"She said—it was finish between you. She's a little rotter, Cosgrave."
"She made me laugh," Cosgrave said simply. "I don't mind about the exam.—or about anything now. I suppose I was bound to fail. But I was so jolly happy. I'd never had a good time like that. It's all over now. She doesn't care. She said she couldn't be tied up with a lot of trouble. That's what I am. A lot of trouble. It was all bunkum—make-believe—to think I could be anything else."
So it wasn't his failure. It wasn't even the loss of a good-for-nothing chorus-girl. It was a loss far more subtle. The recognition of it lamed Robert Stonehouse, knocked the power out of him, as though someone had struck and paralysed a vital nerve centre. He could only stammer futilely:
"She's not worth bothering about."
Cosgrave slumped back into his chair. His hands lay on the table, half clenched as though they had let go and didn't care any more. He looked at Robert wide-eyed with a sudden absolute knowledge.
"That's it," he said. "Not worth bothering about—nothing in this whole beastly, rotten, world. . . . . ."
3
A convenient uncle found him a berth as clerk to a trading firm in West Africa, and with a cheap Colonial outfit and 10 pounds in his pocket, Cosgrave set out for the particular swamp which was to be the scene of his future career. He went docilely, with limp handshakes and dull, pathetic eyes. If he betrayed any feeling at all, it was a sort of relief at getting away from everybody. But emotionally he was dead—like cheap champagne gone flat, as he expressed it in one twisted mood of self-revelation.
Probably he was thinking of Connie Edwards and of their last spree together.
But he never spoke of her.