The Reef Page 8

  VIII

  All day, since the late reluctant dawn, the rain had come down intorrents. It streamed against Darrow's high-perched windows, reducedtheir vast prospect of roofs and chimneys to a black oily huddle, andfilled the room with the drab twilight of an underground aquarium.

  The streams descended with the regularity of a third day's rain, whentrimming and shuffling are over, and the weather has settled down to doits worst. There were no variations of rhythm, no lyrical ups and downs:the grey lines streaking the panes were as dense and uniform as a pageof unparagraphed narrative.

  George Darrow had drawn his armchair to the fire. The time-table hehad been studying lay on the floor, and he sat staring with dullacquiescence into the boundless blur of rain, which affected him like avast projection of his own state of mind. Then his eyes travelled slowlyabout the room.

  It was exactly ten days since his hurried unpacking had strewn it withthe contents of his portmanteaux. His brushes and razors were spread outon the blotched marble of the chest of drawers. A stack of newspapershad accumulated on the centre table under the "electrolier", and half adozen paper novels lay on the mantelpiece among cigar-cases and toiletbottles; but these traces of his passage had made no mark on thefeatureless dulness of the room, its look of being the makeshift settingof innumerable transient collocations. There was something sardonic,almost sinister, in its appearance of having deliberately "made up" forits anonymous part, all in noncommittal drabs and browns, with acarpet and paper that nobody would remember, and chairs and tables asimpersonal as railway porters.

  Darrow picked up the time-table and tossed it on to the table. Then herose to his feet, lit a cigar and went to the window. Through the rainhe could just discover the face of a clock in a tall building beyond therailway roofs. He pulled out his watch, compared the two time-pieces,and started the hands of his with such a rush that they flew past thehour and he had to make them repeat the circuit more deliberately. Hefelt a quite disproportionate irritation at the trifling blunder. Whenhe had corrected it he went back to his chair and threw himself down,leaning back his head against his hands. Presently his cigar went out,and he got up, hunted for the matches, lit it again and returned to hisseat.

  The room was getting on his nerves. During the first few days, whilethe skies were clear, he had not noticed it, or had felt for it only thecontemptuous indifference of the traveller toward a provisional shelter.But now that he was leaving it, was looking at it for the last time,it seemed to have taken complete possession of his mind, to be soakingitself into him like an ugly indelible blot. Every detail pressed itselfon his notice with the familiarity of an accidental confidant: whicheverway he turned, he felt the nudge of a transient intimacy...

  The one fixed point in his immediate future was that his leave was overand that he must be back at his post in London the next morning. Withintwenty-four hours he would again be in a daylight world of recognizedactivities, himself a busy, responsible, relatively necessary factor inthe big whirring social and official machine. That fixed obligationwas the fact he could think of with the least discomfort, yet for someunaccountable reason it was the one on which he found it most difficultto fix his thoughts. Whenever he did so, the room jerked him back intothe circle of its insistent associations. It was extraordinary with whata microscopic minuteness of loathing he hated it all: the grimy carpetand wallpaper, the black marble mantel-piece, the clock with a giltallegory under a dusty bell, the high-bolstered brown-counterpaned bed,the framed card of printed rules under the electric light switch, andthe door of communication with the next room. He hated the door most ofall...

  At the outset, he had felt no special sense of responsibility. He wassatisfied that he had struck the right note, and convinced of his powerof sustaining it. The whole incident had somehow seemed, in spite of itsvulgar setting and its inevitable prosaic propinquities, to be enactingitself in some unmapped region outside the pale of the usual. It was notlike anything that had ever happened to him before, or in which he hadever pictured himself as likely to be involved; but that, at first, hadseemed no argument against his fitness to deal with it.

  Perhaps but for the three days' rain he might have got away without adoubt as to his adequacy. The rain had made all the difference. It hadthrown the whole picture out of perspective, blotted out the mysteryof the remoter planes and the enchantment of the middle distance, andthrust into prominence every commonplace fact of the foreground. It wasthe kind of situation that was not helped by being thought over; andby the perversity of circumstance he had been forced into the unwillingcontemplation of its every aspect...

  His cigar had gone out again, and he threw it into the fire and vaguelymeditated getting up to find another. But the mere act of leaving hischair seemed to call for a greater exertion of the will than he wascapable of, and he leaned his head back with closed eyes and listened tothe drumming of the rain.

  A different noise aroused him. It was the opening and closing ofthe door leading from the corridor into the adjoining room. He satmotionless, without opening his eyes; but now another sight forceditself under his lowered lids. It was the precise photographic pictureof that other room. Everything in it rose before him and pressed itselfupon his vision with the same acuity of distinctness as the objectssurrounding him. A step sounded on the floor, and he knew which way thestep was directed, what pieces of furniture it had to skirt, where itwould probably pause, and what was likely to arrest it. He heard anothersound, and recognized it as that of a wet umbrella placed in the blackmarble jamb of the chimney-piece, against the hearth. He caught thecreak of a hinge, and instantly differentiated it as that of thewardrobe against the opposite wall. Then he heard the mouse-like squealof a reluctant drawer, and knew it was the upper one in the chest ofdrawers beside the bed: the clatter which followed was caused by themahogany toilet-glass jumping on its loosened pivots...

  The step crossed the floor again. It was strange how much better he knewit than the person to whom it belonged! Now it was drawing near the doorof communication between the two rooms. He opened his eyes and looked.The step had ceased and for a moment there was silence. Then he hearda low knock. He made no response, and after an interval he saw thatthe door handle was being tentatively turned. He closed his eyes oncemore...

  The door opened, and the step was in the room, coming cautiously towardhim. He kept his eyes shut, relaxing his body to feign sleep. Therewas another pause, then a wavering soft advance, the rustle of a dressbehind his chair, the warmth of two hands pressed for a moment on hislids. The palms of the hands had the lingering scent of some stuff thathe had bought on the Boulevard...He looked up and saw a letter fallingover his shoulder to his knee...

  "Did I disturb you? I'm so sorry! They gave me this just now when I camein."

  The letter, before he could catch it, had slipped between his knees tothe floor. It lay there, address upward, at his feet, and while he satstaring down at the strong slender characters on the blue-gray envelopean arm reached out from behind to pick it up.

  "Oh, don't--DON'T" broke from him, and he bent over and caught the arm.The face above it was close to his.

  "Don't what?"

  ----"take the trouble," he stammered.

  He dropped the arm and stooped down. His grasp closed over the letter,he fingered its thickness and weight and calculated the number of sheetsit must contain.

  Suddenly he felt the pressure of the hand on his shoulder, and becameaware that the face was still leaning over him, and that in a moment hewould have to look up and kiss it...

  He bent forward first and threw the unopened letter into the middle ofthe fire.

  BOOK II