to get married. It was 'too much fag', Hermione always said. She was rich, of course, or rather her people were. He thought of her shoulders, wide, smooth and young, that seemed to rise out of her clothes like a mermaid rising from the sea; and her skin and hair, which were somehow warm and sleepy, like a wheatfield in the sun. Hermione always yawned at the mention of Socialism, and refused even to read Antichrist. 'Don't talk to me about the lower classes,' she used to say. 'I hate them. They smell.' And Ravelston adored her.
'Of course women are a difficulty,' he admitted.
'They're more than a difficulty, they're a bloody curse. That is, if you've got no money. A woman hates the sight of you if you've got no money.'
'I think that's putting it a little too strongly. Things aren't so crude as all that.'
Gordon did not listen. 'What rot it is to talk about Socialism or any other ism when women are what they are! The only thing a woman ever wants is money; money for a house of her own and two babies and Drage furniture and an aspidistra. The only sin they can imagine is not wanting to grab money. No woman ever judges a man by anything except his income. Of course she doesn't put it to herself like that. She says he's such a nice man—meaning that he's got plenty of money. And if you haven't got money you aren't nice. You're dishonoured, somehow. You've sinned. Sinned against the aspidistra.'
'You talk a great deal about aspidistras,' said Ravelston.
'They're a dashed important subject,' said Gordon.
Ravelston rubbed his nose and looked away uncomfortably.
'Look here, Gordon, you don't mind my asking—have you got a girl of your own?'
'Oh, Christ! Don't speak of her!'
He began, nevertheless, to talk about Rosemary. Ravelston had never met Rosemary. At this moment Gordon could not even remember what Rosemary was like. He could not remember how fond he was of her and she of him, how happy they always were together on the rare occasions when they could meet, how patiently she put up with his almost intolerable ways. He remembered nothing save that she would not sleep with him and that it was now a week since she had even written. In the dank night air, with beer inside him, he felt himself a forlorn, neglected creature. Rosemary was 'cruel' to him—that was how he saw it. Perversely, for the mere pleasure of tormenting himself and making Ravelston uncomfortable, he began to invent an imaginary character for Rosemary. He built up a picture of her as a callous creature who was amused by him and yet half despised him, who played with him and kept him at arm's length, and who would nevertheless fall into his arms if only he had a little more money. And Ravelston, who had never met Rosemary, did not altogether disbelieve him. He broke in:
'But I say, Gordon, look here. This girl, Miss—Miss Waterlow, did you say her name was?—Rosemary; doesn't she care for you at all, really?'
Gordon's conscience pricked him, though not very deeply. He could not say that Rosemary did not care for him.
'Oh, yes, she does care for me. In her own way, I dare say she cares for me quite a lot. But not enough, don't you see. She can't, while I've got no money. It's all money.'
'But surely money isn't so important as all that? After all, there are other things.'
'What other things? Don't you see that a man's whole personality is bound up with his income? His personality is his income. How can you be attractive to a girl when you've got no money? You can't wear decent clothes, you can't take her out to dinner or to the theatre or away for week-ends, you can't carry a cheery, interesting atmosphere about with you. And it's rot to say that kind of thing doesn't matter. It does. If you haven't got money there isn't even anywhere where you can meet. Rosemary and I never meet except in the streets or in picture galleries. She lives in some foul women's hostel, and my bitch of a landlady won't allow women in the house. Wandering up and down beastly wet streets—that's what Rosemary associates me with. Don't you see how it takes the gilt off everything?'
Ravelston was distressed. It must be pretty bloody when you haven't even the money to take your girl out. He tried to nerve himself to say something, and failed. With guilt, and also with desire, he thought of Hermione's body, naked, like a ripe warm fruit. With any luck she would have dropped in at the flat this evening. Probably she was waiting for him now. He thought of the unemployed in Middlesbrough. Sexual starvation is awful among the unemployed. They were nearing the flat. He glanced up at the windows. Yes, they were lighted up. Hermione must be there. She had her own latchkey.
As they approached the flat Gordon edged closer to Ravelston. Now the evening was ending, and he must part from Ravelston, whom he adored, and go back to his foul lonely bedroom. And all evenings ended in this way; the return through dark streets to the lonely room, the womanless bed. And Ravelston would say 'Come up, won't you?' and Gordon, in duty bound, would say, 'No.' Never stay too long with those you love—another commandment of the moneyless.
They halted at the foot of the steps. Ravelston laid his gloved hand on one of the iron spearheads of the railing.
'Come up, won't you!' he said without conviction.
'No, thanks. It's time I was getting back.'
Ravelston's fingers tightened round the spearhead. He pulled as though to go up, but did not go. Uncomfortably, looking over Gordon's head into the distance, he said:
'I say, Gordon, look here. You won't be offended if I say something?'
'What?'
'I say, you know. I hate that business about you and your girl. Not being able to take her out, and all that. It's bloody, that kind of thing.'
'Oh, it's nothing, really.'
As soon as he heard Ravelston say that it was 'bloody', he knew that he had been exaggerating. He wished that he had not talked in that silly self-pitiful way. One says these things, with the feeling that one cannot help saying them, and afterwards one is sorry.
'I dare say I exaggerate,' he said.
'I say, Gordon, look here. Let me lend you ten quid. Take the girl out to dinner a few times. Or away for the week-end, or something. It might make all the difference. I hate to think——'
Gordon frowned bitterly, almost fiercely. He had stepped a pace back, as though from a threat or an insult. The terrible thing was that the temptation to say 'Yes' had almost overwhelmed him. There was so much that ten quid would do! He had a fleeting vision of Rosemary and himself at a restaurant table—a bowl of grapes and peaches, a bowing hovering waiter, a wine bottle dark and dusty in its wicker cradle.
'No fear!' he said.
'I do wish you would. I tell you I'd like to lend it you.'
'Thanks. But I prefer to keep my friends.'
'Isn't that rather—well, rather a bourgeois kind of thing to say?'
'Do you think it would be borrowing if I took ten quid off you! I couldn't pay it back in ten years.'
'Oh, well! It wouldn't matter so very much.' Ravelston looked away. Out it had got to come—the disgraceful, hateful admission that he found himself forced so curiously often to make! 'You know, I've got quite a lot of money.'
'I know you have. That's exactly why I won't borrow off you.'
'You know, Gordon, sometimes you're just a little bit—well, pig-headed.'
'I dare say. I can't help it.'
'Oh, well! Good night, then.'
'Good night.'
Ten minutes later Ravelston rode southward in a taxi, with Hermione. She had been waiting for him, asleep or half asleep in one of the monstrous armchairs in front of the sitting-room fire. Whenever there was nothing particular to do, Hermione always fell asleep as promptly as an animal, and the more she slept the healthier she became. As he came across to her she woke and stretched herself with voluptuous, sleepy writhings, half smiling, half yawning up at him, one cheek and bare arm rosy in the firelight. Presently she mastered her yawns to greet him:
'Hullo, Philip! Where have