← catalogue

Aaron's Rod

by D. H. Lawrence · English · Gutenberg #4520 · 649,043 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Aaron's Rod
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Aaron's Rod

Author: D. H. Lawrence


        
Release date: October 1, 2003 [eBook #4520]
                Most recently updated: March 6, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4520

Credits: Produced by Doug Levy, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AARON'S ROD ***




Produced by Doug Levy





AARON'S ROD

by D. H. Lawrence


CONTENTS

     I.  THE BLUE BALL
    II.  ROYAL OAK
   III.  “THE LIGHTED TREE”
     IV.  “THE PILLAR OF SALT”
      V.  AT THE OPERA
    VI.  TALK
   VII.  THE DARK SQUARE GARDEN
  VIII.  A PUNCH IN THE WIND
    IX.  LOW-WATER MARK
     X.  THE WAR AGAIN
    XI.  MORE PILLAR OF SALT
   XII.  NOVARA
  XIII.  WIE ES IHNEN GEFAELLT
   XIV.  XX SETTEMBRE
    XV.  A RAILWAY JOURNEY
   XVI.  FLORENCE
  XVII.  HIGH UP OVER THE CATHEDRAL SQUARE
 XVIII.  THE MARCHESA
   XIX.  CLEOPATRA, BUT NOT ANTHONY
    XX.  THE BROKEN ROD
   XXI.  WORDS




CHAPTER I. THE BLUE BALL


There was a large, brilliant evening star in the early twilight, and
underfoot the earth was half frozen. It was Christmas Eve. Also the War
was over, and there was a sense of relief that was almost a new menace.
A man felt the violence of the nightmare released now into the general
air. Also there had been another wrangle among the men on the pit-bank
that evening.

Aaron Sisson was the last man on the little black railway-line climbing
the hill home from work. He was late because he had attended a meeting
of the men on the bank. He was secretary to the Miners Union for his
colliery, and had heard a good deal of silly wrangling that left him
nettled.

He strode over a stile, crossed two fields, strode another stile, and
was in the long road of colliers' dwellings. Just across was his own
house: he had built it himself. He went through the little gate, up past
the side of the house to the back. There he hung a moment, glancing down
the dark, wintry garden.

“My father--my father's come!” cried a child's excited voice, and two
little girls in white pinafores ran out in front of his legs.

“Father, shall you set the Christmas Tree?” they cried. “We've got one!”

“Afore I have my dinner?” he answered amiably.

“Set it now. Set it now.--We got it through Fred Alton.”

“Where is it?”

The little girls were dragging a rough, dark object out of a corner of
the passage into the light of the kitchen door.

“It's a beauty!” exclaimed Millicent.

“Yes, it is,” said Marjory.

“I should think so,” he replied, striding over the dark bough. He went
to the back kitchen to take off his coat.

“Set it now, Father. Set it now,” clamoured the girls.

“You might as well. You've left your dinner so long, you might as well
do it now before you have it,” came a woman's plangent voice, out of the
brilliant light of the middle room.

Aaron Sisson had taken off his coat and waistcoat and his cap. He stood
bare-headed in his shirt and braces, contemplating the tree.

“What am I to put it in?” he queried. He picked up the tree, and held
it erect by the topmost twig. He felt the cold as he stood in the yard
coatless, and he twitched his shoulders.

“Isn't it a beauty!” repeated Millicent.

“Ay!--lop-sided though.”

“Put something on, you two!” came the woman's high imperative voice,
from the kitchen.

“We aren't cold,” protested the girls from the yard.

“Come and put something on,” insisted the voice. The man started off
down the path, the little girls ran grumbling indoors. The sky was
clear, there was still a crystalline, non-luminous light in the under
air.

Aaron rummaged in his shed at the bottom of the garden, and found a
spade and a box that was suitable. Then he came out to his neat, bare,
wintry garden. The girls flew towards him, putting the elastic of their
hats under their chins as they ran. The tree and the box lay on the
frozen earth. The air breathed dark, frosty, electric.

“Hold it up straight,” he said to Millicent, as he arranged the tree in
the box. She stood silent and held the top bough, he filled in round the
roots.

When it was done, and pressed in, he went for the wheelbarrow. The girls
were hovering excited round the tree. He dropped the barrow and stooped
to the box. The girls watched him hold back his face--the boughs pricked
him.

“Is it very heavy?” asked Millicent.

“Ay!” he replied, with a little grunt. Then the procession set off--the
trundling wheel-barrow, the swinging hissing tree, the two excited
little girls. They arrived at the door. Down went the legs of the
wheel-barrow on the yard. The man looked at the box.

“Where are you going to have it?” he called.

“Put it in the back kitchen,” cried his wife.

“You'd better have it where it's going to stop. I don't want to hawk it
about.”

“Put it on the floor against the dresser, Father. Put it there,” urged
Millicent.

“You come and put some paper down, then,” called the mother hastily.

The two children ran indoors, the man stood contemplative in the cold,
shrugging his uncovered shoulders slightly. The open inner door showed a
bright linoleum on the floor, and the end of a brown side-board on which
stood an aspidistra.

Again with a wrench Aaron Sisson lifted the box. The tree pricked and
stung. His wife watched him as he entered staggering, with his face
averted.

“Mind where you make a lot of dirt,” she said.

He lowered the box with a little jerk on to the spread-out newspaper on
the floor. Soil scattered.

“Sweep it up,” he said to Millicent.

His ear was lingering over the sudden, clutching hiss of the
tree-boughs.

A stark white incandescent light filled the room and made everything
sharp and hard. In the open fire-place a hot fire burned red. All was
scrupulously clean and perfect. A baby was cooing in a rocker-less
wicker cradle by the hearth. The mother, a slim, neat woman with dark
hair, was sewing a child's frock. She put this aside, rose, and began to
take her husband's dinner from the oven.

“You stopped confabbing long enough tonight,” she said.

“Yes,” he answered, going to the back kitchen to wash his hands.

In a few minutes he came and sat down to his dinner. The doors were shut
close, but there was a draught, because the settling of the mines under
the house made the doors not fit. Aaron moved his chair, to get out of
the draught. But he still sat in his shirt and trousers.

He was a good-looking man, fair, and pleasant, about thirty-two years
old. He did not talk much, but seemed to think about something. His wife
resumed her sewing. She was acutely aware of her husband, but he seemed
not very much aware of her.

“What were they on about today, then?” she said.

“About the throw-in.”

“And did they settle anything?”

“They're going to try it--and they'll come out if it isn't
satisfactory.”

“The butties won't have it, I know,” she said. He gave a short laugh,
and went on with his meal.

The two children were squatted on the floor by the tree. They had a
wooden box, from which they had taken many little newspaper packets,
which they were spreading out like wares.

“Don't open any. We won't open any of them till we've taken them all
out--and then we'll undo one in our turns. Then we s'll both undo
equal,” Millicent was saying.

“Yes, we'll take them ALL out first,” re-echoed Marjory.

“And what are they going to do about Job Arthur Freer? Do they want
him?” A faint smile came on her husband's face.

“Nay, I don't know what they want.--Some of 'em want him--whether
they're a majority, I don't know.”

She watched him closely.

“Majority! I'd give 'em majority. They want to get rid of you, and make
a fool of you, and you want to break your heart over it. Strikes me you
need something to break your heart over.”

He laughed silently.

“Nay,” he said. “I s'll never break my heart.”

“You'll go nearer to it over that, than over anything else: just because
a lot of ignorant monkeys want a monkey of their own sort to do the
Union work, and jabber to them, they want to get rid of you, and you eat
your heart out about it. More fool you, that's all I say--more fool you.
If you cared for your wife and children half what you care about your
Union, you'd be a lot better pleased in the end. But you care about
nothing but a lot of ignorant colliers, who don't know what they want
except it's more money just for themselves. Self, self, self--that's all
it is with them--and ignorance.”

“You'd rather have self without ignorance?” he said, smiling finely.

“I would, if I've got to have it. But what I should like to see is a man
that has thought for others, and isn't all self and politics.”

Her color had risen, her hand trembled with anger as she sewed. A blank
look had come over the man's face, as if he did not hear or heed any
more. He drank his tea in a long draught, wiped his moustache with two
fingers, and sat looking abstractedly at the children.

They had laid all the little packets on the floor, and Millicent was
saying:

“Now I'll undo the first, and you can have the second. I'll take this--”

She unwrapped the bit of newspaper and disclosed a silvery ornament
for a Christmas tree: a frail thing like a silver plum, with deep rosy
indentations on each side.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Isn't it LOVELY!” Her fingers cautiously held the
long bubble of silver and glowing rose, cleaving to it with a curious,
irritating possession. The man's eyes moved away from her. The lesser
child was fumbling with one of the little packets.

“Oh!”--a wail went up from Millicent. “You've taken one!--You didn't
wait.” Then her voice changed to a motherly admonition, and she began to
interfere. “This is the way to do it, look! Let me help you.”

But Marjory drew back with resentment.

“Don't, Millicent!--Don't!” came the childish cry. But Millicent's
fingers itched.

At length Marjory had got out her treasure--a little silvery bell with
a glass top hanging inside. The bell was made of frail glassy substance,
light as air.

“Oh, the bell!” rang out Millicent's clanging voice. “The bell! It's my
bell. My bell! It's mine! Don't break it, Marjory. Don't break it, will
you?”

Marjory was shaking the bell against her ear. But it was dumb, it made
no sound.

“You'll break it, I know you will.--You'll break it. Give it ME--”
 cried Millicent, and she began to take away the bell. Marjory set up an
expostulation.

“LET HER ALONE,” said the father.

Millicent let go as if she had been stung, but still her brassy,
impudent voice persisted:

“She'll break it. She'll break it. It's mine--”

“You undo another,” said the mother, politic.

Millicent began with hasty, itching fingers to unclose another package.

“Aw--aw Mother, my peacock--aw, my peacock, my green peacock!” Lavishly
she hovered over a sinuous greenish bird, with wings and tail of spun
glass, pearly, and body of deep electric green.

“It's mine--my green peacock! It's mine, because Marjory's had one wing
off, and mine hadn't. My green peacock that I love! I love it!” She
swung it softly from the little ring on its back. Then she went to her
mother.

“Look, Mother, isn't it a beauty?”

“Mind the ring doesn't come out,” said her mother. “Yes, it's lovely!”
 The girl passed on to her father.

“Look, Father, don't you love it!”

“Love it?” he re-echoed, ironical over the word love.

She stood for some moments, trying to force his attention. Then she went
back to her place.

Marjory had brought forth a golden apple, red on one cheek, rather
garish.

“Oh!” exclaimed Millicent feverishly, instantly seized with desire for
what she had not got, indifferent to what she had. Her eye ran quickly
over the packages. She took one.

“Now!” she exclaimed loudly, to attract attention. “Now! What's
this?--What's this? What will this beauty be?”

With finicky fingers she removed the newspaper. Marjory watched her
wide-eyed. Millicent was self-important.

“The blue ball!” she cried in a climax of rapture. “I've got THE BLUE
BALL.”

She held it gloating in the cup of her hands. It was a little globe of
hardened glass, of a magnificent full dark blue color. She rose and went
to her father.

“It was your blue ball, wasn't it, father?”

“Yes.”

“And you had it when you were a little boy, and now I have it when I'm a
little girl.”

“Ay,” he replied drily.

“And it's never been broken all those years.”

“No, not yet.”

“And perhaps it never will be broken.” To this she received no answer.

“Won't it break?” she persisted. “Can't you break it?”

“Yes, if you hit it with a hammer,” he said.

“Aw!” she cried. “I don't mean that. I mean if you just drop it. It
won't break if you drop it, will it?”

“I dare say it won't.”

“But WILL it?”

“I sh'd think not.”

“Should I try?”

She proceeded gingerly to let the blue ball drop, it bounced dully on
the floor-covering.

“Oh-h-h!” she cried, catching it up. “I love it.”

“Let ME drop it,” cried Marjory, and there was a performance of
admonition and demonstration from the elder sister.

But Millicent must go further. She became excited.

“It won't break,” she said, “even if you toss it up in the air.”

She flung it up, it fell safely. But her father's brow knitted slightly.
She tossed it wildly: it fell with a little splashing explosion: it had
smashed. It had fallen on the sharp edge of the tiles that protruded
under the fender.

“NOW what have you done!” cried the mother.

The child stood with her lip between her teeth, a look, half, of pure
misery and dismay, half of satisfaction, on her pretty sharp face.

“She wanted to break it,” said the father.

“No, she didn't! What do you say that for!” said the mother. And
Millicent burst into a flood of tears.

He rose to look at the fragments that lay splashed on the floor.

“You must mind the bits,” he said, “and pick 'em all up.”

He took one of the pieces to examine it. It was fine and thin and hard,
lined with pure silver, brilliant. He looked at it closely. So--this
was what it was. And this was the end of it. He felt the curious soft
explosion of its breaking still in his ears. He threw his piece in the
fire.

“Pick all the bits up,” he said. “Give over! give over! Don't cry any
more.” The good-natured tone of his voice quieted the child, as he
intended it should.

He went away into the back kitchen to wash himself. As he was bending
his head over the sink before the little mirror, lathering to shave,
there came from outside the dissonant voices of boys, pouring out the
dregs of carol-singing.

“While Shep-ep-ep-ep-herds watched--”

He held his soapy brush suspended for a minute. They called this
singing! His mind flitted back to early carol music. Then again he heard
the vocal violence outside.

“Aren't you off there!” he called out, in masculine menace. The noise
stopped, there was a scuffle. But the feet returned and the voices
resumed. Almost immediately the door opened, boys were heard muttering
among themselves. Millicent had given them a penny. Feet scraped on the
yard, then went thudding along the side of the house, to the street.

To Aaron Sisson, this was home, this was Christmas: the unspeakably
familiar. The war over, nothing was changed. Yet everything changed. The
scullery in which he stood was painted green, quite fresh, very clean,
the floor was red tiles. The wash-copper of red bricks was very red, the
mangle with its put-up board was white-scrubbed, the American oil-cloth
on the table had a gay pattern, there was a warm fire, the water in the
boiler hissed faintly. And in front of him, beneath him as he leaned
forward shaving, a drop of water fell with strange, incalculable rhythm
from the bright brass tap into the white enamelled bowl, which was now
half full of pure, quivering water. The war was over, and everything
just the same. The acute familiarity of this house, which he had built
for his marriage twelve years ago, the changeless pleasantness of it all
seemed unthinkable. It prevented his thinking.

When he went into the middle room to comb his hair he found the
Christmas tree sparkling, his wife was making pastry at the table, the
baby was sitting up propped in cushions.

“Father,” said Millicent, approaching him with a flat blue-and-white
angel of cotton-wool, and two ends of cotton--“tie the angel at the
top.”

“Tie it at the top?” he said, looking down.

“Yes. At the very top--because it's just come down from the sky.”

“Ay my word!” he laughed. And he tied the angel.

Coming downstairs after changing he went into the icy cold parlour, and
took his music and a small handbag. With this he retreated again to the
back kitchen. He was still in trousers and shirt and slippers: but now
it was a clean white shirt, and his best black trousers, and new pink
and white braces. He sat under the gas-jet of the back kitchen, looking
through his music. Then he opened the bag, in which were sections of a
flute and a piccolo. He took out the flute, and adjusted it. As he sat
he was physically aware of the sounds of the night: the bubbling of
water in the boiler, the faint sound of the gas, the sudden crying of
the baby in the next room, then noises outside, distant boys shouting,
distant rags of carols, fragments of voices of men. The whole country
was roused and excited.

The little room was hot. Aaron rose and opened a square ventilator over
the copper, letting in a stream of cold air, which was grateful to him.
Then he cocked his eye over the sheet of music spread out on the table
before him. He tried his flute. And then at last, with the odd gesture
of a diver taking a plunge, he swung his head and began to play. A
stream of music, soft and rich and fluid, came out of the flute. He
played beautifully. He moved his head and his raised bare arms with
slight, intense movements, as the delicate music poured out. It was
sixteenth-century Christmas melody, very limpid and delicate.

The pure, mindless, exquisite motion and fluidity of the music delighted
him with a strange exasperation. There was something tense, exasperated
to the point of intolerable anger, in his good-humored breast, as he
played the finely-spun peace-music. The more exquisite the music, the
more perfectly he produced it, in sheer bliss; and at the same time, the
more intense was the maddened exasperation within him.

Millicent appeared in the room. She fidgetted at the sink. The music was
a bugbear to her, because it prevented her from saying what was on her
own mind. At length it ended, her father was turning over the various
books and sheets. She looked at him quickly, seizing her opportunity.

“Are you going out, Father?” she said.

“Eh?”

“Are you going out?” She twisted nervously.

“What do you want to know for?”

He made no other answer, and turned again to the music. His eye went
down a sheet--then over it again--then more closely over it again.

“Are you?” persisted the child, balancing on one foot.

He looked at her, and his eyes were angry under knitted brows.

“What are you bothering about?” he said.

“I'm not bothering--I only wanted to know if you were going out,” she
pouted, quivering to cry.

“I expect I am,” he said quietly.

She recovered at once, but still with timidity asked:

“We haven't got any candles for the Christmas tree--shall you buy some,
because mother isn't going out?”

“Candles!” he repeated, settling his music and taking up the piccolo.

“Yes--shall you buy us some, Father? Shall you?”

“Candles!” he repeated, putting the piccolo to his mouth and blowing a
few piercing, preparatory notes.

“Yes, little Christmas-tree candles--blue ones and red ones, in
boxes--Shall you, Father?”

“We'll see--if I see any--”

“But SHALL you?” she insisted desperately. She wisely mistrusted his
vagueness.

But he was looking unheeding at the music. Then suddenly the piccolo
broke forth, wild, shrill, brilliant. He was playing Mozart. The child's
face went pale with anger at the sound. She turned, and went out,
closing both doors behind her to shut out the noise.

The shrill, rapid movement of the piccolo music seemed to possess the
air, it was useless to try to shut it out. The man went on playing
to himself, measured and insistent. In the frosty evening the sound
carried. People passing down the street hesitated, listening. The
neighbours knew it was Aaron practising his piccolo. He was esteemed a
good player: was in request at concerts and dances, also at swell balls.
So the vivid piping sound tickled the darkness.

He played on till about seven o'clock; he did not want to go out too
soon, in spite of the early closing of the public houses. He never went
with the stream, but made a side current of his own. His wife said he
was contrary. When he went into the middle room to put on his collar and
tie, the two little girls were having their hair brushed, the baby was
in bed, there was a hot smell of mince-pies baking in the oven.

“You won't forget our candles, will you, Father?” asked Millicent, with
assurance now.

“I'll see,” he answered.

His wife watched him as he put on his overcoat and hat. He was
well-dressed, handsome-looking. She felt there was a curious glamour
about him. It made her feel bitter. He had an unfair advantage--he was
free to go off, while she must stay at home with the children.

“There's no knowing what time you'll be home,” she said.

“I shan't be late,” he answered.

“It's easy to say so,” she retorted, with some contempt. He took his
stick, and turned towards the door.

“Bring the children some candles for their tree, and don't be so
selfish,” she said.

“All right,” he said, going out.

“Don't say ALL RIGHT if you never mean to do it,” she cried, with sudden
anger, following him to the door.

His figure stood large and shadowy in the darkness.

“How many do you want?” he said.

“A dozen,” she said. “And holders too, if you can get them,” she added,
with barren bitterness.

“Yes--all right,” he turned and melted into the darkness. She went
indoors, worn with a strange and bitter flame.

He crossed the fields towards the little town, which once more fumed its
lights under the night. The country ran away, rising on his right hand.
It was no longer a great bank of darkness. Lights twinkled freely here
and there, though forlornly, now that the war-time restrictions were
removed. It was no glitter of pre-war nights, pit-heads glittering
far-off with electricity. Neither was it the black gulf of the war
darkness: instead, this forlorn sporadic twinkling.

Everybody seemed to be out of doors. The hollow dark countryside
re-echoed like a shell with shouts and calls and excited voices.
Restlessness and nervous excitement, nervous hilarity were in the
air. There was a sense of electric surcharge everywhere, frictional, a
neurasthenic haste for excitement.

Every moment Aaron Sisson was greeted with Good-night--Good-night,
Aaron--Good-night, Mr. Sisson. People carrying parcels, children,
women, thronged home on the dark paths. They were all talking loudly,
declaiming loudly about what they could and could not get, and what this
or the other had lost.

When he got into the main street, the only street of shops, it was
crowded. There seemed to have been some violent but quiet contest, a
subdued fight, going on all the afternoon and evening: people struggling
to buy things, to get things. Money was spent like water, there was
a frenzy of money-spending. Though the necessities of life were in
abundance, still the people struggled in frenzy for cheese, sweets,
raisins, pork-stuff, even for flowers and holly, all of which were
scarce, and for toys and knick-knacks, which were sold out. There was a
wild grumbling, but a deep satisfaction in the fight, the struggle. The
same fight and the same satisfaction in the fight was witnessed whenever
a tram-car stopped, or when it heaved its way into sight. Then the
struggle to mount on board became desperate and savage, but stimulating.
Souls surcharged with hostility found now some outlet for their
feelings.

As he came near the little market-place he bethought himself of the
Christmas-tree candles. He did not intend to trouble himself. And yet,
when he glanced in passing into the sweet-shop window, and saw it bare
as a board, the very fact that he probably _could not_ buy the things
made him hesitate, and try.

“Have you got any Christmas-tree candles?” he asked as he entered the
shop.

“How many do you want?”

“A dozen.”

“Can't let you have a dozen. You can have two boxes--four in a
box--eight. Six-pence a box.”

“Got any holders?”

“Holders? Don't ask. Haven't seen one this year.”

“Got any toffee--?”

“Cough-drops--two-pence an ounce--nothing else left.”

“Give me four ounces.”

He watched her weighing them in the little brass scales.

“You've not got much of a Christmas show,” he said.

“Don't talk about Christmas, as far as sweets is concerned. They ought
to have allowed us six times the quantity--there's plenty of sugar, why
didn't they? We s'll have to enjoy ourselves with what we've got. We
mean to, anyhow.”

“Ay,” he said.

“Time we had a bit of enjoyment, THIS Christmas. They ought to have made
things more plentiful.”

“Yes,” he said, stuffing his package in his pocket.




CHAPTER II. ROYAL OAK


The war had killed the little market of the town. As he passed the
market place on the brow, Aaron noticed that there were only two
miserable stalls. But people crowded just the same. There was a loud
sound of voices, men's voices. Men pressed round the doorways of the
public-houses.

But he was going to a pub out of town. He descended the dark hill. A
street-lamp here and there shed parsimonious light. In the bottoms,
under the trees, it was very dark. But a lamp glimmered in front of
the “Royal Oak.” This was a low white house sunk three steps below the
highway. It was darkened, but sounded crowded.

