13

Thirp and Chiffan competed in the rehumanisation of Rud, and Thirp won easily. Mr. and Mrs. Chiffan entertained Rud once and he would not come again. He appeared a little distrustfully among the "easy, delightful, everyday human beings" she had assembled for his entertainment. He brightened for a moment when she took his hand and smiled at him, and then darkened when he saw her exchange a glance with her husband. He was definitely clumsy with the other women. They were a little at a loss for something to say to him, and he gave them no help.

He became less and less responsive as the evening wore on. His mute demand, Why the devil had they got him there? became insistent. He made a premature retreat and left the little gathering in a state of unwonted dismay at its own unattractiveness. It occurred to Chiffan then, that never in his life had he ever known Rud to indulge in general conversation. Even at the Steenhold flat he had either sulked in his corner under his caricature or broken out into monologue. But there had been no luring him into monologue that evening. In the old days his one topic had been the coming Revolution, and now the Revolution had come he was tongue–tied.

One young woman tried to interest him in her bracelets and necklaces of fire–opal set in silver. They seemed to be old, but she could not find out where they had been made. Opals were supposed to be unlucky. Rud looked at them with an effect of not looking at the neck and arms that wore them. "Thirp," was his sole comment, "could tell you all about them. He's interested in that sort of thing."

Rud indisputably was not.

He went early and yet it seemed to Phoebe that he went reluctantly. She felt, as she told Chiffan afterwards, that if things had been different and there had been different people and he had been different, he would have liked to stay for quite a long time.

"He went away slowly," said Phoebe, "with an air of going off to something worse."

Thirp took a different line with him altogether. He set about entertaining the World Trustee with inferiors and performers. He did not invite him formally, but one evening when they had some minor matter to discuss, he asked Rud to come to him because, he said, he was treating himself to a show. Rud was difficult to entertain because of his habitual abstemiousness, but Thirp induced him to eat a cheese dish he had had prepared for him specially and drink some fine Burgundy, and then he produced his show. He had discovered a little round–faced, round–eyed, yellow and black, exceedingly impudent, Siamese girl conjurer. She had a great sense of humour and some excellent tricks, and very soon she had Rud at his ease and laughing. Then came a dance of masked Siamese girls to a lilting Westernised tune which also took Rud's fancy, so that presently he was beating time.

"He likes them funny and he likes them little and he likes them young," Thirp noted. "The smaller and the younger and the more weakly impudent they are, the less he is afraid."

That was enough for the present, thought Thirp, but at the end of the evening he told Rud he often had little shows of this sort. He felt it well to keep in touch with the amusements of the people. If Rud would care to come again—

Rud was not unwilling to come again. "Relaxation," said Thirp.

"I liked that little conjuring thing," said Rud. "She made me laugh—and somehow I seem to have got out of the habit of laughing."

Thirp repeated this entertainment, but without undue alacrity. This time two wriggling Japanese maidens served the dishes for Rud's austerely excellent meal.

Four or five times was Rud Thirp's appreciative guest, and then it seemed time for Thirp to—to use his own phrase—"arrange a little tete–a–tete"? That demanded thought and preparation. He talked to Rud of health and fatigue, amusement and rest, and of the extraordinary sleep–provoking power of massage. At first Rud seemed as likely to expose his bare skin to the mauling and pinching of massage as to dance naked in a market–place. His accumulated modesty barred the way. Then by a well–arranged accident he was given a glimpse of the infantile but appetising charm of Miss Chubby Fielder, and a little later, when he was in a phase of neurasthenic discomfort, Thirp persuaded him to give her an opportunity…