Zoe ended the discussion by driving half an inch of pen-knife into Coleman’s left arm and running out of the flat, slamming the door behind her. Coleman was used to this sort of thing; this sort of thing, indeed, was what he was there for. Carefully he pulled out the pen-knife which had remained sticking in his arm. He looked at the blade and was relieved to see that it wasn’t so dirty as might have been expected. He found some cotton-wool, mopped up the blood as it oozed out, and dabbed the wound with iodine. Then he set himself to bandage it up. But to tie a bandage round one’s own left arm is not easy. Coleman found it impossible to keep the lint in place, impossible to get the bandage tight enough. At the end of a quarter of an hour he had only succeeded in smearing himself very copiously with blood, and the wound was still unbound. He gave up the attempt and contented himself with swabbing up the blood as it came out. “And forthwith came there out blood and water,” he said aloud, and looked at the red stain on the cotton wool. He repeated the words again and again, and at the fiftieth repetition burst out laughing.
The bell in the kitchen suddenly buzzed. Who could it be? He went to the front door and opened it. On the landing outside stood a tall slender young woman with slanting Chinese eyes and a wide mouth, elegantly dressed 281in a black frock piped with white. Keeping the cotton-wool still pressed to his bleeding arm, Coleman bowed as gracefully as he could.
“Do come in,” he said. “You are just in the nick of time. I am on the point of bleeding to death. And forthwith came there out blood and water. Enter, enter,” he added, seeing the young woman still standing irresolutely on the threshold.
“But I wanted to see Mr. Coleman,” she said, stammering a little and showing her embarrassment by blushing.
“I am Mr. Coleman.” He took the cotton-wool for a moment from his arm and looked with the air of a connoisseur at the blood on it. “But I shall very soon cease to be that individual unless you come and tie up my wounds.”
“But you’re not the Mr. Coleman I thought you were,” said the young lady, still more embarrassed. “You have a beard, it is true; but....”
“Then I must resign myself to quit this life, must I?” He made a gesture of despair, throwing out both hands, “Out, out brief Coleman. Out, damned spot,” and he made as though to close the door.
The young lady checked him. “If you really need tying up,” she said, “I’ll do it of course. I passed my First-Aid Exam, in the war.”
Coleman reopened the door. “Saved!” he said. “Come in.”
It had been Rosie’s original intention yesterday to go straight on from Mr. Mercaptan’s to Toto’s. She would see him at once, she would ask him what he meant by playing that stupid trick on her. She would give him a good talking to. She would even tell him that she would never see him again. But, of course, if he showed himself 282sufficiently contrite and reasonably explanatory, she would consent—oh, very reluctantly—to take him back into favour. In the free, unprejudiced circles in which she now moved, this sort of joke, she imagined, was a mere trifle. It would be absurd to quarrel seriously about it. But still, she was determined to give Toto a lesson.
When, however, she did finally leave Mr. Mercaptan’s delicious boudoir, it was too late to think of going all the way to Pimlico, to the address which Mr. Mercaptan had given her. She decided to put it off till the next day.
And so the next day, duly, she had set out for Pimlico—to Pimlico, and to see a man called Coleman! It seemed rather dull and second-rate after Sloane Street and Mr. Mercaptan. Poor Toto!—the sparkle of Mr. Mercaptan had made him look rather tarnished. That essay on the “Jus Prim? Noctis”—ah! Walking through the unsavoury mazes of Pimlico, she thought of it, and, thinking of it, smiled. Poor Toto! And also, she mustn’t forget, stupid, malicious, idiotic Toto! She had made up her mind exactly what she should say to him; she had even made up her mind what Toto would say to her. And when the scene was over they would go and dine at the Café Royal—upstairs, where she had never been. And she would make him rather jealous by telling him how much she had liked Mr. Mercaptan; but not too jealous. Silence is golden, as her father used to say when she used to fly into tempers and wanted to say nasty things to everybody within range. Silence, about some things, is certainly golden.
In the rather gloomy little turning off Lupus Street to which she had been directed, Rosie found the number, found, in the row of bells and cards, the name. Quickly and decidedly she mounted the stairs.
283“Well,” she was going to say as soon as she saw him, “I thought you were a civilized being.” Mr. Mercaptan had dropped a hint that Coleman wasn’t really civilized; a hint was enough for Rosie. “But I see,” she would go on, “that I was mistaken. I don’t like to associate with boors.” The fastidious lady had selected him as a young poet, not as a ploughboy.
Well rehearsed, Rosie rang the bell. And then the door had opened on this huge bearded Cossack of a man, who smiled, who looked at her with bright, dangerous eyes, who quoted the Bible and who was bleeding like a pig. There was blood on his shirt, blood on his trousers, blood on his hands, bloody finger-marks on his face; even the blond fringe of his beard, she noticed, was dabbled here and there with blood. It was too much, at first, even for her aristocratic equanimity.
In the end, however, she followed him across a little vestibule into a bright, whitewashed room empty of all furniture but a table, a few chairs and a large box-spring and mattress, which stood like an island in the middle of the floor and served as bed or sofa as occasion required. Over the mantelpiece was pinned a large photographic reproduction of Leonardo’s study of the anatomy of love. There were no other pictures on the walls.
“All the apparatus is here,” said Coleman, and he pointed to the table. “Lint, bandages, cotton-wool, iodine, gauze, oiled silk. I have them all ready in preparation for these little accidents.”
“But do you often manage to cut yourself in the arm?” asked Rosie. She took off her gloves and began to undo a fresh packet of lint.
“One gets cut,” Coleman explained. “Little differences 284of opinion, you know. If your eye offend you, pluck it out; love your neighbour as yourself. Argal: if his eye offend you—you see? We live on Christian principles here.”
“But who are ‘we’?” asked Rosie, giving the cut a last dressing of iodine and laying a big square of lint over it.
“Merely myself and—how shall I put it?—my helpmate,” Coleman answered. “Ah! you’re wonderfully skilful at this business,” he went on. “You’re the real hospital nurse type; all maternal instincts. When pain and anguish wring the brow, an interesting mangle thou, as we used to say in the good old days when the pun and the Spoonerismus were in fashion.”
Rosie laughed. “Oh, I don’t spend all my time tying up wounds,” she said, and turned her eyes for an instant from the bandage. After the first surprise she was feeling her cool self again.
“Brava!” cried Coleman. “You make them too, do you? Make them first and cure them afterwards in the grand old hom?opathic way. Delightful! You see what Leonardo has to say about it.” With his free hand he pointed to the photograph over the mantelpiece.
Rosie, who had noticed the pictu............