Opening the door, Sisson found himself in the stone passage. Old Bob,
carrying three cans, stopped to see who had entered--then went on
into the public bar on the left. The bar itself was a sort of
little window-sill on the right: the pub was a small one. In this
window-opening stood the landlady, drawing and serving to her husband.
Behind the bar was a tiny parlour or den, the landlady's preserve.

“Oh, it's you,” she said, bobbing down to look at the newcomer. None
entered her bar-parlour unless invited.

“Come in,” said the landlady. There was a peculiar intonation in her
complacent voice, which showed she had been expecting him, a little
irritably.

He went across into her bar-parlour. It would not hold more than eight
or ten people, all told--just the benches along the walls, the fire
between--and two little round tables.

“I began to think you weren't coming,” said the landlady, bringing him a
whiskey.

She was a large, stout, high-coloured woman, with a fine profile,
probably Jewish. She had chestnut-coloured eyes, quick, intelligent. Her
movements were large and slow, her voice laconic.

“I'm not so late, am I?” asked Aaron.

“Yes, you are late, I should think.” She Looked up at the little clock.
“Close on nine.”

“I did some shopping,” said Aaron, with a quick smile.

“Did you indeed? That's news, I'm sure. May we ask what you bought?”

This he did not like. But he had to answer.

“Christmas-tree candles, and toffee.”

“For the little children? Well you've done well for once! I must say I
recommend you. I didn't think you had so much in you.”

She sat herself down in her seat at the end of the bench, and took up
her knitting. Aaron sat next to her. He poured water into his glass, and
drank.

“It's warm in here,” he said, when he had swallowed the liquor.

“Yes, it is. You won't want to keep that thick good overcoat on,”
 replied the landlady.

“No,” he said, “I think I'll take it off.”

She watched him as he hung up his overcoat. He wore black clothes, as
usual. As he reached up to the pegs, she could see the muscles of his
shoulders, and the form of his legs. Her reddish-brown eyes seemed to
burn, and her nose, that had a subtle, beautiful Hebraic curve, seemed
to arch itself. She made a little place for him by herself, as
he returned. She carried her head thrown back, with dauntless
self-sufficiency.

There were several colliers in the room, talking quietly. They were
the superior type all, favoured by the landlady, who loved intellectual
discussion. Opposite, by the fire, sat a little, greenish man--evidently
an oriental.

“You're very quiet all at once, Doctor,” said the landlady in her slow,
laconic voice.

“Yes.--May I have another whiskey, please?” She rose at once, powerfully
energetic.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” she said. And she went to the bar.

“Well,” said the little Hindu doctor, “and how are things going now,
with the men?”

“The same as ever,” said Aaron.

“Yes,” said the stately voice of the landlady. “And I'm afraid they will
always be the same as ever. When will they learn wisdom?”

“But what do you call wisdom?” asked Sherardy, the Hindu. He spoke with
a little, childish lisp.

“What do I call wisdom?” repeated the landlady. “Why all acting together
for the common good. That is wisdom in my idea.”

“Yes, very well, that is so. But what do you call the common good?”
 replied the little doctor, with childish pertinence.

“Ay,” said Aaron, with a laugh, “that's it.” The miners were all
stirring now, to take part in the discussion.

“What do I call the common good?” repeated the landlady. “That all
people should study the welfare of other people, and not only their
own.”

“They are not to study their own welfare?” said the doctor.

“Ah, that I did not say,” replied the landlady. “Let them study their
own welfare, and that of others also.”

“Well then,” said the doctor, “what is the welfare of a collier?”

“The welfare of a collier,” said the landlady, “is that he shall earn
sufficient wages to keep himself and his family comfortable, to educate
his children, and to educate himself; for that is what he wants,
education.”

“Ay, happen so,” put in Brewitt, a big, fine, good-humoured collier.
“Happen so, Mrs. Houseley. But what if you haven't got much education,
to speak of?”

“You can always get it,” she said patronizing.

“Nay--I'm blest if you can. It's no use tryin' to educate a man over
forty--not by book-learning. That isn't saying he's a fool, neither.”

“And what better is them that's got education?” put in another
man. “What better is the manager, or th' under-manager, than we
are?--Pender's yaller enough i' th' face.”

“He is that,” assented the men in chorus.

“But because he's yellow in the face, as you say, Mr. Kirk,” said the
landlady largely, “that doesn't mean he has no advantages higher than
what you have got.”

“Ay,” said Kirk. “He can ma'e more money than I can--that's about a' as
it comes to.”

“He can make more money,” said the landlady. “And when he's made it, he
knows better how to use it.”

“'Appen so, an' a'!--What does he do, more than eat and drink and
work?--an' take it out of hisself a sight harder than I do, by th' looks
of him.--What's it matter, if he eats a bit more or drinks a bit more--”

“No,” reiterated the landlady. “He not only eats and drinks. He can
read, and he can converse.”

“Me an' a',” said Tom Kirk, and the men burst into a laugh. “I can
read--an' I've had many a talk an' conversation with you in this house,
Mrs. Houseley--am havin' one at this minute, seemingly.”

“SEEMINGLY, you are,” said the landlady ironically. “But do you
think there would be no difference between your conversation, and Mr.
Pender's, if he were here so that I could enjoy his conversation?”

“An' what difference would there be?” asked Tom Kirk. “He'd go home to
his bed just the same.”

“There, you are mistaken. He would be the better, and so should I, a
great deal better, for a little genuine conversation.”

“If it's conversation as ma'es his behind drop--” said Tom Kirk. “An'
puts th' bile in his face--” said Brewitt. There was a general laugh.

“I can see it's no use talking about it any further,” said the landlady,
lifting her head dangerously.

“But look here, Mrs. Houseley, do you really think it makes much
difference to a man, whether he can hold a serious conversation or not?”
 asked the doctor.

“I do indeed, all the difference in the world--To me, there is no
greater difference, than between an educated man and an uneducated man.”

“And where does it come in?” asked Kirk.

“But wait a bit, now,” said Aaron Sisson. “You take an educated
man--take Pender. What's his education for? What does he scheme
for?--What does he contrive for? What does he talk for?--”

“For all the purposes of his life,” replied the landlady.

“Ay, an' what's the purpose of his life?” insisted Aaron Sisson.

“The purpose of his life,” repeated the landlady, at a loss. “I should
think he knows that best himself.”

“No better than I know it--and you know it,” said Aaron.

“Well,” said the landlady, “if you know, then speak out. What is it?”

“To make more money for the firm--and so make his own chance of a rise
better.”

The landlady was baffled for some moments. Then she said:

“Yes, and suppose that he does. Is there any harm in it? Isn't it his
duty to do what he can for himself? Don't you try to earn all you can?”

“Ay,” said Aaron. “But there's soon a limit to what I can earn.--It's
like this. When you work it out, everything comes to money. Reckon it as
you like, it's money on both sides. It's money we live for, and money is
what our lives is worth--nothing else. Money we live for, and money we
are when we're dead: that or nothing. An' it's money as is between the
masters and us. There's a few educated ones got hold of one end of the
rope, and all the lot of us hanging on to th' other end, an' we s'll go
on pulling our guts out, time in, time out--”

“But they've got th' long end o' th' rope, th' masters has,” said
Brewitt.

“For as long as one holds, the other will pull,” concluded Aaron Sisson
philosophically.

“An' I'm almighty sure o' that,” said Kirk. There was a little pause.

“Yes, that's all there is in the minds of you men,” said the landlady.
“But what can be done with the money, that you never think of--the
education of the children, the improvement of conditions--”

“Educate the children, so that they can lay hold of the long end of the
rope, instead of the short end,” said the doctor, with a little giggle.

“Ay, that's it,” said Brewitt. “I've pulled at th' short end, an' my
lads may do th' same.”

“A selfish policy,” put in the landlady.

“Selfish or not, they may do it.”

“Till the crack o' doom,” said Aaron, with a glistening smile.

“Or the crack o' th' rope,” said Brewitt.

“Yes, and THEN WHAT?” cried the landlady.

“Then we all drop on our backsides,” said Kirk. There was a general
laugh, and an uneasy silence.

“All I can say of you men,” said the landlady, “is that you have a
narrow, selfish policy.--Instead of thinking of the children, instead of
thinking of improving the world you live in--”

“We hang on, British bulldog breed,” said Brewitt. There was a general
laugh.

“Yes, and little wiser than dogs, wrangling for a bone,” said the
landlady.

“Are we to let t' other side run off wi' th' bone, then, while we sit on
our stunts an' yowl for it?” asked Brewitt.

“No indeed. There can be wisdom in everything.--It's what you DO with
the money, when you've got it,” said the landlady, “that's where the
importance lies.”

“It's Missis as gets it,” said Kirk. “It doesn't stop wi' us.” “Ay, it's
the wife as gets it, ninety per cent,” they all concurred.

“And who SHOULD have the money, indeed, if not your wives? They have
everything to do with the money. What idea have you, but to waste it!”

“Women waste nothing--they couldn't if they tried,” said Aaron Sisson.

There was a lull for some minutes. The men were all stimulated by drink.
The landlady kept them going. She herself sipped a glass of brandy--but
slowly. She sat near to Sisson--and the great fierce warmth of her
presence enveloped him particularly. He loved so to luxuriate, like a
cat, in the presence of a violent woman. He knew that tonight she was
feeling very nice to him--a female glow that came out of her to him.
Sometimes when she put down her knitting, or took it up again from
the bench beside him, her fingers just touched his thigh, and the fine
electricity ran over his body, as if he were a cat tingling at a caress.

And yet he was not happy--nor comfortable. There was a hard, opposing
core in him, that neither the whiskey nor the woman could dissolve or
soothe, tonight. It remained hard, nay, became harder and more deeply
antagonistic to his surroundings, every moment. He recognised it as a
secret malady he suffered from: this strained, unacknowledged opposition
to his surroundings, a hard core of irrational, exhausting withholding
of himself. Irritating, because he still WANTED to give himself. A woman
and whiskey, these were usually a remedy--and music. But lately these
had begun to fail him. No, there was something in him that would not
give in--neither to the whiskey, nor the woman, nor even the music.
Even in the midst of his best music, it sat in the middle of him, this
invisible black dog, and growled and waited, never to be cajoled. He
knew of its presence--and was a little uneasy. For of course he _wanted_
to let himself go, to feel rosy and loving and all that. But at the very
thought, the black dog showed its teeth.

Still he kept the beast at bay--with all his will he kept himself as it
were genial. He wanted to melt and be rosy, happy.

He sipped his whiskey with gratification, he luxuriated in the presence
of the landlady, very confident of the strength of her liking for him.
He glanced at her profile--that fine throw-back of her hostile head,
wicked in the midst of her benevolence; that subtle, really very
beautiful delicate curve of her nose, that moved him exactly like a
piece of pure sound. But tonight it did not overcome him. There was a
devilish little cold eye in his brain that was not taken in by what he
saw.

A terrible obstinacy located itself in him. He saw the fine,
rich-coloured, secretive face of the Hebrew woman, so loudly
self-righteous, and so dangerous, so destructive, so lustful--and he
waited for his blood to melt with passion for her. But not tonight.
Tonight his innermost heart was hard and cold as ice. The very danger
and lustfulness of her, which had so pricked his senses, now made him
colder. He disliked her at her tricks. He saw her once too often. Her
and all women. Bah, the love game! And the whiskey that was to help in
the game! He had drowned himself once too often in whiskey and in love.
Now he floated like a corpse in both, with a cold, hostile eye.

And at least half of his inward fume was anger because he could no
longer drown. Nothing would have pleased him better than to feel his
senses melting and swimming into oneness with the dark. But impossible!
Cold, with a white fury inside him, he floated wide eyed and apart as
a corpse. He thought of the gentle love of his first married years, and
became only whiter and colder, set in more intense obstinacy. A wave of
revulsion lifted him.

He became aware that he was deadly antagonistic to the landlady, that
he disliked his whole circumstances. A cold, diabolical consciousness
detached itself from his state of semi-intoxication.

“Is it pretty much the same out there in India?” he asked of the doctor,
suddenly.

The doctor started, and attended to him on his own level.

“Probably,” he answered. “It is worse.”

“Worse!” exclaimed Aaron Sisson. “How's that?”

“Why, because, in a way the people of India have an easier time even
than the people of England. Because they have no responsibility. The
British Government takes the responsibility. And the people have nothing
to do, except their bit of work--and talk perhaps about national rule,
just for a pastime.”

“They have to earn their living?” said Sisson.

“Yes,” said the little doctor, who had lived for some years among the
colliers, and become quite familiar with them. “Yes, they have to earn
their living--and then no more. That's why the British Government is the
worst thing possible for them. It is the worst thing possible. And not
because it is a bad government. Really, it is not a bad government. It
is a good one--and they know it--much better than they would make for
themselves, probably. But for that reason it is so very bad.”

The little oriental laughed a queer, sniggering laugh. His eyes
were very bright, dilated, completely black. He was looking into the
ice-blue, pointed eyes of Aaron Sisson. They were both intoxicated--but
grimly so. They looked at each other in elemental difference.

The whole room was now attending to this new conversation: which they
all accepted as serious. For Aaron was considered a special man, a man
of peculiar understanding, even though as a rule he said little.

“If it is a good government, doctor, how can it be so bad for the
people?” said the landlady.

The doctor's eyes quivered for the fraction of a second, as he watched
the other man. He did not look at the landlady.

“It would not matter what kind of mess they made--and they would make
a mess, if they governed themselves, the people of India. They would
probably make the greatest muddle possible--and start killing
one another. But it wouldn't matter if they exterminated half the
population, so long as they did it themselves, and were responsible for
it.”

Again his eyes dilated, utterly black, to the eyes of the other man, and
an arch little smile flickered on his face.

“I think it would matter very much indeed,” said the landlady. “They had
far better NOT govern themselves.”

She was, for some reason, becoming angry. The little greenish doctor
emptied his glass, and smiled again.

“But what difference does it make,” said Aaron Sisson, “whether they
govern themselves or not? They only live till they die, either way.” And
he smiled faintly. He had not really listened to the doctor. The terms
“British Government,” and “bad for the people--good for the people,”
 made him malevolently angry.

The doctor was nonplussed for a moment. Then he gathered himself
together.

“It matters,” he said; “it matters.--People should always be responsible
for themselves. How can any people be responsible for another race
of people, and for a race much older than they are, and not at all
children.”

Aaron Sisson watched the other's dark face, with its utterly exposed
eyes. He was in a state of semi-intoxicated anger and clairvoyance. He
saw in the black, void, glistening eyes of the oriental only the same
danger, the same menace that he saw in the landlady. Fair, wise, even
benevolent words: always the human good speaking, and always underneath,
something hateful, something detestable and murderous. Wise speech
and good intentions--they were invariably maggoty with these secret
inclinations to destroy the man in the man. Whenever he heard anyone
holding forth: the landlady, this doctor, the spokesman on the pit
bank: or when he read the all-righteous newspaper; his soul curdled with
revulsion as from something foul. Even the infernal love and good-will
of his wife. To hell with good-will! It was more hateful than ill-will.
Self-righteous bullying, like poison gas!

The landlady looked at the clock.

“Ten minutes to, gentlemen,” she said coldly. For she too knew that
Aaron was spoiled for her for that night.

The men began to take their leave, shakily. The little doctor seemed
to evaporate. The landlady helped Aaron on with his coat. She saw the
curious whiteness round his nostrils and his eyes, the fixed hellish
look on his face.

“You'll eat a mince-pie in the kitchen with us, for luck?” she said to
him, detaining him till last.

But he turned laughing to her.

“Nay,” he said, “I must be getting home.”

He turned and went straight out of the house. Watching him, the
landlady's face became yellow with passion and rage.

“That little poisonous Indian viper,” she said aloud, attributing
Aaron's mood to the doctor. Her husband was noisily bolting the door.

Outside it was dark and frosty. A gang of men lingered in the road near
the closed door. Aaron found himself among them, his heart bitterer than
steel.

The men were dispersing. He should take the road home. But the devil was
in it, if he could take a stride in the homeward direction. There seemed
a wall in front of him. He veered. But neither could he take a stride in
the opposite direction. So he was destined to veer round, like some sort
of weather-cock, there in the middle of the dark road outside the “Royal
Oak.”

But as he turned, he caught sight of a third exit. Almost opposite was
the mouth of Shottle Lane, which led off under trees, at right angles
to the highroad, up to New Brunswick Colliery. He veered towards the
off-chance of this opening, in a delirium of icy fury, and plunged away
into the dark lane, walking slowly, on firm legs.




CHAPTER III. “THE LIGHTED TREE”


It is remarkable how many odd or extraordinary people there are in
England. We hear continual complaints of the stodgy dullness of the
English. It would be quite as just to complain of their freakish,
unusual characters. Only _en masse_ the metal is all Britannia.

In an ugly little mining town we find the odd ones just as distinct as
anywhere else. Only it happens that dull people invariably meet dull
people, and odd individuals always come across odd individuals, no
matter where they may be. So that to each kind society seems all of a
piece.

At one end of the dark tree-covered Shottle Lane stood the “Royal Oak”
 public house; and Mrs. Houseley was certainly an odd woman. At the
other end of the lane was Shottle House, where the Bricknells lived; the
Bricknells were odd, also. Alfred Bricknell, the old man, was one of the
partners in the Colliery firm. His English was incorrect, his accent,
broad Derbyshire, and he was not a gentleman in the snobbish sense of
the word. Yet he was well-to-do, and very stuck-up. His wife was dead.

Shottle House stood two hundred yards beyond New Brunswick Colliery.
The colliery was imbedded in a plantation, whence its burning pit-hill
glowed, fumed, and stank sulphur in the nostrils of the Bricknells.
Even war-time efforts had not put out this refuse fire. Apart from this,
Shottle House was a pleasant square house, rather old, with shrubberies
and lawns. It ended the lane in a dead end. Only a field-path trekked
away to the left.

On this particular Christmas Eve Alfred Bricknell had only two of his
children at home. Of the others, one daughter was unhappily married, and
away in India weeping herself thinner; another was nursing her babies in
Streatham. Jim, the hope of the house, and Julia, now married to Robert
Cunningham, had come home for Christmas.

The party was seated in the drawing-room, that the grown-up daughters
had made very fine during their periods of courtship. Its walls were
hung with fine grey canvas, it had a large, silvery grey, silky carpet,
and the furniture was covered with dark green silky material. Into this
reticence pieces of futurism, Omega cushions and Van-Gogh-like pictures
exploded their colours. Such _chic_ would certainly not have been looked
for up Shottle Lane.

The old man sat in his high grey arm-chair very near an enormous coal
fire. In this house there was no coal-rationing. The finest coal was
arranged to obtain a gigantic glow such as a coal-owner may well enjoy,
a great, intense mass of pure red fire. At this fire Alfred Bricknell
toasted his tan, lambs-wool-lined slippers.

He was a large man, wearing a loose grey suit, and sprawling in the
large grey arm-chair. The soft lamp-light fell on his clean, bald,
Michael-Angelo head, across which a few pure hairs glittered. His chin
was sunk on his breast, so that his sparse but strong-haired white
beard, in which every strand stood distinct, like spun glass lithe and
elastic, curved now upwards and inwards, in a curious curve returning
upon him. He seemed to be sunk in stern, prophet-like meditation. As a
matter of fact, he was asleep after a heavy meal.

Across, seated on a pouffe on the other side of the fire, was a
cameo-like girl with neat black hair done tight and bright in the French
mode. She had strangely-drawn eyebrows, and her colour was brilliant.
She was hot, leaning back behind the shaft of old marble of the
mantel-piece, to escape the fire. She wore a simple dress of apple-green
satin, with full sleeves and ample skirt and a tiny bodice of green
cloth. This was Josephine Ford, the girl Jim was engaged to.

Jim Bricknell himself was a tall big fellow of thirty-eight. He sat in
a chair in front of the fire, some distance back, and stretched his long
legs far in front of him. His chin too was sunk on his breast, his young
forehead was bald, and raised in odd wrinkles, he had a silent half-grin
on his face, a little tipsy, a little satyr-like. His small moustache
was reddish.

Behind him a round table was covered with cigarettes, sweets, and
bottles. It was evident Jim Bricknell drank beer for choice. He wanted
to get fat--that was his idea. But he couldn't bring it off: he was
thin, though not too thin, except to his own thinking.

His sister Julia was bunched up in a low chair between him and his
father. She too was a tall stag of a thing, but she sat bunched up like
a witch. She wore a wine-purple dress, her arms seemed to poke out of
the sleeves, and she had dragged her brown hair into straight, untidy
strands. Yet she had real beauty. She was talking to the young man who
was not her husband: a fair, pale, fattish young fellow in pince-nez and
dark clothes. This was Cyril Scott, a friend.

The only other person stood at the round table pouring out red wine. He
was a fresh, stoutish young Englishman in khaki, Julia's husband, Robert
Cunningham, a lieutenant about to be demobilised, when he would become a
sculptor once more. He drank red wine in large throatfuls, and his eyes
grew a little moist. The room was hot and subdued, everyone was silent.

“I say,” said Robert suddenly, from the rear--“anybody have a drink?
Don't you find it rather hot?”

“Is there another bottle of beer there?” said Jim, without moving, too
settled even to stir an eye-lid.

“Yes--I think there is,” said Robert.

“Thanks--don't open it yet,” murmured Jim.

“Have a drink, Josephine?” said Robert.

“No thank you,” said Josephine, bowing slightly.

Finding the drinks did not go, Robert went round with the cigarettes.
Josephine Ford looked at the white rolls.

“Thank you,” she said, and taking one, suddenly licked her rather full,
dry red lips with the rapid tip of her tongue. It was an odd movement,
suggesting a snake's flicker. She put her cigarette between her lips,
and waited. Her movements were very quiet and well bred; but perhaps too
quiet, they had the dangerous impassivity of the Bohemian, Parisian or
American rather than English.

“Cigarette, Julia?” said Robert to his wife.

She seemed to start or twitch, as if dazed. Then she looked up at her
husband with a queer smile, puckering the corners of her eyes. He looked
at the cigarettes, not at her. His face had the blunt voluptuous gravity
of a young lion, a great cat. She kept him standing for some moments
impassively. Then suddenly she hung her long, delicate fingers over
the box, in doubt, and spasmodically jabbed at the cigarettes, clumsily
raking one out at last.

“Thank you, dear--thank you,” she cried, rather high, looking up and
smiling once more. He turned calmly aside, offering the cigarettes to
Scott, who refused.

