Free Tarr (Oxford World's Classics) by Wyndham Lewis Page B

Bertha and he could have been spared.
    As he rushed along then a gaunt car met him, rushing in the opposite direction. Butcher’s large red nose stood under a check cap phenomenally peaked. A sweater and stiff-shouldered jacket, of gangster cut, * exaggerated his breadth. He was sunk in horizontal massiveness in the car—almost in the road. A quizzing, heavy smile broke his face open in an indifferent business-like way. It was a sour smile, as though half his face were frozen with cocaine. *
    Butcher was the sweetest old kitten, the sham
tough guy
in excelsis. * He might have been described as a romantic educating his english schoolboyish sense of adventure up to the pitch of drama. He had been induced by Tarr to develop an interest in commerce: had started a motor business in Paris, and through circularizing the Americans resident there and using his english connections, he was succeeding on the lines suggested.
    Tarr had argued that an interest of this sort would prevent him from becoming arty and silly: he would have driven his entire circle of acquaintances into commerce if he could. At first he had cherished the ambition of getting Hobson into a bank in South Africa.
    Guy Butcher pulled up with the air of an Iron-Age mechanic, born among beds of embryonic machinery.
    ‘Ah, I thought I might see you.’ He rolled over the edge and stood grinning archly and stretching in front of his friend.
    ‘Where are you off to?’ Tarr asked.
    ‘Oh, there’s a rumour that some roumanian gypsies are encamped over by Charenton—.’ * He smiled and waited, his entire face breaking up expectantly into arch-cunning pits and traps. Mention of ‘gypsies’ generally succeeded in drawing Tarr—Guy’s Romanys * were a survival of Butcher’s pre-motor days.
    ‘Neglecting business?’ was all Tarr said, however. ‘Have you time for a drink?’
    ‘Yes!’ Butcher turned with an airy jerk to his car.
    ‘Shall we go to the Panthéon?’
    ‘How about the Univers? Would that take long?’
    ‘The Univers? Four or five minutes. Jump in!’
    When they had got to the Univers and ordered their drink, Tarr said:
    ‘I’ve just been talking to Alan Hobson. I’ve been telling him off.’
    ‘That’s right. How had he deserved it?’
    ‘Oh, he happened to drop on me when I was thinking about my girl. He began congratulating me on my engagement. So I gave him my views on marriage and then wound up with a little improvisation about himself.’
    Butcher maintained a decorous silence, drinking his Pernot. *
    ‘You’re not engaged to be married, are you?’ he asked.
    ‘Engaged to be married? Well, that’s a difficult question.’ Tarr laughed with circumspection and softness. ‘I don’t know whether I am or whether I’m not.’
    ‘Would it be the german girl, if you were?’
    Tarr chewed and spat out a skein of pale tobacco, eyeing Butcher.
    ‘Yes, she’d be the one.’
    There was a careful absence of comment in Butcher’s face.
    ‘Ought I to marry the Lunken?’ *
    ‘No’ Butcher said with measured abruptness, flat but soft.
    ‘In that case I ought to tell her at once.’
    ‘That is so.’
    Tarr had wings to his hips. He wore a dark morning-coat whose tails flowed behind him as he walked strongly and quickly along, and curled on either side of his lap as he sat. It was buttoned halfway down the body. He was taller than Butcher, wore glasses, had a dark skin and a steady, unamiable, impatient expression. He was clean-shaven with a shallow square jaw and straight thick mouth. His hands were square and usually hot—all these characteristics he inherited from his mother, except his height. That he seemed to have caused himself.
    He impressed the stranger as having inherited himself last week, and as under a great press of business to grasp the details and resources of the concern. Not very much satisfaction at his inheritance was manifest and no arrogance. Great capacity was written all over him. As yet he did not appear to have