And fast into this perilous gulf of night walked Bosinney, and fast
after him walked George. If the fellow meant to put his 'twopenny' under
a 'bus, he would stop it if he could! Across the street and back the
hunted creature strode, not groping as other men were groping in that
gloom, but driven forward as though the faithful George behind wielded
a knout; and this chase after a haunted man began to have for George the
strangest fascination.
But it was now that the affair developed in a way which ever afterwards
caused it to remain green in his mind. Brought to a stand-still in the
fog, he heard words which threw a sudden light on these proceedings.
What Mrs. Soames had said to Bosinney in the train was now no longer
dark. George understood from those mutterings that Soames had exercised
his rights over an estranged and unwilling wife in the greatest--the
supreme act of property.
His fancy wandered in the fields of this situation; it impressed him;
he guessed something of the anguish, the sexual confusion and horror in
Bosinney's heart. And he thought: 'Yes, it's a bit thick! I don't wonder
the poor fellow is half-cracked!'
He had run his quarry to earth on a bench under one of the lions in
Trafalgar Square, a monster sphynx astray like themselves in that gulf
of darkness. Here, rigid and silent, sat Bosinney, and George, in whose
patience was a touch of strange brotherliness, took his stand behind.
He was not lacking in a certain delicacy--a sense of form--that did not
permit him to intrude upon this tragedy, and he waited, quiet as the
lion above, his fur collar hitched above his ears concealing the fleshy
redness of his cheeks, concealing all but his eyes with their sardonic,
compassionate stare. And men kept passing back from business on the way
to their clubs--men whose figures shrouded in cocoons of fog came
into view like spectres, and like spectres vanished. Then even in his
compassion George's Quilpish humour broke forth in a sudden longing to
pluck these spectres by the sleeve, and say:
"Hi, you Johnnies! You don't often see a show like this! Here's a poor
devil whose mistress has just been telling him a pretty little story of
her husband; walk up, walk up! He's taken the knock, you see."
In fancy he saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned as he
thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled by the state
of his own affections to catch an inkling of what was going on within
Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth getting wider and wider, and
the fog going down and down. For in George was all that contempt of
the of the married middle-class--peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike
spirits in its ranks.