7

Rud went out of the Purple House in a preoccupied manner.

"O.K.?" asked Dreed as he came downstairs.

"No," said Rud curtly…

He felt he had made a mess of the whole situation. He ought to have consulted the B.M.G.s before this second encounter with Bohun. He did not want to go back to Steenhold's flat to make premature explanations to him or any of them, and still less did he want to return to his dismal little apartment. He felt he could never make a tolerable story about this paralysing quarrel. He would go for a walk. He would just walk. He would spend his anger in walking. It was a mild, clear afternoon and he wandered for miles, first west until the sunset got into his eyes, and then northward and round by Hendon and the Northern Heights. He sat for a long time in a tea–shop in Hounslow, brooding; he got a sausage–and–mashed in a little pub out towards Barnet. Afterwards he found a friendly wayside seat and sat on it for some time. Then as his feet were getting very tired and his small change low, he established himself in a belated confectioner's shop at Highgate over a glass of soda and milk, and when that establishment closed he went home, refreshed himself with a wash and repaired at last to Camborne Square.

Saturday night in Steenhold's flat was not one of the B.M.G. nights, and none of the Group was there. Instead there was an influx of uncongenial spirits, interested in the worlds of dramatic art and poetry and literary journalism. Many of the people were quite unknown to Rud, and Steenhold was plainly giving politics a rest. "How goes it?" asked Steenhold.

"Rotten," said Ruck "I'll have a drink and sit a bit and then go to bed."

He sat about ineffectively and he disliked the company very much. The talk splashed about his disregarded sulkiness, He disliked them more and more.

They were all so irrelevant, so frightfully irrelevant. The mind of youth is an errant mind and will not always conspire. It loathes concentration. It flits from novelty to novelty. It must be fed by events and challenges and held to its objective by conflict. It puts world affairs on a level with any one of the minor arts. That night Rud had the completest conviction that things had slipped out of his hands altogether. He did not talk and they betrayed no desire to hear him talk; he felt that they were convinced they had heard all he had to say, and were talking now about other things, about their damned little plays and pictures and novels and biology and genetics and time–space and any old thing of that sort, beyond his peculiar range. He was effaced. He drank several mugs of beer and smoked more cigarettes than were good for him, he tried to intervene in two discussions he knew nothing about, and finally went home stiff and footsore to bed.