Victory | Page 5

that
particular performer hidden from me by the little man with the beard
who conducted, and who might for all I know have been her father, but
whose real mission in life was to be a model for the Zangiacomo of
Victory. Having got a clear line of sight I naturally (being idle)
continued to look at the girl through all the second part of the
programme. The shape of her dark head inclined over the violin was
fascinating, and, while resting between the pieces of that interminable
programme she was, in her white dress and with her brown hands
reposing in her lap, the very image of dreamy innocence. The mature,

bad-tempered woman at the piano might have been her mother, though
there was not the slightest resemblance between them. All I am certain
of in their personal relation to each other is that cruel pinch on the
upper part of the arm. That I am sure I have seen! There could be no
mistake. I was in too idle a mood to imagine such a gratuitous barbarity.
It may have been playfulness, yet the girl jumped up as if she had been
stung by a wasp. It may have been playfulness. Yet I saw plainly poor
"dreamy innocence" rub gently the affected place as she filed off with
the other performers down the middle aisle between the marble tables
in the uproar of voices, the rattling of dominoes through a blue
atmosphere of tobacco smoke. I believe that those people left the town
next day.
Or perhaps they had only migrated to the other big cafe, on the other
side of the Place de la Comedie. It is very possible. I did not go across
to find out. It was my perfect idleness that had invested the girl with a
peculiar charm, and I did not want to destroy it by any superfluous
exertion. The receptivity of my indolence made the impression so
permanent that when the moment came for her meeting with Heyst I
felt that she would be heroically equal to every demand of the risky and
uncertain future. I was so convinced of it that I let her go with Heyst, I
won't say without a pang but certainly without misgivings. And in view
of her triumphant end what more could I have done for her
rehabilitation and her happiness?
1920. J. C.

PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE

There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very close
chemical relation between coal and diamonds. It is the reason, I believe,
why some people allude to coal as "black diamonds." Both these
commodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable form of

property. There is, from that point of view, a deplorable lack of
concentration in coal. Now, if a coal- mine could be put into one's
waistcoat pocket--but it can't! At the same time, there is a fascination in
coal, the supreme commodity of the age in which we are camped like
bewildered travellers in a garish, unrestful hotel. And I suppose those
two considerations, the practical and the mystical, prevented
Heyst--Axel Heyst--from going away.
The Tropical Belt Coal Company went into liquidation. The world of
finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may
appear, evaporation precedes liquidation. First the capital evaporates,
and then the company goes into liquidation. These are very unnatural
physics, but they account for the persistent inertia of Heyst, at which
we "out there" used to laugh among ourselves--but not inimically. An
inert body can do no harm to anyone, provokes no hostility, is scarcely
worth derision. It may, indeed, be in the way sometimes; but this could
not be said of Axel Heyst. He was out of everybody's way, as if he
were perched on the highest peak of the Himalayas, and in a sense as
conspicuous. Everyone in that part of the world knew of him, dwelling
on his little island. An island is but the top of a mountain. Axel Heyst,
perched on it immovably, was surrounded, instead of the imponderable
stormy and transparent ocean of air merging into infinity, by a tepid,
shallow sea; a passionless offshoot of the great waters which embrace
the continents of this globe. His most frequent visitors were shadows,
the shadows of clouds, relieving the monotony of the inanimate,
brooding sunshine of the tropics. His nearest neighbour--I am speaking
now of things showing some sort of animation--was an indolent
volcano which smoked faintly all day with its head just above the
northern horizon, and at night levelled at him, from amongst the clear
stars, a dull red glow, expanding and collapsing spasmodically like the
end of a gigantic cigar puffed at intermittently in the dark. Axel Heyst
was also a smoker; and when he