For Love Alone (51 page)

“Oh, I can hold out for a few weeks—don't stand here,” she said, pulling him out on to the road, for she was strangely upset by his standing there in the alley and had begun to tremble without knowing why.

“Tess, come over to my room now and I'll give you the typewriter.” She said at once: “All right, but won't your landlady mind my coming so late?”

“She—” said Johnny ironically and bit it off there.

As they approached the crescent, the light mist was gathering. A policeman stood under one of the two lights. All round it was very gloomy, there were few lights on; it was late. A few lights shone in top rooms where the maids were going to bed.

Jonathan laughed, enveloping her once more in affection. “It was that bobby,” he said, “and round that light—oh, yes, I never told you that—or did I? Burton? Burton's a kind of wild, snobbish chap writes wild vile verse, mostly unprintable of course—thinks he's Byronic, too.” He laughed obliquely but apologetically. “Flings up the mud wherever he goes, refers to himself as a stallion, a bull.” His voice had changed to a grinding tone. “And then he's a hedonist, he says, wine, women and song.”

“Like the Student of Prague, do nothing and go to the devil? The devil never paid for such bad bargains, I bet.”

He did not hear her but hurried on heartily. “He throws away his little bit of money, he's got an allowance, gets into drunken brawls, got into the clink several times a month when I knew him and we all used to go down and get him out. He pretends to have a violent antipathy for the lads in blue, so he insults every bobby he sees. He's had ever so many run-ins with them.”

“Bobbies and bushrangers,” said Teresa crossly.

“No, he's really wild, a bit cracked perhaps. Once old Gene Burt, my chum, took the blame for him when Burton was on the point of getting expelled for getting up in class and singing some obscene music-hall song with gestures—” He laughed thickly.

“Here we are,” said Teresa. “It's terribly late, perhaps you could bring it down.”

Crow, looking away, said roughly: “No, come up, we'll make some tea, the place is in a bit of a mess, but you'll forgive that.” He continued about Burton on the way upstairs, softly but with bravado, for he felt Teresa did not like Burton. “He has something—braggadocio, do you call it ?—but an almighty blackguard. One time we were coming from his rooms where the fellows had been on a binge. He went up to that policeman and danced ring-around-a-rosy. Burton chirped in a flossy voice and called him Oberon, King of the Fairies. The bobby smole a sickly smile at first, then he got pink round the gills. When Burton kissed him and changed hats with him, he got furious and said he'd run him in.” Johnny shouted with laughter and closed the door of his room suddenly, putting his hand over his mouth. “A big burly chap, you can see him, a fairy—”

She laughed without understanding the joke. He made her sit down while he made some tea and told more tales about the almighty blackguard. As he put the tea in the green teapot, Jonathan turned round, tittering. “It's the type, you're born with it, others couldn't get away with it. You know that line of Ibsen's, what is it—you know what youngsters say—‘What would you rather be?' Ibsen's hero says, ‘It is better to have that kind of luck called
virtus
, the only real virtue.' Well, Burton hasn't precisely
virtus
, the word's not for his kind, but he has something, he has made a religion out of being uncontrollable, a real wild young bounder. What worse can happen to me than devilling for civilization, says he. Not bad, eh? Devil or go to the devil. Every authority in the world, says he, rests on force, violence, and crime. Even your humanitarian wants a revolution, which implies force over some portion of mankind. Civilization rests
on the police, authority equals crime. He isn't a mere scapegrace,” he put in, seeing her expression; “and he has the courage to carry it through. Of course, he's good with his fists.” He laughed gently. “He swears he'll end up a lord, with his theory, by blackmail alone, says he. And if not, look at the fun I'll have had, he says. Oh, Lord!”

“Unworkable, though,” said Teresa with melancholy. “Well, not for a man.” Jonathan was getting cups from the old wooden cupboard.

“Let me do it,” said Teresa. “Have you got a cloth? It's inky here.”

