Eeldrop and Appleplex | Page 3

Nietzsche was a mob-man, just as Bergson is an
intellectualist. We cannot escape the label, but let it be one which
carries no distinction, and arouses no self-consciousness. Sufficient that
we should find simple labels, and not further exploit them. I am, I
confess to you, in private life, a bank-clerk. . . ."
"And should, according to your own view, have a wife, three children,
and a vegetable garden in a suburb," said Appleplex.
"Such is precisely the case," returned Eeldrop, "but I had not thought it
necessary to mention this biographical detail. As it is Saturday night, I
shall return to my suburb. Tomorrow will be spent in that garden. . . ."
"I shall pay my call on Mrs. Howexden," murmured Appleplex.

II

The suburban evening was grey and yellow on Sunday; the gardens of
the small houses to left and right were rank with ivy and tall grass and
lilac bushes; the tropical South London verdure was dusty above and
mouldy below; the tepid air swarmed with flies. Eeldrop, at the window,
welcomed the smoky smell of lilac, the gramaphones, the choir of the
Baptist chapel, and the sight of three small girls playing cards on the
steps of the police station.
"On such a night as this," said Eeldrop, "I often think of Scheherazade,
and wonder what has become of her."
Appleplex rose without speaking and turned to the files which
contained the documents for his "Survey of Contemporary Society." He
removed the file marked London from between the files Barcelona and
Boston where it had been misplaced, and turned over the papers rapidly.

"The lady you mention," he rejoined at last, "whom I have listed not
under S. but as Edith, alias Scheherazade, has left but few evidences in
my possession. Here is an old laundry account which she left for you to
pay, a cheque drawn by her and marked 'R/D,' a letter from her mother
in Honolulu (on ruled paper), a poem written on a restaurant bill--'To
Atthis'--and a letter by herself, on Lady Equistep's best notepaper,
containing some damaging but entertaining information about Lady
Equistep. Then there are my own few observations on two sheets of
foolscap."
"Edith," murmured Eeldrop, who had not been attending to this
catalogue, "I wonder what has become of her. 'Not pleasure, but fulness
of life. . . to burn ever with a hard gem-like flame,' those were her
words. What curiosity and passion for experience! Perhaps that flame
has burnt itself out by now."
"You ought to inform yourself better," said Appleplex severely, "Edith
dines sometimes with Mrs. Howexden, who tells me that her passion
for experience has taken her to a Russian pianist in Bayswater. She is
also said to be present often at the Anarchist Tea Rooms, and can
usually be found in the evening at the Cafe de l'Orangerie."
"Well," replied Eeldrop, "I confess that I prefer to wonder what has
become of her. I do not like to think of her future. Scheherazade grown
old! I see her grown very plump, full-bosomed, with blond hair, living
in a small flat with a maid, walking in the Park with a Pekinese,
motoring with a Jewish stock-broker. With a fierce appetite for food
and drink, when all other appetite is gone, all other appetite gone
except the insatiable increasing appetite of vanity; rolling on two wide
legs, rolling in motorcars, rolling toward a diabetic end in a seaside
watering place."
"Just now you saw that bright flame burning itself out," said Appleplex,
"now you see it guttering thickly, which proves that your vision was
founded on imagination, not on feeling. And the passion for
experience--have you remained so impregnably Pre-Raphaelite as to
believe in that? What real person, with the genuine resources of instinct,
has ever believed in the passion for experience? The passion for

experience is a criticism of the sincere, a creed only of the histrionic.
The passionate person is passionate about this or that, perhaps about the
least significant things, but not about experience. But Marius, des
Esseintes, Edith. . ."
"But consider," said Eeldrop, attentive only to the facts of Edith's
history, and perhaps missing the point of Appleplex's remarks, "her
unusual career. The daughter of a piano tuner in Honolulu, she secured
a scholarship at the University of California, where she graduated with
Honors in Social Ethics. She then married a celebrated billiard
professional in San Francisco, after an acquaintance of twelve hours,
lived with him for two days, joined a musical comedy chorus, and was
divorced in Nevada. She turned up several years later in Paris and was
known to all the Americans and English at the Cafe du Dome as Mrs.
Short. She reappeared in London as Mrs. Griffiths, published a small
volume of verse, and