“Oh!” said Julia, sucking the end of her cigarette. “Robert is so happy
with all the good things--aren't you dear?” she sang, breaking into a
hurried laugh. “We aren't used to such luxurious living, we aren't--ARE
WE DEAR--No, we're not such swells as this, we're not. Oh, ROBBIE, isn't
it all right, isn't it just all right?” She tailed off into her hurried,
wild, repeated laugh. “We're so happy in a land of plenty, AREN'T WE
DEAR?”

“Do you mean I'm greedy, Julia?” said Robert.

“Greedy!--Oh, greedy!--he asks if he's greedy?--no you're not greedy,
Robbie, you're not greedy. I want you to be happy.”

“I'm quite happy,” he returned.

“Oh, he's happy!--Really!--he's happy! Oh, what an accomplishment! Oh,
my word!” Julia puckered her eyes and laughed herself into a nervous
twitching silence.

Robert went round with the matches. Julia sucked her cigarette.

“Give us a light, Robbie, if you ARE happy!” she cried.

“It's coming,” he answered.

Josephine smoked with short, sharp puffs. Julia sucked wildly at her
light. Robert returned to his red wine. Jim Bricknell suddenly roused
up, looked round on the company, smiling a little vacuously and showing
his odd, pointed teeth.

“Where's the beer?” he asked, in deep tones, smiling full into
Josephine's face, as if she were going to produce it by some sleight of
hand. Then he wheeled round to the table, and was soon pouring beer down
his throat as down a pipe. Then he dropped supine again. Cyril Scott was
silently absorbing gin and water.

“I say,” said Jim, from the remote depths of his sprawling. “Isn't there
something we could do to while the time away?”

Everybody suddenly laughed--it sounded so remote and absurd.

“What, play bridge or poker or something conventional of that sort?”
 said Josephine in her distinct voice, speaking to him as if he were a
child.

“Oh, damn bridge,” said Jim in his sleep-voice. Then he began pulling
his powerful length together. He sat on the edge of his chair-seat,
leaning forward, peering into all the faces and grinning.

“Don't look at me like that--so long--” said Josephine, in her
self-contained voice. “You make me uncomfortable.” She gave an odd
little grunt of a laugh, and the tip of her tongue went over her lips as
she glanced sharply, half furtively round the room.

“I like looking at you,” said Jim, his smile becoming more malicious.

“But you shouldn't, when I tell you not,” she returned.

Jim twisted round to look at the state of the bottles. The father also
came awake. He sat up.

“Isn't it time,” he said, “that you all put away your glasses and
cigarettes and thought of bed?”

Jim rolled slowly round towards his father, sprawling in the long chair.

“Ah, Dad,” he said, “tonight's the night! Tonight's some night,
Dad.--You can sleep any time--” his grin widened--“but there aren't many
nights to sit here--like this--Eh?”

He was looking up all the time into the face of his father, full and
nakedly lifting his face to the face of his father, and smiling fixedly.
The father, who was perfectly sober, except for the contagion from the
young people, felt a wild tremor go through his heart as he gazed on the
face of his boy. He rose stiffly.

“You want to stay?” he said. “You want to stay!--Well then--well then,
I'll leave you. But don't be long.” The old man rose to his full height,
rather majestic. The four younger people also rose respectfully--only
Jim lay still prostrate in his chair, twisting up his face towards his
father.

“You won't stay long,” said the old man, looking round a little
bewildered. He was seeking a responsible eye. Josephine was the only one
who had any feeling for him.

“No, we won't stay long, Mr. Bricknell,” she said gravely.

“Good night, Dad,” said Jim, as his father left the room.

Josephine went to the window. She had rather a stiff, _poupee_ walk.

“How is the night?” she said, as if to change the whole feeling in
the room. She pushed back the thick grey-silk curtains. “Why?” she
exclaimed. “What is that light burning? A red light?”

“Oh, that's only the pit-bank on fire,” said Robert, who had followed
her.

“How strange!--Why is it burning now?”

“It always burns, unfortunately--it is most consistent at it. It is the
refuse from the mines. It has been burning for years, in spite of all
efforts to the contrary.”

“How very curious! May we look at it?” Josephine now turned the handle
of the French windows, and stepped out.

“Beautiful!” they heard her voice exclaim from outside.

In the room, Julia laid her hand gently, protectively over the hand of
Cyril Scott.

“Josephine and Robert are admiring the night together!” she said,
smiling with subtle tenderness to him.

“Naturally! Young people always do these romantic things,” replied Cyril
Scott. He was twenty-two years old, so he could afford to be cynical.

“Do they?--Don't you think it's nice of them?” she said, gently removing
her hand from his. His eyes were shining with pleasure.

“I do. I envy them enormously. One only needs to be sufficiently naive,”
 he said.

“One does, doesn't one!” cooed Julia.

“I say, do you hear the bells?” said Robert, poking his head into the
room.

“No, dear! Do you?” replied Julia.

“Bells! Hear the bells! Bells!” exclaimed the half-tipsy and
self-conscious Jim. And he rolled in his chair in an explosion of
sudden, silent laughter, showing his mouthful of pointed teeth, like
a dog. Then he gradually gathered himself together, found his feet,
smiling fixedly.

“Pretty cool night!” he said aloud, when he felt the air on his almost
bald head. The darkness smelt of sulphur.

Josephine and Robert had moved out of sight. Julia was abstracted,
following them with her eyes. With almost supernatural keenness she
seemed to catch their voices from the distance.

“Yes, Josephine, WOULDN'T that be AWFULLY ROMANTIC!”--she suddenly
called shrilly.

The pair in the distance started.

“What--!” they heard Josephine's sharp exclamation.

“What's that?--What would be romantic?” said Jim as he lurched up and
caught hold of Cyril Scott's arm.

“Josephine wants to make a great illumination of the grounds of the
estate,” said Julia, magniloquent.

“No--no--I didn't say it,” remonstrated Josephine.

“What Josephine said,” explained Robert, “was simply that it would be
pretty to put candles on one of the growing trees, instead of having a
Christmas-tree indoors.”

“Oh, Josephine, how sweet of you!” cried Julia.

Cyril Scott giggled.

“Good egg! Champion idea, Josey, my lass. Eh? What--!” cried Jim. “Why
not carry it out--eh? Why not? Most attractive.” He leaned forward over
Josephine, and grinned.

“Oh, no!” expostulated Josephine. “It all sounds so silly now. No. Let
us go indoors and go to bed.”

“NO, Josephine dear--No! It's a LOVELY IDEA!” cried Julia. “Let's get
candles and lanterns and things--”

“Let's!” grinned Jim. “Let's, everybody--let's.”

“Shall we really?” asked Robert. “Shall we illuminate one of the
fir-trees by the lawn?”

“Yes! How lovely!” cried Julia. “I'll fetch the candles.”

“The women must put on warm cloaks,” said Robert.

They trooped indoors for coats and wraps and candles and lanterns. Then,
lighted by a bicycle lamp, they trooped off to the shed to twist wire
round the candles for holders. They clustered round the bench.

“I say,” said Julia, “doesn't Cyril look like a pilot on a stormy night!
Oh, I say--!” and she went into one of her hurried laughs.

They all looked at Cyril Scott, who was standing sheepishly in the
background, in a very large overcoat, smoking a large pipe. The
young man was uncomfortable, but assumed a stoic air of philosophic
indifference.

Soon they were busy round a prickly fir-tree at the end of the lawn. Jim
stood in the background vaguely staring. The bicycle lamp sent a beam
of strong white light deep into the uncanny foliage, heads clustered and
hands worked. The night above was silent, dim. There was no wind. In
the near distance they could hear the panting of some engine at the
colliery.

“Shall we light them as we fix them,” asked Robert, “or save them for
one grand rocket at the end?”

“Oh, as we do them,” said Cyril Scott, who had lacerated his fingers and
wanted to see some reward.

A match spluttered. One naked little flame sprang alight among the dark
foliage. The candle burned tremulously, naked. They all were silent.

“We ought to do a ritual dance! We ought to worship the tree,” sang
Julia, in her high voice.

“Hold on a minute. We'll have a little more illumination,” said Robert.

“Why yes. We want more than one candle,” said Josephine.

But Julia had dropped the cloak in which she was huddled, and with arms
slung asunder was sliding, waving, crouching in a _pas seul_ before the
tree, looking like an animated bough herself.

Jim, who was hugging his pipe in the background, broke into a short,
harsh, cackling laugh.

“Aren't we fools!” he cried. “What? Oh, God's love, aren't we fools!”

“No--why?” cried Josephine, amused but resentful.

But Jim vouchsafed nothing further, only stood like a Red Indian
gripping his pipe.

The beam of the bicycle-lamp moved and fell upon the hands and faces
of the young people, and penetrated the recesses of the secret trees.
Several little tongues of flame clipped sensitive and ruddy on the naked
air, sending a faint glow over the needle foliage. They gave a strange,
perpendicular aspiration in the night. Julia waved slowly in her tree
dance. Jim stood apart, with his legs straddled, a motionless figure.

The party round the tree became absorbed and excited as more ruddy
tongues of flame pricked upward from the dark tree. Pale candles became
evident, the air was luminous. The illumination was becoming complete,
harmonious.

Josephine suddenly looked round.

“Why-y-y!” came her long note of alarm.

A man in a bowler hat and a black overcoat stood on the edge of the
twilight.

“What is it?” cried Julia.

“_Homo sapiens_!” said Robert, the lieutenant. “Hand the light, Cyril.”
 He played the beam of light full on the intruder; a man in a bowler hat,
with a black overcoat buttoned to his throat, a pale, dazed, blinking
face. The hat was tilted at a slightly jaunty angle over the left eye,
the man was well-featured. He did not speak.

“Did you want anything?” asked Robert, from behind the light.

Aaron Sisson blinked, trying to see who addressed him. To him, they were
all illusory. He did not answer.

“Anything you wanted?” repeated Robert, military, rather peremptory.

Jim suddenly doubled himself up and burst into a loud harsh cackle of
laughter. Whoop! he went, and doubled himself up with laughter. Whoop!
Whoop! he went, and fell on the ground and writhed with laughter. He
was in that state of intoxication when he could find no release from
maddening self-consciousness. He knew what he was doing, he did
it deliberately. And yet he was also beside himself, in a sort of
hysterics. He could not help himself in exasperated self-consciousness.

The others all began to laugh, unavoidably. It was a contagion. They
laughed helplessly and foolishly. Only Robert was anxious.

“I'm afraid he'll wake the house,” he said, looking at the doubled up
figure of Jim writhing on the grass and whooping loudly.

“Or not enough,” put in Cyril Scott. He twigged Jim's condition.

“No--no!” cried Josephine, weak with laughing in spite of herself.
“No--it's too long--I'm like to die laughing--”

Jim embraced the earth in his convulsions. Even Robert shook quite
weakly with laughter. His face was red, his eyes full of dancing water.
Yet he managed to articulate.

“I say, you know, you'll bring the old man down.” Then he went off again
into spasms.

“Hu! Hu!” whooped Jim, subsiding. “Hu!”

He rolled over on to his back, and lay silent. The others also became
weakly silent.

“What's amiss?” said Aaron Sisson, breaking this spell.

They all began to laugh again, except Jim, who lay on his back looking
up at the strange sky.

“What're you laughing at?” repeated Aaron.

“We're laughing at the man on the ground,” replied Josephine. “I think
he's drunk a little too much.”

“Ay,” said Aaron, standing mute and obstinate.

“Did you want anything?” Robert enquired once more.

“Eh?” Aaron looked up. “Me? No, not me.” A sort of inertia kept him
rooted. The young people looked at one another and began to laugh,
rather embarrassed.

“Another!” said Cyril Scott cynically.

They wished he would go away. There was a pause.

“What do you reckon stars are?” asked the sepulchral voice of Jim. He
still lay flat on his back on the grass.

Josephine went to him and pulled at his coat.

“Get up,” she said. “You'll take cold. Get up now, we're going indoors.”

“What do you reckon stars are?” he persisted.

Aaron Sisson stood on the edge of the light, smilingly staring at the
scene, like a boy out of his place, but stubbornly keeping his ground.

“Get up now,” said Josephine. “We've had enough.” But Jim would not
move.

Robert went with the bicycle lamp and stood at Aaron's side.

“Shall I show you a light to the road--you're off your track,” he said.
“You're in the grounds of Shottle House.”

“I can find my road,” said Aaron. “Thank you.”

Jim suddenly got up and went to peer at the stranger, poking his face
close to Aaron's face.

“Right-o,” he replied. “You're not half a bad sort of chap--Cheery-o!
What's your drink?”

“Mine--whiskey,” said Aaron.

“Come in and have one. We're the only sober couple in the bunch--what?”
 cried Jim.

Aaron stood unmoving, static in everything. Jim took him by the arm
affectionately. The stranger looked at the flickering tree, with its
tiers of lights.

“A Christmas tree,” he said, jerking his head and smiling.

“That's right, old man,” said Jim, seeming thoroughly sober now. “Come
indoors and have a drink.”

Aaron Sisson negatively allowed himself to be led off. The others
followed in silence, leaving the tree to flicker the night through. The
stranger stumbled at the open window-door.

“Mind the step,” said Jim affectionately.

They crowded to the fire, which was still hot. The newcomer looked round
vaguely. Jim took his bowler hat and gave him a chair. He sat without
looking round, a remote, abstract look on his face. He was very pale,
and seemed-inwardly absorbed.

The party threw off their wraps and sat around. Josephine turned to
Aaron Sisson, who sat with a glass of whiskey in his hand, rather slack
in his chair, in his thickish overcoat. He did not want to drink. His
hair was blond, quite tidy, his mouth and chin handsome but a little
obstinate, his eyes inscrutable. His pallor was not natural to him.
Though he kept the appearance of a smile, underneath he was hard and
opposed. He did not wish to be with these people, and yet, mechanically,
he stayed.

“Do you feel quite well?” Josephine asked him.

He looked at her quickly.

“Me?” he said. He smiled faintly. “Yes, I'm all right.” Then he dropped
his head again and seemed oblivious.

“Tell us your name,” said Jim affectionately.

The stranger looked up.

“My name's Aaron Sisson, if it's anything to you,” he said.

Jim began to grin.

“It's a name I don't know,” he said. Then he named all the party
present. But the stranger hardly heeded, though his eyes looked
curiously from one to the other, slow, shrewd, clairvoyant.

“Were you on your way home?” asked Robert, huffy.

The stranger lifted his head and looked at him.

“Home!” he repeated. “No. The other road--” He indicated the direction
with his head, and smiled faintly.

“Beldover?” inquired Robert.

“Yes.”

He had dropped his head again, as if he did not want to look at them.

To Josephine, the pale, impassive, blank-seeming face, the blue eyes
with the smile which wasn't a smile, and the continual dropping of the
well-shaped head was curiously affecting. She wanted to cry.

“Are you a miner?” Robert asked, _de haute en bas_.

“No,” cried Josephine. She had looked at his hands.

“Men's checkweighman,” replied Aaron. He had emptied his glass. He put
it on the table.

“Have another?” said Jim, who was attending fixedly, with curious
absorption, to the stranger.

“No,” cried Josephine, “no more.”

Aaron looked at Jim, then at her, and smiled slowly, with remote
bitterness. Then he lowered his head again. His hands were loosely
clasped between his knees.

“What about the wife?” said Robert--the young lieutenant.

“What about the wife and kiddies? You're a married man, aren't you?”

The sardonic look of the stranger rested on the subaltern.

“Yes,” he said.

“Won't they be expecting you?” said Robert, trying to keep his temper
and his tone of authority.

“I expect they will--”

“Then you'd better be getting along, hadn't you?”

The eyes of the intruder rested all the time on the flushed subaltern.
The look on Aaron's face became slowly satirical.

“Oh, dry up the army touch,” said Jim contemptuously, to Robert. “We're
all civvies here. We're all right, aren't we?” he said loudly, turning
to the stranger with a grin that showed his pointed teeth.

Aaron gave a brief laugh of acknowledgement.

“How many children have you?” sang Julia from her distance.

“Three.”

“Girls or boys?”

“Girls.”

“All girls? Dear little things! How old?”

“Oldest eight--youngest nine months--”

“So small!” sang Julia, with real tenderness now--Aaron dropped his
head. “But you're going home to them, aren't you?” said Josephine, in
whose eyes the tears had already risen. He looked up at her, at her
tears. His face had the same pale perverse smile.

“Not tonight,” he said.

“But why? You're wrong!” cried Josephine.

He dropped his head and became oblivious.

“Well!” said Cyril Scott, rising at last with a bored exclamation. “I
think I'll retire.”

“Will you?” said Julia, also rising. “You'll find your candle outside.”

She went out. Scott bade good night, and followed her. The four people
remained in the room, quite silent. Then Robert rose and began to walk
about, agitated.

“Don't you go back to 'em. Have a night out. You stop here tonight,” Jim
said suddenly, in a quiet intimate tone.

The stranger turned his head and looked at him, considering.

“Yes?” he said. He seemed to be smiling coldly.

“Oh, but!” cried Josephine. “Your wife and your children! Won't they be
awfully bothered? Isn't it awfully unkind to them?”

She rose in her eagerness. He sat turning up his face to her. She could
not understand his expression.

“Won't you go home to them?” she said, hysterical.

“Not tonight,” he replied quietly, again smiling.

“You're wrong!” she cried. “You're wrong!” And so she hurried out of the
room in tears.

“Er--what bed do you propose to put him in?” asked Robert rather
officer-like.

“Don't propose at all, my lad,” replied Jim, ironically--he did not like
Robert. Then to the stranger he said:

“You'll be all right on the couch in my room?--it's a good couch, big
enough, plenty of rugs--” His voice was easy and intimate.

Aaron looked at him, and nodded.

They had another drink each, and at last the two set off, rather
stumbling, upstairs. Aaron carried his bowler hat with him.

Robert remained pacing in the drawing-room for some time. Then he went
out, to return in a little while. He extinguished the lamps and saw that
the fire was safe. Then he went to fasten the window-doors securely.
Outside he saw the uncanny glimmer of candles across the lawn. He had
half a mind to go out and extinguish them--but he did not. So he went
upstairs and the house was quiet. Faint crumbs of snow were falling
outside.

When Jim woke in the morning Aaron had gone. Only on the floor were two
packets of Christmas-tree candles, fallen from the stranger's pockets.
He had gone through the drawing-room door, as he had come. The housemaid
said that while she was cleaning the grate in the dining-room she heard
someone go into the drawing-room: a parlour-maid had even seen someone
come out of Jim's bedroom. But they had both thought it was Jim himself,
for he was an unsettled house mate.

There was a thin film of snow, a lovely Christmas morning.




CHAPTER IV. “THE PILLAR OF SALT”


Our story will not yet see daylight. A few days after Christmas, Aaron
sat in the open shed at the bottom of his own garden, looking out on the
rainy darkness. No one knew he was there. It was some time after six in
the evening.

From where he sat, he looked straight up the garden to the house. The
blind was not drawn in the middle kitchen, he could see the figures of
his wife and one child. There was a light also in the upstairs window.
His wife was gone upstairs again. He wondered if she had the baby ill.
He could see her figure vaguely behind the lace curtains of the bedroom.
It was like looking at his home through the wrong end of a telescope.
Now the little girls had gone from the middle room: only to return in a
moment.

His attention strayed. He watched the light falling from the window
of the next-door house. Uneasily, he looked along the whole range of
houses. The street sloped down-hill, and the backs were open to the
fields. So he saw a curious succession of lighted windows, between which
jutted the intermediary back premises, scullery and outhouse, in dark
little blocks. It was something like the keyboard of a piano: more
still, like a succession of musical notes. For the rectangular planes
of light were of different intensities, some bright and keen, some soft,
warm, like candle-light, and there was one surface of pure red light,
one or two were almost invisible, dark green. So the long scale of
lights seemed to trill across the darkness, now bright, now dim,
swelling and sinking. The effect was strange.

And thus the whole private life of the street was threaded in lights.
There was a sense of indecent exposure, from so many backs. He felt
himself almost in physical contact with this contiguous stretch of back
premises. He heard the familiar sound of water gushing from the sink in
to the grate, the dropping of a pail outside the door, the clink of a
coal shovel, the banging of a door, the sound of voices. So many houses
cheek by jowl, so many squirming lives, so many back yards, back doors
giving on to the night. It was revolting.

Away in the street itself, a boy was calling the newspaper: “--'NING
POST! --'NING PO-O-ST!” It was a long, melancholy howl, and seemed
to epitomise the whole of the dark, wet, secretive, thickly-inhabited
night. A figure passed the window of Aaron's own house, entered, and
stood inside the room talking to Mrs. Sisson. It was a young woman in
a brown mackintosh and a black hat. She stood under the incandescent
light, and her hat nearly knocked the globe. Next door a man had run out
in his shirt sleeves: this time a young, dark-headed collier running to
the gate for a newspaper, running bare-headed, coatless, slippered in
the rain. He had got his news-sheet, and was returning. And just at that
moment the young man's wife came out, shading her candle with a lading
tin. She was going to the coal-house for some coal. Her husband passed
her on the threshold. She could be heard breaking the bits of coal and
placing them on the dustpan. The light from her candle fell faintly
behind her. Then she went back, blown by a swirl of wind. But again she
was at the door, hastily standing her iron shovel against the wall. Then
she shut the back door with a bang. These noises seemed to scrape and
strike the night.

In Aaron's own house, the young person was still talking to Mrs. Sisson.
Millicent came out, sheltering a candle with her hand. The candle blew
out. She ran indoors, and emerged again, her white pinafore fluttering.
This time she performed her little journey safely. He could see the
faint glimmer of her candle emerging secretly from the closet.

The young person was taking her leave. He could hear her
sympathetic--“Well--good night! I hope she'll be no worse. Good night
Mrs. Sisson!” She was gone--he heard the windy bang of the street-gate.
Presently Millicent emerged again, flitting indoors.

So he rose to his feet, balancing, swaying a little before he started
into motion, as so many colliers do. Then he moved along the path
towards the house, in the rain and darkness, very slowly edging
forwards.

Suddenly the door opened. His wife emerged with a pail. He stepped
quietly aside, on to his side garden, among the sweet herbs. He could
smell rosemary and sage and hyssop. A low wall divided his garden from
his neighbour's. He put his hand on it, on its wetness, ready to drop
over should his wife come forward. But she only threw the contents of
her pail on the garden and retired again. She might have seen him had
she looked. He remained standing where he was, listening to the trickle
of rain in the water-butt. The hollow countryside lay beyond him.
Sometimes in the windy darkness he could see the red burn of New
Brunswick bank, or the brilliant jewels of light clustered at Bestwood
Colliery. Away in the dark hollow, nearer, the glare of the electric
power-station disturbed the night. So again the wind swirled the rain
across all these hieroglyphs of the countryside, familiar to him as his
own breast.

