His mind was occupied by violent thoughts about the two children whom he had fed with currant pudding, and he did not observe what he was doing or where he was going. He was in a wide, dark street where there were tram-lines, but he could not remember seeing a tramcar pass by. He was tired and although he was not hungry, he was conscious of a missed meal, and he was thirsty. "I'd better turn back," he said to himself, turning as he did so. He wondered where he was, and he resolved that he would ask the first policeman he met to tell him in what part of London he now was and what was the quickest way to get out of it.
"It was silly of me to come here at all," he murmured, and then he turned quickly and stared across the street.
A woman had screamed somewhere near by ... on the other side of the street, he thought ... and as he looked, he saw figures struggling, and then they parted and one of them, a woman, ran away towards a lamppost, holding her hands before her in an appealing fashion, and crying, "Oh, don't! Don't hit me!..." The other figure was that of a man, and as the woman shrank from him, the man advanced towards her with his fist uplifted....
Henry could feel himself shrinking back into the shadow.
"He's going to hit her," he was saying to himself, and he closed his eyes, afraid lest he should see the man's fist smashing into the woman's face. He could hear a foul oath uttered by the man and the woman's scream as she retreated still further from him ... and then, trembling with fright, he ran across the street and thrust himself between them. "Oh, my God, what am I doing?" he moaned to himself as he stood in the glare of the yellow light that fell from the street lamp. He felt rather than saw that the woman had risen from the ground and run away the moment the man's attention was distracted from her, and a shudder of fear ran through him as he realised that he was alone. He could see the man's brutal face and his blazing, drink-inflamed eyes, and in the middle of his fear, he thought how ugly the man's eyebrows were ... one long, black line from eye to eye across the top of his nose. The man, his fist clenched and raised, advanced towards him. "He's going to hit me now," Henry thought. "He'll knock me down and ... and kick me!... These people always kick you!..."
He stood still waiting for the blow, mesmerised by the man's blazing eyes; but the man, though his fist was still clenched, did not strike him. He reeled up to him soclosely that Henry was sickened by the smell of his drink-sodden breath. "Fight for a woman, would you?" he shouted at him. "Eih? P'tect a woman, would you?..."
Henry wanted to laugh. The man was repeating phrases from melodramas!...
"Tyke a woman's part, eih? I know you, you bloody toff! You ... you think you're a bloody 'ero, eih, p'tectin' a woman from 'er 'usband!" He pushed Henry aside, almost falling on the pavement as he did so. "I've a goo' mind to break your bloody neck for you, see, bloody toff, interferin' ... 'usband an' wife. See? Thash what I'll do!..."
He came again at Henry, but still he did not strike. He mumbled his melodramatic phrases, swaying in front of Henry, and threatening to break his neck and punch his jaw and give him a thick ear, but he did no more than that, and while he threatened, a crowd gathered out of the shadows, and a woman, with bare arms, touched Henry's arm and drew him away from the drunken man. "You 'op it, mister," she said, "or you'll get 'urt!" She pushed him out of the crowd, slapping a lad in the face who had jostled him and said, "Gawblimey, look at Percy!" and when she had got him away from them, she told him again to 'op it.
"Thank you!..." he began.
"Don't you wyste no time, mister, but 'op it quick," she interrupted, giving him a push forward.
"But I don't know where I am," he replied.
"Dunno w'ere you are!... Well, of course, you look like that! You're in Bermondsey, mister, an' if you tyke my advice you'll go 'ome an' sty 'ome. People like you didden ought to be let out alone! You go 'ome to your mother, sir! The first turnin' on the right'll bring you to the trams...."
He did as she told him, hurrying away from the dark street as quickly as he could. He was trembling. Everynerve in his body seemed to be strained, and his eyes had the tired feel they always had when he was deeply agitated.
"My God," he said, "what an ass I was to do that!"
Gilbert and Roger were sitting together when he got home.
"Hilloa, Quinny!" Gilbert exclaimed as he looked at Henry's white face. "What have you been up to?"
He told them of his adventure in Bermondsey.
"You do do some damn funny things, Quinny!" said Gilbert, going to the sideboard and getting out the whisky. "Here, have a drop of this stuff. You look completely pipped!"
"I don't think I should make a habit of knight-errantry, if I were you," said Roger. "Not in slums at all events!"
"Has Ninian come back yet?" Henry asked, sipping the whisky.
"He's gone to bed. TheGiganticgot off all right, but there was trouble at the start. She fouled a cruiser or something. Ninian's full of it. He'll tell you the whole rigmarole in the morning. You'd better trot off to bed when you've drunk that, and for God's sake, Quinny, don't try to be heroic again. You're not cut out for that sort of job!..."
Mrs. Graham and Mary and Rachel Wynne dined with them on the first night of "The Magic Casement." Rachel, fresh from a Care Committee, composed mostly of members of the Charity Organisation Society and the wives of prosperous tradesmen, was inclined to tell the world what she thought of it, but they diverted her mind from the iniquities of the Care Committee by congratulating her on her engagement to Roger. She blushed and gave her thanks in stammers, looking with bright, proud eyes at Roger; and when they saw how human she was, they forgot her hard efficiency and her sociological angers, and liked her. Gilbert urged her to tell them tales of the C.O.S. and the Care Committee, and rejoiced loudly when she described how she had discomfited a large, granitic woman ... the Mayor's wife ... who had committed a flagrant breach of the law in her anxiety to penalise some unfortunate children whose father was an agitator. "If I were poor," Rachel said, "I'd hit a C.O.S. person on sight! I'd hit it simply because it was a C.O.S. person! That would be evidence against it!" She enjoyed calling a C.O.S. person, "it," and Henry felt that perhaps some of the difficulty with the Mayor's wife was due to the pleasure that Rachel took in rubbing her up the wrong way. He suggested that tactful treatment....
