________________________________________________
_ Tanny went away to Norway to visit her people, for the first time for
three years. Lilly did not go: he did not want to. He came to London
and settled in a room over Covent Garden market. The room was high
up, a fair size, and stood at the corner of one of the streets and
the market itself, looking down on the stalls and the carts and the
arcade. Lilly would climb out of the window and sit for hours watching
the behaviour of the great draught-horses which brought the mountains
of boxes and vegetables. Funny half-human creatures they seemed, so
massive and fleshy, yet so Cockney. There was one which could not
bear donkeys, and which used to stretch out its great teeth like some
massive serpent after every poor diminutive ass that came with a
coster's barrow. Another great horse could not endure standing. It
would shake itself and give little starts, and back into the heaps of
carrots and broccoli, whilst the driver went into a frenzy of rage.
There was always something to watch. One minute it was two great
loads of empty crates, which in passing had got entangled, and reeled,
leaning to fall disastrously. Then the drivers cursed and swore and
dismounted and stared at their jeopardised loads: till a thin fellow
was persuaded to scramble up the airy mountains of cages, like a
monkey. And he actually managed to put them to rights. Great sigh
of relief when the vans rocked out of the market.
Again there was a particular page-boy in buttons, with a round and
perky behind, who nimbly carried a tea-tray from somewhere to
somewhere, under the arches beside the market. The great brawny
porters would tease him, and he would stop to give them cheek. One
afternoon a giant lunged after him: the boy darted gracefully among
the heaps of vegetables, still bearing aloft his tea-tray, like some
young blue-buttoned acolyte fleeing before a false god. The giant
rolled after him--when alas, the acolyte of the tea-tray slipped
among the vegetables, and down came the tray. Then tears, and a
roar of unfeeling mirth from the giants. Lilly felt they were going
to make it up to him.
Another afternoon a young swell sauntered persistently among the
vegetables, and Lilly, seated in his high little balcony, wondered
why. But at last, a taxi, and a very expensive female, in a sort of
silver brocade gown and a great fur shawl and ospreys in her bonnet.
Evidently an assignation. Yet what could be more conspicuous than
this elegant pair, picking their way through the cabbage-leaves?
And then, one cold grey afternoon in early April, a man in a black
overcoat and a bowler hat, walking uncertainly. Lilly had risen and
was just retiring out of the chill, damp air. For some reason he
lingered to watch the figure. The man was walking east. He stepped
rather insecurely off the pavement, and wavered across the setts
between the wheels of the standing vans. And suddenly he went down.
Lilly could not see him on the ground, but he saw some van-men go
forward, and he saw one of them pick up the man's hat.
"I'd better go down," said Lilly to himself.
So he began running down the four long flights of stone stairs, past
the many doors of the multifarious business premises, and out into the
market. A little crowd had gathered, and a large policeman was just
rowing into the centre of the interest. Lilly, always a hoverer on
the edge of public commotions, hung now hesitating on the outskirts
of the crowd.
"What is it?" he said, to a rather sniffy messenger boy.
"Drunk," said the messenger boy: except that, in unblushing cockney,
he pronounced it "Drank."
Lilly hung further back on the edge of the little crowd.
"Come on here. Where d' you want to go?" he heard the hearty tones of
the policeman.
"I'm all right. I'm all right," came the testy drunken answer.
"All right, are yer! All right, and then some,--come on, get on
your pins."
"I'm all right! I'm all right."
The voice made Lilly peer between the people. And sitting on the
granite setts, being hauled up by a burly policeman, he saw our
acquaintance Aaron, very pale in the face and a little dishevelled.
"Like me to tuck the sheets round you, shouldn't you? Fancy yourself
snug in bed, don't you? You won't believe you're right in the way of
traffic, will you now, in Covent Garden Market? Come on, we'll see to
you." And the policeman hoisted the bitter and unwilling Aaron.
Lilly was quickly at the centre of the affair, unobtrusive like a
shadow, different from the other people.
"Help him up to my room, will you?" he said to the constable. "Friend
of mine."
The large constable looked down on the bare-headed wispy, unobtrusive
Lilly with good-humoured suspicion and incredulity. Lilly could not
have borne it if the policeman had uttered any of this cockney
suspicion, so he watched him. There was a great gulf between the
public official and the odd, quiet little individual--yet Lilly had
his way.
"Which room?" said the policeman, dubious.
