Felicity surprised him. Here was Paris all right with London thrown in! She had walked right out of her old self and did not yet seem to have got over the surprise of it. Her dress, of dull shimmering green and gold, with full skirt, threw up her bare shoulders with a positive suggestion of plumpness, and set her brown head with an air of challenge upon her rather thin neck. After he had watched her dancing with Sir Norman, “the iron magnet”, whose reputation as a roué moved gossip’s head sideways, he asked her: “Do you think that was fair, exciting the old boy like that?”
“He loved it!”
“I know. Did you?”
“Well—it was a temptation to pull out all the stops.” She laughed, a gleam in her eyes. “All the same, I could do with one.”
The Mansons’ home, at one time a country mansion house, was now within the city boundary. It was really too big for them, according to Philip’s mother, too unnecessarily costly to run, but she had discovered in one of the depressions that it was unsaleable, because of its size and excessive feu-duty, not to mention rates and taxes. But it had the compensation, fully appreciated by all her guests, of being a splendid place for a party. One spacious public room led to another, and the party had the crowning virtue of being large enough to make it a matter of little consequence whether one was dancing, drinking, at ease on down cushions, or youthfully sitting on the stairs.
“I must admit they do it pretty well,” said Felicity who, having started on gin and French, declared she would stick to gin and French.
“And I must say I’m enjoying it more than I ever thought I should,” said Will, who, having started with cocktails, declared he would stick to whisky.
“I say, we have grown up!”
“Grown up? You’ve grown up and flown open.”
“Flown open?”
“Full flower.”
Her eyes grew wicked in enjoyment. “And to think how dumb you were! Clever always—but oh, so reticent!”
“And you so tentative—and coy.”
“Not coy! Oh, not coy!”
They went into their youthful past, into earnest and not so earnest college adventures, quoted Swinburne murmurously, and roared with laughter.
A young man came and asked her for a dance.
“Must I dance?” she begged him.
“You must,” he said. He was just turned twenty, with black, well-brushed, oiled hair, and was full of assurance and youthful party mannerisms. He had played for The Rest in the rugby trials last season and had nearly been picked as a reserve. So he now bowed exaggeratedly and crooked his arm, for he had a reputation to keep up before his fellows. Felicity came from Paris.
Will got hold of Philip’s sister, Maisie. She was in her last year at the university and said she would like to go in for literature.
“You mean honours and specialize?”
“No. I just mean writing.”
The gravity of her face, her shy spirit, almost hurt him. Why did gravity in a girl’s face always affect him?
“It’s difficult for me to advise you,” he said simply. “You might have genius. I don’t know. I’m just a working journalist.”
After the dance, he stood talking to Maisie’s mother, who was so gracious a woman that her smile was more than most women’s deepest comment. From her, very obviously, Philip had received his physical endowments and the grace to use them.
“You ought to know that old Scots folk don’t dance, except once or twice, ritually,” she said. “But wait—Nancy, do you know William Montgomery?” Nancy’s father was the senior partner of a firm of stockbrokers. She danced close up and silently and very well. He caught sight of Felicity. Her eyes threw him a swift agonized request for a lifeline, while she revolved and side-stepped and chattered to her black-haired cavalier. Will was so amused that he inadvertently clasped his companion more firmly. She accepted the pressure. “I say, you are a lovely dancer,” he murmured. She gave him a languid gleam: “Don’t chatter.” When the dance was over, he led her away. How could he, unless properly relieved, go to the assistance of Felicity?
But he reckoned without Felicity, who now appeared, crying: “Will, have you forgotten?”
“How could I?” he replied. Felicity guided the black cavalier to Nancy.
“It was bliss to know you wouldn’t stare and say ‘What?’,” remarked Felicity, as they went towards the music.
“What was I supposed to have forgotten? That this was Johann Strauss and we were booked to celebrate?”
She paused involuntarily. “That’s uncanny!” Then she gave him a happy little tug forward. “Oooh! The agony of that knowing youth. He was being a man, you know. He was knowing all about it, what what. With the limping gait of a socially constipated young elephant. Not but that he dances”, she added, with the driest malice, “quite well.”