"You can't be tactful with that kind of person," she asserted instantly. "You can only be angry. You see, they love to badger poor people. It's sheer delight to them to ask impertinent questions. There's a big streak ofTorquemada in them. They'd have been Inquisitors if they'd been born in Spain when there were Inquisitors!" She paused for a second or two, and then went on rapidly. "I never thought of that before. Why, of course, that's what they are. They've been reincarnated ... you know, transmigration of souls ... and that fat woman, Mrs. Smeale...." Mrs. Smeale was the Mayor's wife ... "was an Inquisitor before she was ... was dug up again. I can see her beastly big face in a cowl, and hot pincers in her hands, plucking poor Protestants' flesh off their bones ... and she's doing that now, using all the rotten rules and regulations as hot pincers to pluck the spirit out of the poor! Of course, she does it all for the best! So did the Inquisitors! She doesn't want to undermine the moral character of the poor, and they didn't want to let the poor heretic imperil his soul.... I'd like to inquisit her!..."
"There isn't a word 'inquisit,' Rachel!" said Roger.
"Well, there ought to be," she answered.
Henry pictured her, in her committee room, surrounded by hard women, opposing herself to them, fighting for people who were not of her class against people who were, and it seemed to him that Rachel was very valiant, even if she were tactless, much more valiant than he could be. Rachel belonged to the fearless, ungracious, blunt people who are not to be deterred from their purpose by ostracism or abuse, and Henry realised that such courage as hers must inevitably be accompanied by aggressiveness, a harsh insistence on one's point of view, and worst of all, a surrender of social charm and ease and the kindly regard of one's friends. "I couldn't do that," he thought to himself. It was easy enough to sneer at such people, to call them "cranks," but indisputably they had the heroic spirit, the will to endure obloquy for their opinions. "I suppose," he reflected, "the reason why one feels so angry with such people is partly that nine times out of ten they're in the right, and partly that ten times out of ten they'vegot the pluck we haven't got!" And he remembered that Witterton, a journalist whom he had met at the office of theMorning Record, had climbed on to the plinth in Trafalgar Square during the Boer War and made a speech in denunciation of Chamberlain and the Rand lords, and had been badly mauled by the mob. "By God, that's courage!" he murmured. That was the sort of person Rachel was. He could see her opposing herself to mobs, but he could not see himself doing so. Probably, he thought, he would be on the fringe of the crowd, mildly deprecating violence and tactlessness....
He came out of his ruminations to hear Mrs. Graham telling Rachel how pleased she was to hear that Roger and she were engaged. "My dear," she said, "I'm very glad!" and then she kissed Rachel.
"Come here, Roger," she added, and when he had ambled awkwardly up to her, she took his head in her hands and kissed him too....
"I've a jolly good mind to get engaged myself," said Gilbert.
"Well, why don't you?" Mrs. Graham retorted.
"I would, only I keep on forgetting about it," he answered. "Couldn't you kiss me 'Good-luck' to my play?"
"I could," she replied, and kissed him.
Then they insisted that she should kiss them all, and she did as they insisted. She was very gracious and very charming and her eyes were bright with her pleasure in their youth and spirits ... so bright that presently she cried a little ... and then they all talked quickly and kicked one another's shins under the table in order to enforce tactful behaviour.
They sat in one of the two large boxes of the Pall Mall Theatre. Gilbert was nervous and restless, and after theplay began, he retreated to the back of the box and sat down in a corner.
"What's up, Gilbert?" Henry whispered to him. "Are you ill?"
"Ill!" Gilbert exclaimed, looking up at Henry with a whimsical smile. "Man, Quinny, I'm dying! Go away like a good chap and let me die in peace. Tell all my friends that my last words were...."
Henry went back to his seat beside Mary and whispered to her that Gilbert was too nervous and agitated to be sociable ... "some sort of stage fright!..." and they pretended not to notice that he was huddled in the darkest corner of the box. "Thank goodness," Henry said to the others, "a novelist doesn't get a storm of nerves on the day of publication!" Leaning over the edge of the box, he could see Lady Cecily sitting in the stalls, with Jimphy by her side ... and for a while he forgot the play and Mary and Gilbert's agitation. She was sitting forward, looking intently at the stage, and as he watched her, she laughed and turned to Jimphy as if she would share her pleasure with him, but Jimphy, lying back in his stall, was fiddling with his programme, utterly uninterested. She glanced up at the box, her eyes meeting his, and smiled at him.
"Who is it?" said Mary, leaning towards him.
"Oh ... Lady Cecily Jayne!" he answered, discomposed by her question.
"She's very beautiful, isn't she?"
"Yes."
They turned again to the stage and were silent until the end of the first act. There was a burst of laughter, and then the curtain descended, to rise again in quick response to the applause.
"Cheering a chap at his funeral!" said Gilbert, groaning with delight as he listened to the shouts and handclaps.
They turned to him and offered their congratulations.
"Five curtain-calls," said Roger. "Very satisfactory!"
"It's splendid, Gilbert," Mrs. Graham exclaimed. "I'm sure it'll be a great success!"
"Oh, dear, O Lord, I wish it were over!" Gilbert replied.
"Let's fill him with whisky," said Ninian, rising and taking hold of Gilbert's arm, and he and Henry took him and led him to the bar where they met Jimphy, looking like a lost rabbit.
"Hilloa, Jimphy!" they exclaimed, and he turned gleefully to welcome them. Here at all events was something he could comprehend. He congratulated Gilbert. "Jolly good, old chap! Have a drink," he said, and insisted that they should join him at the bar. "Of course," he added privately to Henry, "this sort of stuff isn't really in my line ... jolly good and all that, of course ... but still it's not in my line. All the same, a chap has to congratulate a chap. Oh, Cecily wants you to go and talk to her. You know where she is, don't you?"
He turned to listen to Ninian who was describing the accident which had happened when theGiganticstarted on her first trip to America. "She jolly near sank a cruiser," he was saying as Henry moved away from the bar. "That was the second accident. The first time, she broke from her moorings...."
He pushed his way through the crowd of drinking and gossiping men, and entered the stalls. Lady Cecily saw him coming, and she beckoned to him.