Lilly pointed quickly round. Then he said to Aaron:
"Were you coming to see me, Sisson? You'll come in, won't you?"
Aaron nodded rather stupidly and testily. His eyes looked angry.
Somebody stuck his hat on his head for him, and made him look a fool.
Lilly took it off again, and carried it for him. He turned and the
crowd eased. He watched Aaron sharply, and saw that it was with
difficulty he could walk. So he caught him by the arm on the other
side from the policeman, and they crossed the road to the pavement.
"Not so much of this sort of thing these days," said the policeman.
"Not so much opportunity," said Lilly.
"More than there was, though. Coming back to the old days, like.
Working round, bit by bit."
They had arrived at the stairs. Aaron stumbled up.
"Steady now! Steady does it!" said the policeman, steering his charge.
There was a curious breach of distance between Lilly and the constable.
At last Lilly opened his own door. The room was pleasant. The fire
burned warm, the piano stood open, the sofa was untidy with cushions
and papers. Books and papers covered the big writing desk. Beyond
the screen made by the bookshelves and the piano were two beds, with
washstand by one of the large windows, the one through which Lilly
had climbed.
The policeman looked round curiously.
"More cosy here than in the lock-up, sir!" he said.
Lilly laughed. He was hastily clearing the sofa.
"Sit on the sofa, Sisson," he said.
The policeman lowered his charge, with a--
"Right we are, then!"
Lilly felt in his pocket, and gave the policeman half a crown. But
he was watching Aaron, who sat stupidly on the sofa, very pale and
semi-conscious.
"Do you feel ill, Sisson?" he said sharply.
Aaron looked back at him with heavy eyes, and shook his head slightly.
"I believe you are," said Lilly, taking his hand.
"Might be a bit o' this flu, you know," said the policeman.
"Yes," said Lilly. "Where is there a doctor?" he added, on reflection.
"The nearest?" said the policeman. And he told him. "Leave a message
for you, Sir?"
Lilly wrote his address on a card, then changed his mind.
"No, I'll run round myself if necessary," he said.
And the policeman departed.
"You'll go to bed, won't you?" said Lilly to Aaron, when the door was
shut. Aaron shook his head sulkily.
"I would if I were you. You can stay here till you're all right. I'm
alone, so it doesn't matter."
But Aaron had relapsed into semi-consciousness. Lilly put the big
kettle on the gas stove, the little kettle on the fire. Then he
hovered in front of the stupefied man. He felt uneasy. Again he
took Aaron's hand and felt the pulse.
"I'm sure you aren't well. You must go to bed," he said. And he
kneeled and unfastened his visitor's boots. Meanwhile the kettle
began to boil, he put a hot-water bottle into the bed.
"Let us get your overcoat off," he said to the stupefied man. "Come
along." And with coaxing and pulling and pushing he got off the
overcoat and coat and waistcoat.
At last Aaron was undressed and in bed. Lilly brought him tea. With
a dim kind of obedience he took the cup and would drink. He looked at
Lilly with heavy eyes.
"I gave in, I gave in to her, else I should ha' been all right,"
he said.
"To whom?" said Lilly.
"I gave in to her--and afterwards I cried, thinking of Lottie and the
children. I felt my heart break, you know. And that's what did it.
I should have been all right if I hadn't given in to her--"
"To whom?" said Lilly.
"Josephine. I felt, the minute I was loving her, I'd done myself.
And I had. Everything came back on me. If I hadn't given in to her,
I should ha' kept all right."
"Don't bother now. Get warm and still--"
"I felt it--I felt it go, inside me, the minute I gave in to her.
It's perhaps killed me."
"No, not it. Never mind, be still. Be still, and you'll be all right
in the morning."
"It's my own fault, for giving in to her. If I'd kept myself back, my
liver wouldn't have broken inside me, and I shouldn't have been sick.
And I knew--"
"Never mind now. Have you drunk your tea? Lie down. Lie down, and
go to sleep."
Lilly pushed Aaron down in the bed, and covered him over. Then he
thrust his hands under the bedclothes and felt his feet--still cold.
He arranged the water bottle. Then he put another cover on the bed.
Aaron lay still, rather grey and peaked-looking, in a stillness that
was not healthy. For some time Lilly went about stealthily, glancing
at his patient from time to time. Then he sat down to read.
He was roused after a time by a moaning of troubled breathing and a
fretful stirring in the bed. He went across. Aaron's eyes were open,
and dark looking.
"Have a little hot milk," said Lilly.
Aaron shook his head faintly, not noticing.
"A little Bovril?"
The same faint shake.
Then Lilly wrote a note for the doctor, went into the office on the
same landing, and got a clerk, who would be leaving in a few minutes,
to call with the note. When he came back he found Aaron still
watching.
"Are you here by yourself?" asked the sick man.
"Yes. My wife's gone to Norway."
"For good?"
"No," laughed Lilly. "For a couple of months or so. She'll come back
here: unless she joins me in Switzerland or somewhere."
Aaron was still for a while.
"You've not gone with her," he said at length.
"To see her people? No, I don't think they want me very badly--and I
didn't want very badly to go. Why should I? It's better for married
people to be separated sometimes."
"Ay!" said Aaron, watching the other man with fever-darkened eyes.
"I hate married people who are two in one--stuck together like two
jujube lozenges," said Lilly.
"Me an' all. I hate 'em myself," said Aaron.
"Everybody ought to stand by themselves, in the first place--men and
women as well. They can come together, in the second place, if they
like. But nothing is any good unless each one stands alone,
intrinsically."
"I'm with you there," said Aaron. "If I'd kep' myself to myself I
shouldn't be bad now--though I'm not very bad. I s'll be all right
in the morning. But I did myself in when I went with another woman.
I felt myself go--as if the bile broke inside me, and I was sick."
"Josephine seduced you?" laughed Lilly.
"Ay, right enough," replied Aaron grimly. "She won't be coming here,
will she?"
"Not unless I ask her."
"You won't ask her, though?"
"No, not if you don't want her."
"I don't."
The fever made Aaron naive and communicative, unlike himself. And he
knew he was being unlike himself, he knew that he was not in proper
control of himself, so he was unhappy, uneasy.
"I'll stop here the night then, if you don't mind," he said.
"You'll have to," said Lilly. "I've sent for the doctor. I believe
you've got the flu."
"Think I have?" said Aaron frightened.
"Don't be scared," laughed Lilly.
There was a long pause. Lilly stood at the window looking at the
darkening market, beneath the street-lamps.
"I s'll have to go to the hospital, if I have," came Aaron's voice.
"No, if it's only going to be a week or a fortnight's business, you
can stop here. I've nothing to do," said Lilly.
"There's no occasion for you to saddle yourself with me," said Aaron
dejectedly.
"You can go to your hospital if you like--or back to your lodging--if
you wish to," said Lilly. "You can make up your mind when you see how
you are in the morning."
"No use going back to my lodgings," said Aaron.
"I'll send a telegram to your wife if you like," said Lilly.
Aaron was silent, dead silent, for some time.
"Nay," he said at length, in a decided voice. "Not if I die for it."
Lilly remained still, and the other man lapsed into a sort of semi-
sleep, motionless and abandoned. The darkness had fallen over London,
and away below the lamps were white.
Lilly lit the green-shaded reading lamp over the desk. Then he stood
and looked at Aaron, who lay still, looking sick. Rather beautiful
the bones of the countenance: but the skull too small for such a heavy
jaw and rather coarse mouth. Aaron half-opened his eyes, and writhed
feverishly, as if his limbs could not be in the right place. Lilly
mended the fire, and sat down to write. Then he got up and went
downstairs to unfasten the street door, so that the doctor could walk
up. The business people had gone from their various holes, all the
lower part of the tall house was in darkness.
Lilly waited and waited. He boiled an egg and made himself toast.
Aaron said he might eat the same. Lilly cooked another egg and took
it to the sick man. Aaron looked at it and pushed it away with
nausea. He would have some tea. So Lilly gave him tea.
"Not much fun for you, doing this for somebody who is nothing to you,"
said Aaron.
"I shouldn't if you were unsympathetic to me," said Lilly. "As it is,
it's happened so, and so we'll let be."
"What time is it?"
"Nearly eight o'clock."
"Oh, my Lord, the opera."
And Aaron got half out of bed. But as he sat on the bedside he knew he
could not safely get to his feet. He remained a picture of dejection.
"Perhaps we ought to let them know," said Lilly.
But Aaron, blank with stupid misery, sat huddled there on the bedside
without answering.
"Ill run round with a note," said Lilly. "I suppose others have had
flu, besides you. Lie down!"
But Aaron stupidly and dejectedly sat huddled on the side of the bed,
wearing old flannel pyjamas of Lilly's, rather small for him. He felt
too sick to move.