A motor-car was labouring up the hill. His trained ear attended to it
unconsciously. It stopped with a jar. There was a bang of the yard-gate.
A shortish dark figure in a bowler hat passed the window. Millicent was
drawing down the blind. It was the doctor. The blind was drawn, he could
see no more.

Stealthily he began to approach the house. He stood by the climbing rose
of the porch, listening. He heard voices upstairs. Perhaps the children
would be downstairs. He listened intently. Voices were upstairs only. He
quietly opened the door. The room was empty, save for the baby, who was
cooing in her cradle. He crossed to the hall. At the foot of the stairs
he could hear the voice of the Indian doctor: “Now little girl, you
must just keep still and warm in bed, and not cry for the moon.” He said
“_de_ moon,” just as ever.--Marjory must be ill.

So Aaron quietly entered the parlour. It was a cold, clammy room, dark.
He could hear footsteps passing outside on the asphalt pavement below
the window, and the wind howling with familiar cadence. He began feeling
for something in the darkness of the music-rack beside the piano. He
touched and felt--he could not find what he wanted. Perplexed, he turned
and looked out of the window. Through the iron railing of the front wall
he could see the little motorcar sending its straight beams of light in
front of it, up the street.

He sat down on the sofa by the window. The energy had suddenly left all
his limbs. He sat with his head sunk, listening. The familiar room, the
familiar voice of his wife and his children--he felt weak as if he were
dying. He felt weak like a drowning man who acquiesces in the waters.
His strength was gone, he was sinking back. He would sink back to it
all, float henceforth like a drowned man.

So he heard voices coming nearer from upstairs, feet moving. They were
coming down.

“No, Mrs. Sisson, you needn't worry,” he heard the voice of the doctor
on the stairs. “If she goes on as she is, she'll be all right. Only she
must be kept warm and quiet--warm and quiet--that's the chief thing.”

“Oh, when she has those bouts I can't bear it,” Aaron heard his wife's
voice.

They were downstairs. Their feet click-clicked on the tiled passage.
They had gone into the middle room. Aaron sat and listened.

“She won't have any more bouts. If she does, give her a few drops from
the little bottle, and raise her up. But she won't have any more,” the
doctor said.

“If she does, I s'll go off my head, I know I shall.”

“No, you won't. No, you won't do anything of the sort. You won't go off
your head. You'll keep your head on your shoulders, where it ought to
be,” protested the doctor.

“But it nearly drives me mad.”

“Then don't let it. The child won't die, I tell you. She will be all
right, with care. Who have you got sitting up with her? You're not to
sit up with her tonight, I tell you. Do you hear me?”

“Miss Smitham's coming in. But it's no good--I shall have to sit up. I
shall HAVE to.”

“I tell you you won't. You obey ME. I know what's good for you as well
as for her. I am thinking of you as much as of her.”

“But I can't bear it--all alone.” This was the beginning of tears. There
was a dead silence--then a sound of Millicent weeping with her mother.
As a matter of fact, the doctor was weeping too, for he was an emotional
sympathetic soul, over forty.

“Never mind--never mind--you aren't alone,” came the doctor's
matter-of-fact voice, after a loud nose-blowing. “I am here to help you.
I will do whatever I can--whatever I can.”

“I can't bear it. I can't bear it,” wept the woman.

Another silence, another nose-blowing, and again the doctor:

“You'll HAVE to bear it--I tell you there's nothing else for it. You'll
have to bear it--but we'll do our best for you. I will do my best
for you--always--ALWAYS--in sickness or out of sickness--There!” He
pronounced _there_ oddly, not quite _dhere_.

“You haven't heard from your husband?” he added.

“I had a letter--“--sobs--“from the bank this morning.”

“FROM DE BANK?”

“Telling me they were sending me so much per month, from him, as an
allowance, and that he was quite well, but he was travelling.”

“Well then, why not let him travel? You can live.”

“But to leave me alone,” there was burning indignation in her voice. “To
go off and leave me with every responsibility, to leave me with all the
burden.”

“Well I wouldn't trouble about him. Aren't you better off without him?”

“I am. I am,” she cried fiercely. “When I got that letter this morning,
I said MAY EVIL BEFALL YOU, YOU SELFISH DEMON. And I hope it may.”


“Well-well, well-well, don't fret. Don't be angry, it won't make it any
better, I tell you.”

“Angry! I AM angry. I'm worse than angry. A week ago I hadn't a grey
hair in my head. Now look here--” There was a pause.

“Well-well, well-well, never mind. You will be all right, don't you
bother. Your hair is beautiful anyhow.”

“What makes me so mad is that he should go off like that--never a
word--coolly takes his hook. I could kill him for it.”

“Were you ever happy together?”

“We were all right at first. I know I was fond of him. But he'd kill
anything.--He kept himself back, always kept himself back, couldn't give
himself--”

There was a pause.

“Ah well,” sighed the doctor. “Marriage is a mystery. I'm glad I'm not
entangled in it.”

“Yes, to make some woman's life a misery.--I'm sure it was death to live
with him, he seemed to kill everything off inside you. He was a man you
couldn't quarrel with, and get it over. Quiet--quiet in his tempers, and
selfish through and through. I've lived with him twelve years--I know
what it is. Killing! You don't know what he was--”

“I think I knew him. A fair man? Yes?” said the doctor.

“Fair to look at.--There's a photograph of him in the parlour--taken
when he was married--and one of me.--Yes, he's fairhaired.”

Aaron guessed that she was getting a candle to come into the parlour. He
was tempted to wait and meet them--and accept it all again. Devilishly
tempted, he was. Then he thought of her voice, and his heart went cold.
Quick as thought, he obeyed his first impulse. He felt behind the couch,
on the floor where the curtains fell. Yes--the bag was there. He took it
at once. In the next breath he stepped out of the room and tip-toed
into the passage. He retreated to the far end, near the street door, and
stood behind the coats that hung on the hall-stand.

At that moment his wife came into the passage, holding a candle. She was
red-eyed with weeping, and looked frail.

“Did YOU leave the parlour door open?” she asked of Millicent,
suspiciously.

“No,” said Millicent from the kitchen.

The doctor, with his soft, Oriental tread followed Mrs. Sisson into the
parlour. Aaron saw his wife hold up the candle before his portrait and
begin to weep. But he knew her. The doctor laid his hand softly on
her arm, and left it there, sympathetically. Nor did he remove it when
Millicent stole into the room, looking very woe-begone and important.
The wife wept silently, and the child joined in.

“Yes, I know him,” said the doctor. “If he thinks he will be happier
when he's gone away, you must be happier too, Mrs. Sisson. That's
all. Don't let him triumph over you by making you miserable. You enjoy
yourself as well. You're only a girl---”

But a tear came from his eye, and he blew his nose vigorously on a large
white silk handkerchief, and began to polish his _pince nez_. Then he
turned, and they all bundled out of the room.

The doctor took his departure. Mrs. Sisson went almost immediately
upstairs, and Millicent shortly crept after her. Then Aaron, who had
stood motionless as if turned to a pillar of salt, went quietly down
the passage and into the living room. His face was very pale,
ghastly-looking. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the
mantel, as he passed, and felt weak, as if he were really a criminal.
But his heart did not relax, nevertheless. So he hurried into the night,
down the garden, climbed the fence into the field, and went away across
the field in the rain, towards the highroad.

He felt sick in every fibre. He almost hated the little handbag he
carried, which held his flute and piccolo. It seemed a burden just
then--a millstone round his neck. He hated the scene he had left--and
he hated the hard, inviolable heart that stuck unchanging in his own
breast.

Coming to the high-road, he saw a tall, luminous tram-car roving along
through the rain. The trams ran across country from town to town. He
dared not board, because people knew him. So he took a side road, and
walked in a detour for two miles. Then he came out on the high-road
again and waited for a tram-car. The rain blew on his face. He waited a
long time for the last car.




CHAPTER V. AT THE OPERA


A friend had given Josephine Ford a box at the opera for one evening;
our story continues by night. The box was large and important, near the
stage. Josephine and Julia were there, with Robert and Jim--also two
more men. The women sat in the front of the box, conspicuously. They
were both poor, they were rather excited. But they belonged to a set
which looked on social triumphs as a downfall that one allows oneself.
The two men, Lilly and Struthers, were artists, the former literary, the
latter a painter. Lilly sat by Josephine in the front of the box: he was
her little lion of the evening.

Few women can sit in the front of a big box, on a crowded and full-swing
opera night, without thrilling and dilating. There is an intoxication in
being thus thrust forward, conspicuous and enhanced, right in the eye of
the vast crowd that lines the hollow shell of the auditorium. Thus even
Josephine and Julia leaned their elbows and poised their heads regally,
looking condescendingly down upon the watchful world. They were two poor
women, having nothing to do with society. Half bohemians.

Josephine was an artist. In Paris she was a friend of a very fashionable
dressmaker and decorator, master of modern elegance. Sometimes she
designed dresses for him, and sometimes she accepted from him a
commission to decorate a room. Usually at her last sou, it gave her
pleasure to dispose of costly and exquisite things for other people, and
then be rid of them.

This evening her dress was a simple, but a marvellously poised thing of
black and silver: in the words of the correct journal. With her tight,
black, bright hair, her arched brows, her dusky-ruddy face and her bare
shoulders; her strange equanimity, her long, slow, slanting looks; she
looked foreign and frightening, clear as a cameo, but dark, far off.
Julia was the English beauty, in a lovely blue dress. Her hair was
becomingly untidy on her low brow, her dark blue eyes wandered and got
excited, her nervous mouth twitched. Her high-pitched, sing-song voice
and her hurried laugh could be heard in the theatre. She twisted a
beautiful little fan that a dead artist had given her.

Not being fashionable, they were in the box when the overture began. The
opera was Verdi--_Aida_. If it is impossible to be in an important box
at the opera without experiencing the strange intoxication of social
pre-eminence, it is just as impossible to be there without some feeling
of horror at the sight the stage presents.

Josephine leaned her elbow and looked down: she knew how arresting
that proud, rather stiff bend of her head was. She had some aboriginal
American in her blood. But as she looked, she pursed her mouth. The
artist in her forgot everything, she was filled with disgust. The sham
Egypt of _Aida_ hid from her nothing of its shame. The singers were all
colour-washed, deliberately colour-washed to a bright orange tint. The
men had oblong dabs of black wool under their lower lip; the beard of
the mighty Pharaohs. This oblong dab shook and wagged to the singing.

The vulgar bodies of the fleshy women were unendurable. They all looked
such good meat. Why were their haunches so prominent? It was a question
Josephine could not solve. She scanned their really expensive, brilliant
clothing. It was _nearly_ right--nearly splendid. It only lacked that
last subtlety which the world always lacks, the last final clinching
which puts calm into a sea of fabric, and yet is the opposite pole to
machine fixity.

But the leading tenor was the chief pain. He was large, stout, swathed
in a cummerbund, and looked like a eunuch. This fattish, emasculated
look seems common in stage heroes--even the extremely popular. The tenor
sang bravely, his mouth made a large, coffin-shaped, yawning gap in his
orange face, his little beard fluttered oddly, like a tail. He turned
up his eyes to Josephine's box as he sang--that being the regulation
direction. Meanwhile his abdomen shook as he caught his breath, the
flesh of his fat, naked arms swayed.

Josephine looked down with the fixed gravity of a Red Indian, immovable,
inscrutable. It was not till the scene was ended that she lifted her
head as if breaking a spell, sent the point of her tongue rapidly over
her dried lips, and looked round into the box. Her brown eyes expressed
shame, fear, and disgust. A curious grimace went over her face--a
grimace only to be expressed by the exclamation _Merde!_ But she was
mortally afraid of society, and its fixed institutions. Rapidly she
scanned the eyes of her friends in the box. She rested on the eyes of
Lilly, a dark, ugly man.

“Isn't it nasty?” she said.

“You shouldn't look so closely,” he said. But he took it calmly, easily,
whilst she felt floods of burning disgust, a longing to destroy it all.

“Oh-ho-ho!” laughed Julia. “It's so fu-nny--so funny!”

“Of course we are too near,” said Robert.

“Say you admire that pink fondant over there,” said Struthers,
indicating with his eyebrows a blond large woman in white satin with
pink edging, who sat in a box opposite, on the upper tier.

“Oh, the fondant--exactly--the fondant! Yes, I admire her immensely!
Isn't she exactly IT!” sang Julia.

Josephine was scanning the auditorium. So many myriads of faces--like
beads on a bead-work pattern--all bead-work, in different layers. She
bowed to various acquaintances--mostly Americans in uniform, whom she
had known in Paris. She smiled to Lady Cochrane, two boxes off--Lady
Cochrane had given her the box. But she felt rather coldly towards her.

The curtain rose, the opera wound its slow length along. The audience
loved it. They cheered with mad enthusiasm. Josephine looked down on the
choppy sea of applause, white gloves clapping, heads shaking. The
noise was strange and rattling. What a curious multiple object a
theatre-audience was! It seemed to have a million heads, a million
hands, and one monstrous, unnatural consciousness. The singers appeared
before the curtain--the applause rose up like clouds of dust.

“Oh, isn't it too wonderful!” cried Julia. “I am wild with excitement.
Are you all of you?”

“Absolutely wild,” said Lilly laconically.

“Where is Scott to-night?” asked Struthers.

Julia turned to him and gave him a long, queer look from her dark blue
eyes.

“He's in the country,” she said, rather enigmatic.

“Don't you know, he's got a house down in Dorset,” said Robert, verbally
rushing in. “He wants Julia to go down and stay.”

“Is she going?” said Lilly.

“She hasn't decided,” replied Robert.

“Oh! What's the objection?” asked Struthers.

“Well, none whatsoever, as far as can be seen, except that she can't
make up her mind,” replied Robert.

“Julia's got no mind,” said Jim rudely.

“Oh! Hear the brotherly verdict!” laughed Julia hurriedly.

“You mean to go down to Dorset alone!” said Struthers.

“Why not?” replied Robert, answering for her.

“And stay how long?”

“Oh--as long as it lasts,” said Robert again.

“Starting with eternity,” said Lilly, “and working back to a fortnight.”

“And what's the matter?--looks bad in the eyes of the world?”

“Yes--about that. Afraid of compromising herself--”

Lilly looked at them.

“Depends what you take the world to mean. Do you mean us in this box, or
the crew outside there?” he jerked his head towards the auditorium.

“Do you think, Lilly, that we're the world?” said Robert ironically.

“Oh, yes, I guess we're shipwrecked in this box, like Robinson Crusoes.
And what we do on our own little island matters to us alone. As for the
infinite crowds of howling savages outside there in the unspeakable, all
you've got to do is mind they don't scrap you.”

“But WON'T they?” said Struthers.

“Not unless you put your head in their hands,” said Lilly.

“I don't know--” said Jim.

But the curtain had risen, they hushed him into silence.

All through the next scene, Julia puzzled herself, as to whether she
should go down to the country and live with Scott. She had carried on a
nervous kind of _amour_ with him, based on soul sympathy and emotional
excitement. But whether to go and live with him? She didn't know if she
wanted to or not: and she couldn't for her life find out. She was in
that nervous state when desire seems to evaporate the moment fulfilment
is offered.

When the curtain dropped she turned.

“You see,” she said, screwing up her eyes, “I have to think of
Robert.” She cut the word in two, with an odd little hitch in her
voice--“ROB-ert.”

“My dear Julia, can't you believe that I'm tired of being thought of,”
 cried Robert, flushing.

Julia screwed up her eyes in a slow smile, oddly cogitating.

“Well, who AM I to think of?” she asked.

“Yourself,” said Lilly.

“Oh, yes! Why, yes! I never thought of that!” She gave a hurried little
laugh. “But then it's no FUN to think about oneself,” she cried flatly.
“I think about ROB-ert, and SCOTT.” She screwed up her eyes and peered
oddly at the company.

“Which of them will find you the greatest treat,” said Lilly
sarcastically.

“Anyhow,” interjected Robert nervously, “it will be something new for
Scott.”

“Stale buns for you, old boy,” said Jim drily.

“I don't say so. But--” exclaimed the flushed, full-blooded Robert, who
was nothing if not courteous to women.

“How long ha' you been married? Eh?” asked Jim.

“Six years!” sang Julia sweetly.

“Good God!”

“You see,” said Robert, “Julia can't decide anything for herself. She
waits for someone else to decide, then she puts her spoke in.”

“Put it plainly--” began Struthers.

“But don't you know, it's no USE putting it plainly,” cried Julia.

“But DO you want to be with Scott, out and out, or DON'T you?” said
Lilly.

“Exactly!” chimed Robert. “That's the question for you to answer Julia.”

“I WON'T answer it,” she cried. “Why should I?” And she looked away into
the restless hive of the theatre. She spoke so wildly that she attracted
attention. But it half pleased her. She stared abstractedly down at the
pit.

The men looked at one another in some comic consternation.

“Oh, damn it all!” said the long Jim, rising and stretching himself.
“She's dead nuts on Scott. She's all over him. She'd have eloped with
him weeks ago if it hadn't been so easy. She can't stand it that Robert
offers to hand her into the taxi.”

He gave his malevolent grin round the company, then went out. He did not
reappear for the next scene.

“Of course, if she loves Scott--” began Struthers.

Julia suddenly turned with wild desperation, and cried:

“I like him tremendously--tre-men-dous-ly! He DOES understand.”

“Which we don't,” said Robert.

Julia smiled her long, odd smile in their faces: one might almost say
she smiled in their teeth.

“What do YOU think, Josephine?” asked Lilly.

Josephine was leaning froward. She started. Her tongue went rapidly over
her lips. “Who--? I--?” she exclaimed.

“Yes.”

“I think Julia should go with Scott,” said Josephine. “She'll bother
with the idea till she's done it. She loves him, really.”

“Of course she does,” cried Robert.

Julia, with her chin resting on her arms, in a position which irritated
the neighbouring Lady Cochrane sincerely, was gazing with unseeing eyes
down upon the stalls.

“Well then--” began Struthers. But the music struck up softly. They
were all rather bored. Struthers kept on making small, half audible
remarks--which was bad form, and displeased Josephine, the hostess of
the evening.

When the curtain came down for the end of the act, the men got up.
Lilly's wife, Tanny, suddenly appeared. She had come on after a dinner
engagement.

“Would you like tea or anything?” Lilly asked.

The women refused. The men filtered out on to the crimson and white,
curving corridor. Julia, Josephine and Tanny remained in the box. Tanny
was soon hitched on to the conversation in hand.

“Of course,” she replied, “one can't decide such a thing like drinking a
cup of tea.”

“Of course, one can't, dear Tanny,” said Julia.

“After all, one doesn't leave one's husband every day, to go and live
with another man. Even if one looks on it as an experiment--.”

“It's difficult!” cried Julia. “It's difficult! I feel they all want to
FORCE me to decide. It's cruel.”

“Oh, men with their beastly logic, their either-this-or-that stunt, they
are an awful bore.--But of course, Robert can't love you REALLY, or he'd
want to keep you. I can see Lilly discussing such a thing for ME. But
then you don't love Robert either,” said Tanny.

“I do! Oh, I do, Tanny! I DO love him, I love him dearly. I think he's
beautiful. Robert's beautiful. And he NEEDS me. And I need him too. I
need his support. Yes, I do love him.”

“But you like Scott better,” said Tanny.

“Only because he--he's different,” sang Julia, in long tones. “You see
Scott has his art. His art matters. And ROB-ert--Robert is a dilettante,
don't you think--he's dilettante--” She screwed up her eyes at Tanny.
Tanny cogitated.

“Of course I don't think that matters,” she replied.

“But it does, it matters tremendously, dear Tanny, tremendously.”

“Of course,” Tanny sheered off. “I can see Scott has great
attractions--a great warmth somewhere--”

“Exactly!” cried Julia. “He UNDERSTANDS!”

“And I believe he's a real artist. You might even work together. You
might write his librettos.”

“Yes!--Yes!--” Julia spoke with a long, pondering hiss.

“It might be AWFULLY nice,” said Tanny rapturously.

“Yes!--It might!--It might--!” pondered Julia. Suddenly she gave herself
a shake. Then she laughed hurriedly, as if breaking from her line of
thought.

“And wouldn't Robert be an AWFULLY nice lover for Josephine! Oh,
wouldn't that be splendid!” she cried, with her high laugh.

Josephine, who had been gazing down into the orchestra, turned now,
flushing darkly.

“But I don't want a lover, Julia,” she said, hurt.

“Josephine dear! Dear old Josephine! Don't you really! Oh, yes,
you do.--I want one so BADLY,” cried Julia, with her shaking laugh.
“Robert's awfully good to me. But we've been married six years. And it
does make a difference, doesn't it, Tanny dear?”

“A great difference,” said Tanny.

“Yes, it makes a difference, it makes a difference,” mused Julia. “Dear
old Rob-ert--I wouldn't hurt him for worlds. I wouldn't. Do you think it
would hurt Robert?”

She screwed up her eyes, looking at Tanny.

“Perhaps it would do Robert good to be hurt a little,” said Tanny. “He's
so well-nourished.”

“Yes!--Yes!--I see what you mean, Tanny!--Poor old ROB-ert! Oh, poor old
Rob-ert, he's so young!”

“He DOES seem young,” said Tanny. “One doesn't forgive it.”

“He is young,” said Julia. “I'm five years older than he. He's only
twenty-seven. Poor Old Robert.”

“Robert is young, and inexperienced,” said Josephine, suddenly turning
with anger. “But I don't know why you talk about him.”

“Is he inexperienced, Josephine dear? IS he?” sang Julia. Josephine
flushed darkly, and turned away.

“Ah, he's not so innocent as all that,” said Tanny roughly. “Those young
young men, who seem so fresh, they're deep enough, really. They're far
less innocent really than men who are experienced.”

“They are, aren't they, Tanny,” repeated Julia softly. “They're
old--older than the Old Man of the Seas, sometimes, aren't they?
Incredibly old, like little boys who know too much--aren't they? Yes!”
 She spoke quietly, seriously, as if it had struck her.

Below, the orchestra was coming in. Josephine was watching closely.
Julia became aware of this.

“Do you see anybody we know, Josephine?” she asked.

Josephine started.

“No,” she said, looking at her friends quickly and furtively.

“Dear old Josephine, she knows all sorts of people,” sang Julia.

At that moment the men returned.

“Have you actually come back!” exclaimed Tanny to them. They sat down
without answering. Jim spread himself as far as he could, in the narrow
space. He stared upwards, wrinkling his ugly, queer face. It was evident
he was in one of his moods.

“If only somebody loved me!” he complained. “If only somebody loved me I
should be all right. I'm going to pieces.” He sat up and peered into the
faces of the women.

“But we ALL love you,” said Josephine, laughing uneasily. “Why aren't
you satisfied?”

