“How are your wife and children?” she asked spitefully.
“All right, I think.”
“But you've been back to them?” cried Josephine in dismay.
He looked at her, a slow, half smiling look, but did not speak.
“Come and have a drink. Damn the women,” said Jim uncouthly, seizing Aaron by the arm and dragging him off.
CHAPTER VI. TALK
The party stayed to the end of the interminable opera. They had agreed to wait for Aaron. He was to come around to the vestibule for them, after the show. They trooped slowly down-stairs into the crush of the entrance hall. Chattering, swirling people, red carpet, palms green against cream-and-gilt walls, small whirlpools of life at the open, dark doorways, men in opera hats steering decisively about-it was the old scene. But there were no taxis—absolutely no taxis. And it was raining. Fortunately the women had brought shoes. They slipped these on. Jim rocked through the crowd, in his tall hat, looking for the flautist.
At last Aaron was found—wearing a bowler hat. Julia groaned in spirit. Josephine's brow knitted. Not that anybody cared, really. But as one must frown at something, why not at the bowler hat? Acquaintances and elegant young men in uniforms insisted on rushing up and bowing and exchanging a few words, either with Josephine, or Jim, or Julia, or Lilly. They were coldly received. The party veered out into the night.
The women hugged their wraps about them, and set off sharply, feeling some repugnance for the wet pavements and the crowd. They had not far to go—only to Jim's rooms in Adelphi. Jim was leading Aaron, holding him by the arm and slightly pinching his muscles. It gave him great satisfaction to have between his fingers the arm-muscles of a working-man, one of the common people, the fons et origo of modern life. Jim was talking rather vaguely about Labour and Robert Smillie, and Bolshevism. He was all for revolution and the triumph of labour.
So they arrived, mounted a dark stair, and entered a large, handsome room, one of the Adams rooms. Jim had furnished it from Heale's with striped hangings, green and white and yellow and dark purple, and with a green-and-black checked carpet, and great stripe-covered chairs and Chesterfield. A big gas-fire was soon glowing in the handsome old fire-place, the panelled room seemed cosy.
While Jim was handing round drinks and sandwiches, and Josephine was making tea, Robert played Bach on the piano—the pianola, rather. The chairs and lounge were in a half-circle round the fire. The party threw off their wraps and sank deep into this expensive comfort of modern bohemia. They needed the Bach to take away the bad taste that Aida had left in their mouths. They needed the whiskey and curacao to rouse their spirits. They needed the profound comfort in which to sink away from the world. All the men, except Aaron, had been through the war in some way or other. But here they were, in the old setting exactly, the old bohemian routine.
The bell rang, Jim went downstairs. He returned shortly with a frail, elegant woman—fashionable rather than bohemian. She was cream and auburn, Irish, with a slightly-lifted upper lip that gave her a pathetic look. She dropped her wrap and sat down by Julia, taking her hand delicately.
“How are you, darling?” she asked.
“Yes—I'm happy,” said Julia, giving her odd, screwed-up smile.
The pianola stopped, they all chatted indiscriminately. Jim was watching the new-comer—Mrs. Browning—with a concentrated wolfish grin.
“I like her,” he said at last. “I've seen her before, haven't I?—I like her awfully.”
“Yes,” said Josephine, with a slight grunt of a laugh. “He wants to be loved.”
“Oh,” cried Clariss. “So do I!”
“Then there you are!” cried Tanny.
“Alas, no, there we aren't,” cried Clariss. She was beautiful too, with her lifted upper-lip. “We both want to be loved, and so we miss each other entirely. We run on in two parallel lines, that can never meet.” She laughed low and half sad.
“Doesn't SHE love you?” said Aaron to Jim amused, indicating Josephine. “I thought you were engaged.”
“HER!” leered Jim vindictively, glancing at Josephine. “She doesn't love me.”
“Is that true?” asked Robert hastily, of Josephine.
“Why,” she said, “yes. Why should he make me say out here that I don't love him!”
“Got you my girl,” said Jim.
“Then it's no engagement?” said Robert.
“Listen to the row fools make, rushing in,” said Jim maliciously.
“No, the engagement is broken,” said Josephine.
“World coming to pieces bit by bit,” said Lilly. Jim was twisting in his chair, and looking like a Chinese dragon, diabolical. The room was uneasy.
“What gives you such a belly-ache for love, Jim?” said Lilly, “or for being loved? Why do you want so badly to be loved?”
“Because I like it, damn you,” barked Jim. “Because I'm in need of it.”
None of them quite knew whether they ought to take it as a joke. It was just a bit too real to be quite pleasant.
“Why are you such a baby?” said Lilly. “There you are, six foot in length, have been a cavalry officer and fought in two wars, and you spend your time crying for somebody to love you. You're a comic.”
“Am I though?” said Jim. “I'm losing life. I'm getting thin.”
“You don't look as if you were losing life,” said Lilly.
“Don't I? I am, though. I'm dying.”
“What of? Lack of life?”
“That's about it, my young cock. Life's leaving me.”
“Better sing Tosti's Farewell to it.”
Jim who had been sprawling full length in his arm-chair, the centre of interest of all the company, suddenly sprang forward and pushed his face, grinning, in the face of Lilly.
“You're a funny customer, you are,” he said.
Then he turned round in his chair, and saw Clariss sitting at the feet of Julia, with one white arm over her friend's knee. Jim immediately stuck forward his muzzle and gazed at her. Clariss had loosened her masses of thick, auburn hair, so that it hung half free. Her face was creamy pale, her upper lip lifted with odd pathos! She had rose-rubies in her ears.
“I like HER,” said Jim. “What's her name?”
“Mrs. Browning. Don't be so rude,” said Josephine.
“Browning
