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"Let's record it then," said Lilly. And with the blue pencil he printed:—
When you love, your soul breathes in—
When your soul breathes out, it's a bloody revolution.
"I say Jim," he said. "You must be busting yourself, trying to breathe in."
"Don't you be too clever. I've thought about it," said Jim. "When I'm in love, I get a great inrush of energy. I actually feel it rush in—here!" He poked his finger on the pit of his stomach. "It's the soul's expansion. And if I can't get these rushes of energy, I'm dying, and I know I am."
He spoke the last words with sudden ferocity and desperation.
"All I know is," said Tanny, "you don't look it."
"I am. I am." Jim protested. "I'm dying. Life's leaving me."
"Maybe you're choking with love," said Robert. "Perhaps you have breathed in so much, you don't know how to let it go again. Perhaps your soul's got a crick in it, with expanding so much."
"You're a bloody young sucking pig, you are," said Jim.
"Even at that age, I've learned my manners," replied Robert.
Jim looked round the party. Then he turned to Aaron Sisson.
"What do you make of 'em, eh?" he said.
Aaron shook his head, and laughed.
"Me?" he said.
But Jim did not wait for an answer.
"I've had enough," said Tanny suddenly rising. "I think you're all silly. Besides, it's getting late."
"She!" said Jim, rising and pointing luridly to Clariss. "She's Love. And he's the Working People. The hope is in these two—" He jerked a thumb at Aaron Sisson, after having indicated Mrs. Browning.
"Oh, how awfully interesting. It's quite a long time since I've been a personification.—I suppose you've never been one before?" said Clariss, turning to Aaron in conclusion.
"No, I don't think I have," he answered.
"I hope personification is right.—Ought to be allegory or something else?" This from Clariss to Robert.
"Or a parable, Clariss," laughed the young lieutenant.
"Goodbye," said Tanny. "I've been awfully bored."
"Have you?" grinned Jim. "Goodbye! Better luck next time."
We'd better look sharp," said Robert, "if we want to get the tube."
The party hurried through the rainy narrow streets down to the Embankment station. Robert and Julia and Clariss were going west, Lilly and his wife were going to Hampstead, Josephine and Aaron Sisson were going both to Bloomsbury.
"I suppose," said Robert, on the stairs—"Mr. Sisson will see you to your door, Josephine. He lives your way."
"There's no need at all," said Josephine.
The four who were going north went down to the low tube level. It was nearly the last train. The station was half deserted, half rowdy, several fellows were drunk, shouting and crowing. Down there in the bowels of London, after midnight, everything seemed horrible and unnatural.
"How I hate this London," said Tanny. She was half Norwegian, and had spent a large part of her life in Norway, before she married Lilly.
"Yes, so do I," said Josephine. "But if one must earn one's living one must stay here. I wish I could get back to Paris. But there's nothing doing for me in France.—When do you go back into the country, both of you?"
"Friday," said Lilly.
"How lovely for you!—And when will you go to Norway, Tanny?"
"In about a month," said Tanny.
"You must be awfully pleased."
"Oh—thankful—thankful to get out of England—"
"I know. That's how I feel. Everything is so awful—so dismal and dreary, I find it—"
They crowded into the train. Men were still yelling like wild beasts—others were asleep—soldiers were singing.
"Have you really broken your engagement with Jim?" shrilled Tanny in a high voice, as the train roared.
"Yes, he's impossible," said Josephine. "Perfectly hysterical and impossible."
"And selfish—" cried Tanny.
"Oh terribly—" cried Josephine.
"Come up to Hampstead to lunch with us," said Lilly to Aaron.
"Ay—thank you," said Aaron.
Lilly scribbled directions on a card. The hot, jaded midnight underground rattled on. Aaron and Josephine got down to change trains.
The Dark Square Garden
CHAPTER VII
THE DARK SQUARE GARDEN
Josephine had invited Aaron Sisson to dinner at a restaurant in Soho, one Sunday evening. They had a corner to themselves, and with a bottle of Burgundy she was getting his history from him.
His father had been a shaft-sinker, earning good money, but had been killed by a fall down the shaft when Aaron was only four years old. The widow had opened a shop: Aaron was her only child. She had done well in her shop. She had wanted Aaron to be a schoolteacher. He had served three years apprenticeship, then suddenly thrown it up and gone to the pit.
"But why?" said Josephine.
"I couldn't tell you. I felt more like it."
He had a curious quality of an intelligent, almost sophisticated mind, which had repudiated education. On purpose he kept the midland accent in his speech. He understood perfectly what a personification was—and an allegory. But he preferred to be illiterate.
Josephine found out what a miner's checkweighman was. She tried to find out what sort of wife Aaron had—but, except that she was the daughter of a publican and was delicate in health, she could learn nothing.
"And do you send her money!" she asked.
"Ay," said Aaron. "The house is mine. And I allow her so much a week out of the money in the bank. My mother left me a bit over a thousand when she died."
"You don't mind what I say, do you?" said Josephine.
"No I don't mind," he laughed.
He had this pleasant-seeming courteous manner. But he really kept her at a distance. In some things he reminded her of Robert: blond, erect, nicely built, fresh and English-seeming. But there was a curious cold distance to him, which she could not get across. An inward indifference to her—perhaps to everything. Yet his laugh was so handsome.
"Will you tell me why you left your wife and children?—Didn't you love them?"
Aaron looked at the odd, round, dark muzzle of the girl. She had had her hair bobbed, and it hung in odd dark folds, very black, over her ears.
"Why I left her?" he said. "For no particular reason. They're all right without me."
Josephine watched his face. She saw a pallor of suffering under its freshness, and a strange tension in his eyes.
"But you couldn't leave your little girls for no reason at all—"
"Yes, I did. For no reason—except I wanted to have some free room round me—to loose myself—"