“Might try the Empire, sir,” said George Prest.
“Taxi!” cried George Prest into the rain. And there was a taxi.
As Ivor was about to climb into it, he thrust his top-hat into the commissionaire’s hand. He pressed it on him.
“Keep it,” Ivor urged. “It’s quite a good one. My head wants air to-night and the damn thing keeps on getting between it and air. And I’d like you to have it, George. You can shove it into the cloak-room if you like, but if I were you I’d keep it. It’s not a bad hat, as hats go. You’ll need it when you retire....”
Not so sober as all that, after all! thought Ivor.
The Empire did not hold him for long. He tried, from the promenade, to see what was happening on the stage, but he found that it hurt his eyes to look, they were hot and burning. So he walked up and down for a while, and then sat down on one of the red plush sofas outside the bar. One should take an interest in human nature, he thought, and so he tried to take an interest in the passing crowd. But it was not impressive, that crowd. Of the men, several half-familiar faces nodded to him, and he decided that he must have known them at school. He watched them, and saw they hadn’t changed at all. They were a little pinker and less pimply, that’s all. That’s because pimples grow inwards, he thought. And they were talking to the women whom it had been their ambition, when at school, to talk to. Just like Transome. Dear old Transome.... Later on, when they were a bit more drunk, the women would get money from them, and there would be fumbling with love. Then the women would get more money from them. And to-morrow they would say that they had had a marvellous time—and it would be true, too! But if these harlots, thought Ivor, had anything even remotely resembling brains, and could hold a man when he was stone-cold-sober as well as when he was blind-drunk, they would long ago have been respectably married wives. A harlot is only interesting when she had won her way to respectability. All good harlots die in Mayfair, he thought. But these are no good at their jobs, that’s what it is, and that’s why they’re such crashing bores.
By a quarter-past ten he was in Leicester Square. And by half-past long strides had taken him past Hyde Park Corner—again! Yes, he was going to see Magdalen. He felt awfully ill, not only in his head, but all over, a burning kind of illness, and he wanted to tell Magdalen exactly how ill he was. His skin felt like a damp and unclean shirt. It was still raining, but not much, and it was nice walking bare-headed in the cool rain. It was the nicest part of this awful day, this quick walk. She would see how ill he was, and be sorry for him. Besides, he wanted her to tell him of a doctor; he would have to see a doctor, and to-night, maybe. Had influenza, probably—or worse. That thought pleased him, for she would be frightfully sorry for him. He longed for that, for her to be sorry for him....
Yes, she was in. From the road he could see the dim lights behind the curtains of the two windows of the “room of state.” Dim lights, naturally. Magdalen and he had always had dim lights when they were alone there, on that divan in the corner. Her eyes hated any light except sunlight, she said. That shaded lamp of hers—that “very shaded lamp”—gave a soft, sweet light, he could see the soft light of it in his mind as he stood in the deserted road and looked up at the windows. Then a taxi jerked round from Knightsbridge and moved him on to the pavement by the door. Well, it didn’t matter if she wasn’t alone. He wouldn’t go up, he only wanted to see her for a minute, just to ask her about a doctor. She would be sure to see him, she had never refused yet, anyway. If she did, he didn’t know what he would do, maybe he would go to Saint George’s Hospital nearby, disguised as an accident. The pain had somehow got to his side now, and hurt him when he breathed.
He rang the bell, and waited for a long time, but no one came to the door. He rang again, and heard the tinkle of the bell in the basement. And the third time he rang viciously, keeping his thumb on the button—and Magdalen stood in the open doorway!
“Ivor, it’s you!”