Nielsen sipped his coffee, smoking quietly. He leant slightly forward, with his shoulders squared, his knees apart, and the rim of his hat pulled forward on his high forehead.
The café was nearly opposite the Hôtel Milano, which stood back from the road in its own garden. Nielsen watched the windows of the hotel, and the vague silhouettes of people’s figures against the lighted verandah. The lines of his pale, squarely-moulded face expressed a gently weary resignation, and he remained undisturbed by the wheeling of mosquitoes and the perpetual futile appearances of the unkempt Italian waiters.
That afternoon he had seen Jocelyn for the first time since the day at Bordighera. On that occasion he had been in earnest, with an earnestness that, upon reflection, had caused him surprise. He was aware that he would repeat his conduct under similar circumstances, but the idea of marriage had become so foreign to him in the course of his broken existence, that he was compelled to look upon himself as having deviated from the path of sanity. He had, moreover, been making love to women, more or less harmlessly, for so long, that an acquired cynicism informed him that these things were all a matter of degree, the end of the affair requiring a greater or less absence of the object of attraction. Man of the world, he acutely recognised that without a sustained and zealous siege he had no chance with Jocelyn; he salved his vanity by thinking that, with it, success was possible—even probable. In this way rebuff lost its sting, painful exertion became unnecessary.
The girl had a great attraction for him. She was always “in the picture,” her graceful personality was never marred by her surroundings. She had no taint of “insularity.” Without self-sufficiency, she seemed sufficient unto herself. All this appealed to the cosmopolitan in him. It was not too much to say, that she more nearly approached the persona grata of his fastidious imagination than any woman he had ever met. She was therefore dangerous, he reflected in her absence—in her presence he did not reflect at all, want of reflection in the presence of women having become habitual to him. At this particular moment he was profoundly puzzled.
He had found Jocelyn singularly absorbed, silent and unresponsive. She pleaded headache. Certainly she looked ill, but he had a disquieting feeling that there was something on her mind. She had sat dumb while he talked with her aunt, detailing gossip of the inner life of Monte Carlo, which the soul of that lady loved. When he spoke to her, she was distraite, and returned monosyllabic answers. He was not vain enough to attribute her manifest discomfort to his own presence, and, for the first time since he had known her, he came away without feeling the power of her attraction, experiencing instead a sensation of uneasiness and of curiosity, that was purely benevolent, and very characteristic.
He had dined at the café, and sat in the dusk waiting till the time for his return train.
A man walking hurriedly on the other side of the street went up through the gates of the hotel garden. Nielsen followed the figure negligently with his eyes, and saw it pass and repass the end of the verandah, and then stand motionless for a long time in the shadow of a tree. The faint inquisitiveness he felt in his movements died away presently in the countless, inconsequent reflections of one not compelled by circumstances to think steadily of any given thing. He yawned, looked at his watch, and throwing away his cigarette stepped out of the circle of light into the road leading to the railway station. As he did so, the man came suddenly down the garden path at a great pace, gesticulating with his clenched hands, passed close without seeing him, and hurried away in the direction of the town, muttering to himself. Nielsen stopped abruptly in recognition. He called after him—
“Hallo! Legard!” The man turned.
“Ah!” he said, “Good-night!”
His face was momentarily in the full glare of the café lights; the hat was slouched over it, but the line of his moustache was visible, black against the lower part. The movement of turning had seemed mechanical, the words sounded leaden. In another moment he was gone, walking faster than before, his shoulders hunched up to his ears in a way that suggested pain, and his hands thrust suddenly deep into his pockets as if to keep them still.