Sheraton's eyes, that had been so insistently veiled by decent society, as expressionless as a pair of marbles, were suddenly human; Sheraton's voice, which had been something like the shadow of a real voice, was suddenly full of feeling.
"Why, sir, of course I've noticed ... being with you before the war and all, and being fond of you, if you'll forgive my saying so, so that I always hoped that I'd come back to you. Why, if you ask me, sir, it's just the bloody war—that's all it is. I've felt something of the same kind myself. I'm getting over it a bit. It'll pass, sir. The war leaves you kind o' dead. People don't seem real any more. If you could get fond of some young lady, Mr. Duddon, I'm sure...."
"Thanks, Sheraton. I dare say you're right." He went out.
It was a horrible night. The March wind was tearing down Duke Street, hurling itself at the windows, plucking with its fingers at the doors, screaming and laughing down the chimneys. The decorous decencies of that staid bachelor St. James's world seemed to be nothing to its mood of wilful bad temper. Through the clamour of banging doors and creaking windows the bells of St. James's Church could be heard striking seven o'clock.
The rain was intermittent, and fell in sudden little gusts, like the subsiding agonies of a weeping child. Every once and again a thin wet wisp of a moon showed dimly grey through heavy piles of driving cloud. Tom found Bond Street almost deserted of foot passengers.
Buttoning his high blue collar up about his neck, he set himself to face the storm. The drive of the rain against his cheeks gave him some sort of dim satisfaction after the close warm comfort of his flat.
Somewhere, far, far away in him, a voice was questioning him as to why he had given Mrs. Matcham that money. The voice reminded him of what indeed he very well knew, that it was exactly like throwing water down a well, that it would do Millie Matcham no good, that it was wasted money.... Well, he didn't care. The voice was too far away, and altogether had too little concern with him to disturb him very deeply. Nothing disturbed him, damn it—nothing, nothing, nothing!
When he was almost upon Grosvenor Street, a sudden gust of wind drove at him so furiously that, almost without knowing what he was doing, instinctively he stepped back to take shelter beneath a wooden boarding. Here a street lamp gave a pale yellow colour to the dark shadows, and from its cover the street shot like a gleaming track of steel into the clustered lights of Oxford Street.
Tom was aware that two people had taken shelter in the same refuge. He peered at their dim figures. He saw at once that they were old—an old man and an old woman.
He did not know what it was that persuaded him to stare at them as though they could be of any importance to him. Nothing could be of any importance to him, and he was attracted, perhaps, rather by a kind of snivelling, sniffling noise that one of them made. The old lady—she had a terrible cold. She sneezed violently, and the old man uttered a scornful "chut-chut" like an angry, battered bird. Then he peered up at Tom and said in a complaining, whining voice: