He sat himself down, in spite of the chilly fog which obscured the farther bank and left its lights suspended upon a blank surface, upon one of the riverside seats, and let the tide of disillusionment sweep through him. For the time being all bright points in his life were blotted out; all prominences levelled. At first he made himself believe that Katharine had treated him badly, and drew comfort from the thought that, left alone, she would recollect this, and think of him and tender him, in silence, at any rate, an apology. But this grain of comfort failed him after a second or two, for, upon reflection, he had to admit that Katharine owed him nothing. Katharine had promised nothing, taken nothing; to her his dreams had meant nothing. This, indeed, was the lowest pitch of his despair. If the best of one’s feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us? The old romance which had warmed his days for him, the thoughts of Katharine which had painted every hour, were now made to appear foolish and enfeebled. He rose, and looked into the river, whose swift race of dun-coloured waters seemed the very spirit of futility and oblivion.
‘In what can one trust, then?’ he thought, as he leant there. So feeble and insubstantial did he feel himself that he repeated the word aloud.
‘In what can one trust? Not in men and women. Not in one’s dreams about them. There’s nothing—nothing, nothing left at all.’
Now Denham had reason to know that he could bring to birth and keep alive a fine anger when he chose. Rodney provided a good target for that emotion. And yet at the moment, Rodney and Katharine herself seemed disembodied ghosts. He could scarcely remember the look of them. His mind plunged lower and lower. Their marriage seemed of no importance to him. All things had turned to ghosts; the whole mass of the world was insubstantial vapour, surrounding the solitary spark in his mind, whose burning point he could remember, for it burnt no more. He had once cherished a belief, and Katharine had embodied this belief, and she did so no longer. He did not blame her; he blamed nothing, nobody; he saw the truth. He saw the dun-coloured race of waters and the blank shore. But life is vigorous; the body lives, and the body, no doubt, dictated the reflection, which now urged him to movement, that one may cast away the forms of human beings, and yet retain the passion which seemed inseparable from their existence in the flesh. Now this passion burnt on his horizon, as the winter sun makes a greenish pane in the west through thinning clouds. His eyes were set on something infinitely far and remote; by that light he felt he could walk, and would, in future, have to find his way. But that was all there was left to him of a populous and teeming world.
CHAPTER XIII
THE LUNCH HOUR IN the office was only partly spent by Denham in the consumption of food. Whether fine or wet, he passed most of it pacing the gravel paths in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The children got to know his figure, and the sparrows expected their daily scattering of bread-crumbs. No doubt, since he often gave a copper and almost always a handful of bread, he was not as blind to his surroundings as he thought himself.
He thought that these winter days were spent in long hours before white papers radiant in electric light; and in short passages through fog-dimmed streets. When he came back to his work after lunch he carried in his head a picture of the Strand, scattered with omnibuses, and of the purple shapes of leaves pressed flat upon the gravel, as if his eyes had always been bent upon the ground. His brain worked incessantly, but his thought was attended with so little joy that he did not willingly recall it; but drove ahead, now in this direction, now in that; and came home laden with dark books borrowed from a library.
Mary Datchet, coming from the Strand at lunch-time, saw him one day taking his turn, closely buttoned in an overcoat, and so lost in thought that he might have been sitting in his own room.
She was overcome by something very like awe by the sight of him; then she felt much inclined to laugh, although her pulse beat faster. She passed him, and he never saw her. She came back and touched him on the shoulder.
‘Gracious, Mary!’ he exclaimed. ‘How you startled me!’
‘Yes. You looked as if you were walking in your sleep,’ she said. ‘Are you arranging some terrible love affair? Have you got to reconcile a desperate couple?’
‘I wasn’t thinking about my work,’ Ralph replied, rather hastily. ‘And, besides, that sort of thing’s not in my line,’ he added, rather grimly.
The morning was fine, and they had still some minutes of leisure to spend. They had not met for two or three weeks, and Mary had much to say to Ralph; but she was not certain how far he wished for her company. However, after a turn or two, in which a few facts were communicated, he suggested sitting down, and she took the seat beside him. The sparrows came fluttering about them, and Ralph produced from his pocket the half of a roll saved from his luncheon. He threw a few crumbs among them.
‘I’ve never seen sparrows so tame,’ Mary observed, by way of saying something.
‘No,’ said Ralph. ‘The sparrows in Hyde Parkbh aren’t as tame as this. If we keep perfectly still, I’ll get one to settle on my arm.’
Mary felt that she could have forgone this display of animal good temper, but seeing that Ralph, for some curious reason, took a pride in the sparrows, she bet him sixpence that he would not succeed.
‘Done!’ he said; and his eye, which had been gloomy, showed a spark of light. His conversation was now addressed entirely to a bald cock-sparrow, who seemed bolder than the rest; and Mary took the opportunity of looking at him. She was not satisfied; his face was worn, and his expression stern. A child came bowling its hoop through the concourse of birds, and Ralph threw his last crumbs of bread into the bushes with a snort of impatience.
‘That’s what always happens—just as I’ve almost got him,’ he said. ‘Here’s your sixpence, Mary. But you’ve only got it thanks to that brute of a boy. They oughtn’t to be allowed to bowl hoops here—’
‘Oughtn’t to be allowed to bowl hoops! My dear Ralph, what nonsense!’
‘You always say that,’ he complained; ‘and it isn’t nonsense. What’s the point of having a garden if one can’t watch birds in it? The street does all right for hoops. And if children can’t be trusted in the streets, their mothers should keep them at home.’
Mary made no answer to this remark, but frowned.
She leant back on the seat and looked about her at the great houses breaking the soft grey-blue sky with their chimneys.
‘Ah, well,’ she said, ‘London’s a fine place to live in. I believe I could sit and watch people all day long. I like my