“I'm not satisfied. I'm not satisfied,” murmured Jim.

“Would you like to be wrapped in swaddling bands and laid at the
breast?” asked Lilly, disagreeably.

Jim opened his mouth in a grin, and gazed long and malevolently at his
questioner.

“Yes,” he said. Then he sprawled his long six foot of limb and body
across the box again.

“You should try loving somebody, for a change,” said Tanny. “You've been
loved too often. Why not try and love somebody?”

Jim eyed her narrowly.

“I couldn't love YOU,” he said, in vicious tones.

“_A la bonne heure_!” said Tanny.

But Jim sank his chin on his chest, and repeated obstinately:

“I want to be loved.”

“How many times have you been loved?” Robert asked him. “It would be
rather interesting to know.”

Jim looked at Robert long and slow, but did not answer.

“Did you ever keep count?” Tanny persisted.

Jim looked up at her, malevolent.

“I believe I did,” he replied.

“Forty is the age when a man should begin to reckon up,” said Lilly.

Jim suddenly sprang to his feet, and brandished his fists.

“I'll pitch the lot of you over the bloody rail,” he said.

He glared at them, from under his bald, wrinkled forehead. Josephine
glanced round. She had become a dusky white colour. She was afraid of
him, and she disliked him intensely nowadays.

“Do you recognise anyone in the orchestra?” she asked.

The party in the box had become dead silent. They looked down. The
conductor was at his stand. The music began. They all remained silent
and motionless during the next scene, each thinking his own thoughts.
Jim was uncomfortable. He wanted to make good. He sat with his elbows
on his knees, grinning slightly, looking down. At the next interval he
stood up suddenly.

“It IS the chap--What?” he exclaimed excitedly, looking round at his
friends.

“Who?” said Tanny.

“It IS he?” said Josephine quietly, meeting Jim's eye.

“Sure!” he barked.

He was leaning forward over the ledge, rattling a programme in his hand,
as if trying to attract attention. Then he made signals.

“There you are!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “That's the chap.”

“Who? Who?” they cried.

But neither Jim nor Josephine would vouchsafe an answer.

The next was the long interval. Jim and Josephine gazed down at the
orchestra. The musicians were laying aside their instruments and rising.
The ugly fire-curtain began slowly to descend. Jim suddenly bolted out.

“Is it that man Aaron Sisson?” asked Robert.

“Where? Where?” cried Julia. “It can't be.”

But Josephine's face was closed and silent. She did not answer.

The whole party moved out on to the crimson-carpeted gangway. Groups of
people stood about chatting, men and women were passing along, to pay
visits or to find drinks. Josephine's party stared around, talking
desultorily. And at length they perceived Jim stalking along, leading
Aaron Sisson by the arm. Jim was grinning, the flautist looked
unwilling. He had a comely appearance, in his white shirt--a certain
comely blondness and repose. And as much a gentleman as anybody.

“Well!” cried Josephine to him. “How do you come here?”

“I play the flute,” he answered, as he shook hands.

The little crowd stood in the gangway and talked.

“How wonderful of you to be here!” cried Julia.

He laughed.

“Do you think so?” he answered.

“Yes, I do.--It seems so FAR from Shottle House and Christmas Eve.--Oh,
wasn't it exciting!” cried Julia.

Aaron looked at her, but did not answer.

“We've heard all about you,” said Tanny playfully.

“Oh, yes,” he replied.

“Come!” said Josephine, rather irritated. “We crowd up the gangway.” And
she led the way inside the box.

Aaron stood and looked down at the dishevelled theatre.

“You get all the view,” he said.

“We do, don't we!” cried Julia.

“More than's good for us,” said Lilly.

“Tell us what you are doing. You've got a permanent job?” asked
Josephine.

“Yes--at present.”

“Ah! It's more interesting for you than at Beldover.”

She had taken her seat. He looked down at her dusky young face. Her
voice was always clear and measured.

“It's a change,” he said, smiling.

“Oh, it must be more than that,” she said. “Why, you must feel a whole
difference. It's a whole new life.”

He smiled, as if he were laughing at her silently. She flushed.

“But isn't it?” she persisted.

“Yes. It can be,” he replied.

He looked as if he were quietly amused, but dissociated. None of the
people in the box were quite real to him. He was not really amused.
Julia found him dull, stupid. Tanny also was offended that he could not
_perceive her_. The men remained practically silent.

“You're a chap I always hoped would turn up again,” said Jim.

“Oh, yes!” replied Aaron, smiling as if amused.

“But perhaps he doesn't like us! Perhaps he's not glad that we turned
up,” said Julia, leaving her sting.

The flautist turned and looked at her.

“You can't REMEMBER us, can you?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I can remember you.”

“Oh,” she laughed. “You are unflattering.”

He was annoyed. He did not know what she was getting at.

“How are your wife and children?” she asked spitefully.

“All right, I think.”

“But you've been back to them?” cried Josephine in dismay.

He looked at her, a slow, half smiling look, but did not speak.

“Come and have a drink. Damn the women,” said Jim uncouthly, seizing
Aaron by the arm and dragging him off.




CHAPTER VI. TALK


The party stayed to the end of the interminable opera. They had agreed
to wait for Aaron. He was to come around to the vestibule for them,
after the show. They trooped slowly down-stairs into the crush of the
entrance hall. Chattering, swirling people, red carpet, palms green
against cream-and-gilt walls, small whirlpools of life at the open, dark
doorways, men in opera hats steering decisively about-it was the old
scene. But there were no taxis--absolutely no taxis. And it was raining.
Fortunately the women had brought shoes. They slipped these on. Jim
rocked through the crowd, in his tall hat, looking for the flautist.

At last Aaron was found--wearing a bowler hat. Julia groaned in spirit.
Josephine's brow knitted. Not that anybody cared, really. But as one
must frown at something, why not at the bowler hat? Acquaintances and
elegant young men in uniforms insisted on rushing up and bowing and
exchanging a few words, either with Josephine, or Jim, or Julia, or
Lilly. They were coldly received. The party veered out into the night.

The women hugged their wraps about them, and set off sharply, feeling
some repugnance for the wet pavements and the crowd. They had not far to
go--only to Jim's rooms in Adelphi. Jim was leading Aaron, holding
him by the arm and slightly pinching his muscles. It gave him
great satisfaction to have between his fingers the arm-muscles of a
working-man, one of the common people, the _fons et origo_ of modern
life. Jim was talking rather vaguely about Labour and Robert Smillie,
and Bolshevism. He was all for revolution and the triumph of labour.

So they arrived, mounted a dark stair, and entered a large, handsome
room, one of the Adams rooms. Jim had furnished it from Heale's with
striped hangings, green and white and yellow and dark purple, and with
a green-and-black checked carpet, and great stripe-covered chairs
and Chesterfield. A big gas-fire was soon glowing in the handsome old
fire-place, the panelled room seemed cosy.

While Jim was handing round drinks and sandwiches, and Josephine was
making tea, Robert played Bach on the piano--the pianola, rather. The
chairs and lounge were in a half-circle round the fire. The party threw
off their wraps and sank deep into this expensive comfort of modern
bohemia. They needed the Bach to take away the bad taste that _Aida_ had
left in their mouths. They needed the whiskey and curacao to rouse their
spirits. They needed the profound comfort in which to sink away from the
world. All the men, except Aaron, had been through the war in some
way or other. But here they were, in the old setting exactly, the old
bohemian routine.

The bell rang, Jim went downstairs. He returned shortly with a frail,
elegant woman--fashionable rather than bohemian. She was cream and
auburn, Irish, with a slightly-lifted upper lip that gave her a pathetic
look. She dropped her wrap and sat down by Julia, taking her hand
delicately.

“How are you, darling?” she asked.

“Yes--I'm happy,” said Julia, giving her odd, screwed-up smile.

The pianola stopped, they all chatted indiscriminately. Jim was watching
the new-comer--Mrs. Browning--with a concentrated wolfish grin.

“I like her,” he said at last. “I've seen her before, haven't I?--I like
her awfully.”

“Yes,” said Josephine, with a slight grunt of a laugh. “He wants to be
loved.”

“Oh,” cried Clariss. “So do I!”

“Then there you are!” cried Tanny.

“Alas, no, there we aren't,” cried Clariss. She was beautiful too, with
her lifted upper-lip. “We both want to be loved, and so we miss each
other entirely. We run on in two parallel lines, that can never meet.”
 She laughed low and half sad.

“Doesn't SHE love you?” said Aaron to Jim amused, indicating Josephine.
“I thought you were engaged.”

“HER!” leered Jim vindictively, glancing at Josephine. “She doesn't love
me.”

“Is that true?” asked Robert hastily, of Josephine.

“Why,” she said, “yes. Why should he make me say out here that I don't
love him!”

“Got you my girl,” said Jim.

“Then it's no engagement?” said Robert.

“Listen to the row fools make, rushing in,” said Jim maliciously.

“No, the engagement is broken,” said Josephine.

“World coming to pieces bit by bit,” said Lilly. Jim was twisting in
his chair, and looking like a Chinese dragon, diabolical. The room was
uneasy.

“What gives you such a belly-ache for love, Jim?” said Lilly, “or for
being loved? Why do you want so badly to be loved?”

“Because I like it, damn you,” barked Jim. “Because I'm in need of it.”

None of them quite knew whether they ought to take it as a joke. It was
just a bit too real to be quite pleasant.

“Why are you such a baby?” said Lilly. “There you are, six foot in
length, have been a cavalry officer and fought in two wars, and you
spend your time crying for somebody to love you. You're a comic.”

“Am I though?” said Jim. “I'm losing life. I'm getting thin.”

“You don't look as if you were losing life,” said Lilly.

“Don't I? I am, though. I'm dying.”

“What of? Lack of life?”

“That's about it, my young cock. Life's leaving me.”

“Better sing Tosti's Farewell to it.”

Jim who had been sprawling full length in his arm-chair, the centre
of interest of all the company, suddenly sprang forward and pushed his
face, grinning, in the face of Lilly.

“You're a funny customer, you are,” he said.

Then he turned round in his chair, and saw Clariss sitting at the feet
of Julia, with one white arm over her friend's knee. Jim immediately
stuck forward his muzzle and gazed at her. Clariss had loosened her
masses of thick, auburn hair, so that it hung half free. Her face was
creamy pale, her upper lip lifted with odd pathos! She had rose-rubies
in her ears.

“I like HER,” said Jim. “What's her name?”

“Mrs. Browning. Don't be so rude,” said Josephine.

“Browning for gravies. Any relation of Robert?”

“Oh, yes! You ask my husband,” came the slow, plangent voice of Clariss.

“You've got a husband, have you?”

“Rather! Haven't I, Juley?”

“Yes,” said Julia, vaguely and wispily. “Yes, dear, you have.”

“And two fine children,” put in Robert.

“No! You don't mean it!” said Jim. “Who's your husband? Anybody?”

“Rather!” came the deep voice of Clariss. “He sees to that.”

Jim stared, grinning, showing his pointed teeth, reaching nearer and
nearer to Clariss who, in her frail scrap of an evening dress, amethyst
and silver, was sitting still in the deep black hearth-rug, her arm over
Julia's knee, taking very little notice of Jim, although he amused her.

“I like you awfully, I say,” he repeated.

“Thanks, I'm sure,” she said.

The others were laughing, sprawling in their chairs, and sipping curacao
and taking a sandwich or a cigarette. Aaron Sisson alone sat upright,
smiling flickeringly. Josephine watched him, and her pointed tongue went
from time to time over her lips.

“But I'm sure,” she broke in, “this isn't very interesting for the
others. Awfully boring! Don't be silly all the time, Jim, or we must go
home.”

Jim looked at her with narrowed eyes. He hated her voice. She let her
eye rest on his for a moment. Then she put her cigarette to her lips.
Robert was watching them both.

Josephine took her cigarette from her lips again.

“Tell us about yourself, Mr. Sisson,” she said. “How do you like being
in London?”

“I like London,” said Aaron.

Where did he live? Bloomsbury. Did he know many people? No--nobody
except a man in the orchestra. How had he got his job? Through an agent.
Etc. Etc.

“What do you make of the miners?” said Jim, suddenly taking a new line.

“Me?” said Sisson. “I don't make anything of them.”

“Do you think they'll make a stand against the government?”

“What for?”

“Nationalisation.”

“They might, one day.”

“Think they'd fight?”

“Fight?”

“Yes.”

Aaron sat laughing.

“What have they to fight for?”

“Why, everything! What haven't they to fight for?” cried Josephine
fiercely. “Freedom, liberty, and escape from this vile system. Won't
they fight for that?”

Aaron sat smiling, slowly shaking his head.

“Nay,” he said, “you mustn't ask me what they'll do--I've only just left
them, for good. They'll do a lot of cavilling.”

“But won't they ACT?” cried Josephine.

“Act?” said Aaron. “How, act?”

“Why, defy the government, and take things in their own hands,” said
Josephine.

“They might, some time,” said Aaron, rather indifferent.

“I wish they would!” cried Josephine. “My, wouldn't I love it if they'd
make a bloody revolution!”

They were all looking now at her. Her black brows were twitching, in her
black and silver dress she looked like a symbol of young disaster.

“Must it be bloody, Josephine?” said Robert.

“Why, yes. I don't believe in revolutions that aren't bloody,” said
Josephine. “Wouldn't I love it! I'd go in front with a red flag.”

“It would be rather fun,” said Tanny.

“Wouldn't it!” cried Josephine.

“Oh, Josey, dear!” cried Julia hysterically. “Isn't she a red-hot
Bolsher! _I_ should be frightened.”

“No!” cried Josephine. “I should love it.”

“So should I,” said Jim, in a luscious sort of voice. “What price
machine-guns at the end of the Strand! That's a day to live for, what?”

“Ha! Ha!” laughed Clariss, with her deep laugh. “We'd all Bolsh
together. I'd give the cheers.”

“I wouldn't mind getting killed. I'd love it, in a real fight,” said
Josephine.

“But, Josephine,” said Robert, “don't you think we've had enough of that
sort of thing in the war? Don't you think it all works out rather stupid
and unsatisfying?”

“Ah, but a civil war would be different. I've no interest in fighting
Germans. But a civil war would be different.”

“That's a fact, it would,” said Jim.

“Only rather worse,” said Robert.

“No, I don't agree,” cried Josephine. “You'd feel you were doing
something, in a civil war.”

“Pulling the house down,” said Lilly.

“Yes,” she cried. “Don't you hate it, the house we live
in--London--England--America! Don't you hate them?”

“I don't like them. But I can't get much fire in my hatred. They pall on
me rather,” said Lilly.

“Ay!” said Aaron, suddenly stirring in his chair.

Lilly and he glanced at one another with a look of recognition.

“Still,” said Tanny, “there's got to be a clearance some day or other.”

“Oh,” drawled Clariss. “I'm all for a clearance. I'm all for pulling the
house down. Only while it stands I do want central heating and a good
cook.”

“May I come to dinner?” said Jim.

“Oh, yes. You'd find it rather domestic.”

“Where do you live?”

“Rather far out now--Amersham.”

“Amersham? Where's that--?”

“Oh, it's on the map.”

There was a little lull. Jim gulped down a drink, standing at the
sideboard. He was a tall, fine, soldierly figure, and his face, with
its little sandy moustache and bald forehead, was odd. Aaron Sisson sat
watching him, unconsciously.

“Hello you!” said Jim. “Have one?”

Aaron shook his head, and Jim did not press him. It saved the drinks.

“You believe in love, don't you?” said Jim, sitting down near Aaron, and
grinning at him.

“Love!” said Aaron.

“LOVE! he says,” mocked Jim, grinning at the company.

“What about it, then?” asked Aaron.

“It's life! Love is life,” said Jim fiercely.

“It's a vice, like drink,” said Lilly.

“Eh? A vice!” said Jim. “May be for you, old bird.”

“More so still for you,” said Lilly.

“It's life. It's life!” reiterated Jim. “Don't you agree?” He turned
wolfishly to Clariss.

“Oh, yes--every time--” she drawled, nonchalant.

“Here, let's write it down,” said Lilly. He found a blue pencil and
printed in large letters on the old creamy marble of the mantel-piece
panel:--LOVE IS LIFE.

Julia suddenly rose and flung her arms asunder wildly.

“Oh, I hate love. I hate it,” she protested.

Jim watched her sardonically.

“Look at her!” he said. “Look at Lesbia who hates love.”

“No, but perhaps it is a disease. Perhaps we are all wrong, and we can't
love properly,” put in Josephine.

“Have another try,” said Jim,--“I know what love is. I've thought about
it. Love is the soul's respiration.”

“Let's have that down,” said Lilly.

LOVE IS THE SOUL'S RESPIRATION. He printed it on the old mantel-piece.

Jim eyed the letters.

“It's right,” he said. “Quite right. When you love, your soul breathes
in. If you don't breathe in, you suffocate.”

“What about breathing out?” said Robert. “If you don't breathe out, you
asphyxiate.”

“Right you are, Mock Turtle--” said Jim maliciously.

“Breathing out is a bloody revolution,” said Lilly.

“You've hit the nail on the head,” said Jim solemnly.

“Let's record it then,” said Lilly. And with the blue pencil he printed:

WHEN YOU LOVE, YOUR SOUL BREATHES IN--

WHEN YOUR SOUL BREATHES OUT, IT'S A BLOODY REVOLUTION.

“I say Jim,” he said. “You must be busting yourself, trying to breathe
in.”

“Don't you be too clever. I've thought about it,” said Jim. “When I'm in
love, I get a great inrush of energy. I actually feel it rush in--here!”
 He poked his finger on the pit of his stomach. “It's the soul's
expansion. And if I can't get these rushes of energy, I'M DYING, AND I
KNOW I AM.”

He spoke the last words with sudden ferocity and desperation.

“All _I_ know is,” said Tanny, “you don't look it.”

“I AM. I am.” Jim protested. “I'm dying. Life's leaving me.”

“Maybe you're choking with love,” said Robert. “Perhaps you have
breathed in so much, you don't know how to let it go again. Perhaps your
soul's got a crick in it, with expanding so much.”

“You're a bloody young sucking pig, you are,” said Jim.

“Even at that age, I've learned my manners,” replied Robert.

Jim looked round the party. Then he turned to Aaron Sisson.

“What do you make of 'em, eh?” he said.

Aaron shook his head, and laughed.

“Me?” he said.

But Jim did not wait for an answer.

“I've had enough,” said Tanny suddenly rising. “I think you're all
silly. Besides, it's getting late.”

“She!” said Jim, rising and pointing luridly to Clariss. “She's Love.
And HE's the Working People. The hope is these two--” He jerked a thumb
at Aaron Sisson, after having indicated Mrs. Browning.

“Oh, how awfully interesting. It's quite a long time since I've been a
personification.--I suppose you've never been one before?” said Clariss,
turning to Aaron in conclusion.

“No, I don't think I have,” he answered.

“I hope personification is right.--Ought to be _allegory_ or something
else?” This from Clariss to Robert.

“Or a parable, Clariss,” laughed the young lieutenant.

“Goodbye,” said Tanny. “I've been awfully bored.”

“Have you?” grinned Jim. “Goodbye! Better luck next time.”

“We'd better look sharp,” said Robert, “if we want to get the tube.”

The party hurried through the rainy narrow streets down to the
Embankment station. Robert and Julia and Clariss were going west, Lilly
and his wife were going to Hampstead, Josephine and Aaron Sisson were
going both to Bloomsbury.

“I suppose,” said Robert, on the stairs--“Mr. Sisson will see you to
your door, Josephine. He lives your way.”

“There's no need at all,” said Josephine.

The four who were going north went down to the low tube level. It
was nearly the last train. The station was half deserted, half rowdy,
several fellows were drunk, shouting and crowing. Down there in the
bowels of London, after midnight, everything seemed horrible and
unnatural.

“How I hate this London,” said Tanny. She was half Norwegian, and had
spent a large part of her life in Norway, before she married Lilly.

“Yes, so do I,” said Josephine. “But if one must earn one's living one
must stay here. I wish I could get back to Paris. But there's nothing
doing for me in France.--When do you go back into the country, both of
you?”

“Friday,” said Lilly.

“How lovely for you!--And when will you go to Norway, Tanny?”

“In about a month,” said Tanny.

“You must be awfully pleased.”

“Oh--thankful--THANKFUL to get out of England--”

“I know. That's how I feel. Everything is so awful--so dismal and
dreary, I find it--”

They crowded into the train. Men were still yelling like wild
beasts--others were asleep--soldiers were singing.

“Have you really broken your engagement with Jim?” shrilled Tanny in a
high voice, as the train roared.

“Yes, he's impossible,” said Josephine. “Perfectly hysterical and
impossible.”

“And SELFISH--” cried Tanny.

“Oh terribly--” cried Josephine.

“Come up to Hampstead to lunch with us,” said Lilly to Aaron.

“Ay--thank you,” said Aaron.

Lilly scribbled directions on a card. The hot, jaded midnight
underground rattled on. Aaron and Josephine got down to change trains.




CHAPTER VII. THE DARK SQUARE GARDEN


Josephine had invited Aaron Sisson to dinner at a restaurant in Soho,
one Sunday evening. They had a corner to themselves, and with a bottle
of Burgundy she was getting his history from him.

His father had been a shaft-sinker, earning good money, but had been
killed by a fall down the shaft when Aaron was only four years old. The
widow had opened a shop: Aaron was her only child. She had done well
in her shop. She had wanted Aaron to be a schoolteacher. He had served
three years apprenticeship, then suddenly thrown it up and gone to the
pit.

“But why?” said Josephine.

“I couldn't tell you. I felt more like it.”

He had a curious quality of an intelligent, almost sophisticated mind,
which had repudiated education. On purpose he kept the midland accent in
his speech. He understood perfectly what a personification was--and an
allegory. But he preferred to be illiterate.

Josephine found out what a miner's checkweighman was. She tried to find
out what sort of wife Aaron had--but, except that she was the daughter
of a publican and was delicate in health, she could learn nothing.

“And do you send her money?” she asked.

“Ay,” said Aaron. “The house is mine. And I allow her so much a week out
of the money in the bank. My mother left me a bit over a thousand when
she died.”

“You don't mind what I say, do you?” said Josephine.

“No I don't mind,” he laughed.

He had this pleasant-seeming courteous manner. But he really kept her
at a distance. In some things he reminded her of Robert: blond, erect,
nicely built, fresh and English-seeming. But there was a curious cold
distance to him, which she could not get across. An inward indifference
to her--perhaps to everything. Yet his laugh was so handsome.

“Will you tell me why you left your wife and children?--Didn't you love
them?”

Aaron looked at the odd, round, dark muzzle of the girl. She had had her
hair bobbed, and it hung in odd dark folds, very black, over her ears.

