Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (99 page)

"Come,
Soames!
pull
yourself
together!
This
isn't
a
mere
matter
of life
and
death.
It's
a
question
of
eternal
torment,
mind
you!
You
don't mean
to
say
you're
going
to
wait
limply
here
till
the
Devil
comes
to fetch
you?"

"I
can't
do
anything
else.
I've
no
choice."

"Come!
This
is
'trusting
and
encouraging'
with
a
vengeance!
This'
is
Diabolism
run
mad!"
I
filled
his
glass
with
wine.
"Surely,
now
that
you've
seen
the
brute
---
"

"It's
no
good
abusing
him."

"You
must
admit
there's
nothing
Miltonic
about
him,
Soames."

"I
don't
say
he's
not
rather
different
from
what
I
expected."

"He's
a
vulgarian,
he's
a
swell-mobsman,
he's
the
sort
of
man
who hangs
about
the
corridors
of
trains
going
to
the
Riviera
and
steals ladies'
jewel-cases.
Imagine
eternal
torment
presided
over
by
him.'"

"You
don't
suppose
I
look
forward
to
it,
do
you?"

"Then
why
not
slip
quietly
out
of
the
way?"

Again
and
again
I
filled
his
glass,
and
always,
mechanically,
he emptied
it;
but
the
wine
kindled
no
spark
of
enterprise
in
him.
He did
not
eat,
and
I
myself
ate
hardly
at
all.
I
did
not
in
my
heart
believe that
any
dash
for
freedom
could
save
him.
The
chase
would
be
swift, the
capture
certain.
But
better
anything
than
this
passive,
meek,
miserable
waiting.
I
told
Soames
that
for
the
honour
of
the
human
race he
ought
to
make
some
show
of
resistance.
He
asked
what
the
human race
had
ever
done
for
him.
"Besides,"
he
said,
"can't
you
understand that
I'm
in
his
power?
You
saw
him
touch
me,
didn't
you?
There's
an end
of
it.
I've
no
will.
I'm
sealed."

I
made
a
gesture
of
despair.
.He
went
on
repeating
the
word

"sealed." I began to realise that
the wine had clouded his brain. No wonder! Foodless he had gone into futurity,
foodless he still was. I urged him to eat at any rate some bread. It was
maddening to think that he, who had so much to tell, might tell nothing.
"How was it all," I asked, "yonder? Come! Tell me your
adventures."

"They'd make
first-rate 'copy,' wouldn't they?"

"I'm
awfully sorry for you, Soames, and I make all possible allowances; but what
earthly right have you to insinuate that I should make 'copy,' as you call it,
out of you?"

The
poor fellow pressed his hands to his forehead. "I don't know," he
said. "I had some reason, I know. . . . I'll try to remember."

"That's
right. Try to remember everything. Eat a little more bread. What did the reading-room
look like?"

"Much as usual,"
he at length muttered.

"Many people
there?"

"Usual sort of
number."

"What did they look
like?"

Soames tried to visualise them. "They
all," he presently remembered, "looked very like one another."
My mind took a fearsome leap. "All dressed in Jaeger?" "Yes. I
think so. Greyish-yellowish stuff."

"A
sort of uniform?" He nodded. "With a number on it, perhaps? —a number
on a large disc of metal sewn on to the left sleeve? DKF 78
,910—
that sort of thing?" It was even so. "And all of them—men and
women alike—looking very well-cared-for? very Utopian? and smelling rather
strongly of carbolic? and all of them quite hairless?" I was right every
time. Soames was only not sure whether the men and women were hairless or
shorn. "I hadn't time to look at them very closely," he explained.

"No, of course not. But
----------
"

"They
stared at me, I can tell you. I attracted a great deal of attention." At
last he had done that! "I think I rather scared them. They moved away
whenever I came near. They followed me about at a distance, wherever I went.
The men at the round desk in the middle seemed to have a sort of panic whenever
I went to make inquires."

"What did you do when
you arrived?"

Well,
he had gone straight to the catalogue, of course—to the S volumes—and had stood
long before SN-SOF, unable to take this
volume
out
of
the
shelf,
because
his
heart
was
beating
so.
.
.
.
At first,
he
said,
he
wasn't
disapponted—he
only
thought
there
was
some new
arrangement.
He
went
to
the
middle
desk
and
asked
where
the catalogue
of
twentieth-century
books
was
kept.
He
gathered
that
there was
still
only
one
catalogue.
Again
he
looked
up
his
name,
stared
at the
three
little
pasted
slips
he
had
known
so
well.
Then
he
went
and sat
down
for
a
long
time.
.
.
.