“I thought he had been to Paris?”
“He has. He went to the Folies Bergères. He told me.”
He laughed. “I don’t know quite what that means,” he said, “but it sounds delicious.”
“You have never been to Paris?”
“No.”
“What a waste!” She looked at him. “Will, why don’t you? You cannot possibly live here. This is money-making, this is success, this is—oh, this is death. Don’t you see that they live for their—for their power and position—that they live to hold it—that they’ll kill what opposes them? Don’t you feel that it’s—terrible?”
“I only feel that it’s rather pleasant. I must be getting deeply infected.”
“You are, a bit. You hold me, for example, too close. At every turn round, when, you understand, it mightn’t be noticed, that young sportsman squeezed me—like this. Snatching his sex on the sly.”
“Did he, the young rascal!”
“You are clever enough not even to be hurt in your vanity.”
“Not to show it, you mean. Tell me how I should dance.”
“Like this. A little apart. So.” Presently she added: “Isn’t that—more subtle?”
“Ah,” he said with Swinburnian rhythm, “to remain thus exquisitely for ever poised in tension!”
“There’s a time”, said Felicity, intoning clerically and with a fair mimicry of their old minister, “for all things, and the time for one thing is not the time for another thing, and the time for another thing is not the time for one thing. World without end.”
Will gave the response and, while they were negotiating the dead corner of the room, saluted her very lightly on the forehead, as his head turned apparently to find the way.
“Will, that was a risk!”
“How calmly you keep countenance—so that even the dowagers may see it didn’t happen. Tell me this. See the covey of them we are now advancing towards. They seem to me to have been sitting there for hours. Just sitting and looking. What’s passing in their minds?”
“They have no minds.”
“Come! That’s too easy. For the one most certain thing about them is that they have minds of their own. They have sized you up pretty completely, I bet! And me—they’ll have said: ‘Just a journalist. Not even an editor. And after eight years at it, too!’ Then they’ll go into that strange mystery of my father having put so much into America and, in the crash, lost the lot. Had he put it into gilt-edged in London—like so many of the others! Those fellows, you know, who sold out to the south, sold out the great businesses their fighting fathers had built up, for gilt-edged security and a public school. But no, he was hanged if he was going to do that and sit pretty. So he adventured into the American quicksands, and they opened, and swallowed him up. Nineteen shillings in the pound! If they’re blaming me it is as my father’s ghost. It would round off the story if I became an absolute down and out. It would be poetic justice softer than a sad sigh. I’ll have to think it over.”
“Will, I’m sorry but I must brutally compliment you. I never really thought you would be like this. I could not see how you could outgrow—I mean all this repression—more than that. Even I would be vindictive against these dowagers.”
“I haven’t started to compliment you yet, Felicity. But one thing at a time. What do you think is really passing deep down in the minds of these grey-haired, stout and thin, ladies, while their men are away having a few and discussing armament profits?”
“Will!” she exclaimed, with a chuckle, “are you being romantic? How deliciously provincial! For you are liberated enough to have the provincial upon you, but rather—don’t you know—with a slight distinction; like a brilliant speaker with the charm of a slight, oh, a very slight, stutter!” The last word came out in a drawled staccato, while she arched her brows; her lips closed in a dismissive pout.
He embraced her, murmuring: “But still I wonder—if they wonder about life at last—and vaguely question and wonder why?”
Looking up at him, she shook her head. “They are just watching the coming generation, the fruit of their loins, anxious that the right marriages be made and that they themselves accordingly be justified and pass with sad honour to the grave.”
“Felicity, you are cleverer than I thought you would be and profounder by half.”
“Is that a relief?”
“And a joy.”
“Will, I should like to kiss you.”
“Well?”
Her lids lowered, and her eyes gleamed wickedly. The dance became more exciting. “Ah, Johann Strauss!” she murmured slowly, pronouncing the name like a Viennese girl, for Felicity had always been brilliant at modern languages.