"Lie down! Lie down!" said Lilly. "And keep still while I'm gone. I
shan't be more than ten minutes."
"I don't care if I die," said Aaron.
Lilly laughed.
"You're a long way from dying," said he, "or you wouldn't say it."
But Aaron only looked up at him with queer, far-off, haggard eyes,
something like a criminal who is just being executed.
"Lie down!" said Lilly, pushing him gently into the bed. "You won't
improve yourself sitting there, anyhow."
Aaron lay down, turned away, and was quite still. Lilly quietly left
the room on his errand.
The doctor did not come until ten o'clock: and worn out with work when
he did come.
"Isn't there a lift in this establishment?" he said, as he groped
his way up the stone stairs. Lilly had heard him, and run down to
meet him.
The doctor poked the thermometer under Aaron's tongue and felt the
pulse. Then he asked a few questions: listened to the heart and
breathing.
"Yes, it's the flu," he said curtly. "Nothing to do but to keep warm
in bed and not move, and take plenty of milk and liquid nourishment.
I'll come round in the morning and give you an injection. Lungs are
all right so far."
"How long shall I have to be in bed?" said Aaron.
"Oh--depends. A week at least."
Aaron watched him sullenly--and hated him. Lilly laughed to himself.
The sick man was like a dog that is ill but which growls from a deep
corner, and will bite if you put your hand in. He was in a state of
black depression.
Lilly settled him down for the night, and himself went to bed. Aaron
squirmed with heavy, pained limbs, the night through, and slept and
had bad dreams. Lilly got up to give him drinks. The din in the
market was terrific before dawn, and Aaron suffered bitterly.
In the morning he was worse. The doctor gave him injections against
pneumonia.
"You wouldn't like me to wire to your wife?" said Lilly.
"No," said Aaron abruptly. "You can send me to the hospital. I'm
nothing but a piece of carrion."
"Carrion!" said Lilly. "Why?"
"I know it. I feel like it."
"Oh, that's only the sort of nauseated feeling you get with flu."
"I'm only fit to be thrown underground, and made an end of. I can't
stand myself--"
He had a ghastly, grey look of self-repulsion.
"It's the germ that makes you feel like that," said Lilly. "It poisons
the system for a time. But you'll work it off."
At evening he was no better, the fever was still high. Yet there were
no complications--except that the heart was irregular.
"The one thing I wonder," said Lilly, "is whether you hadn't better
be moved out of the noise of the market. It's fearful for you in the
early morning."
"It makes no difference to me," said Aaron.
The next day he was a little worse, if anything. The doctor knew
there was nothing to be done. At evening he gave the patient a
calomel pill. It was rather strong, and Aaron had a bad time. His
burning, parched, poisoned inside was twisted and torn. Meanwhile
carts banged, porters shouted, all the hell of the market went on
outside, away down on the cobble setts. But this time the two men
did not hear.
"You'll feel better now," said Lilly, "after the operation."
"It's done me harm," cried Aaron fretfully. "Send me to the hospital,
or you'll repent it. Get rid of me in time."
"Nay," said Lilly. "You get better. Damn it, you're only one among
a million."
Again over Aaron's face went the ghastly grimace of self-repulsion.
"My soul's gone rotten," he said.
"No," said Lilly. "Only toxin in the blood."
Next day the patient seemed worse, and the heart more irregular. He
rested badly. So far, Lilly had got a fair night's rest. Now Aaron
was not sleeping, and he seemed to struggle in the bed.
"Keep your courage up, man," said the doctor sharply. "You give way."
Aaron looked at him blackly, and did not answer.
In the night Lilly was up time after time. Aaron would slip down
on his back, and go semi-conscious. And then he would awake, as if
drowning, struggling to move, mentally shouting aloud, yet making no
sound for some moments, mentally shouting in frenzy, but unable to
stir or make a sound. When at last he got some sort of physical
control he cried: "Lift me up! Lift me up!"
Lilly hurried and lifted him up, and he sat panting with a sobbing
motion, his eyes gloomy and terrified, more than ever like a criminal
who is just being executed. He drank brandy, and was laid down on
his side.
"Don't let me lie on my back," he said, terrified. "No, I won't,"
said Lilly. Aaron frowned curiously on his nurse. "Mind you don't
let me," he said, exacting and really terrified.
"No, I won't let you."
And now Lilly was continually crossing over and pulling Aaron on to
his side, whenever he found him slipped down on his back.
