When the storm had subsided, Philip felt like a sea-battered hulk, shorn of spars, incompetent to face wind and tide. The muscle of his left arm suffered peculiarly. Really, the way it had been wrenched and bruised was almost comical. As if his arm had espoused Blatchford and orated on the waste croft which his father had so persistently misnamed the "Public ways and the market-places." Poor old muscle! He dropped his forearm tenderly to see if the movement did not circle the upper arm with bracelets of fire. He took his shirt off and licked the coloured wound with his tongue, like an animal released from a trap. He stared into a jagged fragment of mirror, and seeing his face so grey and drawn burst unaccountably into a roar of laughter. He drowned the noise at once by biting his lip fiercely. "The Romance of a Brachial Muscle!" What a fine subject for a long narrative poem in countless cantos! Oh, by God, he was miserable! What was wrong with Life? Why were Life and he always at daggers drawn? He recapitulated the sum of his conscious crimes. He had once stolen carrots from the cellar, it was true! But equipoise had been asserted: he had been rewarded by an ample stomach-ache. And finally, when physical calm had been established, to round off his state with spiritual calm, he had bought two penn'orth of carrots and replaced them in the cellar. Also, he was bound to confess, he invariably kept his book open in school during the reciting of prepared passages. But then the boy behind him used his own collar as he himself used the collar of the boy in front. It wasn't really cheating because Gibson was such an ass in so many ways! Anyhow there was no doubt the world hated him. The world had always hated him. He had never got on with anybody in Angel Street. He had a filthy time at school, and then there was all this business, and oh, hell! what a rotten arm he had!
He had determined against committing suicide. He remembered once saying to his mother after a row, saying with a strange mordant humour, "Mother, I think it'll be happier for the whole family if I commit suicide!"
"If thou what? Speak plain!"
"Kill myself! Throw myself in the river!"
She had made no reply. She merely went to the sofa and sat trembling for a few minutes. She said "Feivel!" once, less with reproach than raw, ugly pain. All that day she did her housework unsteadily and said not a word to Philip. He hadn't liked it. No, it was better not to commit suicide. It savoured too imitatively, moreover, of the Mighty Atom, whom he had disliked. Then, in addition, the wife of somebody the watchmaker had recently tried it and succeeded. She obviously could have reaped no satisfaction from the episode. If only he could die accidentally! Would even that make his father sorry for his abominable treatment? The youthful corpse would lie on the parlour floor under a black cloth and everybody would sympathize frightfully with his mother and be pointedly chilly towards Reb Monash. Wouldn't he be sick about it! Wouldn't he ask God for another chance to behave like a decent sort of father, but all to no use! There would be his son's pale and romantic corpse lying stately beneath the cloth, with candles and things about. "Easeful Death," one of the poets said somewhere. That wasn't half strong enough. It was a triumph, a pageant! But it meant being carted off, didn't it, to the cold ground somewhere, and the weepers would go away and the candles be extinguished, and the rain would come down, and the coffin be sodden and fall away! That was where the worm-element came in, and with the worm-element he could pretend no sympathy; "where the worm became top-dog," as he had once brilliantly said in comment upon "And the play is the Tragedy, Man—the hero, the Conqueror—Worm!"
It was at this moment that the idea of running away occurred to him. He had lately been reading the triumphant career of a runner-away. Harry had once recommended running away, sceptically enough, but it would be tremendously interesting to take his casual advice seriously. He was quite definitely conscious how melodramatic the idea was, and just as conscious that he had already decided on its execution. The fellow in the book had performed no end of valiant deeds in fires, shipwrecks and revolutions. It was a thin book, duller even than Mr. Henty, whom he had long ago discarded. Of course, he was not going to be taken in by that sort of thing, but any proposal was more satisfactory than the shoutings and the bruised arms of which his life now was constituted.
It was settled! He was going to run away! When? Obviously now, at once! There was no point in to-morrow. To-morrow would be like yesterday. It was evening now. He'd set out and by the time night came ... Oh, there wasn't any need to worry about it! Something would happen. Something always happened, Yet everything was rather frighteningly vague. Was there any need to carry anything off with him? Doubtless it would be more independent and proud to go just as he was, and he wouldn't need an overcoat for months. Oh yes, he might as well stick that Shelley in his pocket. He would finish the "Revolt of Islam," though he had tried three times already. He lifted his injured arm to reach the book and dropped it again, wincing. He sat down before his rickety table, and wrote a brief note to his mother, slipped it into an envelope and descended into the kitchen. He looked mournfully and significantly upon his mother, murmuring to himself bitterly, "If she only knew!" He felt a disgraceful impulse to utter a loud howl of remorse, but manfully repressed it and, realizing that each moment in the kitchen endangered his resolution, went to the door. As he closed the door behind him, he dropped the envelope through.
He carefully examined his feelings. He was running away, wasn't he? It was the most dramatic moment in all his life. There had been psychological crises before, but here was something palpable, dramatic. He was putting himself into immediate communion with some of the choicest spirits of history or legend. Not many other chaps dared do this sort of thing. Then why on earth wasn't he more excited about it? His heart ought to be storming valiantly, but its workings seemed to respect their usual method and speed. He only felt a little dazed and stupid. He was under the ridiculous impression he was only acting! That was absurd, at such a crisis! The vague, the vast, into which he was adventuring, were not merely uninviting, they were, in some inexplicable fashion, not even there. Home and his father and his mother and his arm, all these were realities enough, and the only realities. But this running away, upon which at this very moment he was actually embarked, was a thin dream. And here was another reality, here was Channah coming down the street.
"Good-bye, Channah!" he said darkly.
"You're not off to a meeting?" she ventured confidently.