More than anything she had said, this brought the Continent before him.
“You really like Paris?”
“I love it. Ah, the excitement of that time of the crisis!” The gleam in her eyes grew soft. “I could not tell you. You would not understand. It was—terrific.”
“Standing on the barricades?”
“And the nights—the nights—what a time! I could not tell you; quite hopeless to try.” She sighed.
“Perhaps your escort helped?”
“That, dear Will,” said Felicity, “is the provincial coming out in you. I don’t mind. Really, I don’t. I still want to kiss you, but don’t—don’t—destroy it too much. One escort didn’t matter. A hundred escorts didn’t matter. I had my escort, as you call him and as it happens, he was an Embassy youth; English, with the intense emotion of that time coming through his Sassenach self-restraint. The English are far more sentimental than the Scots, once they break through. But they have manners and can behave, and they are—ah, he was very ver-y charming. But, that apart, if I may say so”——she paused to smile at him—“it was something quite beyond, a feeling that you were living intensely in an atmosphere like quicksilver. It was living, all the time; living on the edge of—I don’t know what.”
“I’m glad you didn’t say the edge of a volcano.”
She gave a soft chuckle, then looked at him shrewdly. “On what edge then?”
“Wasn’t an edge at all. Not even a brink. You know how civilization stood on the brink of the precipice, I hope?”
“Will, you ravish me! Tell me, where did I stand?”
“Alas, Felicity, it’s not that you really want to know where you stood, because you think you know that better than any one could ever tell you. As indeed you do. But you’re curious, you wicked woman, to know where I think you stood, so that, in the process of telling, my innocent provincial self may be exposed to the merciless lens of your rather lovely dark blue eye. And why should I play?”
She gave him a little shake. “How true! So you have to tell me now, or I shall pass away in your arms. Quick! Where did I stand?”
“It was really a dance——”
“Oh, that’s good!”
“——and your partner held you, at a little distance. So. And he is quite the most impressive of all partners. We use the word sensational loosely. But he is, in the magnificent sense, sensational. And you never knew when he was going to lean forward, to bridge the gap between you. No wonder you were thrilled.”
“And his name?”
“Death.”
She took a moment. “That’s splendid, but—not—quite true.” She was looking at him. “It was living: not death.”
“When the girl jumps on the barricade and waves the boys on, that’s living, that’s not death; it’s not death until the next moment.”
“But I wasn’t on a barricade.”
“No. But your experience was heightened in the same intense way; only it was not heightened by fighting: it was heightened by—by I don’t know what.”
“Why did you hesitate? By what?”
“By sex,” said Will, and looked at her.
For one moment her whole face seemed to shrink in dismay. She stared at him penetratingly, about to protest, but was held back by something she couldn’t be dishonest about.
His smile broke into a soft teasing laugh. “Surely you are not grudging me one thrust of green jealousy at the Embassy man?”
But she could not respond and danced silently, gazing over his shoulder. He rallied her. The music stopped with a final rumble.
“This has been a frightful shock to me. For heaven’s sake protect me from that young crew. The doctors I don’t mind so much, but——”
“But how can I protect you, if one of them comes and asks?”
“Very well. I’ll protect myself. Put me there—and fetch some drinks. No, I’ll stick to you—and we’ll take the drinks across.”
“I’m sorry, Felicity,” he began, as they sat down, “but really I didn’t mean to suggest seriously——”
“Please do shut up,” she said. “Will you never learn to understand when the perfect effect has been created? I know men who would give half their fortune for your gift—or, at least, for what your gift could be. It’s been a frightful shock.”
She suddenly met his puzzled look and smiled maliciously. “I’ve got you guessing, haven’t I? And such innocence! You’re like something come out of a wood. Yes, a squirrel! You have eyes like hazelnuts. And your hair is exactly the colour of a bat’s. Only your teeth don’t look as if they were made to nibble. Though they are a trifle shy behind so intriguing a mouth. And your smile dawns on your face! Positively like wind coming on a pool. You really would be too good to spoil. If you could be in Paris—and do everything—and still be yourself, ah!”
“You had just better mind your eye! And fancy you, the emancipated, the Parisian lady, with complete knowledge of the world, of life, of living, being shocked at the introduction of an idea, hardly even that, a fanciful conception, because it’s based on sex! I mean to say——”
“Oh, go on,” she said, gloating. “This is too delicious.”
He regarded her doubtfully.
“I can’t keep it in any longer,” she said. “I was shocked, shattered, to discover—that in this matter of life——”
“Of living. Yes?”
“——you are cleverer than I am. Can you possibly understand what a blow it was?”
He looked at her. Then—she was quite right—his smile dawned, and darkened, while his eyes caught a gleam deeper than any squirrel’s.
“Felicity,” he said softly, “you are very ver-y clever. I admit your mastery.”
“Will,” she said, “that is very ver-y superb of you.” Her eyes were alive; softly hot. She was moved. The music started. A rising young surgeon stood before her.
“Jim,” she begged him, “would you mind if I didn’t this time? There’s something gone wrong with my heel. I must get it put right. Perhaps then? Oh, there’s Philip. Philip!”
Philip excused himself to a tall dark girl and two others, and came across.
“There’s something gone wrong with the heel of my slipper, something coming through and hurting a bit. Could you flatten it some way?”
“Why, yes. Let me see. It’ll mean the garage. You wait here, and if you give me the slipper——”
“I’ll come with you,” she said, “and mak siccar.”
“Very well. We can go out the back way.” Philip turned to Will. “Perhaps you could come and hold it while I bump?”
“Lead on,” said Will.
It was a large garage, with electric light and a work bench. Philip was very careful that Felicity should not soil her dress. Will watched Philip’s face as he felt for the defect inside the slipper, but Philip’s face remained perfectly solemn.
“There’s a distinct lump there,” he said.
“Let me see.” Will took the slipper. “Yes. But it’s not a nail. It’s a lump. It will have to be hammered very gently. Do you mind if I try?”
“Do,” said Philip.
“I am sorry,” said Felicity to Philip, “taking you away like this. I called to you, with my usual recklessness!”
“Not at all,” said Philip, looking at her closely. “But if Will could manage alone——”
“Leave it to me,” said Will. “I’ll put this clean piece of waste round the heel and fix it in the vice, then tap tap away.”
When Philip had gone, Will asked: “Who exactly is the tall dark lady to whom I’ve noticed Philip being particularly, almost proprietorially, attentive?” He closed the vice gently.
“One of the Clive-Smeatons.”
“Phew!” whistled Will softly. “Anything really doing?”
“Philip is reticent, of course. But, far as I can gather, she’s the anointed.”
“Philip has the unlucky habit of blundering into money, hasn’t he?”
“Malice deep and dyed?”
“No. Truth does sometimes slip out in a forgetful way. But that wasn’t truth really. What do you think of her?”
“I think she’s quite all right. A bit stiff, perhaps.”
“But you think she’d make a very good official wife? Feel that.”
“Oh, it’s gone!”
Will stooped, put her slipper on, and arose beside her.
“Thank you, Will.”
He smiled to her, and she put her arms swiftly round his neck. Will responded.… She broke from him. “Ooh! You’re rough.”
“And the light, too,” he observed, his breath disordered.
The switch was at the door and when he had turned the light off, she said: “How glorious to find you again, Will!” and got into his arms. Then she began to whisper to him, to teach him a few small things in love’s gentler art.
When the experience got a little too much for Will, she restrained him strictly, saying there’s a time for all things and this is one thing, and a sweet stinging gentleness is the tide on which it’s borne, and tried to make him understand the wisdom thereof and succeeded as well as she wanted to.
“And now,” she sighed—“we must go.”
“Why? I shan’t see you alone again.”
“Why not?”
“How can I?”
“And us sleeping in the same house?”
“But—when?”
“After the ball is over.”
“Felicity.”
