And she smiled, a provocative ‘there-you-are’ smile, not intended for her clapping enthusiastic spectators.
“Bravo, Peter! you’re a sport! Shame, Tommy, to be beaten by a girl!”
“And now to bed, every man Jack of you,” cried Mrs. Thorpe, who since five minutes had been listening with dread to the impatient tip-tap on the ceiling, of a best-bedroom boarder afflicted with insomnia.
“She cheated, twisting round like that, instead of goin’ straight on,” grumbled Tommy, in the hall. Like a great many humorous gentlemen, he could not take a beating.
And Peter turned on the stairs to remark tauntingly, “There, there, Master Tommy, never mind. We’ll say that you won, shall we?”
“I’ll make you pay for that, young lady!” Only half in earnest, but stung nevertheless by the laughter of his friends, he made a rush for his tormentor. She broke away from him, ran with dangerous swiftness to the room she usually occupied. She could hear Tommy panting at her heels; his breath, stale with cheap tobacco, on the back of her neck. “Go it, Tommy boy!” urged his companions from below. Peter clenched her hands; ‘pay for that’—she had a very clear idea how the Tommies of this world exact payment. She would not be kissed to-night, not ... again.
Putting on a spurt, she gained her room, crashed the door in his face, and turned the key in the lock. Tommy called through one or two witticisms, and strolled away to be consoled by his pals. Then Jinny knocked a final ‘good night’ and did Peter want anything? Peter wanted nothing. So Jinny too departed. A whispered exchange of banter on the landings; a loud guffaw; a flurry of feet.... Silence now in the house. Peter’s day was over, grey and white and pallor of gold. It had been a very long day. She was logged with sleep, as a water-logged boat that can no longer crawl for heaviness. Eyelids tumbling, fingers purely mechanical. Nothing was remembered, nothing existed save her longing for bed. Bed was a tangible thing and mattered very much. She was just aware, through formless drifting clouds whirling her mind to stupor, that it was just as well she should be physically so dead beat.
Light turned out, and head plunged among the pillows. It was sand that was weighing her down; heavy yellow sand; she could hear it trickling into the crevices and chinks and joints of her body; hear it like water among the reeds ... hear herself falling asleep.
And knew that before dawn she would awake, purged of her merciful weariness. Wake to the knowledge of a world without Stuart.