"Who is that nice girl in the box?" she asked, as he sat down in Jimphy's seat. "She sat beside you...."
"Oh, Ninian's sister," he replied. "Mary Graham."
"She's very pretty, isn't she?"
"Yes...."
He would have said more, but it suddenly struck him as comical that Lady Cecily should speak of Mary almost in the words that Mary had used when she spoke of LadyCecily. He looked up at the box and saw that Mary was talking to her mother, and something in her attitude sent a pang through his heart.
"Idolove Mary," he said to himself, "but somehow ... somehow I love Cecily too!"
Lady Cecily was speaking to him and he turned to listen.
"I want you to introduce me to Ninian's sister," she said.
"Yes," he answered reluctantly, though he could not have said why he was reluctant to introduce her to Mary.
"After the next act," she went on, and he nodded his head.
Then Jimphy returned, and Henry got up and left her, and hurried back to the box. The second act had begun when he reached it, and he tiptoed to his seat and sat down in silence. Mary looked round at him, smiling, and then looked back at the stage, and again he felt that odd reluctance to bring Lady Cecily and her together.
At the end of the second act, he turned to Mary and said, "Lady Cecily wants to be introduced to you. I said I'd bring her here after this act!"
"Do," Mary answered.
As he walked towards the door of the box, he remembered Gilbert and he bent towards him and said quietly, "Oh, Gilbert, I'm going to fetch Lady Cecily. She wants to talk to Mary!..."
"Righto!" Gilbert replied, without looking up.
Henry hesitated. "You ... you don't mind, do you?" he said, and then wished that he had remained silent.
"Mind!" Gilbert looked up. "Why should I mind?"
"I thought perhaps ... but of course if you don't mind, that's all right!"
He hurried out of the box, feeling that he had intruded into private places. He had intended to be considerate and had achieved only the appearance of prying. "That's like me!" he thought, as he descended the stairs that led to the stalls. "I wonder why it is that I'm full of sympathy and understanding and tact in my books, and such a clumsy fool in life!"
He entered the stalls, and as he did so, Lady Cecily rose to join him. Jimphy had already gone to the bar. He held the curtain for her and she passed through. "Isn't it clever?" she said, speaking of the play, and he nodded his head. The passage leading up from the stalls was full of chattering people, but when they reached the narrow corridor which led to the box, there was no one about....
"Cecily!" he said in a low voice.
"Yes, Paddy!" she answered, looking back over her shoulder.
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards him.
"Some one will see you," she said.
"No, they won't," he replied, "and I don't care...."
He kissed her ardently. "My dear!" he murmured with his lips on hers.
She pushed him from her. "Youarea fool," she said.
"I couldn't help it!"
Their voices were low lest the people in the box should hear them.
"You must never do that again," she said. "I'd never have forgiven you if any one had seen us!"
"What are you afraid of, Cecily?" he asked.
She made a gesture of despair. "Haven't youanysense?" she said.
She turned to go towards the box again, but he caught hold of her hand and held her.
"Cecily," he whispered, "you know I love you, don't you?"
"Yes, yes," she answered impatiently, snatching her hand from his, "but you needn't tell everybody about it!"
"And you love me, too. Don't you?"
"Let's go and join the others!..."
He held her again. "No, Cecily," he said, "you must listen to me!"
"Well, what is it?"
"Cecily!" He was breathing hard, and it seemed to him that he could only speak by forcing words out of himself. "Cecily ... come with me! ..."
"That's what I want to do, but you keep me hanging about here. If any one were to see us!..."
"I don't mean that," he interrupted. "You know quite well what I mean!..."
"Whatdoyou mean? I don't know!..."
He went closer to her, trying to waken her passion by the strength of his. "I want you to leave Jimphy and come away with me," he said.
"Leave Jimphy!"
"Yes. You're not happy ... you're not suited to each other. Come with me!"
"Like this?" she said, holding out her hands and mocking him.
"That doesn't matter," he urged. "We'll go somewhere...."
"Fly to Ireland, I suppose, in evening dress! Poor Paddy, you're so Irish, aren't you? Please don't be an idiot!"
She went on towards the door of the box, and he followed after her. "Cecily!" he said.
"Not to-night," she answered. "I want to be introduced to that nice girl, Mary Graham, and I really must congratulate Gilbert ... I suppose he's here ... it's such a clever play!"
She opened the door of the box and went in, and, hesitating for a moment, he went after her.
She stayed in the box, sitting between Mrs. Graham and Mary, until the end of the play. The curtain had gone down to applause and laughter and had been raised again and a third and fourth time, and then the audience had demanded that the author should appear. Somewhere in the gallery, they could hear the faint groan of the man who attends all first nights and groans on principle. "I'd like to punch that chap's jaw!" Ninian muttered, glancing up at the gallery indignantly. There was more applause and a louder and more insistent shout of "Author! Author!" and the curtain went up, and Gilbert, very nervous and very pale, came on to the stage and bowed. Then, after another curtain call, the lights were lowered and the audience began to disperse.
There was to be a supper party at the Carlton, because the Carlton was nearer to the Pall Mall than the Savoy, and Sir Geoffrey Mundane and Mrs. Michael Gordon had accepted Gilbert's invitation to join them. "It'll cost a hell of a lot," Gilbert said to Henry, "but what's money for? When I die, they'll put on my tombstone, 'He was born in debt, he lived in debt, he died in debt, and he didn't care a damn. So be it!' He extended his invitation to Jimphy and Lady Cecily.
"You didn't come to Jimphy's birthday party," she objected.
"Didn't I?" he replied. "Well, both of you come to my party ... that'll make up for it!"
