“How should I know why?—he looked fairly all right from the top—but the poor little fellow begged me with the tears in his eyes—he hasn’t got one in his flat—and they’re so particular at the Napoli—I couldn’t refuse him, could I, Deb? He might lose his job. Besides, he’s such a little gentleman at heart—listen to him splashing so that he shouldn’t have to hear what I’m saying? I like that, don’t you, Deb? It shows nice feeling. And of course, he couldn’t lock the door because it doesn’t lock. You might have walked right in and how would he have felt then? The landlord never left me the key, and I can’t ask him for special favours because he’s so crazy about me he might take advantage—common little sand-worm—I was just telling Antonia——”
“I would hardly call it a special favour to ask for the key of your bathroom door.” Antonia’s voice, soft and amused, dropped like cool respite into Zoe’s loud insistent gabble.
Zoe’s conversational ability was a Juggernaut to her friends; it rolled on and on, destroying in its eternal passage those rash victims who hurled themselves beneath the wheels. Nothing could stop its course, not night nor anguish, nor the kettle boiling over, nor the tailor’s family doing murder on the landing below. It could not be ignored, nor suffered as accompaniment to other deeds. It claimed hypnotized attention, and by a perpetual insertion of “didn’t I?” “well, don’t you agree?” “What do you think?” exacted response, and exacting, passed over and crushed it.
And yet she was such a jolly little person, with a wide-eyed tip-tilted air of a seraphim just introduced into the Café Royal and anxious to get the hang of the place; tumbled silvery curls; and sleeves now rolled up to show a plump allure of forearm and elbow.
“Pinto is coming to supper, we’ve got to make up a quarrel, which means that he’ll throw the furniture about, especially if his crab salad isn’t just right, so I simply can’t come in and talk to you, girls, but I can hear you quite well, so do go on telling about Cliffe, Deb; was he almost human? I mean, did he make love to you? don’t say he did ... I like having Cliffe about the flat to remind myself that a man exists who can walk, breathe and eat and wash himself quite nicely, like other men—and yet not want to kiss me. He doesn’t, you know—it’s so funny, isn’t it, Antonia? It never seems to strike him. I’ve sat on the arm of his chair and pouted at him, and stroked his head, and told him how lonely and miserable I was, and how Pinto had left me for good and it’s so hard for a girl alone, and I’ve rubbed off all the lip salve because he doesn’t like it, and drawn his attention to the fact—and still it doesn’t seem to strike him. Sometimes I wonder if something is broken inside him—No, I don’t mean ‘Wear one of Our Belts and lift the Grand Piano’ sort of thing—I meant a kind of moral spring. Because even the post-office man round the corner—it’s perfectly awful—he’s simply crazy about me, and I don’t know what to do, because one must have stamps, mustn’t one? I never dreamt he felt like that about me till yesterday when I went in to phone, and he pretended the penny-box was out of order, and came in to help me, and—well, there I was in the dark alone with him, and he was whispering in one ear about every part of me separately—really appreciative, I must say—and Timothy Fawcett bawling ‘Hello’ from the other end into my right ear—What was I to do? I didn’t know men were like that, did you, Deb?”
“There was no marked change for the worse in Cliffe’s behaviour,” Deb replied to Zoe’s question of ten minutes ago. “In fact, it was depressingly like spending the night with one’s great-aunt. He sent me up to bed at a quarter to ten, and then went for a short walk in the rain——”
“Wrestling with his evil passions, I hope—oh, Deb, do say he was wrestling, and that his better self prevailed in the end.”
“It must have, because I saw no more of him till he banged at my door with a morning carol, and no hot water. And I didn’t know men were like that, did you, Zoe?...”
Antonia said: “Cliffe will revise the episode, bind it, and illustrate it, with a preface, and additional notes, and alterations in the original text——”
“Oh, I’m prepared to meet it again, looking like Ophelia dressed by Paquin for the mad-scene. He’ll boom it for a fortnight, and then forget it. Cliffe never bothers to prop up his lies, once he’s tired of them; he lets them crawl about and go bad.”