The Dark Labyrinth Read Online Free Page B

his neck. He put his hat on, and pressed a ten-shilling note into the old man’s hand. “I shall see you very soon,” he said as he passed down the hall and through the swing-doors.
    He halted for a moment on the marble steps, experiencing a sense of aimless emptiness which must, he thought, be such as prisoners feel, who, after a long sentence, hear the prison gate close behind them. It was a leave-taking peculiarly without any positive sentimental bias, and as a sentimental man he regretted it. “I’ve resigned,” he told himself aloud, and, looking round, found that the pock-marked elementary Easter Island carvings were staring at him with their familiar cruelty from the porch.
    Museum Street looked drab. So did Great Russell Street. Drabness multiplied by drabness. The last suds of light were running down behind St. Pancras. London was drawing up the darkness like a blotter. Syrinx was out, however. He saw that it was in several bookshops. A few notes on the scrannel for a Spring that was, as usual, late. “Ah well,” he said, and took off his hat to feel the air upon his brow. He bought a Times Literary Supplement and a packet of cigarettes at the corner. It was no good reading the reviews in the left-wing papers—they always upset him with their ill-bred shrillness. As an afterthought he stole into a bookshop and bought himself a copy of Syrinx: as usual he had given all his complimentaries away. It was absurd to feel guilty and panic-stricken, for he was still comparatively unknown as a poet. Syrinx was his seventh book and he did not expect more than the usual mede of literary lip-service for it. He had long ago resigned himself to the fact that his verse was neither very experimental nor very exciting. But at least it got published: and he adored publishing. He had all the author’s vanity in the appearance of a new book, and Syrinx was really very pretty, very pretty indeed. The cover was bright, and yet refined. The pan-pipes, the reeds, the rather mouldy-looking swan—they all, he felt, admirably expressed the nature of the poems. They, too, were a little mannered, a little old-fashioned, perhaps a little threadbare. (“Lord Graecen’s Muse, turned housewife, once more beats out her iambics like some threadbare carpet”: that was the kind of thing he found so unkind.)
    Enjoying the feeling of the little book under his arm he turned into a tea-shop to look it over once more. The review in The Times would be, as always, sepulchral but kind. Old Conklin admired his work, genuinely admired it. He avoided the corner where old Sir Fennystone Crutch was devouring buttered toast. His skull-cap and slippers made him a familiar figure in the reading room. He hated being disturbed at his tea—which was the only real meal he had during the day. Graecen had once done so and had been severely reprimanded. “Go away,” the old man had said, “Can’t you see I’m eating?” An all-consuming passion for Sanscrit and buttered toast—did that give one the right to be rude to people, Graecen wondered? Nevertheless he had learned his lesson; he squeezed past the old man in a hurry and fitted himself into one of the dark wooden alcoves, ordering tea, toast and a boiled egg. He opened the paper.
    For over an hour now he had forgotten what had been haunting him for several days; well, haunting was too strong a word. He sought in his mind for something with a little less value. His round innocent face puckered as he searched the columns of the paper, leaving one-half of his mind to indulge its capacity for fear, and to play with metaphors for death. It was like having a cavity in a tooth—one simply could not keep the tongue away. Death, of course, was a cavity considerably larger and more exciting. After all, he reminded himself, it was not certain that he might die during the next few months. It was merely the opinion of certain medical men—an