Hobohemians

66He looked around the workroom. Here he had produced the finest antique furniture and metalwork to be seen in any of the museums of Europe. Seven workmen had bled years of his blood in their training. All that to be left because she had become what she must always have been. He would leave it all, shed, workmen, reputation. Let it rot. Let them puzzle out to whom it belonged, close it down, open it up, blow it up. There was just one thing remaining, to join his brother in Paris and tell him. Later he would see how easy it was to starve in a foreign language. He would never come back.

* * *

67Lotte stopped in her walk. The village in front was bright in the sunshine. Her brother halted.

68Viktor was saying at that moment as he sat washing himself in the waters of the Lago Maggiore: “You made a great mistake, well-brought-up Englishman. Never cast off a young healthy type like Lotte. If you had taken a tender farewell of her, we shouldn’t be hungry now. You don’t seem to bring out the devotion they are so willing to show on encouragement. If you had, we should have been opening registered letters every morning. That’s how Heinke gets about.”

69Lotte faced her brother. “What am I to do? I came home to tell you. I am going to have a baby. I think so.”

70“What are you going to do? Who are you going to do! You’re not going to let him get away with it?”

71“Him?”

72“The fellow. Who was it?”

73“I don’t know. I think it was an Englishman.”

74Brotherly disgust at its being an Englishman was boundless. . . . So boundless, he would see his doctor friend and arrange that contemptible offspring should be surgically mitigated. Then he would go out after this islander and force year-long weekly contribution to provision of utterly aborted baby. A truly English revenge. Lotte took his arm and agreed.

75Viktor was saying: “Let me tell you a girl in love is as good as a small income. The poorest can manage ten marks a week. And you throw that up. Where did we have our last meal? In Konstanz days ago.”

* * *

76The great hall of the Grange-aux-Belles shook to the tramp of vowels and consonants in platoon formation of mimic warfare. The International raised once more its final fight in welcoming ardours. A deputation of young workers recently returned from Russia sat on the platform, witnesses. Thunderous grew to-morrow in the song of the workers, louder, louder, that the flics [cops] in sullen silent ranks against neighbouring walls should hear affirmation of defiance. Ludmila, knee-tired with two hours standing, pressed still nearer the platform. The man, short, square, strong as a horse, introduced the delegation. Every word he said was to her fever and kiss. He spoke for twenty minutes. At the end of that time Ludmila, pushing, complaining with volubility, elbowing, screaming, forced her way through jellied proletariat, through ten, twenty, thirty minutes strangulation to the door.

77This was the third time she had seen him. Now she would set herself to meet him. Seeing the dull line of police, blackcaped, sinister-holstered, she stayed terrible hours till she could mix with the outpouring jubilant workers, intellectual fly in their honey.