Sunflower by Rebecca West Page A

there? Old Woodruff. I haven’t seen him since the Amritsar business. He was very friendly. He asked after you. We are the most official pair of sinners that ever were. I’m dining with him on Thursday, just ourselves. Hm. What about going to bed?’ He wanted it to be like that with Hurrell, whom she remembered now he had known not very well, but for a long time. He had told her once that they had sat together for the same examination at some very early stage in their careers, and had gone off in company at the lunch-hour and eaten bread and cheese in a public house, united by the link, which was not alluded to then and never had been since, that they were both wearing suits of clothes which they had outgrown to a ridiculous degree. It occurred to her that this must have happened years before she was born. This somehow brought tears to her eyes. It was as if she saw him sitting alone among long shadows.
    She must see to it that he met Hurrell; but she must not give away that he wanted to, for he was ashamed of these ordinary emotions, as one would have thought he would have been ashamed of his bad temper and injustice, and as he was not. So she looked at Etta and Francis Pitt, as if she thought them very interesting and charming people, though at that moment she was not thinking about them at all; she seemed as if she were going to say something, but bit it back, and then could not help herself, and said naïvely, as if begging him to let her go to this nice party, ‘We could go, couldn’t we?’ It was queer how she could act better off the stage than on it; she supposed it was because the motive was stronger. She couldn’t be expected to want to please an audience of people she didn’t know as much as she would want to please Essington.
    ‘There you see,’ said Francis Pitt, ‘Miss Fassendyll wants you to do it. That settles it. You’re coming to meet Hurrell.’
    ‘These women,’ protested Essington, ‘these women know nothing of the stern moral passion of our sex. I quarrelled with Hurrell on a matter of high moral principle, my dear.’ He looked happier already.
    ‘And you’ll make it up with him on my Mumm 1901, which is a darn sight better,’ said Francis Pitt, with that strange, deep, over-acted chuckle. ‘I’m all with the women on this and many other matters. Nix on moral passion for me. Now, when will you come up? Etta, when are we free? Well, we needn’t bother about that. It’s for you to say.’
    ‘Next week, you said, didn’t you? Monday … Tuesday …’ He seemed to reflect deeply, though nowadays he had not so very many engagements; and finally suggested, in a burst, ‘Look here, what about this Friday? As a matter of fact it would suit me better than next week, just as it happens.’
    ‘This Friday? That’s fine. At half past eight. I count on you for that.’
    Etta murmured, ‘What about the Dartreys?’
    Pitt made a sweeping, advertising gesture. ‘Put them off! I know now what I want to do on Friday evening!’ He drank deeply, and brought down the glass smartly on the table. ‘Ah, this’ll help Hurrell to throw off his cold.’
    ‘Has he a cold?’ asked Essington. She could see that now he was letting himself be eager for news of Hurrell.
    ‘If you asked him tonight he’d tell you he was dying of one. He’s an old woman about himself, God bless him. He’s gone off to bed this evening with a face as long as a fiddle because he’s got an ordinary cold on his chest.’ Again he chuckled, and twirled the stem of his glass between his thick fingers. For a moment he seemed to Sunflower like a tired actor who is getting through the evening on his technique; but that was absurd, for vitality was plainly the thing that he had got. He was the most self-possessed and male person she had ever met.
    ‘Well, I think he really is ill,’ said Etta obstinately, re-starting a discussion.
    ‘Fiddlesticks! I’m often as ill as that,’ her brother interrupted, rather suddenly. A