Gilbert did not appear to be affected by Cecily's presence. He had greeted her naturally, behaving to her in as friendly a way as he would have behaved if she had been Mrs. Graham. Henry, remembering the scene on the Embankment, had difficulty in understanding Gilbert's easy manner. Had he been in Gilbert's place, he knew that he would have been awkward, constrained, tongue-tied. Undoubtedly, Gilbert hadsavoir faire. So, too, had Cecily.Her look of irritation with Henry had disappeared as she entered the box. He, following after her, had been nervous and self-conscious, feeling that the flushed look on his face must betray him to his friends; but Cecily had none of these awkwardnesses. She behaved as easily as if the scene with Henry had not taken place. "You'd think she hadn't any feelings," he murmured to himself, and as he did so, it seemed to him that in that moment he knew Cecily, knew her once and for all.She had no feelings, no particular feelings for any one, not even for Gilbert.She was a beautiful animal, eager for emotional diversions, but indifferent to the creature that pleased her after it had pleased her. If Henry were to quit her now and never return to her, she might some day say, "I wonder where poor Paddy is!" and turn carelessly to a new lover; but that would be all. Gilbert had piqued her, perhaps, but he had done no more than that, though probably it was more than Henry could ever hope to do, and she had yawned a little with the tedium of waiting for him, and then had decided to yawn no more....
He fell among platitudes. "Like a butterfly," he said to himself. "Just like a damned butterfly!"
Well, he thought, mentally cooler because of his revelation, that is an attitude towards life that has many advantages. One might call Cecily a stoical amorist, an erotic philosopher. "Love where you can, and don't bother where you can't!" might serve her for a motto. "And, really, that's rather a good way of getting through these plaguey emotions of ours!" he told himself. "Only," he went on, "you can't walk in that way just because you think it's a good one!"
He sat between Lady Cecily and Mary at supper, but he did not talk a great deal to either of them, for Mary was chattering excitedly to Sir Geoffrey Mundane, and Cecily was persuading Ninian that engineering had always been the passion of her life. "I quite agree," she was saying, "a Channel Tunnel would be very useful and ... and soconvenient, too. I've often said that to Jimphy, but dear Jimphy doesn't pretend to understand these things!" She had turned to him once and, in a whisper, had said, "Which of you is in love with Mary?" but he had pretended to be wooden and hard of understanding.
"My dear Paddy," she said, raising her eyebrows, "I believe you're sulking ... just because I wouldn't run away with you. You're as bad as Gilbert!"
"You're perfectly brutal," he said under his breath.
"Aren't you exaggerating?" she replied. "And if I had gone off with you, we'd have missed this nice supper. Do be sociable, there's a dear Paddy, and perhaps I'll run away with you next Tuesday!"
There was a babble of conversation about them, and much laughter, for Gilbert, reacting from his fright, was full of bright talk, and Sir Geoffrey, reminiscent, capped it with entertaining tales of dramatists and stage people. It was easy for Cecily and Henry to carry on their conversation in quiet tones without fear of being overheard.
"You treat me like a boy," he said reproachfully.
"You are a boy, Paddy dear, and a very nice boy!"
"I suppose," he retorted, "it's impossible for you to understand that I love you...."
"Indeed, it isn't," she interrupted. "I understand that quite easily. What I can't understand is why you wish to spoil everything by silly proposals to ... to elope!..."
"But I love you," he insisted. "Isn't that enough to make you understand?"
She shook her head, and turned again to Ninian.
"You see," Ninian said, "you bore through this big bed of chalk from both sides...."
"But how do you know the two ends will meet?" she asked.
"Oh, engineers manage that sort of thing easily," Ninian answered. "Think of the Simplon Tunnel!..."
"Yes!" she said, to indicate that she was thinking of it.
"Well, that met, didn't it?"
"Did it?" she replied. "Oh, but of course it must have met. I've been through it!..."
"There was hardly an inch of divergence between the two ends," he went on....
"Hell's flames!" Henry said to himself.
"I must see you," he said to her when the party had broken up and she was going home. "I must see you alone!"
"I do hope you're not going to be a nuisance, Paddy!" she replied.
He put her cloak about her shoulders. "Will you meet me at the suspension bridge over the lake in St. James's Park to-morrow at eleven?..."
"That's awfully early, Paddy, and St. James's Park is such a long way from everywhere. Couldn't you come to lunch? Jimphy'll be glad to see you. He seems to like you for some reason!"
"I want to talk to you alone, and we're not likely to be disturbed in St. James's Park. You must come, Cecily!"
"Oh, all right," she answered. "But I shan't be there before twelve. You can take me to lunch somewhere...."
"Very well," he said. "I'll be at the bridge at twelve, and I'll wait for you ... only, come as soon as you can, Cecily!"
"I can't think why you want to behave like this, Paddy. It's so melodramatic. Gilbert was just the same!..."
He felt that he could hit her when she said that, and he turned away from her so quickly that her cloak slipped from her shoulders.
"Oh, Paddy!" she exclaimed.
"I beg your pardon!" he answered, turning again and picking the cloak from the ground.
"You're so ... so selfish," she said. "You want everything to be just as you like it. You're just like Gilbert ... where is Gilbert?... I must say good-night to him ... and that nice girl, Mary. I think it's a very clever play, and she's such a nice girl, too. Oh, Gilbert, there you are! Good-night! I've enjoyed everything so much ... a nice play and a nice supper. Good-night, and do come and see me soon, won't you. Why not come to-morrow with Paddy?..."
"Paddy?" said Gilbert.
"Yes, Henry Quinn. I call him Paddy. It seems natural to call him Paddy. He's so Irish. Do come with him to-morrow, and bring all your press cuttings with you and read them to me. Paddy wants to talk to me...."
Henry walked away from them. What sort of woman was this? he asked himself. Was she totally insensitive? Was it impossible for her to realise that she was hurting him?...
"Good-night, Quinny!"
He turned quickly to take Mary's hand.
"We're going back to Devonshire the day after to-morrow," she said.
"Are you?" he murmured vaguely.
"Yes. Good-night, Quinny!"
"Aren't you tired?" he asked.
"Oh, no," she answered. "I've enjoyed myself awfully much. Here's Ninian! He's taking us back to our hotel. Good-night, Quinny!"
He hesitated for a moment or two. He wanted to suggest that he should go with her instead of Ninian, but before he could speak he saw Cecily moving down the room towards the street.
