It was from the Curzon Street corner, just by Jolley’s the chemist, that I saw Gerald. He was across the road, against the entrance of the little tunnel that leads into Shepherd’s Market, buying an evening-paper off a friend of ours, Mr. Auk, who used to have his stand just there.
I crossed towards Gerald. I would be a few minutes late for dinner, that was certain, but if ever I was punctual at Hilary’s he never was dressed: a sense of conduct being the property of imperious men, who must disregard the servile virtue of punctuality.
I could not see Gerald’s face as he stood on the curb glancing at his paper, the brim of that hat was so low over his right eye. Mr. Auk winked at me as I came up. “Oiled, that’s wot!” whispered Mr. Auk. Then a friend of his came by and he and Mr. Auk retreated into the tunnel, where I vaguely thought that Mr. Auk seemed to be telling his friend something funny about Gerald. I never have passed the time of day with Mr. Auk since I found what it was that he thought so funny about Gerald that evening.
When I greeted Gerald he instantly looked up from the paper to me. I remember now that he seemed to watch my face for something, an expression, which he half-expected to see. But one notices those things only later on.
“I say, seen the evening-paper?”
“No. Why?”
The dark eyes haunted with abstraction, the thin hawk’s nose, the fine, twisted, defiant mouth. …
“Why? How the hell do I know why!”
He crumpled his paper, thrust it under his arm and dug the released hand into his pocket. Thus was Gerald Haveleur March armed cap-a-pie against life. He had something on his mind, one could see that. But it would take hours to make Gerald confide anything.
“I say, have a drink?”
Now I wonder how many thousands of men are at this very moment putting that question to thousands of men; yet that, if nothing else, would have made that night significant in my life, for never before had the solitary asked me or, I think, anyone to have a drink with him. Nor would he, as a rule, have a drink if you suggested it. And once, at a party I gave, he had some gingerbeer. But, even so, I had to say I couldn’t, pleading that I would be too late for dinner. “With Hilary,” I said, and he scowled absently in a way he had, and lounged up the road with me. Thoughtful he was always.
That was a curious, capacious evening. The Marches were gathered together that evening, they who were never let off anything. As Gerald lounged beside me the great primrose car with the menacing shining bonnet passed us as silently as though Curzon Street was a carpet. It was empty but for a boyish chauffeur. Gerald, I suppose, did not know it, and I did not remark on it. I wondered if Iris had surprised Mrs. Oden by returning suddenly. Poor Mr. Oden. …
“What have you been doing with yourself lately, Gerald?”
“Doing?” His eyes pierced the pavement the other side of my shoulder, for tall was Gerald.
He grinned. …
“You’d never guess,” he grinned.
I did not like this grinning. It was unusual in Gerald. It was like a crooked mask on the fine dark face. There was by ordinary no grinning froth about Gerald … and, somehow, it crossed my mind that maybe Gerald was hard-up. I asked him, oh, tentatively, if anything was “up.”
“Up? The hell’s up. O Jesu!” And he grinned. …
“Yes, but besides that—anything?” Not, you know, that I thought for one moment that anything really was “up.” It was merely that I misliked that grinning.
I can see him this moment so clearly, the way he suddenly threw back his head and stared from under the brim of that hat as though into the heart of the heavens: the dark, defiant, hungry silhouette searching the heart of the above.
We were at the corner of East Chapel Street, where the great American pile of Sunderland House debases itself before the puny roofs of Mayfair: it loitered clumsily against the soft evening light, reluctant to yield to the grey embrace of London. …
“God!” sighed Gerald. Like a child, like a child … and like a fiend he suddenly laughed up at the veiled heavens. “Imagine, you fool, just imagine the bloody degradation of being alive!”
But I will leave out Gerald’s “bloody’s.” One is tired of saying, hearing, reading that silly word. It is only chickenfood, after all, and does very well on the lips of the young ladies of the day, but there is no reason why grown-up people should use it.
“I like you,” he said, as only that devilish child could say it. “You sit on your imagination as though it was an egg, and a nice little chicken comes out. God, I wouldn’t be you! Look at all the pretty eggs you’ll hatch and not one have a chance to grow up into a splendid, lovely old hen that’ll peck at the dung you call life. Why don’t you write about fallen archangels? They’re the only things worth writing about, fallen archangels. Phut to you, that’s what I say. …”
I managed then, for the first time in our friendship, to suggest that if perhaps he was hard-up, well, phut to him. …
“Look here, that’s not fair,” stammered Gerald. Shy himself, he made one want to sink into the
