“That’s all,” he said, returning the paper to be dropped into the fire.
“What was in the letter?” asked Mrs. Beeton, when Alf returned.
“I don’t know. I think it was a circular or a tract about not whistlin’ at everything when you’re young.”
“I must have stepped on something when I was alive and walking about and it has bounced up and hit me. God help it, whatever it is—unless it was all a joke. But I don’t know any one who’d take the trouble to play a joke on me.... Love and loyalty for nothing. It sounds tempting enough.
I wonder whether I have lost anything really?”
Dick considered for a long time but could not remember when or how he had put himself in the way of winning these trifles at a woman’s hands.
Still, the letter as touching on matters that he preferred not to think about stung him into a fit of frenzy that lasted for a day and night. When his heart was so full of despair that it would hold no more, body and soul together seemed to be dropping without check through the darkness.
Then came fear of darkness and desperate attempts to reach the light again. But there was no light to be reached. When that agony had left him sweating and breathless, the downward flight would recommence till the gathering torture of it spurred him into another fight as hopeless as the first. Followed some few minutes of sleep in which he dreamed that he saw. Then the procession of events would repeat itself till he was utterly worn out and the brain took up its everlasting consideration of Maisie and might-have-beens.
At the end of everything Mr. Beeton came to his room and volunteered to take him out. “Not marketing this time, but we’ll go into the Parks if you like.”
“Be damned if I do,” quoth Dick. “Keep to the streets and walk up and down. I like to hear the people round me.”