LITMIR.BIZ

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

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

      The town was too large for him, he could not take in its immense, its stupendous poetry. What did come home to him was its flagrant discords. The unintelligibilty of the vast city made him apprehensive, and the crudity of its big, coarse contrasts wounded him unutterably.

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

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

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

      “Do you want a drink?” he asked.

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

      “Aren’t you coming to bed?” I asked.

      “I’m not sleepy — you go to sleep,” he answered, resenting having to speak at all.

      “Then put on a dressing-gown — there’s one in that corner — turn the light on.”

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

      “Do you mind if I smoke?”

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

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

      “What’s the matter?” I asked.

      “I’ve only knocked something down — cigarette-case or something,” he replied, apologetically.

      “Aren’t you coming to bed?” I asked.

      “Yes, I’m coming,” he answered quite docile.

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

      “Are you sleepy now?” I asked.

      “I dunno — I shall be directly,” he replied.

      “What’s up with you?” I asked.

      “I dunno,” he answered. “I’m like this sometimes, when there’s nothing I want to do, and nowhere I want to go, and nobody I want to be near. Then you feel so rottenly lonely, Cyril. You feel awful, like a vacuum, with a pressure on you, a sort of pressure of darkness, and you yourself — just nothing, a vacuum — that’s what it’s like — a little vacuum that’s not dark, all loose in the middle of a space of darkness, that’s pressing on you.”

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

      He laughed slightly.

      “It’s all right,” he said, “it’s only the excitement of London, and that little man in the park, and that woman on the seat — I wonder where she is tonight, poor devil — and then Lettie. I seem thrown off my balance. — I think really, I ought to have made something of myself —”

      “What?” I asked, as he hesitated.

      “I don’t know,” he replied slowly, “— a poet or something, like Burns — I don’t know. I shall laugh at myself for thinking so, tomorrow. But I am born a generation too soon — I wasn’t ripe enough when I came. I wanted something I hadn’t got. I’m something short. I’m like corn in a wet harvest — full, but pappy, no good. I s’ll rot. I came too soon; or I wanted something that would ha’ made me grow fierce. That’s why I wanted Lettie — I think. But am I talking damn rot? What am I saying? What are you making me talk for? What are you listening for?”

      I rose and went across to him, saying:

      “I don’t want you to talk! If you sleep till morning things will look different.”

      I sat on his bed and took his hand. He lay quite still.

      “I’m only a kid after all, Cyril,” he said, a few moments later.

      “We all are,” I answered, still holding his hand. Presently he fell asleep.

      When I awoke the sunlight was laughing with the young morning in the room. The large blue sky shone against the window, and the birds were calling in the garden below, shouting to one another and making fun of life. I felt glad to have opened my eyes. I lay for a moment looking out on the morning as on a blue bright sea in which I was going to plunge.

      Then my eyes wandered to the little table near the couch. I noticed the glitter of George’s cigarette-case, and then, with a start, the whisky decanter. It was nearly empty. He must have drunk three-quarters of a pint of liquor while I was dozing. I could not believe it. I thought I must have been mistaken as to the quantity the bottle contained. I leaned out to see what it was that had startled me by its fall the night before. It was the large, heavy drinking glass which he had knocked down but not broken. I could see no stain on the carpet.

      George was still asleep. He lay half uncovered, and was breathing quietly. His face looked inert like a mask. The pallid, uninspired clay of his features seemed to have sunk a little out of shape, so that he appeared rather haggard, rather ugly, with grooves of ineffectual misery along his cheeks. I wanted him to wake, so that his inert, flaccid features might be inspired with life again. I could not believe his charm and his beauty could have forsaken him so, and left his features dreary, sunken clay.

      As I looked he woke. His eyes opened slowly. He looked at me and turned away, unable to meet my eyes. He pulled the bedclothes up over his shoulders, as though to cover himself from me, and he lay with his back to me, quite still, as if he were asleep, although I knew he was quite awake; he was suffering the humiliation of lying waiting for his life to crawl back and inhabit his body. As it was, his vitality was not yet sufficient to inform the muscles of his face and give him an expression, much less to answer by challenge.

      Chapter 6

       Pisgah

       Table of Contents

      When her eldest boy was three years old Lettie returned to live at Eberwich. Old Mr Tempest died suddenly, so Leslie came down to inhabit Highclose. He

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