Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
The plump young Frenchwoman within the glazed cash office near the door, at whom Marsden had several times glanced in a way at which Romarin had frowned, was aware of the honour done the restaurant; and several times the blond-bearded proprietor had advanced and inquired with concern whether the dinner and the service was to the liking of M'sieu.
Our next journey, on the 7th, led through Bailleul, where the band of the Artists' Rifles played in the great square, and the Warwicks of the 143rd Brigade viewed us with the superior air of men who had already been in the trenches with the 6th Division; then between the poplars along the Armentières road, until we turned to the left at Rabot, and soon arrived at our destination, a small village called Romarin.
Romarin recognised in Marsden the old craving for sensation; it was part of the theoretical creed Marsden had made for himself, of doing things, not for their own sakes, but in order that he might have done them. Of course, it had appeared to a fellow like that, that Romarin himself had always had a calculated end in view; he had not; Marsden merely measured Romarin's peck out of his own bushel.
"Highly unphilosophic," said Romarin, shaking his head. "Hm!" grunted Marsden, stripping the bone... "Well, I grant it pays in a different way." "It does pay, then?" Romarin asked. "Oh yes, it pays." The restaurant had filled up. It was one frequented by young artists, musicians, journalists and the clingers to the rather frayed fringes of the Arts.
There's a fellow across there has recognised you already by your photographs in the papers.... I assume I may...?" He made a little upward movement of his hand. It was a gin and bitters Marsden assumed he might have. Romarin ordered it; he himself did not take one.
The sound of the animal's voice had begun it, and his every word, look, movement, gesture, since they had entered the restaurant, had added to it. And he was now chuckling, chuckling, shaking with chuckles, as if some monstrous tit-bit still remained to be told. Already Romarin had tossed aside his napkin, beckoned to the waiter, and said, "M'sieu dines with me...."
Without apology Romarin looked at his watch. "All right," said Marsden, smiling, "for what I've got out of life, then. But I warn you, it's entirely discreditable." Romarin did not doubt it. "But it's mine, and I boast of it. I've done barring receiving honours and degrees everything everything! If there's anything I haven't done, tell me and lend me a sovereign, and I'll go and do it."
It was not the short stubble of grey beard, so short that it seemed to hesitate between beard and unshavenness; it was not the figure nor carriage clothes alter that, and the clothes of the man who was advancing to meet Romarin were, to put it bluntly, shabby; nor was it... but Romarin did not know what it was in the advancing figure that for the moment found no response in his memory.
Certainly! It can be put to a much better purpose." He refilled the glass. The liquor had begun to tell on him. A quarter of the quantity would have made a clean-living man incapably drunk, but it had only made Marsden's eyes bright. He gave a sarcastic laugh. "And is that all?" he asked. Romarin replied shortly that that was all. "You've missed out the R.A., and the D.C.L."
But it was just like Marsden to be late, for all that. At first Romarin did not recognise him when he turned the corner of the street and walked towards him. He hadn't made up his mind beforehand exactly how he had expected Marsden to look, but he was conscious that he didn't look it.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking