The White Peacock Part 80

I sat still in the small, close s.p.a.ce and waited.

"Do you know--?" he laughed, keeping his face averted from me. "She makes my blood boil. I could hate her."

"Why?" I said gently.

"I don't know. I feel as if she'd insulted me. She does lie, doesn't she?"

"I didn't notice it," I said, but I knew he meant her shirking, her shuffling of her life.

"And you think of those poor devils under the bridge-and then of her and them frittering away themselves and money in that idiocy--"

He spoke with pa.s.sion.

"You are quoting Longfellow," I said.

"What?" he asked, looking at me suddenly.

"'Life is real, life is earnest--'"

He flushed slightly at my good-natured gibe.

"I don't know what it is," he replied. "But it's a pretty rotten business, when you think of her fooling about wasting herself, and all the waste that goes on up there, and the poor devils rotting on the embankment-and--"

"And you-and Mayhew-and me--" I continued.

He looked at me very intently to see if I were mocking. He laughed. I could see he was very much moved.

"Is the time quite out of joint?" I asked.

"Why!"-he laughed. "No. But she makes me feel so angry-as if I should burst-I don't know when I felt in such a rage. I wonder why. I'm sorry for him, poor devil. 'Lettie and Leslie'-they seemed christened for one another, didn't they?"

"What if you'd had her?" I asked.

"We should have been like a cat and dog; I'd rather be with Meg a thousand times-now!" he added significantly. He sat watching the lamps and the people and the dark buildings slipping past us.

"Shall we go and have a drink?" I asked him, thinking we would call in Frascati's to see the come-and-go.

"I could do with a brandy," he replied, looking at me slowly.

We sat in the restaurant listening to the jigging of the music, watching the changing flow of the people. I like to sit a long time by the hollyhocks watching the throng of varied bees which poise and hesitate outside the wild flowers, then swing in with a hum which sets everything aquiver. But still more fascinating it is to watch the come and go of people weaving and intermingling in the complex mesh of their intentions, with all the subtle grace and mystery of their moving, shapely bodies.

I sat still, looking out across the amphitheatre. George looked also, but he drank gla.s.s after gla.s.s of brandy.

"I like to watch the people," said I.

"Ay-and doesn't it seem an aimless, idiotic business-look at them!" he replied in tones of contempt. I looked instead at him, in some surprise and resentment His face was gloomy, stupid and unrelieved. The amount of brandy he had drunk had increased his ill humour.

"Shall we be going?" I said. I did not want him to get drunk in his present state of mind.

"Ay-in half a minute," he finished the brandy, and rose. Although he had drunk a good deal, he was quite steady, only there was a disagreeable look always on his face, and his eyes seemed smaller and more glittering than I had seen them. We took a bus to Victoria. He sat swaying on his seat in the dim, clumsy vehicle, saying not a word. In the vast cavern of the station the theatre-goers were hastening, crossing the pale grey strand, small creatures scurrying hither and thither in the s.p.a.ce beneath the lonely lamps. As the train crawled over the river we watched the far-flung hoop of diamond lights curving slowly round and striping with bright threads the black water. He sat looking with heavy eyes, seeming to shrink from the enormous unintelligible lettering of the poem of London.

The town was too large for him, he could not take in its immense, its stupendous poetry. What did come home to him was its flagrant discords.

The unintelligibility of the vast city made him apprehensive, and the crudity of its big, coa.r.s.e contrasts wounded him unutterably.

"What is the matter?" I asked him as we went along the silent pavement at Norwood.

"Nothing," he replied. "Nothing!" and I did not trouble him further.

We occupied a large, two-bedded room-that looked down the hill and over to the far woods of Kent. He was morose and untalkative. I brought up a soda-syphon and whisky, and we proceeded to undress. When he stood in his pajamas he waited as if uncertain.

"Do you want a drink?" he asked.

I did not. He crossed to the table, and as I got into my bed I heard the brief fizzing of the syphon. He drank his gla.s.s at one draught, then switched off the light. In the sudden darkness I saw his pale shadow go across to the sofa in the window-s.p.a.ce. The blinds were undrawn, and the stars looked in. He gazed out on the great bay of darkness wherein, far away and below, floated a few sparks of lamps like herring boats at sea.

"Aren't you coming to bed?" I asked.

"I'm not sleepy-you go to sleep," he answered, resenting having to speak at all.

"Then put on a dressing gown-there's one in that corner-turn the light on."

He did not answer, but fumbled for the garment in the darkness. When he had found it, he said:

"Do you mind if I smoke?"

I did not. He fumbled again in his pockets for cigarettes, always refusing to switch on the light. I watched his face bowed to the match as he lighted his cigarette. He was still handsome in the ruddy light, but his features were coa.r.s.er. I felt very sorry for him, but I saw that I could get no nearer to him, to relieve him. For some time I lay in the darkness watching the end of his cigarette like a ruddy, malignant insect hovering near his lips, putting the timid stars immensely far away. He sat quite still, leaning on the sofa arm. Occasionally there was a little glow on his cheeks as the cigarette burned brighter, then again I could see nothing but the dull red bee.

I suppose I must have dropped asleep. Suddenly I started as something fell to the floor. I heard him cursing under his breath.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"I've only knocked something down-cigarette case or something," he replied, apologetically.

"Aren't you coming to bed?" I asked.

"Yes, I'm coming," he answered quite docile.

He seemed to wander about and knock against things as he came. He dropped heavily into bed.

"Are you sleepy now?" I asked.

"I dunno-I shall be directly," he replied.

"What's up with you?" I asked.

"I dunno," he answered. "I am like this sometimes, when there's nothing I want to do, and nowhere I want to go, and n.o.body I want to be near.

Then you feel so rottenly lonely, Cyril. You feel awful, like a vacuum, with a pressure on you, a sort of pressure of darkness, and you yourself-just nothing, a vacuum-that's what it's like-a little vacuum that's not dark, all loose in the middle of a s.p.a.ce of darkness, that's pressing on you."

"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, rousing myself in bed. "That sounds bad!"