But Jonathan only answered, “A little love, a little kindness;” and he walked by his sister-in-law’s side.
Linda dropped into Beryl’s hammock under the manuka-tree, and Jonathan stretched himself on the grass beside her, pulled a long stalk and began chewing it. They knew each other well. The voices of children cried from the other gardens. A fisherman’s light cart shook along the sandy road, and from far away they heard a dog barking; it was muffled as though the dog had its head in a sack. If you listened you could just hear the soft swish of the sea at full tide sweeping the pebbles. The sun was sinking.
“And so you go back to the office on Monday, do you, Jonathan?” asked Linda.
“On Monday the cage door opens and clangs to upon the victim for another eleven months and a week,” answered Jonathan.
Linda swung a little. “It must be awful,” she said slowly.
“Would ye have me laugh, my fair sister? Would ye have me weep?”
Linda was so accustomed to Jonathan’s way of talking that she paid no attention to it.
“I suppose,” she said vaguely, “one gets used to it. One gets used to anything.”
“Does one? Hum!” The “Hum” was so deep it seemed to boom from underneath the ground. “I wonder how it’s done,” brooded Jonathan; “I’ve never managed it.”
Looking at him as he lay there, Linda thought again how attractive he was. It was strange to think that he was only an ordinary clerk, that Stanley earned twice as much money as he. What was the matter with Jonathan? He had no ambition; she supposed that was it. And yet one felt he was gifted, exceptional. He was passionately fond of music; every spare penny he had went on books. He was always full of new ideas, schemes, plans. But nothing came of it all. The new fire blazed in Jonathan; you almost heard it roaring softly as he explained, described and dilated on the new thing; but a moment later it had fallen in and there was nothing but ashes, and Jonathan went about with a look like hunger in his black eyes. At these times he exaggerated his absurd manner of speaking, and he sang in church—he was the leader of the choir—with such fearful dramatic intensity that the meanest hymn put on an unholy splendour.