Джон Пристли - Benighted

"Amusing!" He thought he saw her pull a face at him. "I like your idea of amusement."

His fingers touched something smooth and cold. It was the flask. He'd forgotten that too. "There's just a spot left," he said, shaking it. "You have it."

"Don't want it, thanks. Finish it yourself."

"Shall I? Or shall I keep it for an emergency? Or is this an emergency? Tell me that."

"You just said it wasn"t, didn't you, Mr. Clever Man? But hurry up and finish it." She leaned sideways against the cushions, her face turned towards him. "I believe I want to go to sleep," she yawned. "I'll be off in a minute." But inside she didn't feel a bit sleepy, all excited.

"If you went to sleep, something tremendous would happen and then you'd miss it." He went rambling on while he slowly unscrewed the flask. "You might wake up to find the water an inch from your chin and trout darting under your arms. Then again, of course, you might wake up to find that you weren't here at all but crossing Piccadilly Circus to catch the last Tube train."

"And where would you be?"

"Nowhere at all. You'd have just dreamt me. You know how people you've seen only once or twice, as you saw me, pop up in your dreams and become quite important. Well, I should be one of them."

"I don't want to wake up in Piccadilly Circus then."

"Why?" He looked at her above the flask.

"Because I like you."

"And by rain, by darkness, and by Sir Roderick Femm himself," he cried, "I like you too! I feel this is a great and solemn moment. You're sure you don't want any of this whisky?"

"Yes, I told you I didn"t."

"Then it must be put to an even nobler purpose than that of helping to rot my liver."

"What are you going to do? Something crazy, I'll bet. I can see it coming."

"I'm going to sacrifice it – the last drop too, mind, and I'm coldish – to celebrate this moment. I'll address a few remarks, we won't call it a prayer, to the gods, and then I'll pour it out as an offering, a libation. How's this?" He sat bolt upright. "Oh, gods of light and beauty and happiness," he began, in rich, vibrating tones, "crowned with flowers in eternal May, hear the cry that comes from the little world that you have left so long unvisited. Behold two mortals whose hearts were fashioned for your service but who sit in a darkness within a darkness, homeless, lost, the black water rising round them – - "

"I shall want to weep in a minute," she interrupted. "You ought to go on the stage, Roger."

"I am on the stage, Gladys. I'm on it all the time, but only wander about trying to remember what my next cue is, and what the play's about, and wondering who the devil can be in the audience. But you've ruined my exhortation now. I'll have to trust to the libation. Here goes." He held out the flask and raised his voice again. "Accept this offering, all that we can give, the last drops of our golden spirit." The flask was solemnly emptied into the water just outside the door.

"Well, d"you feel any better now?" she enquired as he returned to her side. She was smiling at him.

He had twisted round, so that they were sitting face to face, and now his hands shot out to clasp her arms. "Do you know, I believe I do," he cried. "I think they'd had a glance at us – those gods, I mean – even before I made the libation, and now they may really take notice of us. When I come to think of it, I've felt depressed only once to-night, and that's almost a record."

"When was that?" She pressed gently against the hands that were still curved loosely round her arms.

"Oh, before you arrived; just after we went into the house. I can remember the very moment. I'd been left alone, and suddenly everything went as hollow as hell – perhaps you don't know the feeling?"

"Don't I though! I've had weeks of it, when it's a bother to breathe, let alone get up and wash and do your hair and dress and eat – - "

"And walk about and talk to people or even look at their silly eyes, and then undress and crawl into bed, to try and sleep, and after that begin it all over again. I know. Still, I shouldn't have thought you would."

"Well, I do," she said gravely. "Why did you think I didn"t?"

"You seemed to have so much life in you, good red stuff," he replied, considering her. "I couldn't imagine anything downing you for more than a minute. I don't believe it does."

"Oh yes, it does." She nodded her head, round-eyed, like a child. Then she laughed. "For that matter," she cried, "I shouldn't have thought it of you either. I never met anybody so full of beans. Why, even when you're saying how miserable you are, you seem to be enjoying yourself a lot more than most people are when they think they're really happy for once. Look at Sir Bill there. He wouldn't admit he wasn't ever enjoying himself, but at the top of his form, with a pint or two of champagne tucked away inside him, he's a damn sight more miserable than you are when you talk as if you were nearly dead. So there, Mister Roger."

"Ah, but" – and he shook his head – "to-night's different. That's what I'm really trying to tell you."

"I'd risk every night being different, with you. Not that you aren't fed up, of course. It didn't take me long to see that. And then that story of yours. That got over all right with me, I can tell you. But you've no need to sit about, thinking it out over and over again or doping yourself. You're not really that sort. I know. You're full of fight and fun. I'm a bit like that myself but not so much as you are, and that's why I like you or partly why. Only I'm not clever like you and that makes it easier for me."

"I'm just not quite so clever as a ten-year-old retriever," he protested. "And that's not modesty either. I don't even want to be clever. I've met some of the clever ones, and they make me sick."

She stirred and then moved a little closer to him. "Why don't you do something?"

"What's this?" he exclaimed softly. "Good advice?"

"Sounds like it, doesn't it? I expect you're thinking it's damned cheek, coming from me."

"No, I'm not. It couldn't come from a better person; I wouldn't have it from anybody else, I believe. But what do you mean exactly?"

Before she replied, she slid a hand up the cushion and then rested her cheek against it. He found something curiously moving in that little action, seen vaguely in the gloom of their little covered place. It was one of those things that women carry over from childhood. And now she was beginning to explain herself in that funny little voice of hers, which had been hastily shedding acquired accents and becoming more piquant all the time they had been talking together.

"What I mean is this," she began. "Have a pop at something. Start something fresh. Take a chance again. But try something you haven't tried before. You can call it good advice if you like, and it is for your own good I'm telling you; but I don't mean you ought to go to night-school or keep hens or put five shillings a week in the Post Office Savings Bank. You can work the confidence trick or run a roulette board, if it comes to a pinch – though I can't see you doing anything like that – but the thing is, do something. If you think everything's all wrong – about the war and all that – you could at least take a soapbox round and spout at street corners, like the Bolshies or socialists or whatever they are. Anyhow, do something, and then you won't know yourself."

He'd had a glimpse of the essentially feminine point of view. We're tremendously important as persons, he said to himself, but they're just detached and amused about all our antics, whether we're running a roulette or weighing the sun. We're still spending half our time, in their eyes, scrambling in and out of the big nursery cupboard. Gladys plainly thought his grand deep philosophic pessimism – which she was obviously ready to lump with socialism and relativity and psychoanalysis and fascism and anything else she may have heard about – could be disposed of by talking it out, being only so much steam to be let off. And perhaps it was so much steam to be let off. Perhaps she was wiser than he was. It was all very fascinating; and one thing having this point of view described in books and quite another thing coming across it like this, suddenly seeing a fantastically coloured searchlight flashing out of a familiar sky. Here at his elbow was really another world; and it was soft, warm, and breathing, a person, somebody you could talk and laugh and cry with, not so very different in most things, indeed strangely like you. His thought, having raced round this little circle, suddenly stopped.