I did not see Gerald whilst I was shaking the dust of Shepherd’s Market
for ever off my feet, for he was still asleep. I left Shepherd’s Market.
The hearty-looking man and the thin wizened man who said “Oi!” and the
little bent old man with the blood-shot eyes gave me farewell.
That afternoon I snatched a few moments from the arranging of the new
place, which was only round the corner, to go round and tell Gerald that
his sister had been to see him on an Impulse. I had grown to feel
responsible for Gerald: his solitude was somehow like a scar across
one’s own life, a rebuke.
I came upon him in our lane. I have forgotten to say that Gerald, after
a particularly hard spell of dipsomania, would go riding on a hack from
the Mews nearby. He had a pair of fine polo breeches with which to do
that, and with the fine polo breeches (Moss Bros.) went Barty March’s
riding-whip and the jacket of the old grey suit and that hat. A
highwayman on an off day, that is what he looked like in the mean lane,
passing the time of day with the little bent old man with the blood-shot
eyes.
“You’ve been drinking,” said Gerald severely to me.
“Billy Goat’s won the two-thirty,” wheezed the little bent old man. His
hat was the captain of Gerald’s hat.
One didn’t, perhaps, look one’s best in the middle of a removal. But
Gerald, confound the man, looked positively healthy, taut, tempered,
weathered. _Ach, le sale type anglais!_ I told him that his sister had
called. “On an Impulse,” I said.
Gerald stared at me, his cigarette half-way to his mouth. “Oh!” he said.
“Oh!...”
“Here’s her telephone number,” I said. He didn’t take the slip of paper
I held out.
“’Ere,” said the little bent old man, “I’ll give it ’im when he’s
better.” Gerald lowered his cigarette, scowling at me pathetically. No
one else would have known it was “pathetically.”
“Iris called hell!” he accused me. “How you lie! What?”
“Honest to God, Gerald!”
He flipped away his cigarette and dug his free hand into his pocket as
though it was a weapon. Those deep eyes scowled at me, but I wondered
what they saw.
“That beast,” he whispered, “oh, that beast....”