“You see,” cried Jonathan, planking down the cups, “you see! It's this habit of prettiness, the clothes you wear, the hair, the whole thing, a tablecloth—isn't a bare table good enough? My mother had a bare table and she ate in the kitchen—manners, frills and feathers—that's why you aren't as free as Burton! A cloth! No,” he said with a dash of good humour, “no, we won't have a cloth. I'll always eat without a cloth.” He moralized a bit more about the habits of women, but sat down pleasantly enough, pouring out the tea and telling anecdotes of his room-mate, Gene Burt, who had ruined himself by getting tied up with the cornstalk, the bony country girl. “Gene was full of self-deception, he wrote a poem about a prostitute he saw one wintry night and said if he'd sold it he'd give the money to her because she had produced it. He sold it—one guinea. Gene needed it for debts. That's your sentimentalist, isn't it?” He laughed, his spectacles shone. “Typical, isn't it?”

He came back to Burton after a moment. “That Burton, though—I could tell you tales about him all night, someone ought to write him up.”

When they had finished the tea and he had forbidden the washing of the cups, he asked her to stay a few more minutes to chat before she made for home, and he reverted to Burton with the doggedness which was characteristic of him. He called it worrying a subject.

“One afternoon, we were over at his room, it's just a den like this, not much better and much untidier, the girl they have there is a slut. We were drinking tea—we were all at low water, no smokes, no
drinks and Burton was fretting—no excitement. Jesus—the frowsy place he lived in! The beds weren't made and it was three in the afternoon. He almost never paid his rent, it went in booze, but he had got all the women in the place tangled up with him. That was common talk, he didn't hide it. It was a rule he had to tumble every woman, he said, it always paid some dividend.” His voice had taken on the strange harsh note again.

Teresa sat stiffly on the edge of the bed. Crow was droning on. “He was fidgety and presently yelled out the window for the servant to come and make the beds. She came in, a blond, biggish girl of twenty-three or so, with big legs bare above the knee and rolled cotton stockings.” He said these words in a lascivious voice, as if there was an erotic meaning in rolled stockings.

“He told her not to leave a gentleman't room in that state, he had no intention of letting his friends sit in that muck and if she was a sow and liked her wallow, he was a gentleman and he was damned if he wouldn't see that he got some cleaning up done around him. The accent, the tone, he put on! Squire Jones, oh, Lord! We simply roared with laughter. It tickled you to see Burton, unshaved, dirty, bearish, who had obviously slept in his clothes, and only half-sober after a spree, being so toney! What a character! He painted up the year for us, last year. The servant-girl grumbled that she had the whole house to do and that he had lain in bed till midday, so that she couldn't get in. He shouts: ‘Gentlemen lie in bed till midday but you couldn't be expected to know that.' ‘
Gentlemen!'
she says, getting mad and giving us all a dirty look. ‘Well, do it now,' says old Burton, in a finicky cold tone, the very image of a noble lordling, and when the girl flushed, you could see he was pleased he had got a rise out of her, for she was an old hand. She began to pull the clothes off the bed and growled, a fine gentleman and a fine thing to see a girl set on like this, she knew what sort of gentleman, we'd never so much as seen a gentleman, unless he was the judge in court, and we'd soon see more of the same sort. It was a regular comedy.” Jonathan tried
to control his laughter. Then he became serious. “Gee, what a
type
, as the French say, coarse but apparently
sympathique.”

He continued confidentially: “Anyhow, the girl turned back to make the bed and Burton, furious at being answered with his friends there—for I suppose he half-believes that rot of his—brutally pushed her on to the bed and invited one of the chaps to attack her. They were scared of course, so he tried to, but she twisted out of his grasp, although he's a hefty fellow—but shaky just then—and she rushed out of the room, bellowing. What a shindy! Wow! She ran downstairs, crying for the landlady. Do you know what the fellow did? A regular gallow's-bird. You've got to admire his almighty nerve in a way, none of us would have had the brass—it was this gentleman pose—he leaned over the stairhead and shouted to the landlady to send the girl up to do his filthy room, if not, he'd leave that very day. That was pushing his gall pretty far, considering what he owed in rent there. What was his pull? The old lady was sweet on him, I imagine. The girl was crying downstairs and telling what was the matter, and Burton yelling upstairs. What a din! Some of the fellows were making a row too. Would you believe it? The landlady didn't believe the girl and sent her up, to satisfy him, and he raped her, and a couple of the other fellows did, but we just sat and grinned. What a scene!” he finished reminiscently, but with a sidelong glance at her. Seeing she took it ill, Jonathan swung away to the window with a bitter contemptuous look and looked out. “The bobby's still there,” he said coldly. “He does his beat and then stands under the lamp. Is he afraid? We forget that bobbies are working men too!”