“Why I left her?” he said. “For no particular reason. They're all right
without me.”

Josephine watched his face. She saw a pallor of suffering under its
freshness, and a strange tension in his eyes.

“But you couldn't leave your little girls for no reason at all--”

“Yes, I did. For no reason--except I wanted to have some free room round
me--to loose myself--”

“You mean you wanted love?” flashed Josephine, thinking he said _lose_.

“No, I wanted fresh air. I don't know what I wanted. Why should I know?”

“But we must know: especially when other people will be hurt,” said she.

“Ah, well! A breath of fresh air, by myself. I felt forced to feel--I
feel if I go back home now, I shall be FORCED--forced to love--or
care--or something.”

“Perhaps you wanted more than your wife could give you,” she said.

“Perhaps less. She's made up her mind she loves me, and she's not going
to let me off.”

“Did you never love her?” said Josephine.

“Oh, yes. I shall never love anybody else. But I'm damned if I want to
be a lover any more. To her or to anybody. That's the top and bottom of
it. I don't want to CARE, when care isn't in me. And I'm not going to be
forced to it.”

The fat, aproned French waiter was hovering near. Josephine let him
remove the plates and the empty bottle.

“Have more wine,” she said to Aaron.

But he refused. She liked him because of his dead-level indifference to
his surroundings. French waiters and foreign food--he noticed them in
his quick, amiable-looking fashion--but he was indifferent. Josephine
was piqued. She wanted to pierce this amiable aloofness of his.

She ordered coffee and brandies.

“But you don't want to get away from EVERYTHING, do you? I myself feel
so LOST sometimes--so dreadfully alone: not in a silly sentimental
fashion, because men keep telling me they love me, don't you know. But
my LIFE seems alone, for some reason--”

“Haven't you got relations?” he said.

“No one, now mother is dead. Nothing nearer than aunts and cousins in
America. I suppose I shall see them all again one day. But they hardly
count over here.”

“Why don't you get married?” he said. “How old are you?”

“I'm twenty-five. How old are you?”

“Thirty-three.”

“You might almost be any age.--I don't know why I don't get married. In
a way, I hate earning my own living--yet I go on--and I like my work--”

“What are you doing now?”

“I'm painting scenery for a new play--rather fun--I enjoy it. But I
often wonder what will become of me.”

“In what way?”

She was almost affronted.

“What becomes of me? Oh, I don't know. And it doesn't matter, not to
anybody but myself.”

“What becomes of anybody, anyhow? We live till we die. What do you
want?”

“Why, I keep saying I want to get married and feel sure of something.
But I don't know--I feel dreadful sometimes--as if every minute would
be the last. I keep going on and on--I don't know what for--and IT keeps
going on and on--goodness knows what it's all for.”

“You shouldn't bother yourself,” he said. “You should just let it go on
and on--”

“But I MUST bother,” she said. “I must think and feel--”

“You've no occasion,” he said.

“How--?” she said, with a sudden grunting, unhappy laugh. Then she lit a
cigarette.

“No,” she said. “What I should really like more than anything would be
an end of the world. I wish the world would come to an end.”

He laughed, and poured his drops of brandy down his throat.

“It won't, for wishing,” he said.

“No, that's the awful part of it. It'll just go on and on-- Doesn't it
make you feel you'd go mad?”

He looked at her and shook his head.

“You see it doesn't concern me,” he said. “So long as I can float by
myself.”

“But ARE you SATISFIED!” she cried.

“I like being by myself--I hate feeling and caring, and being forced
into it. I want to be left alone--”

“You aren't very polite to your hostess of the evening,” she said,
laughing a bit miserably.

“Oh, we're all right,” he said. “You know what I mean--”

“You like your own company? Do you?--Sometimes I think I'm nothing when
I'm alone. Sometimes I think I surely must be nothing--nothingness.”

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No. I only want to be left alone.”

“Not to have anything to do with anybody?” she queried ironically.

“Not to any extent.”

She watched him--and then she bubbled with a laugh.

“I think you're funny,” she said. “You don't mind?”

“No--why--It's just as you see it.--Jim Bricknell's a rare comic, to my
eye.”

“Oh, him!--no, not actually. He's self-conscious and selfish and
hysterical. It isn't a bit funny after a while.”

“I only know what I've seen,” said Aaron. “You'd both of you like a
bloody revolution, though.”

“Yes. Only when it came he wouldn't be there.”

“Would you?”

“Yes, indeed I would. I would give everything to be in it. I'd give
heaven and earth for a great big upheaval--and then darkness.”

“Perhaps you'll get it, when you die,” said Aaron.

“Oh, but I don't want to die and leave all this standing. I hate it so.”

“Why do you?”

“But don't you?”

“No, it doesn't really bother me.”

“It makes me feel I can't live.”

“I can't see that.”

“But you always disagree with one!” said Josephine. “How do you like
Lilly? What do you think of him?”

“He seems sharp,” said Aaron.

“But he's more than sharp.”

“Oh, yes! He's got his finger in most pies.”

“And doesn't like the plums in any of them,” said Josephine tartly.

“What does he do?”

“Writes--stories and plays.”

“And makes it pay?”

“Hardly at all.--They want us to go. Shall we?” She rose from the table.
The waiter handed her her cloak, and they went out into the blowy dark
night. She folded her wrap round her, and hurried forward with short,
sharp steps. There was a certain Parisian _chic_ and mincingness about
her, even in her walk: but underneath, a striding, savage suggestion as
if she could leg it in great strides, like some savage squaw.

Aaron pressed his bowler hat down on his brow.

“Would you rather take a bus?” she said in a high voice, because of the
wind.

“I'd rather walk.”

“So would I.”

They hurried across the Charing Cross Road, where great buses rolled and
rocked, crammed with people. Her heels clicked sharply on the pavement,
as they walked east. They crossed Holborn, and passed the Museum. And
neither of them said anything.

When they came to the corner, she held out her hand.

“Look!” she said. “Don't come any further: don't trouble.”

“I'll walk round with you: unless you'd rather not.”

“No--But do you want to bother?”

“It's no bother.”

So they pursued their way through the high wind, and turned at last
into the old, beautiful square. It seemed dark and deserted, dark like
a savage wilderness in the heart of London. The wind was roaring in the
great bare trees of the centre, as if it were some wild dark grove deep
in a forgotten land.

Josephine opened the gate of the square garden with her key, and let it
slam to behind him.

“How wonderful the wind is!” she shrilled. “Shall we listen to it for a
minute?”

She led him across the grass past the shrubs to the big tree in the
centre. There she climbed up to a seat. He sat beside her. They sat in
silence, looking at the darkness. Rain was blowing in the wind. They
huddled against the big tree-trunk, for shelter, and watched the scene.

Beyond the tall shrubs and the high, heavy railings the wet street
gleamed silently. The houses of the Square rose like a cliff on this
inner dark sea, dimly lighted at occasional windows. Boughs swayed and
sang. A taxi-cab swirled round a corner like a cat, and purred to a
standstill. There was a light of an open hall door. But all far away,
it seemed, unthinkably far away. Aaron sat still and watched. He was
frightened, it all seemed so sinister, this dark, bristling heart of
London. Wind boomed and tore like waves ripping a shingle beach. The two
white lights of the taxi stared round and departed, leaving the coast
at the foot of the cliffs deserted, faintly spilled with light from the
high lamp. Beyond there, on the outer rim, a policeman passed solidly.

Josephine was weeping steadily all the time, but inaudibly. Occasionally
she blew her nose and wiped her face. But he had not realized. She
hardly realized herself. She sat near the strange man. He seemed so
still and remote--so fascinating.

“Give me your hand,” she said to him, subduedly.

He took her cold hand in his warm, living grasp. She wept more bitterly.
He noticed at last.

“Why are you crying?” he said.

“I don't know,” she replied, rather matter-of-fact, through her tears.

So he let her cry, and said no more, but sat with her cold hand in his
warm, easy clasp.

“You'll think me a fool,” she said. “I don't know why I cry.”

“You can cry for nothing, can't you?” he said.

“Why, yes, but it's not very sensible.”

He laughed shortly.

“Sensible!” he said.

“You are a strange man,” she said.

But he took no notice.

“Did you ever intend to marry Jim Bricknell?” he asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“I can't imagine it,” he said.

“Why not?”

Both were watching blankly the roaring night of mid-London, the
phantasmagoric old Bloomsbury Square. They were still hand in hand.

“Such as you shouldn't marry,” he said.

“But why not? I want to.”

“You think you do.”

“Yes indeed I do.”

He did not say any more.

“Why shouldn't I?” she persisted. “I don't know--”

And again he was silent.

“You've known some life, haven't you?” he asked.

“Me? Why?”

“You seem to.”

“Do I? I'm sorry. Do I seem vicious?--No, I'm not vicious.--I've seen
some life, perhaps--in Paris mostly. But not much. Why do you ask?”

“I wasn't thinking.”

“But what do you mean? What are you thinking?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

“Don't be so irritating,” said she.

But he did not answer, and she became silent also. They sat hand in
hand.

“Won't you kiss me?” came her voice out of the darkness.

He waited some moments, then his voice sounded gently, half mocking,
half reproachful.

“Nay!” he said.

“Why not?”

“I don't want to.”

“Why not?” she asked.

He laughed, but did not reply.

She sat perfectly still for some time. She had ceased to cry. In the
darkness her face was set and sullen. Sometimes a spray of rain blew
across it. She drew her hand from his, and rose to her feet.

“Ill go in now,” she said.

“You're not offended, are you?” he asked.

“No. Why?”

They stepped down in the darkness from their perch.

“I wondered.”

She strode off for some little way. Then she turned and said:

“Yes, I think it is rather insulting.”

“Nay,” he said. “Not it! Not it!”

And he followed her to the gate.

She opened with her key, and they crossed the road to her door.

“Good-night,” she said, turning and giving him her hand.

“You'll come and have dinner with me--or lunch--will you? When shall we
make it?” he asked.

“Well, I can't say for certain--I'm very busy just now. I'll let you
know.”

A policeman shed his light on the pair of them as they stood on the
step.

“All right,” said Aaron, dropping back, and she hastily opened the big
door, and entered.




CHAPTER VIII. A PUNCH IN THE WIND


The Lillys had a labourer's cottage in Hampshire--pleasant enough. They
were poor. Lilly was a little, dark, thin, quick fellow, his wife was
strong and fair. They had known Robert and Julia for some years, but
Josephine and Jim were new acquaintances,--fairly new.

One day in early spring Lilly had a telegram, “Coming to see you arrive
4:30--Bricknell.” He was surprised, but he and his wife got the spare
room ready. And at four o'clock Lilly went off to the station. He was
a few minutes late, and saw Jim's tall, rather elegant figure stalking
down the station path. Jim had been an officer in the regular army, and
still spent hours with his tailor. But instead of being a soldier he was
a sort of socialist, and a red-hot revolutionary of a very ineffectual
sort.

“Good lad!” he exclaimed, as Lilly came up. “Thought you wouldn't mind.”

“Not at all. Let me carry your bag.” Jim had a bag and a knapsack.

“I had an inspiration this morning,” said Jim. “I suddenly saw that if
there was a man in England who could save me, it was you.”

“Save you from what?” asked Lilly, rather abashed.

“Eh--?” and Jim stooped, grinning at the smaller man.

Lilly was somewhat puzzled, but he had a certain belief in himself as a
saviour. The two men tramped rather incongruously through the lanes to
the cottage.

Tanny was in the doorway as they came up the garden path.

“So nice to see you! Are you all right?” she said.

“A-one!” said Jim, grinning. “Nice of you to have me.”

“Oh, we're awfully pleased.”

Jim dropped his knapsack on the broad sofa.

“I've brought some food,” he said.

“Have you! That's sensible of you. We can't get a great deal here,
except just at week-ends,” said Tanny.

Jim fished out a pound of sausages and a pot of fish paste.

“How lovely the sausages,” said Tanny. “We'll have them for dinner
tonight--and we'll have the other for tea now. You'd like a wash?”

But Jim had already opened his bag, taken off his coat, and put on an
old one.

“Thanks,” he said.

Lilly made the tea, and at length all sat down.

“Well how unexpected this is--and how nice,” said Tanny.

“Jolly--eh?” said Jim.

He ate rapidly, stuffing his mouth too full.

“How is everybody?” asked Tanny.

“All right. Julia's gone with Cyril Scott. Can't stand that fellow, can
you? What?”

“Yes, I think he's rather nice,” said Tanny. “What will Robert do?”

“Have a shot at Josephine, apparently.”

“Really? Is he in love with her? I thought so. And she likes him too,
doesn't she?” said Tanny.

“Very likely,” said Jim.

“I suppose you're jealous,” laughed Tanny.

“Me!” Jim shook his head. “Not a bit. Like to see the ball kept
rolling.”

“What have you been doing lately?”

“Been staying a few days with my wife.”

“No, really! I can't believe it.”

Jim had a French wife, who had divorced him, and two children. Now he
was paying visits to this wife again: purely friendly. Tanny did most
of the talking. Jim excited her, with his way of looking in her face and
grinning wolfishly, and at the same time asking to be saved.

After tea, he wanted to send telegrams, so Lilly took him round to the
village post-office. Telegrams were a necessary part of his life. He had
to be suddenly starting off to keep sudden appointments, or he felt he
was a void in the atmosphere. He talked to Lilly about social reform,
and so on. Jim's work in town was merely nominal. He spent his time
wavering about and going to various meetings, philandering and weeping.

Lilly kept in the back of his mind the Saving which James had come to
look for. He intended to do his best. After dinner the three sat cosily
round the kitchen fire.

“But what do you really think will happen to the world?” Lilly asked
Jim, amid much talk.

“What? There's something big coming,” said Jim.

“Where from?”

“Watch Ireland, and watch Japan--they're the two poles of the world,”
 said Jim.

“I thought Russia and America,” said Lilly.

“Eh? What? Russia and America! They'll depend on Ireland and Japan. I
know it. I've had a vision of it. Ireland on this side and Japan on the
other--they'll settle it.”

“I don't see how,” said Lilly.

“I don't see HOW--But I had a vision of it.”

“What sort of vision?”

“Couldn't describe it.”

“But you don't think much of the Japanese, do you?” asked Lilly.

“Don't I! Don't I!” said Jim. “What, don't you think they're wonderful?”

“No. I think they're rather unpleasant.”

“I think the salvation of the world lies with them.”

“Funny salvation,” said Lilly. “I think they're anything but angels.”

“Do you though? Now that's funny. Why?”

“Looking at them even. I knew a Russian doctor who'd been through the
Russo-Japanese war, and who had gone a bit cracked. He said he saw the
Japs rush a trench. They threw everything away and flung themselves
through the Russian fire and simply dropped in masses. But those that
reached the trenches jumped in with bare hands on the Russians and tore
their faces apart and bit their throats out--fairly ripped the faces
off the bone.--It had sent the doctor a bit cracked. He said the wounded
were awful,--their faces torn off and their throats mangled--and dead
Japs with flesh between the teeth--God knows if it's true. But that's
the impression the Japanese had made on this man. It had affected his
mind really.”

Jim watched Lilly, and smiled as if he were pleased.

“No--really--!” he said.

“Anyhow they're more demon than angel, I believe,” said Lilly.

“Oh, no, Rawdon, but you always exaggerate,” said Tanny.

“Maybe,” said Lilly.

“I think Japanese are fascinating--fascinating--so quick, and such FORCE
in them--”

“Rather!--eh?” said Jim, looking with a quick smile at Tanny.

“I think a Japanese lover would be marvellous,” she laughed riskily.

“I s'd think he would,” said Jim, screwing up his eyes.

“Do you hate the normal British as much as I do?” she asked him.

“Hate them! Hate them!” he said, with an intimate grin.

“Their beastly virtue,” said she. “And I believe there's nobody more
vicious underneath.”

“Nobody!” said Jim.

“But you're British yourself,” said Lilly to Jim.

“No, I'm Irish. Family's Irish--my mother was a Fitz-patrick.”

“Anyhow you live in England.”

“Because they won't let me go to Ireland.”

The talk drifted. Jim finished up all the beer, and they prepared to go
to bed. Jim was a bit tipsy, grinning. He asked for bread and cheese to
take upstairs.

“Will you have supper?” said Lilly. He was surprised, because Jim had
eaten strangely much at dinner.

“No--where's the loaf?” And he cut himself about half of it. There was
no cheese.

“Bread'll do,” said Jim.

“Sit down and eat it. Have cocoa with it,” said Tanny.

“No, I like to have it in my bedroom.”

“You don't eat bread in the night?” said Lilly.

“I do.”

“What a funny thing to do.”

The cottage was in darkness. The Lillys slept soundly. Jim woke up and
chewed bread and slept again. In the morning at dawn he rose and went
downstairs. Lilly heard him roaming about--heard the woman come in
to clean--heard them talking. So he got up to look after his visitor,
though it was not seven o'clock, and the woman was busy.--But before he
went down, he heard Jim come upstairs again.

Mrs. Short was busy in the kitchen when Lilly went down.

“The other gentleman have been down, Sir,” said Mrs. Short. “He asked me
where the bread and butter were, so I said should I cut him a piece. But
he wouldn't let me do it. I gave him a knife and he took it for himself,
in the pantry.”

“I say, Bricknell,” said Lilly at breakfast time, “why do you eat so
much bread?”

“I've got to feed up. I've been starved during this damned war.”

“But hunks of bread won't feed you up.”

“Gives the stomach something to work at, and prevents it grinding on the
nerves,” said Jim.

“But surely you don't want to keep your stomach always full and heavy.”

“I do, my boy. I do. It needs keeping solid. I'm losing life, if I
don't. I tell you I'm losing life. Let me put something inside me.”

“I don't believe bread's any use.”

During breakfast Jim talked about the future of the world.

“I reckon Christ's the finest thing time has ever produced,” said he;
“and will remain it.”

“But you don't want crucifixions _ad infinitum_,” said Lilly.

“What? Why not?”

“Once is enough--and have done.”

“Don't you think love and sacrifice are the finest things in life?” said
Jim, over his bacon.

“Depends WHAT love, and what sacrifice,” said Lilly. “If I really
believe in an Almighty God, I am willing to sacrifice for Him. That is,
I'm willing to yield my own personal interest to the bigger creative
interest.--But it's obvious Almighty God isn't mere Love.”

“I think it is. Love and only love,” said Jim. “I think the greatest joy
is sacrificing oneself to love.”

“To SOMEONE you love, you mean,” said Tanny.

“No I don't. I don't mean someone at all. I mean love--love--love. I
sacrifice myself to love. I reckon that's the highest man is capable
of.”

“But you can't sacrifice yourself to an abstract principle,” said Tanny.

“That's just what you can do. And that's the beauty of it. Who
represents the principle doesn't matter. Christ is the principle of
love,” said Jim.

“But no!” said Tanny. “It MUST be more individual. It must be SOMEBODY
you love, not abstract love in itself. How can you sacrifice yourself to
an abstraction.”

“Ha, I think Love and your Christ detestable,” said Lilly--“a sheer
ignominy.”

“Finest thing the world has produced,” said Jim.

“No. A thing which sets itself up to be betrayed! No, it's foul. Don't
you see it's the Judas principle you really worship. Judas is the real
hero. But for Judas the whole show would have been _manque_.”

“Oh yes,” said Jim. “Judas was inevitable. I'm not sure that Judas
wasn't the greatest of the disciples--and Jesus knew it. I'm not sure
Judas wasn't the disciple Jesus loved.”

“Jesus certainly encouraged him in his Judas tricks,” said Tanny.

Jim grinned knowingly at Lilly.

“Then it was a nasty combination. And anything which turns on a Judas
climax is a dirty show, to my thinking. I think your Judas is a rotten,
dirty worm, just a dirty little self-conscious sentimental twister. And
out of all Christianity he is the hero today. When people say Christ
they mean Judas. They find him luscious on the palate. And Jesus
fostered him--” said Lilly.

“He's a profound figure, is Judas. It's taken two thousand years to
begin to understand him,” said Jim, pushing the bread and marmalade into
his mouth.

“A traitor is a traitor--no need to understand any further. And a system
which rests all its weight on a piece of treachery makes that treachery
not only inevitable but sacred. That's why I'm sick of Christianity.--At
any rate this modern Christ-mongery.”

“The finest thing the world has produced, or ever will produce--Christ
and Judas--” said Jim.

“Not to me,” said Lilly. “Foul combination.”

It was a lovely morning in early March. Violets were out, and the first
wild anemones. The sun was quite warm. The three were about to take out
a picnic lunch. Lilly however was suffering from Jim's presence.

“Jolly nice here,” said Jim. “Mind if I stay till Saturday?”

There was a pause. Lilly felt he was being bullied, almost obscenely
bullied. Was he going to agree? Suddenly he looked up at Jim.

“I'd rather you went tomorrow,” he said.

Tanny, who was sitting opposite Jim, dropped her head in confusion.

“What's tomorrow?” said Jim.

“Thursday,” said Lilly.

“Thursday,” repeated Jim. And he looked up and got Lilly's eye. He
wanted to say “Friday then?”

“Yes, I'd rather you went Thursday,” repeated Lilly.

“But Rawdon--!” broke in Tanny, who was suffering. She stopped, however.

“We can walk across country with you some way if you like,” said Lilly
to Jim. It was a sort of compromise.

“Fine!” said Jim. “We'll do that, then.”

It was lovely sunshine, and they wandered through the woods. Between Jim
and Tanny was a sort of growing _rapprochement_, which got on Lilly's
nerves.

“What the hell do you take that beastly personal tone for?” cried Lilly
at Tanny, as the three sat under a leafless great beech-tree.

“But I'm not personal at all, am I, Mr. Bricknell?” said Tanny.

Jim watched Lilly, and grinned pleasedly.

“Why shouldn't you be, anyhow?” he said.

“Yes!” she retorted. “Why not!”

“Not while I'm here. I loathe the slimy creepy personal
intimacy.--'Don't you think, Mr. Bricknell, that it's lovely to be able
to talk quite simply to somebody? Oh, it's such a relief, after most
people---'” Lilly mimicked his wife's last speech savagely.

“But I MEAN it,” cried Tanny. “It is lovely.”

“Dirty messing,” said Lilly angrily.

Jim watched the dark, irascible little man with amusement. They rose,
and went to look for an inn, and beer. Tanny still clung rather stickily
to Jim's side.

But it was a lovely day, the first of all the days of spring, with
crocuses and wall-flowers in the cottage gardens, and white cocks
crowing in the quiet hamlet.

When they got back in the afternoon to the cottage, they found a
telegram for Jim. He let the Lillys see it--“Meet you for a walk on your
return journey Lois.” At once Tanny wanted to know all about Lois. Lois
was a nice girl, well-to-do middle-class, but also an actress, and she
would do anything Jim wanted.

