“It’s a change,” he said, smiling.
“Oh, it must be more than that,” she said.
“Why, you must feel a whole difference.
It’s a whole new life.”
He smiled, as if he were laughing at her silently.
She flushed.
“But isn’t it?” she persisted.
“Yes. It can be,” he replied.
He looked as if he were quietly amused, but dissociated.
None of the people in the box were quite real to
him. He was not really amused. Julia found
him dull, stupid. Tanny also was offended that
he could not perceive her. The men remained
practically silent.
“You’re a chap I always hoped would turn
up again,” said Jim.
“Oh, yes!” replied Aaron, smiling as if
amused.
“But perhaps he doesn’t like us!
Perhaps he’s not glad that we turned up,”
said Julia, leaving her sting.
The flautist turned and looked at her.
“You can’t REMEMBER us, can you?”
she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I can remember
you.”
“Oh,” she laughed. “You are
unflattering.”
He was annoyed. He did not know what she was
getting at.
“How are your wife and children?” she
asked spitefully.
“But you’ve been back to them?”
cried Josephine in dismay.
He looked at her, a slow, half smiling look, but did
not speak.
“Come and have a drink. Damn the women,”
said Jim uncouthly, seizing
Aaron by the arm and dragging him off.
The party stayed to the end of the interminable opera.
They had agreed to wait for Aaron. He was to
come around to the vestibule for them, after the show.
They trooped slowly down-stairs into the crush of
the entrance hall. Chattering, swirling people,
red carpet, palms green against cream-and-gilt walls,
small whirlpools of life at the open, dark doorways,
men in opera hats steering decisively about-it was
the old scene. But there were no taxis—absolutely
no taxis. And it was raining. Fortunately
the women had brought shoes. They slipped these
on. Jim rocked through the crowd, in his tall
hat, looking for the flautist.
At last Aaron was found—wearing a bowler
hat. Julia groaned in spirit. Josephine’s
brow knitted. Not that anybody cared, really.
But as one must frown at something, why not at the
bowler hat? Acquaintances and elegant young men
in uniforms insisted on rushing up and bowing and
exchanging a few words, either with Josephine, or
Jim, or Julia, or Lilly. They were coldly received.
The party veered out into the night.
The women hugged their wraps about them, and set off
sharply, feeling some repugnance for the wet pavements
and the crowd. They had not far to go—only
to Jim’s rooms in Adelphi. Jim was leading
Aaron, holding him by the arm and slightly pinching
his muscles. It gave him great satisfaction
to have between his fingers the arm-muscles of a working-man,
one of the common people, the fons et origo
of modern life. Jim was talking rather vaguely
about Labour and Robert Smillie, and Bolshevism.
He was all for revolution and the triumph of labour.
