In the hall, when she held out her hand, he wanted tremendously to squeeze it, to give her through his hand the message of sympathy which his tongue, intimidated by her manner, dared not give. But his hand also refused to obey him. The clasp was strictly ceremonious. As she was drawing the heavy latch of the door he forced himself to say, “I’m in Brighton sometimes, off and on. Now I know where you are, I must look you up.”
She made no answer. She merely said good night as he passed out into the street and the wind. The door banged.
Five.
Edwin took a long breath. He had seen her! Yes, but the interview had been worse than his worst expectations. He had surpassed himself in futility, in fatuous lack of enterprise. He had behaved liked a schoolboy. Now, as he plunged up the street with the wind, he could devise easily a dozen ways of animating and guiding and controlling the interview so that, even if sad, its sadness might have been agreeable. The interview had been hell, ineffable torture, a perfect crime of clumsiness. It had resulted in nothing. (Except, of course, that he had seen her—that fact was indisputable.) He blamed himself. He cursed himself with really extraordinary savageness.
“Why did I go near her?” he demanded. “Why couldn’t I keep away? I’ve simply made myself look a blasted fool! Creeping and crawling round her! ... After all, she did throw me over! And now she asks me to take a parcel to her confounded kid! The whole thing’s ridiculous! And what’s going to happen to her in that hole? I don’t suppose she’s got the least notion of looking after herself. Impossible—the whole thing! If anybody had told me that I should—that she’d—” Half of which talk was simple bluster. The parcel was bobbing on its loop against his side.
When he reached the top of the street he discovered that he had been going up it instead of down it. “What am I thinking of?” he grumbled impatiently. However, he would not turn back. He adventured forward, climbing into latitudes whose geography was strange to him, and scarcely seeing a single fellow-wanderer beneath the gas-lamps. Presently, after a steep hill, he came to a churchyard, and then he redescended, and at last tumbled into a street alive with people who had emerged from a theatre, laughing, lighting cigarettes, linking arms. Their existence seemed shallow, purposeless, infantile, compared to his. He felt himself superior to them. What did they know about life? He would not change with any of them.
Recognising the label on an omnibus, he followed its direction, and arrived almost immediately in the vast square which contained his hotel, and which was illuminated by the brilliant façades of several hotels. The doors of the Royal Sussex were locked, because eleven o’clock had struck. He could not account for the period of nearly three hours which had passed since he left the hotel. The zealous porter, observing his shadow through the bars, had sprung to unfasten the door before he could ring.