“I must get a wire to her to meet me tomorrow,” he said. “Where shall I
say?”

Lilly produced the map, and they decided on time and station at which
Lois coming out of London, should meet Jim. Then the happy pair could
walk along the Thames valley, spending a night perhaps at Marlowe, or
some such place.

Off went Jim and Lilly once more to the postoffice. They were quite
good friends. Having so inhospitably fixed the hour of departure,
Lilly wanted to be nice. Arrived at the postoffice, they found it shut:
half-day closing for the little shop.

“Well,” said Lilly. “We'll go to the station.”

They proceeded to the station--found the station-master--were conducted
down to the signal-box. Lilly naturally hung back from people, but
Jim was hob-nob with the station-master and the signal man, quite
officer-and-my-men kind of thing. Lilly sat out on the steps of the
signal-box, rather ashamed, while the long telegram was shouted over the
telephone to the junction town--first the young lady and her address,
then the message “Meet me X. station 3:40 tomorrow walk back great
pleasure Jim.”

Anyhow that was done. They went home to tea. After tea, as the evening
fell, Lilly suggested a little stroll in the woods, while Tanny prepared
the dinner. Jim agreed, and they set out. The two men wandered through
the trees in the dusk, till they came to a bank on the farther edge of
the wood. There they sat down.

And there Lilly said what he had to say. “As a matter of fact,” he said,
“it's nothing but love and self-sacrifice which makes you feel yourself
losing life.”

“You're wrong. Only love brings it back--and wine. If I drink a bottle
of Burgundy I feel myself restored at the middle--right here! I feel
the energy back again. And if I can fall in love--But it's becoming so
damned hard--”

“What, to fall in love?” asked Lilly.

“Yes.”

“Then why not leave off trying! What do you want to poke yourself and
prod yourself into love, for?”

“Because I'm DEAD without it. I'm dead. I'm dying.”

“Only because you force yourself. If you drop working yourself up--”

“I shall die. I only live when I can fall in love. Otherwise I'm dying
by inches. Why, man, you don't know what it was like. I used to get
the most grand feelings--like a great rush of force, or light--a great
rush--right here, as I've said, at the solar plexus. And it would come
any time--anywhere--no matter where I was. And then I was all right.

“All right for what?--for making love?”

“Yes, man, I was.”

“And now you aren't?--Oh, well, leave love alone, as any twopenny doctor
would tell you.”

“No, you're off it there. It's nothing technical. Technically I can make
love as much as you like. It's nothing a doctor has any say in. It's
what I feel inside me. I feel the life going. I know it's going. I never
get those inrushes now, unless I drink a jolly lot, or if I possibly
could fall in love. Technically, I'm potent all right--oh, yes!”

“You should leave yourself and your inrushes alone.”

“But you can't. It's a sort of ache.”

“Then you should stiffen your backbone. It's your backbone that matters.
You shouldn't want to abandon yourself. You shouldn't want to fling
yourself all loose into a woman's lap. You should stand by yourself and
learn to be by yourself. Why don't you be more like the Japanese you
talk about? Quiet, aloof little devils. They don't bother about being
loved. They keep themselves taut in their own selves--there, at the
bottom of the spine--the devil's own power they've got there.”

Jim mused a bit.

“Think they have?” he laughed. It seemed comic to him.

“Sure! Look at them. Why can't you gather yourself there?”

“At the tail?”

“Yes. Hold yourself firm there.”

Jim broke into a cackle of a laugh, and rose. The two went through
the dark woods back to the cottage. Jim staggered and stumbled like a
drunken man: or worse, like a man with locomotor ataxia: as if he had no
power in his lower limbs.

“Walk there--!” said Lilly, finding him the smoothest bit of the
dark path. But Jim stumbled and shambled, in a state of nauseous weak
relaxation. However, they reached the cottage: and food and beer--and
Tanny, piqued with curiosity to know what the men had been saying
privately to each other.

After dinner they sat once more talking round the fire.

Lilly sat in a small chair facing the fire, the other two in the
armchairs on either side the hearth.

“How nice it will be for you, walking with Lois towards London
tomorrow,” gushed Tanny sentimentally.

“Good God!” said Lilly. “Why the dickens doesn't he walk by himself,
without wanting a woman always there, to hold his hand.”

“Don't be so spiteful,” said Tanny. “YOU see that you have a woman
always there, to hold YOUR hand.”

“My hand doesn't need holding,” snapped Lilly.

“Doesn't it! More than most men's! But you're so beastly ungrateful and
mannish. Because I hold you safe enough all the time you like to pretend
you're doing it all yourself.”

“All right. Don't drag yourself in,” said Lilly, detesting his wife
at that moment. “Anyhow,” and he turned to Jim, “it's time you'd done
slobbering yourself over a lot of little women, one after the other.”

“Why shouldn't I, if I like it?” said Jim.

“Yes, why not?” said Tanny.

“Because it makes a fool of you. Look at you, stumbling and staggering
with no use in your legs. I'd be ashamed if I were you.”

“Would you?” said Jim.

“I would. And it's nothing but your wanting to be loved which does it. A
maudlin crying to be loved, which makes your knees all go rickety.”

“Think that's it?” said Jim.

“What else is it. You haven't been here a day, but you must telegraph
for some female to be ready to hold your hand the moment you go away.
And before she lets go, you'll be wiring for another. YOU WANT TO BE
LOVED, you want to be loved--a man of your years. It's disgusting--”

“I don't see it. I believe in love--” said Jim, watching and grinning
oddly.

“Bah, love! Messing, that's what it is. It wouldn't matter if it did
you no harm. But when you stagger and stumble down a road, out of sheer
sloppy relaxation of your will---”

At this point Jim suddenly sprang from his chair at Lilly, and gave him
two or three hard blows with his fists, upon the front of the body. Then
he sat down in his own chair again, saying sheepishly:

“I knew I should have to do it, if he said any more.”

Lilly sat motionless as a statue, his face like paper. One of the blows
had caught him rather low, so that he was almost winded and could not
breathe. He sat rigid, paralysed as a winded man is. But he wouldn't let
it be seen. With all his will he prevented himself from gasping. Only
through his parted lips he drew tiny gasps, controlled, nothing revealed
to the other two. He hated them both far too much.

For some minutes there was dead silence, whilst Lilly silently and
viciously fought for his breath. Tanny opened her eyes wide in a sort
of pleased bewilderment, and Jim turned his face aside, and hung his
clasped hands between his knees.

“There's a great silence, suddenly!” said Tanny.

“What is there to say?” ejaculated Lilly rapidly, with a spoonful of
breath which he managed to compress and control into speech. Then he sat
motionless again, concerned with the business of getting back his wind,
and not letting the other two see.

Jim jerked in his chair, and looked round.

“It isn't that I don't like the man,” he said, in a rather small voice.
“But I knew if he went on I should have to do it.”

To Lilly, rigid and physically preoccupied, there sounded a sort of
self-consciousness in Jim's voice, as if the whole thing had been
semi-deliberate. He detected the sort of maudlin deliberateness which
goes with hysterics, and he was colder, more icy than ever.

Tanny looked at Lilly, puzzled, bewildered, but still rather pleased, as
if she demanded an answer. None being forthcoming, she said:

“Of course, you mustn't expect to say all those things without rousing a
man.”

Still Lilly did not answer. Jim glanced at him, then looked at Tanny.

“It isn't that I don't like him,” he said, slowly. “I like him better
than any man I've ever known, I believe.” He clasped his hands and
turned aside his face.

“Judas!” flashed through Lilly's mind.

Again Tanny looked for her husband's answer.

“Yes, Rawdon,” she said. “You can't say the things you do without their
having an effect. You really ask for it, you know.”

“It's no matter.” Lilly squeezed the words out coldly. “He wanted to do
it, and he did it.”

A dead silence ensued now. Tanny looked from man to man.

“I could feel it coming on me,” said Jim.

“Of course!” said Tanny. “Rawdon doesn't know the things he says.” She
was pleased that he had had to pay for them, for once.

It takes a man a long time to get his breath back, after a sharp blow in
the wind. Lilly was managing by degrees. The others no doubt attributed
his silence to deep or fierce thoughts. It was nothing of the kind,
merely a cold struggle to get his wind back, without letting them know
he was struggling: and a sheer, stock-stiff hatred of the pair of them.

“I like the man,” said Jim. “Never liked a man more than I like him.” He
spoke as if with difficulty.

“The man” stuck safely in Lilly's ears.

“Oh, well,” he managed to say. “It's nothing. I've done my talking and
had an answer, for once.”

“Yes, Rawdy, you've had an answer, for once. Usually you don't get an
answer, you know--and that's why you go so far--in the things you say.
Now you'll know how you make people feel.”

“Quite!” said Lilly.

“_I_ don't feel anything. I don't mind what he says,” said Jim.

“Yes, but he ought to know the things he DOES say,” said Tanny. “He goes
on, without considering the person he's talking to. This time it's come
back on him. He mustn't say such personal things, if he's not going to
risk an answer.”

“I don't mind what he says. I don't mind a bit,” said Jim.

“Nor do I mind,” said Lilly indifferently. “I say what I feel--You do as
you feel--There's an end of it.”

A sheepish sort of silence followed this speech. It was broken by a
sudden laugh from Tanny.

“The things that happen to us!” she said, laughing rather shrilly.
“Suddenly, like a thunderbolt, we're all struck into silence!”

“Rum game, eh!” said Jim, grinning.

“Isn't it funny! Isn't life too funny!” She looked again at her husband.
“But, Rawdy, you must admit it was your own fault.”

Lilly's stiff face did not change.

“Why FAULT!” he said, looking at her coldly. “What is there to talk
about?”

“Usually there's so much,” she said sarcastically.

A few phrases dribbled out of the silence. In vain Jim, tried to get
Lilly to thaw, and in vain Tanny gave her digs at her husband. Lilly's
stiff, inscrutable face did not change, he was polite and aloof. So they
all went to bed.

In the morning, the walk was to take place, as arranged, Lilly and Tanny
accompanying Jim to the third station across country. The morning was
lovely, the country beautiful. Lilly liked the countryside and enjoyed
the walk. But a hardness inside himself never relaxed. Jim talked
a little again about the future of the world, and a higher state of
Christlikeness in man. But Lilly only laughed. Then Tanny managed to
get ahead with Jim, sticking to his side and talking sympathetic
personalities. But Lilly, feeling it from afar, ran after them and
caught them up. They were silent.

“What was the interesting topic?” he said cuttingly.

“Nothing at all!” said Tanny, nettled. “Why must you interfere?”

“Because I intend to,” said Lilly.

And the two others fell apart, as if severed with a knife. Jim walked
rather sheepishly, as if cut out.

So they came at last past the canals to the wayside station: and at last
Jim's train came. They all said goodbye. Jim and Tanny were both waiting
for Lilly to show some sign of real reconciliation. But none came. He
was cheerful and aloof.

“Goodbye,” he said to Jim. “Hope Lois will be there all right. Third
station on. Goodbye! Goodbye!”

“You'll come to Rackham?” said Jim, leaning out of the train.

“We should love to,” called Tanny, after the receding train.

“All right,” said Lilly, non-committal.

But he and his wife never saw Jim again. Lilly never intended to see
him: a devil sat in the little man's breast.

“You shouldn't play at little Jesus, coming so near to people, wanting
to help them,” was Tanny's last word.




CHAPTER IX. LOW-WATER MARK


Tanny went away to Norway to visit her people, for the first time for
three years. Lilly did not go: he did not want to. He came to London
and settled in a room over Covent Garden market. The room was high up, a
fair size, and stood at the corner of one of the streets and the market
itself, looking down on the stalls and the carts and the arcade. Lilly
would climb out of the window and sit for hours watching the behaviour
of the great draught-horses which brought the mountains of boxes and
vegetables. Funny half-human creatures they seemed, so massive and
fleshy, yet so Cockney. There was one which could not bear donkeys,
and which used to stretch out its great teeth like some massive serpent
after every poor diminutive ass that came with a coster's barrow.
Another great horse could not endure standing. It would shake itself
and give little starts, and back into the heaps of carrots and broccoli,
whilst the driver went into a frenzy of rage.

There was always something to watch. One minute it was two great loads
of empty crates, which in passing had got entangled, and reeled, leaning
to fall disastrously. Then the drivers cursed and swore and dismounted
and stared at their jeopardised loads: till a thin fellow was persuaded
to scramble up the airy mountains of cages, like a monkey. And he
actually managed to put them to rights. Great sigh of relief when the
vans rocked out of the market.

Again there was a particular page-boy in buttons, with a round and perky
behind, who nimbly carried a tea-tray from somewhere to somewhere, under
the arches beside the market. The great brawny porters would tease him,
and he would stop to give them cheek. One afternoon a giant lunged after
him: the boy darted gracefully among the heaps of vegetables, still
bearing aloft his tea-tray, like some young blue-buttoned acolyte
fleeing before a false god. The giant rolled after him--when alas, the
acolyte of the tea-tray slipped among the vegetables, and down came the
tray. Then tears, and a roar of unfeeling mirth from the giants. Lilly
felt they were going to make it up to him.

Another afternoon a young swell sauntered persistently among the
vegetables, and Lilly, seated in his high little balcony, wondered why.
But at last, a taxi, and a very expensive female, in a sort of silver
brocade gown and a great fur shawl and ospreys in her bonnet. Evidently
an assignation. Yet what could be more conspicuous than this elegant
pair, picking their way through the cabbage-leaves?

And then, one cold grey afternoon in early April, a man in a black
overcoat and a bowler hat, walking uncertainly. Lilly had risen and was
just retiring out of the chill, damp air. For some reason he lingered to
watch the figure. The man was walking east. He stepped rather insecurely
off the pavement, and wavered across the setts between the wheels of the
standing vans. And suddenly he went down. Lilly could not see him on the
ground, but he saw some van-men go forward, and he saw one of them pick
up the man's hat.

“I'd better go down,” said Lilly to himself.

So he began running down the four long flights of stone stairs, past
the many doors of the multifarious business premises, and out into the
market. A little crowd had gathered, and a large policeman was just
rowing into the centre of the interest. Lilly, always a hoverer on the
edge of public commotions, hung now hesitating on the outskirts of the
crowd.

“What is it?” he said, to a rather sniffy messenger boy.

“Drunk,” said the messenger boy: except that, in unblushing cockney, he
pronounced it “Drank.”

Lilly hung further back on the edge of the little crowd.

“Come on here. Where d' you want to go?” he heard the hearty tones of
the policeman.

“I'm all right. I'm all right,” came the testy drunken answer.

“All right, are yer! All right, and then some,--come on, get on your
pins.”

“I'm all right! I'm all right.”

The voice made Lilly peer between the people. And sitting on the granite
setts, being hauled up by a burly policeman, he saw our acquaintance
Aaron, very pale in the face and a little dishevelled.

“Like me to tuck the sheets round you, shouldn't you? Fancy yourself
snug in bed, don't you? You won't believe you're right in the way of
traffic, will you now, in Covent Garden Market? Come on, we'll see to
you.” And the policeman hoisted the bitter and unwilling Aaron.

Lilly was quickly at the centre of the affair, unobtrusive like a
shadow, different from the other people.

“Help him up to my room, will you?” he said to the constable. “Friend of
mine.”

The large constable looked down on the bare-headed wispy, unobtrusive
Lilly with good-humoured suspicion and incredulity. Lilly could not have
borne it if the policeman had uttered any of this cockney suspicion, so
he watched him. There was a great gulf between the public official and
the odd, quiet little individual--yet Lilly had his way.

“Which room?” said the policeman, dubious.

Lilly pointed quickly round. Then he said to Aaron:

“Were you coming to see me, Sisson? You'll come in, won't you?”

Aaron nodded rather stupidly and testily. His eyes looked angry.
Somebody stuck his hat on his head for him, and made him look a fool.
Lilly took it off again, and carried it for him. He turned and the crowd
eased. He watched Aaron sharply, and saw that it was with difficulty
he could walk. So he caught him by the arm on the other side from the
policeman, and they crossed the road to the pavement.

“Not so much of this sort of thing these days,” said the policeman.

“Not so much opportunity,” said Lilly.

“More than there was, though. Coming back to the old days, like. Working
round, bit by bit.”

They had arrived at the stairs. Aaron stumbled up.

“Steady now! Steady does it!” said the policeman, steering his charge.
There was a curious breach of distance between Lilly and the constable.

At last Lilly opened his own door. The room was pleasant. The fire
burned warm, the piano stood open, the sofa was untidy with cushions and
papers. Books and papers covered the big writing desk. Beyond the screen
made by the bookshelves and the piano were two beds, with washstand by
one of the large windows, the one through which Lilly had climbed.

The policeman looked round curiously.

“More cosy here than in the lock-up, sir!” he said.

Lilly laughed. He was hastily clearing the sofa.

“Sit on the sofa, Sisson,” he said.

The policeman lowered his charge, with a--

“Right we are, then!”

Lilly felt in his pocket, and gave the policeman half a crown. But
he was watching Aaron, who sat stupidly on the sofa, very pale and
semi-conscious.

“Do you feel ill, Sisson?” he said sharply.

Aaron looked back at him with heavy eyes, and shook his head slightly.

“I believe you are,” said Lilly, taking his hand.

“Might be a bit o' this flu, you know,” said the policeman.

“Yes,” said Lilly. “Where is there a doctor?” he added, on reflection.

“The nearest?” said the policeman. And he told him. “Leave a message for
you, Sir?”

Lilly wrote his address on a card, then changed his mind.

“No, I'll run round myself if necessary,” he said.

And the policeman departed.

“You'll go to bed, won't you?” said Lilly to Aaron, when the door was
shut. Aaron shook his head sulkily.

“I would if I were you. You can stay here till you're all right. I'm
alone, so it doesn't matter.”

But Aaron had relapsed into semi-consciousness. Lilly put the big kettle
on the gas stove, the little kettle on the fire. Then he hovered in
front of the stupefied man. He felt uneasy. Again he took Aaron's hand
and felt the pulse.

“I'm sure you aren't well. You must go to bed,” he said. And he kneeled
and unfastened his visitor's boots. Meanwhile the kettle began to boil,
he put a hot-water bottle into the bed.

“Let us get your overcoat off,” he said to the stupefied man. “Come
along.” And with coaxing and pulling and pushing he got off the overcoat
and coat and waistcoat.

At last Aaron was undressed and in bed. Lilly brought him tea. With
a dim kind of obedience he took the cup and would drink. He looked at
Lilly with heavy eyes.

“I gave in, I gave in to her, else I should ha' been all right,” he
said.

“To whom?” said Lilly.

“I gave in to her--and afterwards I cried, thinking of Lottie and the
children. I felt my heart break, you know. And that's what did it. I
should have been all right if I hadn't given in to her--”

“To whom?” said Lilly.

“Josephine. I felt, the minute I was loving her, I'd done myself. And I
had. Everything came back on me. If I hadn't given in to her, I should
ha' kept all right.”

“Don't bother now. Get warm and still--”

“I felt it--I felt it go, inside me, the minute I gave in to her. It's
perhaps killed me.”

“No, not it. Never mind, be still. Be still, and you'll be all right in
the morning.”

“It's my own fault, for giving in to her. If I'd kept myself back, my
liver wouldn't have broken inside me, and I shouldn't have been sick.
And I knew--”

“Never mind now. Have you drunk your tea? Lie down. Lie down, and go to
sleep.”

Lilly pushed Aaron down in the bed, and covered him over. Then he
thrust his hands under the bedclothes and felt his feet--still cold. He
arranged the water bottle. Then he put another cover on the bed.

Aaron lay still, rather grey and peaked-looking, in a stillness that was
not healthy. For some time Lilly went about stealthily, glancing at his
patient from time to time. Then he sat down to read.

He was roused after a time by a moaning of troubled breathing and a
fretful stirring in the bed. He went across. Aaron's eyes were open, and
dark looking.

“Have a little hot milk,” said Lilly.

Aaron shook his head faintly, not noticing.

“A little Bovril?”

The same faint shake.

Then Lilly wrote a note for the doctor, went into the office on the same
landing, and got a clerk, who would be leaving in a few minutes, to call
with the note. When he came back he found Aaron still watching.

“Are you here by yourself?” asked the sick man.

“Yes. My wife's gone to Norway.”

“For good?”

“No,” laughed Lilly. “For a couple of months or so. She'll come back
here: unless she joins me in Switzerland or somewhere.”

Aaron was still for a while.

“You've not gone with her,” he said at length.

“To see her people? No, I don't think they want me very badly--and I
didn't want very badly to go. Why should I? It's better for married
people to be separated sometimes.”

“Ay!” said Aaron, watching the other man with fever-darkened eyes.

“I hate married people who are two in one--stuck together like two
jujube lozenges,” said Lilly.

“Me an' all. I hate 'em myself,” said Aaron.

“Everybody ought to stand by themselves, in the first place--men and
women as well. They can come together, in the second place, if
they like. But nothing is any good unless each one stands alone,
intrinsically.”

“I'm with you there,” said Aaron. “If I'd kep' myself to myself I
shouldn't be bad now--though I'm not very bad. I s'll be all right in
the morning. But I did myself in when I went with another woman. I felt
myself go--as if the bile broke inside me, and I was sick.”

“Josephine seduced you?” laughed Lilly.

“Ay, right enough,” replied Aaron grimly. “She won't be coming here,
will she?”

“Not unless I ask her.”

“You won't ask her, though?”

“No, not if you don't want her.”

“I don't.”

The fever made Aaron naive and communicative, unlike himself. And he
knew he was being unlike himself, he knew that he was not in proper
control of himself, so he was unhappy, uneasy.

“I'll stop here the night then, if you don't mind,” he said.

“You'll have to,” said Lilly. “I've sent for the doctor. I believe
you've got the flu.”

“Think I have?” said Aaron frightened.

“Don't be scared,” laughed Lilly.

There was a long pause. Lilly stood at the window looking at the
darkening market, beneath the street-lamps.

“I s'll have to go to the hospital, if I have,” came Aaron's voice.

“No, if it's only going to be a week or a fortnight's business, you can
stop here. I've nothing to do,” said Lilly.

“There's no occasion for you to saddle yourself with me,” said Aaron
dejectedly.

“You can go to your hospital if you like--or back to your lodging--if
you wish to,” said Lilly. “You can make up your mind when you see how
you are in the morning.”

“No use going back to my lodgings,” said Aaron.

“I'll send a telegram to your wife if you like,” said Lilly.

Aaron was silent, dead silent, for some time.

“Nay,” he said at length, in a decided voice. “Not if I die for it.”