He shrugged gloomily and turned away from the window, his face full of trouble. “I saw one poor chap going down a side lane to a side door of a ham-and-beef shop, to get a sandwich, and looking around anxiously to see if the sergeant was about. Then he bolted it down and went back to his beat, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.” After a moment, he burst out laughing and looked candidly at her. “It was the copper out there made me think of it!
How I laughed that night when he called him a fairy and said he'd crown him—I suppose I had had a drop too much, and it doesn't often take me that way.”

The girl said nothing.

“You see,” he begged, “it's not really as bad as it seems, they all live in pretty much of a mess here in Bloomsbury, and she probably belonged to him, you know! You don't find female virtues in Bloomsbury! And I admit Burton's a terrible scamp, but he goes on the principle of anything once. So do I,” he added morosely.

Teresa had been sitting with bowed shoulders. Now she raised her head and read his face, but she saw what she had seen before, the agonies of self-engrossment, a lonely, ingrown life, eyes that kept gleaming with secret pangs. She was swept by a flush of passion for the strange face. Seeing her face soften, Jonathan went on: “The whole thing is just to express contempt for the underdog, I suppose.” He became depressed. “Give them one drop of blue blood in their veins, or even an imaginary drop, like he has, and we're just talking cattle to them. As for your romance, ideals, love—” he snapped his fingers and his eyes snapped—“your Tom Joneses didn't trouble their heads about romance or even fathering their illegitimate offspring, no state, no God, no women's honour, no such animal. Who knows if it isn't best to take the world with a swagger? The advantage of being born rich is you're born without illusions. I bet you had to struggle through a lot of disillusion, the sort of hocus-pocus they ram down our necks in school, before you realized that there was no such thing as love?”

Teresa murmured: “It certainly exists for me, at any rate.”

“For me,” said Jonathan, “it is lust.” He said “lust” as a murderer would say murder.

“You don't know.”

He hung his head. “No, that's right, I don't know. Civilization pops its hard facts at me and I don't even pop back. The bitter truth!” He stole secret glances at the girl from under his long lashes as he stood drooping. He flung away a few steps. “I have never loved a woman.”

“And the girl—Gloria—the American girl?”

He sat down morbidly hunched in a chair, his arms resting on the table. “You're right! You're right! I did love her, I suppose, I wanted her, I know that. But she didn't want me. The whirligig of time brings in its revenges.” He withdrew his arms, raised his face and smiled faintly. “I suppose I'll get over it some day.” Teresa looked at him with despair, looked at the floor, and seeing her gloves there, picked them up. She got up. “Well, I must go. I've got to get up early.”

Jonathan rose deliberately, and came a step towards her, facing her. “I've been looking for a woman,” he said downright. “It can't go on. Whatever my philosophy—philosophy comes a cropper every time it hurdles a hard fact—I can't get on any longer with the hard fact of lust. I need one to love me to save me from the desperations of—a bachelor's life.” He flung his hand out, gesturing at the room.

“Find someone! There are so many women, Jonathan.”

“Well, I suppose, some day,” said Jonathan with his twisted smile. He made a half-turn and picked her hat up off the bed. “Well, I'd better let you go to bed.”

She supposed his timidity had overcome him again, so she took her hat without speaking and opening her bag, took out a little mirror to fix her hair. Jonathan took the mirror out of her hands, just touching her finger-tips, and turned it thoughtfully in his hand. “Do you think it's an instinct, I wonder—coquetry I mean. Do you dress for men or for yourselves?”

“Kohler's apes in the Canaries put leaves and rags in their hair,” said Teresa. She was trying not to cry.

“Vine-leaves in their hair! Our simian grandmothers! Well, you'd better be off.”