“My door”, said Felicity, in a whisper, “is just before yours.”
He kissed her, for he could not answer.
She pulled him by the hand out of the open garage, and found a mirror and a wash basin, before they reappeared. “We must”, said Felicity, “do a little more of our duty now. I am even prepared for the dark cavalier.” She saw Jim and hailed him and they went off gaily together, talking about heels and blisters and a doctor’s lapsed opportunity.
The night now took on for Will a tension and strangeness behind all his overt acts. He got talking to some of the older men, too, who had known his father; for one like fat jolly Mr. Calder, the fruit importer, with the small shrewd kindly eyes, he felt an affection; there were oranges in his skin and a half-tumbler of whisky was “a small one”. Will laughed at the size of the drink he accepted from him. Others, too, whose names stood for shipbuilding and overseas trade, spoke to him in a friendly way as the son of his father. There was a reticence about a few of these men that touched him. Most were full of social manners, with hearty voices and a proper importance.
But whisky seemed to have no effect on the quiver and tension at his heart. And he wanted it to have an effect. He wanted to move swiftly away from the tension, to subdue the quiver. For there was something about it all that was scarcely credible. Then he would see Felicity’s head, and the sensation of intimacy with it became for one swift moment overpowering. During the moment, his muscles flexed rigidly, and on one occasion he in this involuntary manner embraced the calm Maisie, but at once said: “Ah, that was nearly a bump!” and guided her sideways.
With Felicity he did not dance again. Some of the older guests began to take their departure and at two o’clock came the end. Dark coats and white mufflers and hats in hand; fur coats and satin shoes and bare sleek heads. Thanks were offered for a perfectly lovely evening, while, outside, cars were started up and young men strode hither and thither with commanding vigour.
“Can you tell me”, Felicity whispered to him as they stood in the hall, “why so many of the faces of the fully middle-aged ladies of this city are little noses on blobs of water?”
They happened to be looking towards two or three women rather small in stature, but rotund, whose red slightly blown watery faces rose out of the rich collars of their furs in a way that gave Felicity’s question an impressionistic warrant.
He did not turn and look at her. He could not look at her. He laughed instead. All his cool assurance was gone. He had to say something equally wild, anything but meet her eyes.
“Do you know what I was thinking just now?” he asked.
“No.”
One of the ladies sat down, her richly tinted face heaving a sigh from the depths of her two-hundred guinea coat. “Ah,” she said, “I am very tired.”
“Well?” prompted Felicity, and looked up at him—when her glance immediately concentrated on his expression. He was staring at the woman as if she were an apparition. In a moment, he blinked, and began vaguely: “Ah——”
“Will? Tell me.”
“A ghost walked over my grave,” he said, and his smile twisted drily. “Let’s watch them go.” She went with him to the door.
But here was Sir Norman. He shook hands with her and said: “Now, remember!” in a playful meaningful voice and departed.
“Let’s watch, if we must, from a window,” said Felicity. “This is too cold.”
“Imagine the old boy staying right to the end!”
“He’s an old rip,” she answered. “Let’s sit here. We’ve said our good-byes—or enough of ’em.” Her gay manner was reckless still, but a trifle more downright. “Now, tell me your story.”
“About the ghost?”
“Not about that—unless you like.”
“It’s not really personal. It was about a poor married girl who died in the slums—a case I was dealing with lately. But, by an odd chance, the stout lady…”
“Mrs. Dobson. Yes?”
“…said something which coincided oddly enough with what I was going to say to you. Have you ever imagined yourself looking down on a city and seeing it like a clay model of itself? Just a queer vision I sometimes have of it. You know my politics from of old. Well—here we have the spacious residential quarter on the Hills; and down there we have the tall dark slums of the River. That isn’t strictly true, of course, because you can get the worst slums off a main thoroughfare, but it clarifies the picture, if you see what I mean.”
“Perfectly.”
“When I saw the guests making for their cars, the fantastic thought arose in me—of the revolution swelling up from the River to the Hills and the folk of the Hills preparing to meet it. Have you ever thought of something like that happening in our city?”
