Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/444

436 watching the throng of varied bees which poise and hesitate outside the wild flowers, then swing in with a hum which sets everything aquiver. But still more fascinating it is to watch the come and go of people weaving and intermingling in the complex mesh of their intentions, with all the subtle grace and mystery of their moving, shapely bodies.

I sat still, looking out across the amphitheatre. George looked also, but he drank glass after glass of brandy.

“I like to watch the people,” said I.

“Ay—and doesn’t it seem an aimless, idiotic business—look at them!” he replied in tones of contempt. I looked instead at him, in some surprise and resentment. His face was gloomy, stupid and unrelieved. The amount of brandy he had drunk had increased his ill humour.

“Shall we be going?” I said. I did not want him to get drunk in his present state of mind.

“Ay—in half a minute,” he finished the brandy, and rose. Although he had drunk a good deal, he was quite steady, only there was a disagreeable look always on his face, and his eyes seemed smaller and more glittering than I had seen them. We took a bus to Victoria. He sat swaying on his seat in the dim, clumsy vehicle, saying not a word. In the vast cavern of the station the theatre-goers were hastening, crossing the pale grey strand, small creatures scurrying hither and thither in the space beneath the lonely lamps. As the train crawled over the river we watched the far-flung hoop of diamond lights curving slowly round and striping with bright threads the black water. He sat looking with heavy eyes,