“Then I must resign myself to quit this life, must I?” He made a gesture of despair, throwing out both hands, “Out, out brief Coleman. Out, damned spot,” and he made as though to close the door.
The young lady checked him. “If you really need tying up,” she said, “I’ll do it of course. I passed my First-Aid Exam, in the war.”
Coleman reopened the door. “Saved!” he said. “Come in.”
It had been Rosie’s original intention yesterday to go straight on from Mr. Mercaptan’s to Toto’s. She would see him at once, she would ask him what he meant by playing that stupid trick on her. She would give him a good talking to. She would even tell him that she would never see him again. But, of course, if he showed himself sufficiently contrite and reasonably explanatory, she would consent—oh, very reluctantly—to take him back into favour. In the free, unprejudiced circles in which she now moved, this sort of joke, she imagined, was a mere trifle. It would be absurd to quarrel seriously about it. But still, she was determined to give Toto a lesson.
When, however, she did finally leave Mr. Mercaptan’s delicious boudoir, it was too late to think of going all the way to Pimlico, to the address which Mr. Mercaptan had given her. She decided to put it off till the next day.
And so the next day, duly, she had set out for Pimlico—to Pimlico, and to see a man called Coleman! It seemed rather dull and second-rate after Sloane Street and Mr. Mercaptan. Poor Toto!—the sparkle of Mr. Mercaptan had made him look rather tarnished. That essay on the “Jus Primæ Noctis”—ah! Walking through the unsavoury mazes of Pimlico, she thought of it, and, thinking of it, smiled. Poor Toto! And also, she mustn’t forget, stupid, malicious, idiotic Toto! She had made up her mind exactly what she should say to him; she had even made up her mind what Toto would say to her. And when the scene was over they would go and dine at the Café Royal—upstairs, where she had never been. And she would make him rather jealous by telling him how much she had liked Mr. Mercaptan; but not too jealous. Silence is golden, as her father used to say when she used to fly into tempers and wanted to say nasty things to everybody within range. Silence, about some things, is certainly golden.
In the rather gloomy little turning off Lupus Street to which she had been directed, Rosie found the number, found, in the row of bells and cards, the name. Quickly and decidedly she mounted the stairs.
“Well,” she was going to say as soon as she saw him, “I thought you were a civilized being.” Mr. Mercaptan had dropped a hint that Coleman wasn’t really civilized; a hint was enough for Rosie. “But I see,” she would go on, “that I was mistaken. I don’t like to associate with boors.” The fastidious lady had selected him as a young poet, not as a ploughboy.
Well rehearsed, Rosie rang the bell. And then the door had opened on this huge bearded Cossack of a man, who smiled, who looked at her with bright, dangerous eyes, who quoted the Bible and who was bleeding like a pig. There was blood on his shirt, blood on his trousers, blood on his hands, bloody finger-marks on his face; even the blond fringe of his beard, she noticed, was dabbled here and there with blood. It was too much, at first, even for her aristocratic equanimity.
In the end, however, she followed him across a little vestibule into a bright, whitewashed room empty of all furniture but a table, a few chairs and a large box-spring and mattress, which stood like an island in the middle of the floor and served as bed or sofa as occasion required. Over the mantelpiece was pinned a large photographic reproduction of Leonardo’s study of the anatomy of love. There were no other pictures on the walls.