“It couldn’t,” she said. “There isn’t the fire in us.”
“It wouldn’t be fire. It would be something much more grim and bloody and unyielding.”
“What a thought!”
“Assuming it happened, Felicity of the Left: what side would you be on?”
She looked at him. He met her eyes with a calm smile. She searched his eyes.
“It’s a thought, isn’t it?” he said.
“Will, tell me—feeling all right?”
“Naturally a bit excited.”
“Dear Will,” she murmured and pressed his hand. “Come. Let’s go. We’ll talk—and talk—alone.” She jumped up. Outside the cars were whining, one after another, into the distance. “I hate starting something and being interrupted by inquisitive faces. Here’s Philip, his dark lady gone.”
The house party was small, and after they had sat for half an hour discussing the evening, the ladies retired. The men sat on for a little, then Mr. Manson, a personable man, bald on the crown, rather quiet, with an easy-going nature, threw his cigar in the fire and got up. He yawned and knuckled his eyes audibly. “Well, it’s bed for me. Good night.”
Philip suggested to Will that there was no particular hurry for a few minutes, unless he was tired.
Will found himself gladly accepting the idea. He must have drunk far too much whisky, for in recent minutes, while sitting still, he had experienced a queasy feeling of insecurity and had had to move restlessly on his chair in order to ensure command of his body. It would have been rather a dreadful thing if the room had tilted and slid his body sideways before them all!
Not that he was really drunk. It was a light-headed feeling from an odd sickly excitement in the stomach.
“What about a last drink?” Without waiting for Will’s response, Philip went away and fetched two whiskies well charged with soda.
Will, after a mouthful, felt himself again, and they lit cigarettes.
“Enjoyed yourself?” Philip asked.
“To be quite candid, much more than I expected.”
Philip smiled. “Good. I could see Felicity and you were hitting it off. And that’s often a gamble—renewing youthful fellowships, I mean.”
Will grew quickly animated, talking about Paris and barricades, and soon Philip and himself were on the friendliest terms.
“Have you fixed up about seeing her any time?” Philip asked.
“No,” said Will. “Somehow—it…didn’t think about it, really. Why?” He finished his whisky.
“I’m not being inquisitive,” said Philip with a smile. “It’s simply that if you had fixed up anything with her, then I shouldn’t feel the responsibilities of a host so much. And she’s the girl who will have to be doing something—probably wild. She is really very charming.”
“That’s true,” said Will. “Yes.”
“And you’ll be off before she’s up in the morning and you won’t see her.”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” said Will.
“Oh, it’s nothing, but I mean you could have come to my aid, so to speak, and, well—it mightn’t be doing you, I had hoped, a disservice either, what?”
Will smiled in response and moved restlessly. “But I will, of course! I mean—certainly. I’ll—I’ll get in touch. Somehow the evening just finished—you know—and——”
“It’s only really one point,” said Philip negligently. “I’m getting a new car next week and I was thinking of having the week-end off—a week to-morrow—or, I suppose I should say to-day, for it’s Saturday now. A fellow needs occasionally to get away from his home crowd.” He slowly finished his drink and, as he was setting his glass down, added: “If you fixed up somewhat early in the week with Felicity for the Saturday evening, then—that would be that. She has really an uncanny gift of getting at you!” He lit a fresh cigarette.
Will stretched to the floor and lifted his empty glass automatically.
“Oh, have a last spot!” Philip got up.
“Thanks.” Will handed him his glass and, when Philip had gone, got to his feet. His whole body underwent a slow rigor, the head tilting back, eyes shut, teeth showing, and the right hand coming up breast high and clenching into a fist. Christ’s name came through his teeth in a hiss. It looked like the reaction to an intense knot of physical pain. It passed, as it came, and his palm went up and across his forehead. He sat down, as Philip returned, but he could not command his hand, which shook a little as it took the glass.
“Feeling all right?” Philip looked at him, brow wrinkling in concern.
