The Clean Heart

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

She put out her hand and touched his. "Now, Phil!"

But he shook off her touch. "You don't understand me. That's what it comes to."

"Phil!"

"No one does. You least of all."

"Phil, you're ill, old boy."

"Well, laugh over that!" cried Mr. Wriford and turned with a shuffling movement of his feet; and she saw him blunder against the door-post as though he had not noticed it; and stood listening white he went heavily down the stairs; and heard him fumble with the latch below and slam the outer door behind him.

II

Now you shall picture this Mr. Wriford—thirty, youthful of face, not bad-looking, clever, successful, one of the lucky ones—walking back from Brida's little flat in Knightsbridge to the office of The Week Reviewed off Fleet Street, and as he walked, rehearsing every passage of his own contribution to the interview that had just passed, and as he rehearsed them, abusing himself in every line of it. It was not where he had been rude or unkind to Brida that gave him distress. There, on the contrary, he found brief gleams of satisfaction. There he had held his own. It was where he had made a fool of himself and exposed himself that gnawed him. It was where she had laughed at him that he was stung. He made an effort to distract his thoughts, to fix them on the work to which he was proceeding, to attach them anywhere ("Anywhere, anywhere, any infernal where!" cried Mr. Wriford to himself). Useless. They rushed back. "From here to that pillar-box," cried Mr. Wriford inwardly, "I'll fix on what I'm going to write in my first leader." He was not ten steps in the direction when he was writhing again at having made a fool of himself with Brida. It was always so in these days. "I never exchange words with a soul," cried Mr. Wriford, "not even with a cab-driver—" He was switched off on the word to recollection of a fare-dispute with a cab-driver on the previous day. He was plunged back into the humiliation he had suffered himself to endure by not taking a strong line with the man. It had occupied him, gnawing, gnawing at him right up to this afternoon with Brida, when new mortification, new example of having been a weak fool, of having been worsted in an encounter, had come to take its place.

So there was Mr. Wriford—one of the lucky ones—back with this old gnawing again; and, realising the swift transition from one to the other, able to complete his broken sentence with a bitter laugh at himself for the instance that had come to illustrate it.

"I never exchange a word with a soul, not even with a cab-driver," cried Mr. Wriford, "but I show what a weak fool I am, and then brood over it, brood over it, until the next thing comes along to take its place!" Whereupon, and with which, another next thing came immediately in further proof and in further assault upon the thin film of Mr. Wriford's self-possession that was in these days left to him. In form, this came, of a cyclist carrying a bundle of newspapers upon his back and travelling at the hazard and speed and with the dexterity that belong to his calling. Mr. Wriford stepped off the pavement to cross the road, stepped in front of this gentleman, caused him to execute a prodigious swerve to avoid collision, ejaculated very genuinely a "Sorry—I'm awfully sorry," and was addressed in raucous bawl of obscene abuse that added new terms to the names which, as he had told Brida, he often lay awake at night and called himself.