"Good-night, Mary!" was all he said.
Roger had taken Rachel home, and so, when Ninian had gone off with his mother and Mary, there were only Henry and Gilbert left.
"Let's go home, Quinny," Gilbert said. "I'd like to walk if you don't mind!"
"Very well," Henry replied.
They left the hotel and strolled across the street towards the National Gallery.
"I wish it were the morning," Gilbert said. "I want to see the newspapers!"
"It doesn't greatly matter what they say, does it?" Henry answered. "The play's a success. The audience liked it."
"I want to read the notices all the same. Of course, I want to read them. I shall spend the whole of to-morrow reading and re-reading them. Just vanity!"
They walked past the Gallery, and made their way through the complicated streets that lie behind the Strand, about Covent Garden, towards Bloomsbury. They did not speak for some time, for they were tired and their minds were too full of other things. Once indeed, Gilbert began to speak ... "I think I could improve the second act a little ..." but he did not finish his sentence, and Henry did not ask him to do so. It was not until they were nearly at their home that Henry spoke to Gilbert about Cecily.
"Are you going to Lady Cecily's to-morrow?" he said.
"Eh?" Gilbert exclaimed, starting out of his dreams. "Oh, no, I think not! Why?"
"I only wondered. She asked you, you know!"
They walked on in silence until they reached the door of their house.
"I say, Quinny," said Gilbert, while Henry opened the door, "you seem to be very friendly with Cecily!"
Henry fumbled with the key and muttered, "Damn this door, it won't open!"
"Let me try!..."
"It's all right now. I've done it! What were you saying, Gilbert?"
They entered the house, shutting the door behind them, and stood for a while in the hall, removing their hats and coats.
"Oh, nothing," Gilbert replied. "I was only saying you seemed very friendly with Cecily!"
"Well, yes, I suppose I am, but not more than most people. Are you going to bed now or will you wait up for Ninian and Roger?"
"I shan't sleep if I go to bed ... I'm too excited. I shall read for a while in my room ... unless you'd like to jaw a bit!"
Henry shook his head. "No," he said, "I'm too tired to jaw to-night. See you in the morning. Good-night, Gilbert!"
"Good-night, Quinny!"
Henry went to his bedroom, leaving Gilbert in the hall, and began to undress. His mind was full of a flat rage against Cecily. She had consented to meet him in St. James's Park, and then, almost as she had made her promise, she had turned to Gilbert and had invited him to call on her, in his company, at the time she had appointed for his private meeting with her. He did not wish to see her again. "She's fooling me," he said, throwing his coat on to a chair so that it fell on to the ground where he let it lie. "I've not done a stroke of work for days on her account, and she cares no more for me than she does for ... for anybody. I won't go and meet her to-morrow, damn her! I'll send a messenger to say I can't come, and then I'll drop her. It isn't worth while going through this ... this agony for a woman who doesn't care a curse for you!"
"I'm not going to be treated like this," he went on to himself while he brushed his teeth. "I'm not going to hang about her and let her treat me as she pleases. She can get somebody else, some one who is more complacent than I am, and doesn't feel things. I hope she goes to the Park and waits for me. Perhaps that'll teach her to understand what a man feels like...."
But of course she would not go to the Park and wait for him. He would send an express messenger with a note to tell her that he was unable to keep the appointment.
"I'll write it now," he said to himself and he stopped in the middle of washing his face and hands to find notepaper. "Damn, my hands are wet," he said aloud, and picked up a towel.
"Dear Lady Cecily," he wrote, when he was dry, using the formal address because he wished to let her know that he was ill friends with her, "I am sorry I shall not be able to meet you to-day as we arranged last night." He wondered what excuse he should make for breaking off the appointment, and then decided that he would not make any. "I won't add anything else," he said, and he signed himself, "Yours sincerely, Henry Quinn." "She'll know that I'm sick of this ... messing about. I don't see why I should explain myself to her!"
He sealed the envelope and put the letter aside, and sat for a while drumming on his table with the pen.
"Mary's worth a dozen of her," he said aloud, getting up and going to bed.
They all rose early the next day. Ninian had been out of the house before any of them had reached the breakfast room, and when he returned, his arms were full of newspapers.
"What's Walkley say?" said Gilbert. "That's all I want to know!"
They opened theTimes, and then, when they had read the criticism of "The Magic Casement," they murmured, "Charming! Splendid! Oh, ripping!" while Gilbert, sitting back in his chair, smiled beatifically and said, "Read it again, coves. Read it aloud and slowly!"
While they were reading the notices, Henry went off to a post office, and sent his letter to Lady Cecily by express messenger. "That's settled," he said, as he returned home, for he had been afraid that he might change his mind. As he was shaving that morning, he had faltered in his resolution. "I'd better go," he had said to himself, and then had added weakly, "No, I'm damned if I will!" Well, it was settled now. The letter was on its way to her. She would probably be angry with him, but not as angry as he was with her, and perhaps they would not meet again for a long while. So much the better. Now he could get on with his book in peace. Gilbert was right. Womendoupset things. Well, this particular woman would not upset him again....
They had read all the notices when Henry returned, and were now at breakfast. Roger was relating the latest legal jest about Mr. Justice Kirkcubbin, a poor old man who persisted in clinging to the Bench in spite of the broadest hints from theLaw Journal, and Ninian was making mysterious movements with his hands.
"What's the matter, Ninian?" Henry asked, as he sat down at the table.
Ninian, while searching for the notices of Gilbert's play, had seen a sentence in a serial story in one of the newspapers.... "Her hands fluttered helplessly over his breast" ... and he was trying to discover exactly what the lady had done with her hands. "She seems to have just flopped them about," he said, and he turned to Gilbert. "Look here, Gilbert," he said, "you try it. I'll clasp you in my arms as the hero clasped this female, and you'll let your hands flutter helplessly over my breast!"
"I'll let my fist flutter helplessly over your jaw, young Ninian!..."
