about him than is conveyed by a rusty overcoat and wisps of cloth in place of socks. Shelton endeavoured to pass unseen, but the sleeper woke. “Ah, it's you, monsieur!” he said “I received your letter this evening, and have lost no time.” He looked down at himself and tittered, as though to say, “But what a state I 'm in!”
The young foreigner's condition was indeed more desperate than on the occasion of their first meeting, and Shelton invited him upstairs.
“You can well understand,” stammered Ferrand, following his host, “that I did n't want to miss you this time. When one is like this—” and a spasm gripped his face.
“I 'm very glad you came,” said Shelton doubtfully.
His visitor's face had a week's growth of reddish beard; the deep tan of his cheeks gave him a robust appearance at variance with the fit of, trembling which had seized on him as soon as he had entered.
“Sit down-sit down,” said Shelton; “you 're feeling ill!”
Ferrand smiled. “It's nothing,” said he; “bad nourishment.”
Shelton left him seated on the edge of an armchair, and brought him in some whisky.
“Clothes,” said Ferrand, when he had drunk, “are what I want. These are really not good enough.”
The statement was correct, and Shelton, placing some garments in the bath-room, invited his visitor to make himself at home. While the latter, then, was doing this, Shelton enjoyed the luxuries of self-denial, hunting up things he did not want, and laying them in two portmanteaus. This done, he waited for his visitor's return.
The young foreigner at length emerged, unshaved indeed, and innocent of boots, but having in other respects an air of gratifying affluence.
“This is a little different,” he said. “The boots, I fear”—and, pulling down his, or rather Shelton's, socks he exhibited sores the size of half a crown. “One does n't sow without reaping some harvest or another. My stomach has shrunk,” he added simply. “To see things one must suffer. 'Voyager, c'est plus fort que moi'.”
Shelton failed to perceive that this was one way of disguising the human animal's natural dislike of work—there was a touch of pathos, a suggestion of God-knows-what-might-have-been, about this fellow.
“I have eaten my illusions,” said the young foreigner, smoking a cigarette. “When you've starved a few times, your eyes are opened. 'Savoir, c'est mon metier; mais remarquez ceci, monsieur'. It 's not always the intellectuals who succeed.”
“When you get a job,” said Shelton, “you throw it away, I suppose.”
“You accuse me of restlessness? Shall I explain what I think about that? I'm restless because of ambition; I want to reconquer an independent position. I put all my soul into my trials, but as soon as I see there's no future for me in that line, I give it up and go elsewhere. 'Je ne veux pas etre rond de cuir,' breaking my back to economise sixpence a day, and save enough after forty years to drag out the remains of an exhausted existence. That's not in my character.” This ingenious paraphrase of the words “I soon get tired of things” he pronounced with an air of letting Shelton into a precious secret.
“Yes; it must be hard,” agreed the latter.
Ferrand shrugged his shoulders.
“It's not all butter,” he replied; “one is obliged to do things that are not too delicate. There's nothing I pride myself on but frankness.”
Like a good chemist, however, he administered what Shelton could stand in a judicious way. “Yes, yes,” he seemed to say, “you'd like me to think that you have a perfect knowledge of life: no morality, no prejudices, no illusions; you'd like me to think that you feel yourself on an equality with me, one human animal talking to another, without any barriers of position, money, clothes, or the rest—'ca c'est un peu trop fort'. You're as good an imitation as I 've come across in your class, notwithstanding your unfortunate education, and I 'm grateful to you, but to tell you everything, as it passes through my mind would damage my prospects. You can hardly expect that.”
In one of Shelton's old frock-coats he was impressive, with his air of natural, almost sensitive refinement. The room looked as if it were accustomed to him, and more amazing still was the sense of familiarity that he inspired, as, though he were a part of Shelton's soul. It came as a shock to realise that this young foreign vagabond had taken such a place within his thoughts. The pose of his limbs and head, irregular but not ungraceful; his disillusioned lips; the rings of smoke that issued from them—all signified rebellion, and the overthrow of law and order. His thin, lopsided nose, the rapid glances of his goggling, prominent eyes, were subtlety itself; he stood for discontent with the accepted.
“How do I live when I am on the tramp?” he said, “well, there are the consuls. The system is not delicate, but when it's a question of starving, much is permissible; besides, these gentlemen were created for the purpose. There's a coterie of German Jews in Paris living entirely upon consuls.” He hesitated for the fraction of a second, and resumed: “Yes, monsieur; if you have papers that fit you, you can try six or seven consuls in a single town. You must know a language or two; but most of these gentlemen are not too well up in the tongues of the country they represent. Obtaining money under false pretences? Well, it is. But what's the differ............