“You know,” he said, “I could never have gone if I’d once been in prison. That’s where they has you. If wishing could do it, you’ll have good luck. And if praying’s any good I don’t mind trying that, though I’m not much of a hand at it and out of practice.”
He gave René a crumpled dirty letter to Rita, and bade him tell her that his last thought was for her, and that when she came out he would be on the quay to meet her.
“I’ve told ’er in my letter it was you put a heart into me, guvnor. I’d been feeding on it that long it was nearly all eat away.”
At last the train moved—(René had taken him to the station with his few possessions, smuggled out under the very eyes of the policeman)—Joe leaped into his carriage and sang out:
“So long!”
“Good luck!” cried René, as he moved away through the crowd of tearful women and young men on the platform.
As he was leaving the station he met Kurt, just returned from a flying visit to Thrigsby. He explained that he had been called away on business or would have been round before to pay his promised visit.
“I told them at home I’d seen you. My mother turned on a face like a window-shutter—you know, the iron kind they have in Paris, and clank down in the small hours of the morning just to make sure no one shall sleep the night through. Funny old thing! I suppose she regards you as one dead. Silly thing to do, when I’d just told her you were very much alive. Linda was quite excited and started pumping up all sorts of emotions until I asked her how long it was since she had even thought of you. Then she stopped that game. She knows it isn’t any use with me. I once said to her, ‘My dear girl, if you really felt all the emotions you pretend to feel, you’d be dead in a week.’ I never could stand that sort of thing myself. She gets them out of books, you know, and really sometimes it is quite impressive, or would be, if it weren’t so disgustingly false. It is wonderful to feel things, but you can’t feel things all the time and be sane. No one can. One’s too busy. It’s beastly to make that sort of thing cheap as they do on the stage and in Linda’s mucky novels—Oh, she’s written another play, all about my mother this time. Well, after a bit she cooled down and I told her you were quite pleased with yourself, earning an humble but honest living. She wanted to know if you were alone. I said I didn’t know, but anyhow it wasn’t her affair. She agreed, and said that anything she might do wasn’t your affair either. Then she talked a great deal of nonsense about your being the New Man, with too much vitality and intellectual energy for the outworn institutions of a demoded society, and a lot more rot of that kind. The fact is, of course, that she prefers living without you and doesn’t want any fuss. The scandal had made her interesting to Thrigsby, and she can find all sorts of silly people there who want to be instructed in the art of being advanced, to think shocking things and to live without shocks of any kind. Linda’s shock is keeping quite a lot of people going. I told her I should see you again and she asked me to give you her love, and to say that she is quite happy and hopes you will go and see her play when it is acted in London by the Thrigsby Players. I say, you must have thought me a swine that day at Hendon. That was a Lord and a Lady. These people haven’t any manners, and one gets like them. I’m their particular pet just now. You should see me hobnobbing with Cabinet Ministers and theater managers. It is terrible how alike they are.”
“You’ll see a bit of difference if you come to Mitcham Mews,” said René.