• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 5782 0

at the turn of a moment—with tired simplicity. She did, therefore, enjoy one kind of privilege: he allowed her at least to stay in body beside him when he was virtually not there, gone. No presence could be less insistent than hers. He treated her like an element (air, for instance) or a condition (darkness): these touch one with their equality and lightness where one could endure no human touch. He could look right through her, without a flicker of seeing, without being made shamefully conscious of the vacuum there must be in his eyes.

Portia, waiting for Eddie as she had often waited, turned her fists round slowly in her pockets, regretting that he should have been called away just now. The autumnal moment, such as occurs in all seasons, the darkening sea with its little commas of foam offered no limits to the loneliness she could feel, even when she was feeling quite resigned. All at once, a light from mid-Channel darted over the sea, picking out its troughs and its polished waves. The lighthouse had begun its all-night flashing. The tip of this finger of light was drawn across

Eddie's face—and a minute later, the lamps sprang alight all down the esplanade. She saw, when she turned round, tamarisk shadows cast on lodging-house walls.

"What a blaze!" said Eddie, starting alight also. "Now this really is like the seaside. Have they got a pier?"

"Well, no. But there's one at Southstone."

"Come down on the beach."

As they scrunched along, Eddie said: "Then you've been happy here?"

"You see, it's more like what I was accustomed to. At Anna's, I never know what is going to happen next—and here, though I may not know, I do not mind so much. In a way, at Anna's nothing does happen—though of course I might not know if it did. But here I do see how everyone feels."

"I wonder if I like that," said Eddie. "I suspect how people feel, and that seems to me bad enough—I wonder if the truth would be worse or better. The truth, of course I mean, about other people. I know only too well how I feel."

"So do I."

"Know how I feel?"

"Yes, Eddie."

"You make me feel rather guilty."

"Why?"

"Well, you haven't the slightest notion how I behave sometimes, and it isn't till I behave that I know quite how I feel. You see, my life depends entirely on what happens."

"Then you don't know how you may be going to feel?"

"No, I've no idea, darling. It's perfectly unforeseeable. That is the worst of it. I'm a person you ought to be frightened of." "But you are the only person who doesn't frighten me."

"Wait a moment—damn! I've got a stone in my shoe."

"I have, too, as a matter of fact."

"Why didn't you say so, silly? Why suffer away?"

They sat down on a roll of beach and each took a shoe off. The light from the lighthouse swept round to where they sat, and Portia said: "I say, you've got a hole in your sock."

"Yes. That lighthouse is like the eye of God."

"But are you frightening, do you really think?"

"You ask such snubbing questions. You mean I make a fuss. I suppose, that I'm I at all is just a romantic fallacy. It may be vulgar to feel that I'm anyone, but at least I'm sure that I'm not anyone else. Of course we have all got certain things in common, but a good deal that we have in common is dreadful. When I so much hate so much I see in myself, how do you expect me to tolerate other people? Shall we move on, darling? I love sitting here like this, but these pebbles hurt my behind."

"Yes, they hurt mine rather, as a matter of fact."

"I do hate it when you are a dear little soul—It's sweet to be here with you, but I don't feel really happy."

"Have you not had a nice week in London, then?"

"Oh, well—Thomas gives me five pounds a week."

"Good gracious!"

"Yes, that is what brains cost by the pound... I nearly got another stone in my shoe: I think we'd better get back to the promenade. Who lives all along there?"

"Those are just lodging-houses. Three of them are to let."

They climbed back on to the esplanade, faced roundand started back to Waikiki. "All the same," said Portia, "don't you think Mrs. Heccomb is very nice?"

On