Lilly remained still, and the other man lapsed into a sort of
semi-sleep, motionless and abandoned. The darkness had fallen over
London, and away below the lamps were white.

Lilly lit the green-shaded reading lamp over the desk. Then he stood and
looked at Aaron, who lay still, looking sick. Rather beautiful the bones
of the countenance: but the skull too small for such a heavy jaw and
rather coarse mouth. Aaron half-opened his eyes, and writhed feverishly,
as if his limbs could not be in the right place. Lilly mended the fire,
and sat down to write. Then he got up and went downstairs to unfasten
the street door, so that the doctor could walk up. The business people
had gone from their various holes, all the lower part of the tall house
was in darkness.

Lilly waited and waited. He boiled an egg and made himself toast. Aaron
said he might eat the same. Lilly cooked another egg and took it to the
sick man. Aaron looked at it and pushed it away with nausea. He would
have some tea. So Lilly gave him tea.

“Not much fun for you, doing this for somebody who is nothing to you,”
 said Aaron.

“I shouldn't if you were unsympathetic to me,” said Lilly. “As it is,
it's happened so, and so we'll let be.”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly eight o'clock.”

“Oh, my Lord, the opera.”

And Aaron got half out of bed. But as he sat on the bedside he knew he
could not safely get to his feet. He remained a picture of dejection.

“Perhaps we ought to let them know,” said Lilly.

But Aaron, blank with stupid misery, sat huddled there on the bedside
without answering.

“Ill run round with a note,” said Lilly. “I suppose others have had flu,
besides you. Lie down!”

But Aaron stupidly and dejectedly sat huddled on the side of the bed,
wearing old flannel pyjamas of Lilly's, rather small for him. He felt
too sick to move.

“Lie down! Lie down!” said Lilly. “And keep still while I'm gone. I
shan't be more than ten minutes.”

“I don't care if I die,” said Aaron.

Lilly laughed.

“You're a long way from dying,” said he, “or you wouldn't say it.”

But Aaron only looked up at him with queer, far-off, haggard eyes,
something like a criminal who is just being executed.

“Lie down!” said Lilly, pushing him gently into the bed. “You won't
improve yourself sitting there, anyhow.”

Aaron lay down, turned away, and was quite still. Lilly quietly left the
room on his errand.

The doctor did not come until ten o'clock: and worn out with work when
he did come.

“Isn't there a lift in this establishment?” he said, as he groped his
way up the stone stairs. Lilly had heard him, and run down to meet him.

The doctor poked the thermometer under Aaron's tongue and felt the
pulse. Then he asked a few questions: listened to the heart and
breathing.

“Yes, it's the flu,” he said curtly. “Nothing to do but to keep warm in
bed and not move, and take plenty of milk and liquid nourishment. I'll
come round in the morning and give you an injection. Lungs are all right
so far.”

“How long shall I have to be in bed?” said Aaron.

“Oh--depends. A week at least.”

Aaron watched him sullenly--and hated him. Lilly laughed to himself. The
sick man was like a dog that is ill but which growls from a deep corner,
and will bite if you put your hand in. He was in a state of black
depression.

Lilly settled him down for the night, and himself went to bed. Aaron
squirmed with heavy, pained limbs, the night through, and slept and had
bad dreams. Lilly got up to give him drinks. The din in the market was
terrific before dawn, and Aaron suffered bitterly.

In the morning he was worse. The doctor gave him injections against
pneumonia.

“You wouldn't like me to wire to your wife?” said Lilly.

“No,” said Aaron abruptly. “You can send me to the hospital. I'm nothing
but a piece of carrion.”

“Carrion!” said Lilly. “Why?”

“I know it. I feel like it.”

“Oh, that's only the sort of nauseated feeling you get with flu.”

“I'm only fit to be thrown underground, and made an end of. I can't
stand myself--”

He had a ghastly, grey look of self-repulsion.

“It's the germ that makes you feel like that,” said Lilly. “It poisons
the system for a time. But you'll work it off.”

At evening he was no better, the fever was still high. Yet there were no
complications--except that the heart was irregular.

“The one thing I wonder,” said Lilly, “is whether you hadn't better be
moved out of the noise of the market. It's fearful for you in the early
morning.”

“It makes no difference to me,” said Aaron.

The next day he was a little worse, if anything. The doctor knew there
was nothing to be done. At evening he gave the patient a calomel pill.
It was rather strong, and Aaron had a bad time. His burning, parched,
poisoned inside was twisted and torn. Meanwhile carts banged, porters
shouted, all the hell of the market went on outside, away down on the
cobble setts. But this time the two men did not hear.

“You'll feel better now,” said Lilly, “after the operation.”

“It's done me harm,” cried Aaron fretfully. “Send me to the hospital, or
you'll repent it. Get rid of me in time.”

“Nay,” said Lilly. “You get better. Damn it, you're only one among a
million.”

Again over Aaron's face went the ghastly grimace of self-repulsion.

“My soul's gone rotten,” he said.

“No,” said Lilly. “Only toxin in the blood.”

Next day the patient seemed worse, and the heart more irregular. He
rested badly. So far, Lilly had got a fair night's rest. Now Aaron was
not sleeping, and he seemed to struggle in the bed.

“Keep your courage up, man,” said the doctor sharply. “You give way.”

Aaron looked at him blackly, and did not answer.

In the night Lilly was up time after time. Aaron would slip down on his
back, and go semi-conscious. And then he would awake, as if drowning,
struggling to move, mentally shouting aloud, yet making no sound for
some moments, mentally shouting in frenzy, but unable to stir or make a
sound. When at last he got some sort of physical control he cried: “Lift
me up! Lift me up!”

Lilly hurried and lifted him up, and he sat panting with a sobbing
motion, his eyes gloomy and terrified, more than ever like a criminal
who is just being executed. He drank brandy, and was laid down on his
side.

“Don't let me lie on my back,” he said, terrified. “No, I won't,” said
Lilly. Aaron frowned curiously on his nurse. “Mind you don't let me,” he
said, exacting and really terrified.

“No, I won't let you.”

And now Lilly was continually crossing over and pulling Aaron on to his
side, whenever he found him slipped down on his back.

In the morning the doctor was puzzled. Probably it was the toxin in the
blood which poisoned the heart. There was no pneumonia. And yet Aaron
was clearly growing worse. The doctor agreed to send in a nurse for the
coming night.

“What's the matter with you, man!” he said sharply to his patient. “You
give way! You give way! Can't you pull yourself together?”

But Aaron only became more gloomily withheld, retracting from life.
And Lilly began to be really troubled. He got a friend to sit with the
patient in the afternoon, whilst he himself went out and arranged to
sleep in Aaron's room, at his lodging.

The next morning, when he came in, he found the patient lying as ever,
in a sort of heap in the bed. Nurse had had to lift him up and hold him
up again. And now Aaron lay in a sort of semi-stupor of fear, frustrated
anger, misery and self-repulsion: a sort of interlocked depression.

The doctor frowned when he came. He talked with the nurse, and wrote
another prescription. Then he drew Lilly away to the door.

“What's the matter with the fellow?” he said. “Can't you rouse his
spirit? He seems to be sulking himself out of life. He'll drop out quite
suddenly, you know, if he goes on like this. Can't you rouse him up?”

“I think it depresses him partly that his bowels won't work. It
frightens him. He's never been ill in his life before,” said Lilly.

“His bowels won't work if he lets all his spirit go, like an animal
dying of the sulks,” said the doctor impatiently. “He might go off quite
suddenly--dead before you can turn round--”

Lilly was properly troubled. Yet he did not quite know what to do. It
was early afternoon, and the sun was shining into the room. There were
daffodils and anemones in a jar, and freezias and violets. Down below in
the market were two stalls of golden and blue flowers, gay.

“The flowers are lovely in the spring sunshine,” said Lilly. “I wish I
were in the country, don't you? As soon as you are better we'll go. It's
been a terrible cold, wet spring. But now it's going to be nice. Do you
like being in the country?”

“Yes,” said Aaron.

He was thinking of his garden. He loved it. Never in his life had he
been away from a garden before.

“Make haste and get better, and we'll go.”

“Where?” said Aaron.

“Hampshire. Or Berkshire. Or perhaps you'd like to go home? Would you?”

Aaron lay still, and did not answer.

“Perhaps you want to, and you don't want to,” said Lilly. “You can
please yourself, anyhow.”

There was no getting anything definite out of the sick man--his soul
seemed stuck, as if it would not move.

Suddenly Lilly rose and went to the dressing-table.

“I'm going to rub you with oil,” he said. “I'm going to rub you as
mothers do their babies whose bowels don't work.”

Aaron frowned slightly as he glanced at the dark, self-possessed face of
the little man.

“What's the good of that?” he said irritably. “I'd rather be left
alone.”

“Then you won't be.”

Quickly he uncovered the blond lower body of his patient, and began to
rub the abdomen with oil, using a slow, rhythmic, circulating motion,
a sort of massage. For a long time he rubbed finely and steadily, then
went over the whole of the lower body, mindless, as if in a sort of
incantation. He rubbed every speck of the man's lower body--the abdomen,
the buttocks, the thighs and knees, down to the feet, rubbed it all
warm and glowing with camphorated oil, every bit of it, chafing the toes
swiftly, till he was almost exhausted. Then Aaron was covered up again,
and Lilly sat down in fatigue to look at his patient.

He saw a change. The spark had come back into the sick eyes, and the
faint trace of a smile, faintly luminous, into the face. Aaron was
regaining himself. But Lilly said nothing. He watched his patient fall
into a proper sleep.

And he sat and watched him sleep. And he thought to himself: “I wonder
why I do it. I wonder why I bother with him.... Jim ought to have taught
me my lesson. As soon as this man's really better he'll punch me in the
wind, metaphorically if not actually, for having interfered with him.
And Tanny would say, he was quite right to do it. She says I want power
over them. What if I do? They don't care how much power the mob has over
them, the nation, Lloyd George and Northcliffe and the police and money.
They'll yield themselves up to that sort of power quickly enough, and
immolate themselves _pro bono publico_ by the million. And what's
the bonum publicum but a mob power? Why can't they submit to a bit of
healthy individual authority? The fool would die, without me: just as
that fool Jim will die in hysterics one day. Why does he last so long!

“Tanny's the same. She does nothing really but resist me: my authority,
or my influence, or just ME. At the bottom of her heart she just blindly
and persistently opposes me. God knows what it is she opposes: just me
myself. She thinks I want her to submit to me. So I do, in a measure
natural to our two selves. Somewhere, she ought to submit to me. But
they all prefer to kick against the pricks. Not that THEY get many
pricks. I get them. Damn them all, why don't I leave them alone? They
only grin and feel triumphant when they've insulted one and punched one
in the wind.

“This Aaron will do just the same. I like him, and he ought to like me.
And he'll be another Jim: he WILL like me, if he can knock the wind out
of me. A lot of little Stavrogins coming up to whisper affectionately,
and biting one's ear.

“But anyhow I can soon see the last of this chap: and him the last of
all the rest. I'll be damned for ever if I see their Jims and Roberts
and Julias and Scotts any more. Let them dance round their insipid
hell-broth. Thin tack it is.

“There's a whole world besides this little gang of Europeans. Except,
dear God, that they've exterminated all the peoples worth knowing. I
can't do with folk who teem by the billion, like the Chinese and Japs
and orientals altogether. Only vermin teem by the billion. Higher types
breed slower. I would have loved the Aztecs and the Red Indians. I KNOW
they hold the element in life which I am looking for--they had living
pride. Not like the flea-bitten Asiatics--even niggers are better than
Asiatics, though they are wallowers--the American races--and the South
Sea Islanders--the Marquesans, the Maori blood. That was the true blood.
It wasn't frightened. All the rest are craven--Europeans, Asiatics,
Africans--everyone at his own individual quick craven and cringing: only
conceited in the mass, the mob. How I hate them: the mass-bullies, the
individual Judases.

“Well, if one will be a Jesus he must expect his Judas. That's why
Abraham Lincoln gets shot. A Jesus makes a Judas inevitable. A man
should remain himself, not try to spread himself over humanity. He
should pivot himself on his own pride.

“I suppose really I ought to have packed this Aaron off to the hospital.
Instead of which here am I rubbing him with oil to rub the life into
him. And I KNOW he'll bite me, like a warmed snake, the moment he
recovers. And Tanny will say 'Quite right, too,' I shouldn't have been
so intimate. No, I should have left it to mechanical doctors and nurses.

“So I should. Everything to its own. And Aaron belongs to this little
system, and Jim is waiting to be psychoanalysed, and Tanny is waiting
for her own glorification.

“All right, Aaron. Last time I break my bread for anybody, this is. So
get better, my flautist, so that I can go away.

“It was easy for the Red Indians and the Others to take their hook into
death. They might have stayed a bit longer to help one to defy the white
masses.

“I'll make some tea--”

Lilly rose softly and went across to the fire. He had to cross a landing
to a sort of little lavatory, with a sink and a tap, for water. The
clerks peeped out at him from an adjoining office and nodded. He nodded,
and disappeared from their sight as quickly as possible, with his
kettle. His dark eyes were quick, his dark hair was untidy, there was
something silent and withheld about him. People could never approach him
quite ordinarily.

He put on the kettle, and quietly set cups and plates on a tray. The
room was clean and cosy and pleasant. He did the cleaning himself, and
was as efficient and inobtrusive a housewife as any woman. While the
kettle boiled, he sat darning the socks which he had taken off Aaron's
feet when the flautist arrived, and which he had washed. He preferred
that no outsider should see him doing these things. Yet he preferred
also to do them himself, so that he should be independent of outside
aid.

His face was dark and hollow, he seemed frail, sitting there in the
London afternoon darning the black woollen socks. His full brow was
knitted slightly, there was a tension. At the same time, there was an
indomitable stillness about him, as it were in the atmosphere about him.
His hands, though small, were not very thin. He bit off the wool as he
finished his darn.

As he was making the tea he saw Aaron rouse up in bed.

“I've been to sleep. I feel better,” said the patient, turning round to
look what the other man was doing. And the sight of the water steaming
in a jet from the teapot seemed attractive.

“Yes,” said Lilly. “You've slept for a good two hours.”

“I believe I have,” said Aaron.

“Would you like a little tea?”

“Ay--and a bit of toast.”

“You're not supposed to have solid food. Let me take your temperature.”

The temperature was down to a hundred, and Lilly, in spite of the
doctor, gave Aaron a piece of toast with his tea, enjoining him not to
mention it to the nurse.

In the evening the two men talked.

“You do everything for yourself, then?” said Aaron.

“Yes, I prefer it.”

“You like living all alone?”

“I don't know about that. I never have lived alone. Tanny and I have
been very much alone in various countries: but that's two, not one.”

“You miss her then?”

“Yes, of course. I missed her horribly in the cottage, when she'd first
gone. I felt my heart was broken. But here, where we've never been
together, I don't notice it so much.”

“She'll come back,” said Aaron.

“Yes, she'll come back. But I'd rather meet her abroad than here--and
get on a different footing.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don't know. There's something with marriage altogether, I think.
_Egoisme a deux_--”

“What's that mean?”

“_Egoisme a deux_? Two people, one egoism. Marriage is a self-conscious
egoistic state, it seems to me.”

“You've got no children?” said Aaron.

“No. Tanny wants children badly. I don't. I'm thankful we have none.”

“Why?”

“I can't quite say. I think of them as a burden. Besides, there ARE such
millions and billions of children in the world. And we know well enough
what sort of millions and billions of people they'll grow up into. I
don't want to add my quota to the mass--it's against my instinct--”

“Ay!” laughed Aaron, with a curt acquiescence.

“Tanny's furious. But then, when a woman has got children, she thinks
the world wags only for them and her. Nothing else. The whole world wags
for the sake of the children--and their sacred mother.”

“Ay, that's DAMNED true,” said Aaron.

“And myself, I'm sick of the children stunt. Children are all right, so
long as you just take them for what they are: young immature things like
kittens and half-grown dogs, nuisances, sometimes very charming. But
I'll be hanged if I can see anything high and holy about children. I
should be sorry, too, it would be so bad for the children. Young brats,
tiresome and amusing in turns.”

“When they don't give themselves airs,” said Aaron.

“Yes, indeed. Which they do half the time. Sacred children, and sacred
motherhood, I'm absolutely fed stiff by it. That's why I'm thankful I
have no children. Tanny can't come it over me there.”

“It's a fact. When a woman's got her children, by God, she's a bitch
in the manger. You can starve while she sits on the hay. It's useful to
keep her pups warm.”

“Yes.”

“Why, you know,” Aaron turned excitedly in the bed, “they look on a man
as if he was nothing but an instrument to get and rear children. If you
have anything to do with a woman, she thinks it's because you want to
get children by her. And I'm damned if it is. I want my own pleasure, or
nothing: and children be damned.”

“Ah, women--THEY must be loved, at any price!” said Lilly. “And if you
just don't want to love them--and tell them so--what a crime.”

“A crime!” said Aaron. “They make a criminal of you. Them and their
children be cursed. Is my life given me for nothing but to get children,
and work to bring them up? See them all in hell first. They'd better die
while they're children, if childhood's all that important.”

“I quite agree,” said Lilly. “If childhood is more important than
manhood, then why live to be a man at all? Why not remain an infant?”

“Be damned and blasted to women and all their importances,” cried Aaron.
“They want to get you under, and children is their chief weapon.”

“Men have got to stand up to the fact that manhood is more than
childhood--and then force women to admit it,” said Lilly. “But the
rotten whiners, they're all grovelling before a baby's napkin and a
woman's petticoat.”

“It's a fact,” said Aaron. But he glanced at Lilly oddly, as if
suspiciously. And Lilly caught the look. But he continued:

“And if they think you try to stand on your legs and walk with the feet
of manhood, why, there isn't a blooming father and lover among them but
will do his best to get you down and suffocate you--either with a baby's
napkin or a woman's petticoat.”

Lilly's lips were curling; he was dark and bitter.

“Ay, it is like that,” said Aaron, rather subduedly.

“The man's spirit has gone out of the world. Men can't move an inch
unless they can grovel humbly at the end of the journey.”

“No,” said Aaron, watching with keen, half-amused eyes.

“That's why marriage wants readjusting--or extending--to get men on to
their own legs once more, and to give them the adventure again. But men
won't stick together and fight for it. Because once a woman has climbed
up with her children, she'll find plenty of grovellers ready to support
her and suffocate any defiant spirit. And women will sacrifice eleven
men, fathers, husbands, brothers and lovers, for one baby--or for her
own female self-conceit--”

“She will that,” said Aaron.

“And can you find two men to stick together, without feeling criminal,
and without cringing, and without betraying one another? You can't. One
is sure to go fawning round some female, then they both enjoy giving
each other away, and doing a new grovel before a woman again.”

“Ay,” said Aaron.

After which Lilly was silent.




CHAPTER X. THE WAR AGAIN


“One is a fool,” said Lilly, “to be lachrymose. The thing to do is to
get a move on.”

Aaron looked up with a glimpse of a smile. The two men were sitting
before the fire at the end of a cold, wet April day: Aaron convalescent,
somewhat chastened in appearance.

“Ay,” he said rather sourly. “A move back to Guilford Street.”

“Oh, I meant to tell you,” said Lilly. “I was reading an old Baden
history. They made a law in 1528--not a law, but a regulation--that: if
a man forsakes his wife and children, as now so often happens, the said
wife and children are at once to be dispatched after him. I thought that
would please you. Does it?”

“Yes,” said Aaron briefly.

“They would have arrived the next day, like a forwarded letter.”

“I should have had to get a considerable move on, at that rate,” grinned
Aaron.

“Oh, no. You might quite like them here.” But Lilly saw the white frown
of determined revulsion on the convalescent's face.

“Wouldn't you?” he asked.

Aaron shook his head.

“No,” he said. And it was obvious he objected to the topic. “What are
you going to do about your move on?”

“Me!” said Lilly. “I'm going to sail away next week--or steam dirtily
away on a tramp called the _Maud Allen Wing_.”

“Where to?”

“Malta.”

“Where from?”

“London Dock. I fixed up my passage this morning for ten pounds. I am
cook's assistant, signed on.”

Aaron looked at him with a little admiration.

“You can take a sudden jump, can't you?” he said.

“The difficulty is to refrain from jumping: overboard or anywhere.”

Aaron smoked his pipe slowly.

“And what good will Malta do you?” he asked, envious.

“Heaven knows. I shall cross to Syracuse, and move up Italy.”

“Sounds as if you were a millionaire.”

“I've got thirty-five pounds in all the world. But something will come
along.”

“I've got more than that,” said Aaron.

“Good for you,” replied Lilly.

He rose and went to the cupboard, taking out a bowl and a basket of
potatoes. He sat down again, paring the potatoes. His busy activity
annoyed Aaron.

“But what's the good of going to Malta? Shall YOU be any different in
yourself, in another place? You'll be the same there as you are here.”

“How am I here?”

“Why, you're all the time grinding yourself against something inside
you. You're never free. You're never content. You never stop chafing.”

Lilly dipped his potato into the water, and cut out the eyes carefully.
Then he cut it in two, and dropped it in the clean water of the second
bowl. He had not expected this criticism.

“Perhaps I don't,” said he.

“Then what's the use of going somewhere else? You won't change
yourself.”

“I may in the end,” said Lilly.

“You'll be yourself, whether it's Malta or London,” said Aaron.

“There's a doom for me,” laughed Lilly. The water on the fire was
boiling. He rose and threw in salt, then dropped in the potatoes with
little plops. “There there are lots of mes. I'm not only just one
proposition. A new place brings out a new thing in a man. Otherwise
you'd have stayed in your old place with your family.”

“The man in the middle of you doesn't change,” said Aaron.

“Do you find it so?” said Lilly.

“Ay. Every time.”

“Then what's to be done?”

“Nothing, as far as I can see. You get as much amusement out of life as
possible, and there's the end of it.”

“All right then, I'll get the amusement.”

“Ay, all right then,” said Aaron. “But there isn't anything wonderful
about it. You talk as if you were doing something special. You aren't.
You're no more than a man who drops into a pub for a drink, to liven
himself up a bit. Only you give it a lot of names, and make out as if
you were looking for the philosopher's stone, or something like that.
When you're only killing time like the rest of folks, before time kills
you.”

Lilly did not answer. It was not yet seven o'clock, but the sky was
dark. Aaron sat in the firelight. Even the saucepan on the fire was
silent. Darkness, silence, the firelight in the upper room, and the two
men together.

“It isn't quite true,” said Lilly, leaning on the mantelpiece and
staring down into the fire.

“Where isn't it? You talk, and you make a man believe you've got
something he hasn't got? But where is it, when it comes to? What have
you got, more than me or Jim Bricknell! Only a bigger ch

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/4520