"I don't believe she let her hands do anything of the sort," Ninian went on. "She couldn't have done it. An engineer couldn't do it, and I don't believe a female can do what an engineer can't do!"
"I suppose," he added, getting up from the table, "Tom Arthurs is half way across now. I wish I could have gone with him. What a holiday!"
"Talking of holidays," Gilbert said, "I'm going to take one, and as you don't seem in a fit state to do any work, Quinny, you'd better take one too, and come with me!"
"Where are you going?" Roger asked. "Anglesey?"
"No. I thought of going there, but I've changed my mind. I shall go to Ireland with Quinny."
"Ireland!" Henry exclaimed, looking across at Gilbert.
"Yes. Dublin. We can go to-night. I've never been there, and I'd like to know what these chaps, Marsh and Galway, are up to. That whatdoyoucallit movement you were telling me about?... you know, the thing that means 'a stitch in time saves nine' or something of the sort!"
"Oh, the Sinn Fein movement!"
"Yes. That's the thing. The Improved Tories ought to know about that...."
"That reminds me," said Roger, "of an idea I had in the middle of the night about the Improved Tories. We ought to publish our views on problems. The Fabians do that kind of thing rather well. We ought to imitate them. We ought to study some subject hard, argue all round it, and then tell the world just how we think it ought to be solved. I thought we might begin on the problem of unemployment...."
"Good Lord, do you think we can solve that!" Ninian exclaimed.
"No, but we might find a means of palliating it. My own notion...."
"I thought you had some scheme in your skull, Roger!" said Gilbert. "Let's have it!"
"Well, it's rather raw in my mind at present, but my idea is that the way to mitigate the problem of unemployment, perhaps solve it, is to join it on to the problem of defence. Supposing we decided to create a big army ... and we shall need one sooner or later with all these ententes and alliances we're forming ... the problem would be to form it without dislocating the industrial system. My idea is to make it compulsory for every man to undergo military training, about a couple of months every year, and call the men up to the camp in times of trade depression. You wouldn't have to call them all up at once ... trades aren't all slack at the same time ... and you'd arrange the period of training as far as possible to fit in with the slack time in each job. I mean, people who are employed in gasworks could easily be trained in the summer without dislocating the gas industry ... colliers, too, and people like that ... and men who are slack in the winter, like builders' men, could be trained in the winter. That's my idea roughly. There'd be training going on all the year round, and of course you could vary the duration of the period of training ... never less than two months, butlonger if trade were badly depressed. You'd save a lot of misery that way ... you'd keep your men fit and fed and their homes going ... and you'd have the nucleus of a large army. I don't see why we shouldn't bring the Board of Education in. If we were to raise the school age to sixteen, and then make it compulsory for every boy to go into a cadet corps or something of the sort for a couple of years, you'd relieve the pressure on the labour market at that end enormously, and you'd make the job of getting the army ready much easier in case of emergency. A couple of years' training to begin with, followed by a couple of months' further training every year, would make all the difference in the world to us militarily, and it would do away, largely, with the unemployed!"
"How about apprentices?" said Gilbert. "If you raise the school age to sixteen and then make all the boys go into training until they are eighteen, you're going to make a big difficulty in the way of getting skilled labour!"
"I don't think so. As far as I can make out the period of apprenticeship is much too long. Five or six years is a ridiculous time to ask a boy to spend in learning his job, and any trade unionist will tell you that every apprentice spends the first year or two in acting as a sort of messenger: fetching beer and cleaning up things. I suppose the real reason why the period of indenture is so long is because the Unions don't want to swamp the labour market with skilled workers. Well, why shouldn't we reduce the period of apprenticeship by giving the boy a military training? You see, don't you, what a problem this is? I thought of talking about it to the Improved Tories, and when we'd argued it over a bit, we'd put our proposals into print and circulate them among informed people, and invite them to come and tell us what they think of the notion from their point of view ... Trade Union secretaries and military men and employers and people like that ... and then, we might publish a book on it. Jaurés wrote a book on the French Army ... a very good book, too ... so thereisn't anything remarkably novel about the notion, except, perhaps, my idea of linking the military problem on to the unemployment problem. You and Quinny could write the book, Gilbert, because you've got style and we want the book to be written so that people will read it without getting tied up. Of course, if you must go to Ireland, you must, but it seems a little needless, doesn't it?"
"This business will take time," Gilbert replied. "Tons of time. I don't think our visit to Ireland will affect it much. You'll come with me, won't you, Quinny?"
Henry nodded his head. "At once, if you like," he answered, hoping indeed that Gilbert would suggest an immediate departure. If Lady Cecily were to hear that he had left London....
"To-night will do," said Gilbert.
"Are you going to work?" Gilbert said to Henry, when the others had gone.
"I think so," Henry replied. "I haven't written a word for days. You?"
"I'll go and have a squint at the Pall Mall ... just to make sure that last night wasn't a dream. I'll come back to lunch. It 'ud be rather jolly to go on from Dublin and see your father, Quinny?"
"Yes ... that's a notion. I'll write and tell him we're coming. Bring back the afternoon papers when you come, Gilbert, I'd like to see what they say about the play!"
"Righto!" said Gilbert.
Henry sat on in the breakfast room, after Gilbert had gone, reading the criticisms of "The Magic Casement," and then, when he had finished, he went up to his room and began to work on "Turbulence." He wrote steadily for an hour, and then read over what he had done.
"This is better," he murmured to himself, pleased with what he had written, and he prepared to go on, but beforehe could start again, there was a knock on the door, and Magnolia came in.
"You're wanted on the telephone, sir!" she said.
"Who is it?"
"I don't know, sir. They didn't say!"
He went downstairs and took up the receiver. "Hilloa!" he said.
"Is that you, Paddy?" was the response.
"Cecily!"
"Yes. I've just had your letter. Are you very cross, Paddy?"
He felt perturbed, but he tried to make his voice sound as if he were indifferent to her.
"No," he replied, "I'm not cross at all...."