Will slowly smiled. “The truth is, Philip, I’ve already had, I’m afraid, just a wee drop too much.”
Philip’s brow cleared. “Perhaps you’d better not have this, then?”
“If you put plenty of soda in it?”
“Just the usual.”
“Oh. Uhm.” Will considered the glass with thoughtful humour. “What’s one more amongst so many? Here’s how!” He drank it all right off. “Ah-h,” he exclaimed and went on, “it’s a strange thing that the more alcohol you take, the drier you get. It’s the alcohol probably does the drying. I wouldn’t put it past the stuff.”
Philip began to chuckle. “Look here, old boy, you’re well on!”
“Think so? Suppose I am a bit.”
“Come on! It’s bed. And thanks for—being so helpful.”
“Don’t mention it. But why bed? There’s a stage you reach when bed appears an unwelcome irrelevance. You don’t feel like making a night of it?”
“No. And you won’t.” Philip was amused at this unusual manifestation of Will and, finishing his own drink, got up. “Come on!” He took Will’s arm. Not since they were adolescents, confessing some shy ideal, had Philip felt so near, so tender, to his oldest friend.
“Well, if we must, I suppose we must. There’s an end to all things—even to things that, in the inscrutable wisdom of God, never had a beginning.”
Philip’s laugh was soft and warm, in acknowledgment of a humour dry enough to be nearly bitter. He led Will to his bedroom, opened the door, wheeled him round and pointed out the bathroom: “Just in case you make a mistake,” he whispered, “and go in by the wrong door!” Then his expression cleared. “Good night, Will! Good night, old boy!”
“Good night, Philip.” Will nodded, as if he had not heard Philip’s final friendly inflection, and went into his room. He stood on the floor for a little time, filling his lungs with air. Then he methodically undressed, to the extent of folding his trousers along the creases. The slight tremor in his flesh was troublesome, and, in his pyjamas, he sat down on his bed, but got up almost at once and into his dressing-gown. He filled his lungs again as if his blood were poisoned and needed a lot of oxygen. Then he walked out of his room and into the bathroom. Returning from the bathroom, he had to pass Felicity’s door. He came to her door. There was no one in the corridor. This was the moment. He paused. A weakening sensation mounted from his chest to his head. He went in blindly at his own door and with an exhausting waste of energy tried to close it quietly; then quickly, in a staggering little run, reached his bed and stretched himself out.
Bitterness. Black deep bitterness. Nothing else. Not drink. No excuses. Black obliterating self-bitterness. He sank into it; his consciousness dwindled, losing its brightness of pain; it became small in the smothering darkness, was lost for a little, then became small again, and slowly grew. He opened his eyes. From between the narrowing lids, they glittered as if the light hurt them. He pushed himself up, took off his dressing-gown, switched off the light and got into bed.
Felicity was waiting for him.
Why should he have to endure this torture of humiliation? Out of what did it come? Why? Why? Why?
Why should the poor bloody body be tortured like this? Jenny had nothing to do with this. That was sheer fantasy. That she should be having her first week-end with Philip, what was that to him? What in the name of God had that got to do with anything? Let him be honest at least about that.
Felicity was waiting for him, wondering.
And he had no desire for Felicity. Extraordinary, unaccountable, unimaginable! Bitter humiliation. Most bitter! His humour grew coarse. With the sexual oaths of the slums, he taunted his spirit and its impotent slave, the body. The humour became more vile than vomit.
Felicity was waiting for him, wondering, and beginning to be hurt in her woman’s pride.
But he could find no answer to his Why? For he knew the fault did not lie with his body, which, like all healthy bodies, could be too lusty too often. It was none of the excuses he paraded before himself. It was not even drink—and he knew what drink could do! Genuinely, profoundly, he could not understand this appalling, this insuperable reluctance that had him in its grip. It was like an intangible octopus, holding him. The only thing that might have overcome it, he thought, in one of the washes of bitter humour that went over him, was—if he had been used to sleeping with women. But in the instant the thought was born, beneath it was the certainty, as if spoken out of some alien mouth inside him, that even then he could not have overcome it now.