In the morning the doctor was puzzled. Probably it was the toxin in
the blood which poisoned the heart. There was no pneumonia. And yet
Aaron was clearly growing worse. The doctor agreed to send in a nurse
for the coming night.
"What's the matter with you, man!" he said sharply to his patient.
"You give way! You give way! Can't you pull yourself together?"
But Aaron only became more gloomily withheld, retracting from life.
And Lilly began to be really troubled. He got a friend to sit with
the patient in the afternoon, whilst he himself went out and arranged
to sleep in Aaron's room, at his lodging.
The next morning, when he came in, he found the patient lying as ever,
in a sort of heap in the bed. Nurse had had to lift him up and hold
him up again. And now Aaron lay in a sort of semi-stupor of fear,
frustrated anger, misery and self-repulsion: a sort of interlocked
depression.
The doctor frowned when he came. He talked with the nurse, and wrote
another prescription. Then he drew Lilly away to the door.
"What's the matter with the fellow?" he said. "Can't you rouse his
spirit? He seems to be sulking himself out of life. He'll drop out
quite suddenly, you know, if he goes on like this. Can't you rouse
him up?"
"I think it depresses him partly that his bowels won't work. It
frightens him. He's never been ill in his life before," said Lilly.
"His bowels won't work if he lets all his spirit go, like an animal
dying of the sulks," said the doctor impatiently. "He might go off
quite suddenly--dead before you can turn round--"
Lilly was properly troubled. Yet he did not quite know what to do.
It was early afternoon, and the sun was shining into the room. There
were daffodils and anemones in a jar, and freezias and violets. Down
below in the market were two stalls of golden and blue flowers, gay.
"The flowers are lovely in the spring sunshine," said Lilly. "I wish
I were in the country, don't you? As soon as you are better we'll go.
It's been a terrible cold, wet spring. But now it's going to be nice.
Do you like being in the country?"
"Yes," said Aaron.
He was thinking of his garden. He loved it. Never in his life had he
been away from a garden before.
"Make haste and get better, and we'll go."
"Where?" said Aaron.
"Hampshire. Or Berkshire. Or perhaps you'd like to go home? Would
you?"
Aaron lay still, and did not answer.
"Perhaps you want to, and you don't want to," said Lilly. "You can
please yourself, anyhow."
There was no getting anything definite out of the sick man--his soul
seemed stuck, as if it would not move.
Suddenly Lilly rose and went to the dressing-table.
"I'm going to rub you with oil," he said. "I'm going to rub you as
mothers do their babies whose bowels don't work."
Aaron frowned slightly as he glanced at the dark, self-possessed face
of the little man.
"What's the good of that?" he said irritably. "I'd rather be left
alone."
"Then you won't be."
Quickly he uncovered the blond lower body of his patient, and began to
rub the abdomen with oil, using a slow, rhythmic, circulating motion,
a sort of massage. For a long time he rubbed finely and steadily,
then went over the whole of the lower body, mindless, as if in a sort
of incantation. He rubbed every speck of the man's lower body--the
abdomen, the buttocks, the thighs and knees, down to the feet, rubbed
it all warm and glowing with camphorated oil, every bit of it, chafing
the toes swiftly, till he was almost exhausted. Then Aaron was covered
up again, and Lilly sat down in fatigue to look at his patient.
He saw a change. The spark had come back into the sick eyes, and the
faint trace of a smile, faintly luminous, into the face. Aaron was
regaining himself. But Lilly said nothing. He watched his patient
fall into a proper sleep.
And he sat and watched him sleep. And he thought to himself: "I wonder
why I do it. I wonder why I bother with him. . . . Jim ought to have
taught me my lesson. As soon as this man's really better he'll punch
me in the wind, metaphorically if not actually, for having interfered
with him. And Tanny would say, he was quite right to do it. She says
I want power over them. What if I do? They don't care how much power
the mob has over them, the nation, Lloyd George and Northcliffe and
the police and money. They'll yield themselves up to that sort of
power quickly enough, and immolate themselves _pro bono publico_ by
the million. And what's the bonum publicum but a mob power? Why
can't they submit to a bit of healthy individual authority? The fool
would die, without me: just as that fool Jim will die in hysterics one
day. Why does he last so long!
"Tanny's the same. She does nothing really but resist me: my
authority, or my influence, or just ME. At the bottom of her heart
she just blindly and persistently opposes me. God knows what it is
she opposes: just me myself. She thinks I want her to submit to me.
