Part 77 (1/2)

”Shall you be going back to Bursley soon?” she demanded. In her voice was desperation.

”Oh yes!” he said, thankfully eager to follow up any subject. ”On Monday, I expect.”

”I wonder if you'd mind giving Janet a little parcel from me--some things of George's? I meant to send it by post, but if you--”

”Of course! With pleasure!” He seemed to implore her.

”It's quite small,” she said, rising and going to the sideboard, on which lay a little brown-paper parcel.

His eye followed her. She picked up the parcel, glanced at it, and offered it to him.

”I'll take it across on Monday night,” he said fervently.

”Thanks.”

She remained standing; he got up.

”No message or anything?” he suggested.

”Oh!” she said coldly, ”I write, you know.”

”Well--” He made the gesture of departing. There was no alternative.

”We're having very rough weather, aren't we?” she said, with careless conventionality, as she took the lamp.

In the hall, when she held out her hand, he wanted tremendously to squeeze it, to give her through his hand the message of sympathy which his tongue, intimidated by her manner, dared not give. But his hand also refused to obey him. The clasp was strictly ceremonious. As she was drawing the heavy latch of the door he forced himself to say, ”I'm in Brighton sometimes, off and on. Now I know where you are, I must look you up.”

She made no answer. She merely said good night as he pa.s.sed out into the street and the wind. The door banged.

FIVE.

Edwin took a long breath. He had seen her! Yes, but the interview had been worse than his worst expectations. He had surpa.s.sed himself in futility, in fatuous lack of enterprise. He had behaved liked a schoolboy. Now, as he plunged up the street with the wind, he could devise easily a dozen ways of animating and guiding and controlling the interview so that, even if sad, its sadness might have been agreeable.

The interview had been h.e.l.l, ineffable torture, a perfect crime of clumsiness. It had resulted in nothing. (Except, of course, that he had seen her--that fact was indisputable.) He blamed himself. He cursed himself with really extraordinary savageness.

”Why did I go near her?” he demanded. ”Why couldn't I keep away? I've simply made myself look a blasted fool! Creeping and crawling round her! ... After all, she did throw me over! And now she asks me to take a parcel to her confounded kid! The whole thing's ridiculous! And what's going to happen to her in that hole? I don't suppose she's got the least notion of looking after herself. Impossible--the whole thing!

If anybody had told me that I should--that she'd--” Half of which talk was simple bl.u.s.ter. The parcel was bobbing on its loop against his side.

When he reached the top of the street he discovered that he had been going up it instead of down it. ”What am I thinking of?” he grumbled impatiently. However, he would not turn back. He adventured forward, climbing into lat.i.tudes whose geography was strange to him, and scarcely seeing a single fellow-wanderer beneath the gas-lamps. Presently, after a steep hill, he came to a churchyard, and then he redescended, and at last tumbled into a street alive with people who had emerged from a theatre, laughing, lighting cigarettes, linking arms. Their existence seemed shallow, purposeless, infantile, compared to his. He felt himself superior to them. What did they know about life? He would not change with any of them.

Recognising the label on an omnibus, he followed its direction, and arrived almost immediately in the vast square which contained his hotel, and which was illuminated by the brilliant facades of several hotels.

The doors of the Royal Suss.e.x were locked, because eleven o'clock had struck. He could not account for the period of nearly three hours which had pa.s.sed since he left the hotel. The zealous porter, observing his shadow through the bars, had sprung to unfasten the door before he could ring.

SIX.

Within the hotel reigned gaiety, wine, and the dance. Small tables had been placed in the hall, and at these sat bald-headed men, smoking cigars and sharing champagne with ladies of every age. A white carpet had been laid in the large smoking-room, and through the curtained archway that separated it from the hall, Edwin could see couples revolving in obedience to the music of a piano and a violin. One of the Royal Suss.e.x's Sat.u.r.day Cinderellas was in progress. The self-satisfied gestures of men inspecting their cigars or lifting gla.s.ses, of simpering women glancing or the sly at their jewels, and of youths pulling straight their white waistcoats as they strolled about with the air of Don Juans, invigorated his contempt for the average existence. The tinkle of the music appeared exquisitely tedious in its superficiality.

He could rot remain in the hall because of the incorrectness of his attire, and the staircase was blocked, to a timid man, by elegant couples apparently engaged in the act of flirtation. He turned, through a group of attendant waiters, into the pa.s.sage leading to the small smoking-room which adjoined the discreetly situated bar. This smoking-room, like a club, warm and bright, was empty, but in pa.s.sing he had caught sight of two mutually affectionate dandies drinking at the splendid mahogany of the bar. He lit a cigarette. Seated in the smoking-room he could hear their conversation; he was forced to hear it.