Outside, the look of the stars above the parapets of the houses opposite, and even the smell, on a still night, of London’s pavements that had been heated all day by the sun, were better. Nothing ingenious about that, even if it had no meaning. No false contact. He stood by the kerb, free again, deciding which way he should turn.
“I’m coming too, Jimmy, I could see you were bored. So was I. Come along.” Helen laid her hand on his arm.
“You were?” He hesitated.
“Of course. Did you think you were going to escape like this?” She laughed quietly, in confidence. She could rely on Jimmy.
He, though, was suspicious that the friendly night was being taken from him as soon as he had found it. He was reluctant to share the street with anyone. It surprised him that she had left her friends. Why was that? He could trust himself, when alone. There was safety in the night, but he knew he could not be sure of himself if she were close to him. Then he was largely in abeyance. It was as if most other human creatures were inimical. They were so remarkably not the same that they were uncanny. He felt strongly drawn to that clever, supple woman beside him, and resented her for that reason. There was no privacy with a woman. The soul got mauled about.
Besides, she had not left that dinner-table because its talk was glib and sparkling. She liked that. She’d brought that atmosphere with her. She admired those people in there. They were all clever, and he felt a slow fool. But if they were clever, perhaps that only meant they could justify their hollow insides. They could make their dry and dusty cavities seem more like nature than having guts. Lord, they could make a heart feel ashamed, compared with an interior that had a thick settlement of knowledge on its hard ledges. If that was Bloomsbury, give him Billiter Avenue. You knew there where you were.
“It’s better out here, Jimmy.”
He found it hard to believe she meant that. She meant it at the moment; that was all. But what an autocrat she was in that cloak. He wanted to believe her. If he could do that he would surrender. Here was luck, for a woman like this to show she wanted him. Helen was as clever as they were made. Then why did she want him? Even the pictures she painted were malicious, as if her insight were diabolical. Sometimes her designs and figures were as though she was contemptuous of the world, and wanted to expose it. He would sooner look at the traffic now, and have no reason to talk. He would not accept her; she did not belong to him. It didn’t do to look at that full throat of hers, and then at her eyes. Common sense went then. Was it time it did?
As they walked, and she stepped in unison with him no matter how in irritation he broke his stride, for she was nearly as tall as himself, he felt her intended touch now and then, and was stirred. She pointed to something comic in the upturned faces of a crowd that was watching an electric sky-sign, a baby’s feeding-bottle that constantly emptied and refilled to the joy repeated as intermittent jerky lights in the face of a gigantic cherub, and Jimmy stopped and laughed aloud. The crowd might have been watching the heavens unroll as a scroll.
They got into a taxicab. Helen could see his profile, salient and thoughtful, in an occasional light, and his nearness was evident to her. He suggested faintly—what was it?—tonka beans. That was Perriam’s warehouse. Or his tobacco. She remembered it. She broke into gaiety over what they had heard at dinner. He heard, in surprise, his own dubiety expressed in positive wit. Was that what she was thinking while listening to the critic with such apparent respect? Poor man of letters! Perhaps women were like chameleons, and could swiftly assume the colour which circumstance required. But he liked it. It was pleasant to feel a woman so close who could be as comically shrewd as that over people who had mocked his verities.
Helen knew he was coming over to her. “How’s the ogre? How’s old Perriam?” she asked. “You haven’t said a thing yet. Talk to me.”
He outlined the latest manifestation in the city. He put his hand on hers. “So, you see, if I’m to go on, they’re to get out.”
She took possession of his fist. “Don’t let those people trouble you. That’s what you always do.”
He did not answer.
“You are ridiculous. You want to treat a crude earth as if it were porcelain. You waste feeling on what will never know it. No doubt about it, men are the sentimentalists. Haven’t you learned yet that the art of commerce is the art of doing without more feeling than you need for luck?”
His fist was clenched on her knee. She opened his hand, and laid it limply flat.
“If it were daylight, I’d read your fortune. You’re too easy with those men. No daylight wanted to read that. If they hurt you, get others who won’t.”
The cab bumped. His hat fell to the floor. He withdrew his hand to pick it up, and then folded his arms.
“Those men knew well enough, of course, that either they would win, or else you would. They asked for it. Why let them win?”
He could not answer that. Such an argument came from a different order of assumptions. That was the way Perriam looked at it.
They