So I do, in a measure natural to our two selves. Somewhere, she
ought to submit to me. But they all prefer to kick against the
pricks. Not that THEY get many pricks. I get them. Damn them all,
why don't I leave them alone? They only grin and feel triumphant when
they've insulted one and punched one in the wind.
"This Aaron will do just the same. I like him, and he ought to like
me. And he'll be another Jim: he WILL like me, if he can knock the
wind out of me. A lot of little Stavrogins coming up to whisper
affectionately, and biting one's ear.
"But anyhow I can soon see the last of this chap: and him the last of
all the rest. I'll be damned for ever if I see their Jims and Roberts
and Julias and Scotts any more. Let them dance round their insipid
hell-broth. Thin tack it is.
"There's a whole world besides this little gang of Europeans. Except,
dear God, that they've exterminated all the peoples worth knowing. I
can't do with folk who teem by the billion, like the Chinese and Japs
and orientals altogether. Only vermin teem by the billion. Higher
types breed slower. I would have loved the Aztecs and the Red Indians.
I KNOW they hold the element in life which I am looking for--they had
living pride. Not like the flea-bitten Asiatics--even niggers are
better than Asiatics, though they are wallowers--the American races--
and the South Sea Islanders--the Marquesans, the Maori blood. That
was the true blood. It wasn't frightened. All the rest are craven--
Europeans, Asiatics, Africans--everyone at his own individual quick
craven and cringing: only conceited in the mass, the mob. How I hate
them: the mass-bullies, the individual Judases.
"Well, if one will be a Jesus he must expect his Judas. That's why
Abraham Lincoln gets shot. A Jesus makes a Judas inevitable. A man
should remain himself, not try to spread himself over humanity. He
should pivot himself on his own pride.
"I suppose really I ought to have packed this Aaron off to the
hospital. Instead of which here am I rubbing him with oil to rub the
life into him. And I KNOW he'll bite me, like a warmed snake, the
moment he recovers. And Tanny will say 'Quite right, too,' I shouldn't
have been so intimate. No, I should have left it to mechanical doctors
and nurses.
"So I should. Everything to its own. And Aaron belongs to this little
system, and Jim is waiting to be psychoanalysed, and Tanny is waiting
for her own glorification.
"All right, Aaron. Last time I break my bread for anybody, this is.
So get better, my flautist, so that I can go away.
"It was easy for the Red Indians and the Others to take their hook
into death. They might have stayed a bit longer to help one to defy
the white masses.
"I'll make some tea--"
Lilly rose softly and went across to the fire. He had to cross a
landing to a sort of little lavatory, with a sink and a tap, for
water. The clerks peeped out at him from an adjoining office and
nodded. He nodded, and disappeared from their sight as quickly as
possible, with his kettle. His dark eyes were quick, his dark hair
was untidy, there was something silent and withheld about him.
People could never approach him quite ordinarily.
He put on the kettle, and quietly set cups and plates on a tray. The
room was clean and cosy and pleasant. He did the cleaning himself, and
was as efficient and inobtrusive a housewife as any woman. While the
kettle boiled, he sat darning the socks which he had taken off Aaron's
feet when the flautist arrived, and which he had washed. He preferred
that no outsider should see him doing these things. Yet he preferred
also to do them himself, so that he should be independent of outside
aid.
His face was dark and hollow, he seemed frail, sitting there in the
London afternoon darning the black woollen socks. His full brow was
knitted slightly, there was a tension. At the same time, there was
an indomitable stillness about him, as it were in the atmosphere about
him. His hands, though small, were not very thin. He bit off the
wool as he finished his darn.
As he was making the tea he saw Aaron rouse up in bed.
"I've been to sleep. I feel better," said the patient, turning round
to look what the other man was doing. And the sight of the water
steaming in a jet from the teapot seemed attractive.
"Yes," said Lilly. "You've slept for a good two hours."
"I believe I have," said Aaron.
"Would you like a little tea?"
"Ay--and a bit of toast."
"You're not supposed to have solid food. Let me take your
temperature."
The temperature was down to a hundred, and Lilly, in spite of the
doctor, gave Aaron a piece of toast with his tea, enjoining him not
to mention it to the nurse.
In the evening the two men talked.
"You do everything for yourself, then?" said Aaron.
"Yes, I prefer it."
"You like living all alone?"
