I stopped short, and watched, he had a white paper in his hand. He
fumbled with this for a moment, then slipped it under the door, pushing
it clear through into the room with a pencil. Then he got awkwardly
to his feet, and stood hesitating. By this time my eyes were partially
accustomed to the dim light, and I knew it was Sir Robert. He did not
see me. After a moment he tiptoed heavily across the hall to his own
door, just opposite and entered, cautiously and silently closing the
door behind him.
I walked straight along the hall, past my own door, and stood before
his. I had a mind to go in there and strangle him.
But what was the use? He was an absurd old man, that was all. But none
the less, as I stepped back and entered my own room, I found myself
shivering oddly. There was an uncomfortable pressure at the back of my
head, and my heart was skipping beats.
It is the first time in my life, I think, that I have been seized by the
impulse to do physical harm to a fellow creature.
Before putting on my pajamas to-night I stood and looked at my bare
chest and arms in my broken mirror. My chest is narrow, my skin white.
My arms are thin. Possibly I could n't have strangled him, if I had
tried. I wish I were strong.
A little earlier than that, before she closed our door, I asked her if
Sir Robert was annoying her in any serious way.
The question made her very grave--graver even than usual. She looked
at me, then dropped her eyes, and said nothing. But after a moment she
looked up again, made one of those efforts to smile that are pain to me,
and shrugged her shoulders. That was all.
_April 11th._
|SIR ROBERT is always hovering about the office and the lounge when I
appear, and he always tries to engage me in talk. I can't understand it.
He is insistent. He acts as if I fascinate him. Twice to-day I fairly
ran away from him. I was afraid I would strike him. It makes me
physically uncomfortable to have him so much as stand near me, even if
he does not try to take my hand in greeting.
I fear I am not managing this matter very well. I am acting aimlessly,
and in a sort of panic of the soul. This won't do.
_April 12th._
|THIS afternoon he caught me squarely at the clerk's desk. He extended a
cigar and suggested that we stroll into the lounge and have a chin-chin.
I observed that his hand was unsteady, as if the palsy had reached and
touched him.
On the spot I made up my mind to face him out. I accepted the cigar, and
down we sat.
He asked if I had attended any of the theaters in the Chinese city that
lies to the south of the Tartar Wall. When I replied in the negative, he
suggested that we do a little exploring together of an evening.
“The ancient Chinese character is nowhere better preserved,” said he,
“than in these theatrical performances. And the music, of course, is the
pure old strain, quite uncorrupted by Modernism or the West. I can boast
of some familiarity with the Chinese drama and music, and even a little
acquaintance with the language. It would give me pleasure to act as your
guide.”
“Thank you,” said I, a bit too shortly. “Later on, perhaps. Just now I
am very busy with my records.”
He smiled--all wrinkles. That left eyelid drooped and drooped.
I pulled savagely on my cigar, chewing it so hard that the end crumpled
between my teeth and filled my mouth with unpleasant little particles of
tobacco leaf.
Then he laughed--with an effort, I thought. It was not a successful
laugh.
So we sat for a few moments, in silence and smoke. So men sit often in
this queer tangle of life--smoking, smiling, speaking the commonplace
phrases that are the current small change of human intercourse, yet
hating each other in their hearts.
“I say, Eckhart”--it was a little later on that he came out with
this--“you know who she is, of course.”
There was no good in pretending ignorance. God knows I am not quite the
child I sometimes seem, even to myself. So I nodded.
He looked narrowly at me. I met his gaze. I was just a thin, nervous
man, a little bald, sitting quietly there and smoking, yet all the time
that drooping left eyelid irritated me so that I wanted to reach right
over and tear it off his face. But I only nodded.
“Dangerous game, my boy,” said he.
That was his assumption, of course--that to me, too, she was merely a
quarry in the endless, universal pursuit of woman by man. Out here on
the Coast, of course, from the point of view of the hard world about us,
any lone woman is quite legitimate prey.
He was still studying me.
“I 'm wondering how much you know,” he went on.
“About what?” said I, confused.
“About that woman and the fix she is in. You know who her husband is,
surely.”