It is a most terrible, damning, dreadful thing, that a man’s mental side should be so developed that it interferes with the potent body. And, said the alien mouth, at once and with a leer, It isn’t even that!
He smothered that mouth which, in its leer, had become like the mouth of a mud fish.
His head rolled on the pillow. Would he go? Would he get up and go? Mounting with the thought came that weakening excitement and its horrible feeling of nausea. He would have to go! The feeling receded and left him without any thought—until it began to come again. Mounting wave and slow recession, until exhaustion brought another wave across his brain, a wave of darkness, of the beginning of dissolution.
He fought that back with a slight fear—and with a cunning gratitude that shamed him, shamed him to the last secret recess of his spirit. Running away from a decision! Glad to take refuge behind the body’s humiliating weakness!
How deep went the root of his manhood into a man! What froth the spiritual was, compared with this dark deep root, and the thin roots that went out from it, gripping flesh and bone and marrow in their wire mesh!
And all the time he knew the decision was being made, slowly, irrevocably, the decision that he was not going into Felicity’s room. As in its tortuous torturing course it approached finality, the shame of its acceptance lost its halfliberating spirts of feelings and rebellions and became still and dark and more bitter than any self-shame he had ever known. At last! said the mouth. At last! But this is only the beginning! Before the night is over, you may in fact know something of the dark night of the soul!…
A faint scratching, like the scratching of a mouse at the door. His heart stood still. Then the click of the knob, and the silent invisible swing inward of the door, solid with movement. Once more, he had reckoned without Felicity.
When the light went on, she was standing against the closed door, one arm still outstretched to the switch. Light blue dressing-gown, bare throat, poised head with its dark brown hair, and eyes that steadied and gleamed against the light.
He stirred, getting up on an elbow, and tried to smile. She came over slowly, sat on the edge of his bed, and looked down at him. There was pride in her look, and a certain calm ironic assessment.
“Sorry, Felicity,” he muttered. “I’m not feeling very good.” His bitter smile looked sick.
“What’s wrong?”
“Too much whisky.”
She kept looking at him, nodded to herself, while her lips moved in their own humour.
“You are as pale as death,” she said in a whisper that sounded loud.
“I feel like death.”
She nodded again, the gleam of assessment in her eyes.
He turned his head to avoid her eyes, pushed himself up against the back of the bed, and brought movement and stress upon the body, for a new horror was mounting in him. The intense excitement of her appearance was deepening the feeling of nausea and he realized that, unless he could fight it down, he might very easily be physically sick.
Balancing the horror of this was the cunning that sickness might help him, might help to show Felicity that it was nothing more than whisky. In degradation, there is still a lower deep, still…O God, he was going to be sick! He swung his legs out and staggered over to the wash basin.…
As he turned the taps on to wash the stuff away, Felicity withdrew her warm hand from his cold forehead. “Hush!” she said, supporting him under the arms, for his gasping spluttering cough could be heard more than one room away, and it was not exactly the moment for Philip or his father or mother to appear.… Taking one arm, she supported him back to bed.
“You are really feeling very bad now,” she whispered, as he stretched himself and his head fell back. “Poor Will.”
“On the contrary,” he said, “I am feeling much better.” He tried to keep his lips from trembling, for his body was icy cold.
“You’ll soon be all right.” She tucked the clothes about him.
His eyes winced; he drew a deep quivering breath.
“Now,” she said. “Go to sleep, like a good boy.”
He turned his eyes on her, glittering points steady and piercing. She regarded them with her slight smile.
“Good night,” she said, and gave a playful snuggle to the clothes over his chest; then she got up and tiptoed to the door. There she paused, her right hand on the switch, and half-turned, her head rising poised and bright out of the blue dressing-gown. Like a perfect actress, she held the look for a time, the friendly faintly mocking smile on her face, then with the finger-tips of her left hand, she blew him a kiss. Click! went the switch, and the darkness came down upon him.