"Oh, yes, you are, Paddy. You're very cross, and you're going to teach me a lesson, aren't you?"
He could hear her light laugh as she spoke.
"I can'tmakeyou believe that I'm not cross at all," he said.
"No, you can't. Paddy!" Her voice had a coaxing note as she said his name.
"Yes."
"Come to lunch with me. Jimphy's gone off for the day somewhere...."
"I'm sorry!..."
"Do come, Paddy. I want you to come. I do, really!"
He paused for a second or two before he replied. After all why should he not go?...
"I'm sorry," he said, "but I really can't lunch with you. I'm going to Ireland!..."
"Going where?"
"Ireland. To-night! I'm going with Gilbert!"
"But you can't go this minute. Paddy, youarecross, and you're spiteful, too. If you aren't cross, you'll come and lunch with me. You ought to come and say 'good-bye' to me before you go to Ireland...."
"I've got a lot to do ... packing and things!"
"You can do that afterwards!" Her voice became more insistent. "Paddy, I want you to come. You must come!..."
He hesitated, and she said, "Do, Paddy!" very appealingly.
It would be weak, he told himself, to yield to her now ... she would think she had only to be a little gracious and he would be at her feet immediately; and then he thought it would be weak not to yield to her. "It'll look as if I were afraid to meet her ... running away like this. Or that I'm sulking ... just petulant!"
"All right," he said to her, "I'll come!"
"Come now!"
He nodded his head, forgetting that she could not see him, and she called to him again, "You'll come now, won't you?"
"Yes," he replied. "I'll come at once!"
He put up the receiver and reached for his hat. "I wonder what she wants," he thought, "perhaps she really does love me and my letter's frightened her!" His spirits rose at the thought and he went jauntily to the door and opened it, and as he did so, Ninian, pale and miserable, panted up the steps.
"My God, Quinny!" he exclaimed, almost sobbing, "theGigantic'sgone down!"
"The what?"
"TheGigantic'sgone down! It's in the paper. Look, look!" He was unbalanced by grief as he thrust theWestminster Gazetteand theGlobeinto Henry's hands.
"But, damn it, she can't have gone down," Henry said, "she's a Belfast boat ... she can't have gone down!"
"She has, I tell you, and Tom Arthurs ... oh, my God, Quinny, he's gone down too! The decentest chap on earth and ... and he's been drowned!"
Henry led him into the house. "I went out to get the evening papers to see about Gilbert's play," he went on, "and that's what I saw. I saw her at Southampton goingoff as proud as a queen ... and now she's at the bottom of the Atlantic. And Tom waved his hand to me. He was going to show me over her properly when he came back. Isn't it horrible, Quinny? What's the sense of it ... what the hell's the sense of it?"
"She can't have gone down ..." Henry said, as if that would comfort Ninian.
"She has, I tell you...."
Henry went to the sideboard and took out the whisky.
"Here, Ninian," he said, pouring out some of it, "drink that. You're upset!..."
"No, I don't want any whisky. God damn it, what's the sense of a thing like this! A man like Tom Arthurs!..."
There was a noise like the sound of a taxi-cab drawing up in front of the house, and presently the bell rang, and then, after a moment or two, the door opened, and Mrs. Graham came hurrying into the room.
"Ninian! Where's Ninian?" she said wildly to Henry.
"He's here, Mrs. Graham!"
She went to him and clutched him tightly to her. "Oh, my dear, my dear," she said.
"What is it, mother?" he asked, calming himself and looking at her.
"I telephoned to your office, but you weren't there, so I came here to find you. I couldn't rest content till I'd seen you!"
"What is it, mother?"
"That ship, Ninian. If you'd been on it ... you wanted to go, and I said why didn't you ... oh, my dear, if you'd been on it, and I'd lost you!"
He put his arms about her and drew her on to his shoulder. "I'm all right, mother!" he said.
Henry left the room hurriedly. He went to the kitchen and called to Mrs. Clutters. "I won't be in to lunch," he said. "Don't let any one disturb Mrs. Graham and Mr. Graham for a while. They ... they've had bad news!"
Then he went out of the house. The taxi-cab in which Mrs. Graham had come was still standing outside the door.
"I ain't 'ad me fare yet," said the driver.
"All right!" said Henry. "I'll pay it."
He gave Cecily's address to the man, and then he got into the cab.
He could hear the newspaper boys crying out the news of the disaster as he was driven swiftly to Cecily's house. The sinking of the great ship had stunned men's minds and humiliated their pride. This beautiful vessel, skilfully built, the greatest ship afloat, had seemed imperishable, the most powerful weapon that man had yet forged to subdue the sea, and in a little while, recoiling from the hidden iceberg, she had foundered, broken as easily as a child's toy, carrying all her vanity and strength to the bottom....
"It isn't true," he kept on saying to himself as if he were trying to contradict the cries of the newsvendors. "She's a Belfast boat and Belfast boats don't go down...."
He felt it oddly, this loss. The drowning of many men and women and children affected him merely as a vague, impersonal thing. "Yes, it's dreadful," he would say when he thought of it, but he was not moved by it. When he remembered Tom Arthurs he was stirred, but less than Ninian had been. He could see him now, just as he had stood in the shipyard that day when John Marsh and Henry had been with him, and he had watched the workmen pouring through the gates. "Those are my pals!" he had said.... Poor Tom Arthurs! Destroyed with the thing that he had conceived and his "pals" had built! But perhaps that was as he would have wished. It would have hurt Tom Arthurs to have lived on after theGigantichad gone down.... It was not the drowning of a crowd of people or the drowning of Tom Arthurs that most affectedHenry. It was the fact that a boat built by Belfast men had foundered on her maiden trip, on a clear, cold night of stars, reeling from the iceberg's blow like a flimsy yacht. He had the Ulsterman's pride in the Ulsterman's power, and he liked to boast that the best ships in the world were built on the Lagan....
"By God," he said to himself, "this'll break their hearts in Belfast!"
The cab drew up before the door of Cecily's house, and in a little while he was with her.
