Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction
At first he saw no one who attracted his attention, and then----. A
man with dejected shoulders was crouching in the gateway of a house. He
seemed to be trying to be unobserved. His clothes were shabby--out of
fashion. His linen was soiled. It was the dirty white spats above his
unshone boots that made Peter notice. He told the cabby to wait for him.
He walked by the man once. In passing he noted the total slovenliness of
his appearance, the unkempt hands, the defeated air and the hat jammed
down to hide the close-cropped hair. He turned back and was repassing.
Like a whipped dog the man raised his eyes; then instantly lowered them.
Peter held out his hand; his throat was too choked to say anything. The
man seemed about to take it; then slunk back.
“You don't want to know me.”
“I do. If I hadn't, I shouldn't have come. I'm----I'm awfully sorry.”
“If you won't come to Heaven, then you'll have to go to hell,” sang
Grace and her followers; it sounded as though they were passing
sentence.
To the driver's amazement, Peter helped him into the hansom. “Trot us
round for an hour or two,” he said.
“If you won't come to Heaven, then you'll have to go to hell.” The
singing hurled itself after them--seemed to be running and to grow out
of breath as they drew into the distance.
They set off through Holloway. They reached the foot of Highgate Hill
and had not spoken. Ahead blazed the dome of St. Joseph's, catching the
redness of the sinking sun. The cabby asked for further instructions.
“Go up the hill and out to Hampstead.”
Waterlow Park brought a breath of country; children were laughing and
playing there. The sternness of the city, like the brutality of just
judgments, was dropping away behind them. Streets took on a village
aspect. Over to the left, within sound of the living children, lay the
stone-garden where little Philip rested. The horse clambered slowly to
the top of the ascent.
Peter touched the knee of the man beside him. “I'm glad you sent for me.
It's--it's a long time since we met. I mean--what I mean to say is, you
might have forgotten me. I'm glad you didn't.”
“A long time since we met!” The dull eyes stared at him as lifelessly as
through a pair of smoked glasses. “I've been buried. They'd better have
dug a hole for me.”
The man paused and looked from side to side stealthily. He had the
hoarse prison voice which whispered and cracked. It was painful to
see how he cringed and shrank. He pulled himself together and laughed
huskily. “They didn't let us speak in there.” He spoke reflectively, as
if to himself. “Silent for more than four years! Strange to be back!”
They were bowling down a smooth road. To the right were cricket-fields
and boys at the nets. Across the blue stillness of evening came the
sharp “click” of balls against bats.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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