" She echoed softly:
"Sleep well" and from the cab window, already moving away, he saw her
face screwed round towards him, and her hand put out in a gesture which
seemed to linger.
He sought his room slowly. They never gave him the same, and he could
not get used to these 'spick-and-spandy' bedrooms with new furniture and
grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink roses. He was wakeful
and that wretched Habanera kept throbbing in his head.
His French had never been equal to its words, but its sense he knew, if
it had any sense, a gipsy thing--wild and unaccountable. Well, there was
in life something which upset all your care and plans--something which
made men and women dance to its pipes. And he lay staring from deep-sunk
eyes into the darkness where the unaccountable held sway. You thought
you had hold of life, but it slipped away behind you, took you by the
scruff of the neck, forced you here and forced you there, and then,
likely as not, squeezed life out of you! It took the very stars like
that, he shouldn't wonder, rubbed their noses together and flung them
apart; it had never done playing its pranks. Five million people in
this great blunderbuss of a town, and all of them at the mercy of that
Life-Force, like a lot of little dried peas hopping about on a board
when you struck your fist on it.
Pages:
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418