"Have you heard about theGigantic?" he said, as he walked across the room to her.
"Oh, yes," she answered, "isn't it dreadful? Come and sit down here!"
He had not greeted her otherwise than by his question about theGigantic, and she frowned a little as she made room for him beside her on the sofa.
"That great boat!..." he began, but she interrupted him.
"I suppose you're still cross," she said.
"Cross?"
"Yes. You haven't even shaken hands with me!"
He remembered now. "Oh!" he said in confusion, but could say no more.
"Are you really going to Ireland?" she asked, putting her hand on his arm.
"Yes," he answered, feeling his resolution weakening just because she had touched him.
"But why?"
"You know why!" he said.
Her hand dropped from his arm. "I don't know why," she exclaimed pettishly, and he saw and disliked the way her lips turned downwards as she said it.
"I can't bear it, Cecily," he exclaimed. "I must have you to myself or ... or not have you at all!"
"Perfectly absurd!" she murmured.
"It isn't absurd. How can you expect me to feel happywhen I see you going off with Jimphy? Can't you understand, Cecily? Here I am with you now, but if Jimphy were to come into the room, I should have to ... to give way, to pretend that I'm not in love with you!"
"I can't see what difference it makes," she said. "Jimphy and I don't interfere with each other. It's ridiculous to make all this fuss. I don't see any necessity to go about telling everybody!..."
"I didn't propose that," he interrupted.
"Yes, you did, Paddy, dear! You asked me to run away with you, and what's that but telling everybody?"
He felt angry with her for what seemed to him to be flippancy. "I'm in earnest, Cecily!" he said. "I'm not joking!"
"I'm in earnest, too. I don't want to run away with you ... not because I don't love you ... I do love you, Paddy, very much ... but it's so absurd to run away and make a ... a mountain out of a molehill. We should be awfully miserable if we were to elope. We'd have to go to some horrid place where we shouldn't know anybody and there'd be nothing to do. Really, it's much pleasanter to go on as we are now, Paddy. You can come here and take me to lunch sometimes and go to the theatre with me when Jimphy wants to go to a music-hall, and ... and so on!"
He could not rid himself of the notion that she was "chattering" in the Lensley style.
"It would be decenter to go away together," he said.
She moved away from him angrily. "You're a prig, Paddy!" she exclaimed. "You can go to Ireland. I don't care!"
He got up as if to go, but did not move away. He stood beside her irresolutely, wishing to go and wishing to stay, and then he bent over her and touched her. "Cecily," he said, "come with me!"
"No!" she answered, keeping her back to him.
"Very well," he said, and he walked across the roomtowards the door. His hand was on the handle when she called to him.
"Aren't you going to stay to lunch?" she said.
"You told me to go!..."
"Yes, but I didn't mean immediately. I shall be all alone."
He went back to her very quickly, and sat down beside her and folded her in his arms.
"I loathe you," he cried, with his lips pressed against her cheek. "I loathe you because you're so selfish and brutal. You don't really care for me...."
"Oh, I do, Paddy I ..."
"No, you don't. You were making love to Ninian last night!..."
"So that's it, is it?..."
"No, it isn't. Ninian doesn't care about you or about any woman. He's not like me, a soft, sloppy fool. You don't love me. If I were to leave you now, you'd find some one to take my place quite easily. Lensley or Boltt!..."
"They're too middle-aged, Paddy!"
He pushed her away from him. "Damn it, can't you be serious!" he shouted at her.
"You're very rude," she replied.
"I'd like to beat you! I'd like to hurt you!..."
She smiled at him and then she put her arms about his neck and drew him towards her. "You don't loathe me, Paddy," she said softly, soothing him with her voice, "you love me, don't you?"
"Will you come away with me? Now?"
"No!" She kissed him and got up. "Let's go to lunch," she said.
He felt that he ought to leave her then, but he followed her meekly enough.
"I don't think I'll stay to lunch," he said weakly.
"Yes, you will!" she replied. "You can take me to a picture gallery afterwards!..."
They did not go to a picture gallery. The spring air was so fresh that she declared she must go for a drive.
"Let's go to Hampstead!" he said, signalling to a taxi-driver. "Well have tea at Jack Straw's Castle!"
"Yes, let's!" she exclaimed.
She had tried to persuade him not to return to Ireland, but he had insisted that he must go because of his promise to Gilbert.
"Do you care for Gilbert more than you care for me?" she had asked, making him wonder at the casual way in which she spoke Gilbert's name. It seemed incredible, listening to her, that Gilbert had been her lover....
"It's hardly the same thing," he replied.
Then, after more pleading and anger, she had given in.
"Very well," she said, "I won't ask you again, and don't let's talk about it any more. Well enjoy to-day anyhow!"
The taxi-cab carried them swiftly to Hampstead.
"Well get out at the Spaniards' Road," he said, "and walk across the Heath. It's beautiful now!"
"All right," she answered.
They did as he said, and walked about the Heath for nearly an hour. The fresh smell of spring exhilarated them, and they sat for a little while on a seat which was perched on rising ground so that they were able to see far beyond the common. Young bracken fronds were thrusting their curled heads upwards through the old brown growth; and the buds on the blackened boughs were bursting from their cases and offering delicate green leaves to the sunlight; and the yellow whins shone like little golden stars on their spiky stems. Henry's capacity for sensuous enjoyment was fully employed, and he would willingly have sat there until dusk, drawing his breath in with as much luxurious feeling as a woman has when she puts new linen on her limbs. He would have liked to strip and bathe his naked body in the Highgate Ponds or run with bare feetover the wet grass ... but Cecily was tired of the Heath.
"Isn't it time we got some tea?" she said, getting up and looking about her as if she were searching for a tea-shop.
"I suppose it is," he answered reluctantly, and he rose too. "We go this way," he said, moving in the direction of Jack Straw's Castle. "Let's come back to the Heath," he added, "after we've had tea!"
"But why?" she asked.
"Oh, because it's so beautiful."
"I thought it was getting chilly," she objected.