Part 27 (2/2)
Something is wrong with Antoinette. The dinner she served up this evening was all but uneatable. Something is wrong with Stenson, who has taken to playing his lugubrious hymn-tunes on the concertina while I am in the house; I won't have it. Something is wrong with the cat. He wanders round the house like a lost soul, sniffing at everything. This evening he actually jumped onto the dinner-table, looked at me out of his one eye, in which all the desolation of two was concentrated, and miaowed heart-rendingly in my face. Something is wrong with the house, with my pens which will not write, with my books which have the air of dry bones in a charnel-house, with the MS. of my History of Renaissance Morals, which stands on the writing-table like a dusty monument to the futility of human endeavour. Something is wrong with me.
Something, too, is wrong with Judith, who has just returned from her stay with the Willoughbys. I have been to see her this evening and found her of uncertain temper, and inclined to be contradictious. She accused me of being dull. I answered that the autumn world outside was drenched with miserable rain. How could man be sprightly under such conditions?
”In this room,” said Judith, ”with its bright fire and drawn curtains there is no miserable rain, and no autumn save in our hearts.”
”Why in our hearts?” I asked.
”How you peg one down to precision,” said Judith, testily. ”I wish I were a Roman Catholic.”
”Why?”
”I could go into a convent.”
”You had much better go to Delphine Carrere,” said I.
”I have only been back a day, and you want to get rid of me already?”
she cried, using her woman's swift logic of unreason.
”I want you to be happy and contented, my dear Judith.”
”H'm,” she said.
Her slipper dangling as usual from the tip of her foot fell to the ground. I declare I was only half conscious of the accident as my mind was deep in other things.
”You don't even pick up my slipper,” she said.
”Ten thousand pardons,” I exclaimed, springing forward. But she had antic.i.p.ated my intention. We remained staring into the fire and saying nothing. As she professed to be tired I went away early.
At the front door of the mansions, finding I had left my umbrella behind, I remounted the stairs, and rang Judith's bell. After a while I saw her figure through the ground-gla.s.s panel approach the door, but before she opened it, she turned out the light in the pa.s.sage.
”Marcus!” she cried, rather excitedly; and in the dimness of the threshold her eyes looked strangely accusative of tears. ”You have come back!”
”Yes,” said I, ”for my umbrella.”
She looked at me for a moment, laughed, clapped her hands to her throat, turned away sharply, caught up my umbrella, and putting it into my hands and thrusting me back shut the door in my face. In great astonishment I went downstairs again. What is wrong with Judith? She said this evening that all men are cruel. Now, I am a man. Therefore I am cruel. A perfect syllogism. But how have I been cruel?
I walked home. There is nothing so consoling to the depressed man as the unmitigated misery of a walk through the London rain. One is not mocked by any fact.i.tious gaiety. The mind is in harmony with the sodden universe. It is well to have everything in the world wrong at one and the same time.
I have changed my drenched garments for dressing-gown and slippers. I find on my writing-table a letter addressed in a round childish hand.
It is from Carlotta, who for the last fortnight has been staying in Cornwall with the McMurrays. I have known few fortnights so long. In a ridiculous schoolboy way I have been counting the days to her return--the day after to-morrow.
<script>