"I don't know about that. I never have lived alone. Tanny and I have
been very much alone in various countries: but that's two, not one."
"You miss her then?"
"Yes, of course. I missed her horribly in the cottage, when she'd
first gone. I felt my heart was broken. But here, where we've never
been together, I don't notice it so much."
"She'll come back," said Aaron.
"Yes, she'll come back. But I'd rather meet her abroad than here--and
get on a different footing."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know. There's something with marriage altogether, I
think. _Egoisme a deux_--"
"What's that mean?"
"_Egoisme a deux_? Two people, one egoism. Marriage is a self-
conscious egoistic state, it seems to me."
"You've got no children?" said Aaron.
"No. Tanny wants children badly. I don't. I'm thankful we have
none."
"Why?"
"I can't quite say. I think of them as a burden. Besides, there ARE
such millions and billions of children in the world. And we know well
enough what sort of millions and billions of people they'll grow up
into. I don't want to add my quota to the mass--it's against my
instinct--"
"Ay!" laughed Aaron, with a curt acquiescence.
"Tanny's furious. But then, when a woman has got children, she thinks
the world wags only for them and her. Nothing else. The whole world
wags for the sake of the children--and their sacred mother."
"Ay, that's DAMNED true," said Aaron.
"And myself, I'm sick of the children stunt. Children are all right,
so long as you just take them for what they are: young immature things
like kittens and half-grown dogs, nuisances, sometimes very charming.
But I'll be hanged if I can see anything high and holy about children.
I should be sorry, too, it would be so bad for the children. Young
brats, tiresome and amusing in turns."
"When they don't give themselves airs," said Aaron,
"Yes, indeed. Which they do half the time. Sacred children, and
sacred motherhood, I'm absolutely fed stiff by it. That's why I'm
thankful I have no children. Tanny can't come it over me there."
"It's a fact. When a woman's got her children, by God, she's a bitch
in the manger. You can starve while she sits on the hay. It's useful
to keep her pups warm."
"Yes."
"Why, you know," Aaron turned excitedly in the bed, "they look on a
man as if he was nothing but an instrument to get and rear children.
If you have anything to do with a woman, she thinks it's because you
want to get children by her. And I'm damned if it is. I want my own
pleasure, or nothing: and children be damned."
"Ah, women--THEY must be loved, at any price!" said Lilly. "And if
you just don't want to love them--and tell them so--what a crime."
"A crime!" said Aaron. "They make a criminal of you. Them and their
children be cursed. Is my life given me for nothing but to get
children, and work to bring them up? See them all in hell first.
They'd better die while they're children, if childhood's all that
important."
"I quite agree," said Lilly. "If childhood is more important than
manhood, then why live to be a man at all? Why not remain an infant?"
"Be damned and blasted to women and all their importances," cried
Aaron. "They want to get you under, and children is their chief
weapon."
"Men have got to stand up to the fact that manhood is more than
childhood--and then force women to admit it," said Lilly. "But the
rotten whiners, they're all grovelling before a baby's napkin and a
woman's petticoat."
"It's a fact," said Aaron. But he glanced at Lilly oddly, as if
suspiciously. And Lilly caught the look. But he continued:
"And if they think you try to stand on your legs and walk with the
feet of manhood, why, there isn't a blooming father and lover among
them but will do his best to get you down and suffocate you--either
with a baby's napkin or a woman's petticoat."
Lilly's lips were curling; he was dark and bitter.
"Ay, it is like that," said Aaron, rather subduedly.
"The man's spirit has gone out of the world. Men can't move an inch
unless they can grovel humbly at the end of the journey."
"No," said Aaron, watching with keen, half-amused eyes.
"That's why marriage wants readjusting--or extending--to get men on to
their own legs once more, and to give them the adventure again. But
men won't stick together and fight for it. Because once a woman has
climbed up with her children, she'll find plenty of grovellers ready
to support her and suffocate any defiant spirit. And women will
sacrifice eleven men, fathers, husbands, brothers and lovers, for one
baby--or for her own female self-conceit--"
"She will that," said Aaron.
"And can you find two men to stick together, without feeling criminal,
and without cringing, and without betraying one another? You can't.
One is sure to go fawning round some female, then they both enjoy
giving each other away, and doing a new grovel before a woman again."
"Ay," said Aaron.
After which Lilly was silent. _
Read next: CHAPTER X. THE WAR AGAIN
Read previous: CHAPTER VIII. A PUNCH IN THE WIND
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