The Clean Heart

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

Mr. Wriford hung on.

The surge took him, swept him, left him. He was with Brida in Brida's jolly little flat in Knightsbridge, holding her hands. It was a longish time since he had been to see her. She had come into the room gay as ever—

Mr. Wriford got suddenly back to the point whence he had been suddenly cut adrift; remembered the surge, realised the lapse, recalled how he had caught at her hands, how they had soothed him, how, like a mock, he had seen the laughter in her eyes. Mr. Wriford threw back her hands at her with a violent motion, and went back a step, not meaning to, and knew again the frequent desire in moments of stress such as had just passed, and in moments of recovery such as he now was in, to shout out very loudly a jumble of cries of despair, as often he cried them at night, or inwardly when not alone. "O God! Oh, I say! I say! I say! Oh, this can't go on! Oh, this must end—this must end! Oh, I say! I say!" but mastered the desire and effected instead a confusion of sentences ending with "then."

A very great effort was required. Mastery of such impulses had been undermined these ten years, slipping from him these five, altogether leaving him in recent months. To give way, and to release in clamorous cries the tumult that consumed him, would ease him, he felt sure; but it would create a scene and have him stared at and laughed at, he knew. That stopped him. Fear of the betrayal of his state, that day and night he dreaded, once again saved him; and therefore in place of the loud cries, Mr. Wriford—thirty, not bad-looking, clever, successful, held to be "one of the lucky ones"—substituted heavily: "Well then! All right then! It's no good then! Very well then!"

She was a trifle surprised by the violent action with which he released her hands. But she knew his moods (not their depth) and had no comment to make on his roughness. "Oh, Phil," she cried, and her tone matched her face in its mingling of gay banter and of tenderness, "Oh, Phil, don't twist up your forehead so—frowning like that. Phil, don't!" And when he made no answer but with working face just stood there before her, she went on: "You know that I hate to see you frowning so horribly. And I don't see why you should come and do it in my flat; I'm blessed if I do!"

He did not respond to the gay little laugh with which she poked her words at him. He had come to her for the rest, for the comfort, he had felt in that brief moment when he first caught at her hands. Instead, the laughter in her eyes informed him that here, here also, was not to be found what day and night he sought. The interview must be ended, and he must get away. He was in these days always fidgeting to end a conversation, however eagerly he had begun it.

It must be ended—conventionally.

"Well, I'm busy," he said. "I must be going."

"Now, Phil!" she exclaimed, and there was in her voice just a trace of pleading. "Now, Phil, don't be in one of your moods! It's not kind after all the ages I've never seen you." A settee was near her, and she sat down and indicated the place beside her. "Going! Why, you've scarcely come! Tell me what you've been doing. Months since you've been near me! Of course, I've heard about you. I'm always hearing your name or seeing it in the papers. Clever little beast, Phil! I hear people talking about The Week Reviewed, or about your books; and I say: 'Oh, I know the editor well'; or 'He's a friend of mine—Philip Wriford,' and I feel rather bucked when they exclaim and want to know what you're like. You must be making pots of money, Phil, old boy."

He remained standing, making no motion to accept the place beside her. "I'm making what I should have thought would be a good lot once," he said; and he added: "You ought to have married me, Brida—when you had the chance."