"Ay—thank you," said Aaron.
Lilly scribbled directions on a card. The hot, jaded midnight underground rattled on. Aaron and Josephine got down to change trains.
The Dark Square Garden
CHAPTER VII
THE DARK SQUARE GARDEN
Josephine had invited Aaron Sisson to dinner at a restaurant in Soho, one Sunday evening. They had a corner to themselves, and with a bottle of Burgundy she was getting his history from him.
His father had been a shaft-sinker, earning good money, but had been killed by a fall down the shaft when Aaron was only four years old. The widow had opened a shop: Aaron was her only child. She had done well in her shop. She had wanted Aaron to be a schoolteacher. He had served three years apprenticeship, then suddenly thrown it up and gone to the pit.
"But why?" said Josephine.
"I couldn't tell you. I felt more like it."
He had a curious quality of an intelligent, almost sophisticated mind, which had repudiated education. On purpose he kept the midland accent in his speech. He understood perfectly what a personification was—and an allegory. But he preferred to be illiterate.
Josephine found out what a miner's checkweighman was. She tried to find out what sort of wife Aaron had—but, except that she was the daughter of a publican and was delicate in health, she could learn nothing.
"And do you send her money!" she asked.
"Ay," said Aaron. "The house is mine. And I allow her so much a week out of the money in the bank. My mother left me a bit over a thousand when she died."
"You don't mind what I say, do you?" said Josephine.
"No I don't mind," he laughed.
He had this pleasant-seeming courteous manner. But he really kept her at a distance. In some things he reminded her of Robert: blond, erect, nicely built, fresh and English-seeming. But there was a curious cold distance to him, which she could not get across. An inward indifference to her—perhaps to everything. Yet his laugh was so handsome.
"Will you tell me why you left your wife and children?—Didn't you love them?"
Aaron looked at the odd, round, dark muzzle of the girl. She had had her hair bobbed, and it hung in odd dark folds, very black, over her ears.
"Why I left her?" he said. "For no particular reason. They're all right without me."
Josephine watched his face. She saw a pallor of suffering under its freshness, and a strange tension in his eyes.
"But you couldn't leave your little girls for no reason at all—"
"Yes, I did. For no reason—except I wanted to have some free room round me—to loose myself—"
"You mean you wanted love?" flashed Josephine, thinking he said lose.
"No, I wanted fresh air. I don't know what I wanted. Why should I know?"
"But we must know: especially when other people will be hurt," said she.
"Ah, well! A breath of fresh air, by myself. I felt forced to feel—I feel if I go back home now, I shall be forced—forced to love—or care—or something."
"Perhaps you wanted more than your wife could give you," she said.
"Perhaps less. She's made up her mind she loves me, and she's not going to let me off."
"Did you never love her?" said Josephine.
"Oh, yes. I shall never love anybody else. But I'm damned if I want to be a lover any more. To her or to anybody. That's the top and bottom of it. I don't want to care, when care isn't in me. And I'm not going to be forced to it."
The fat, aproned French waiter was hovering near. Josephine let him remove the plates and the empty bottle.
"Have more wine," she said to Aaron. "Do?"
But he refused. She liked him because of his dead-level indifference to his surroundings. French waiters and foreign food—he noticed them in his quick, amiable-looking fashion—but he was indifferent. Josephine was piqued. She wanted to pierce this amiable aloofness of his.
She ordered coffee and brandies.
"But you don't want to get away from everything, do you? I myself feel so lost sometimes—so dreadfully alone: not in a silly sentimental fashion, because men keep telling me they love me, don't you know. But my life seems alone, for some reason—"
"Haven't you got relations?" he said.
"No one, now mother is dead. Nothing nearer than aunts and cousins in America. I suppose I shall see them all again one day. But they hardly count over here."
"Why don't you get married?" he said. "How old are you?"
"I'm twenty-five. How old are you?"
"Thirty-three."
"You might almost be any age.—I don't know why I don't get married. In a way, I hate earning my own living—yet I go on—and I like my work—"
"What are you doing now?"
"I'm painting scenery for a new play—rather fun—I enjoy it. But I often wonder what will become of me."
"In what way?"
She was almost affronted.
"What becomes of me? Oh, I don't know. And it doesn't matter, not to anybody but myself."
"What becomes of anybody, anyhow? We live till we die. What do you want?"
"Why, I keep saying I want to get married and feel sure of something. But I don't know—I feel dreadful sometimes—as if every minute would be the last. I keep going on and on—I don't know what for—and It keeps going on and on—goodness knows what it's all for."
"You shouldn't bother yourself," he said. "You should just let it go on and on—"
"But I must bother," she said. "I must think and feel—"
"You've no occasion," he said.
"How—?" she said, with a sudden grunting, unhappy laugh. Then she lit a cigarette.
"No," she said. "What I should really like more than anything would be an end of the world. I wish the world would come to an end."
He laughed,
