Chapter VII. The Dark Square Garden

Josephine had invited Aaron Sisson to dinner at a restaurant in Soho, one Sunday evening. They had a corner to themselves, and with a bottle of Burgundy she was getting his history from him.

His father had been a shaft-sinker, earning good money, but had been killed by a fall down the shaft when Aaron was only four years old. The widow had opened a shop: Aaron was her only child. She had done well in her shop. She had wanted Aaron to be a schoolteacher. He had served three years apprenticeship, then suddenly thrown it up and gone to the pit.

"But why?" said Josephine.

"I couldn't tell you. I felt more like it."

He had a curious quality of an intelligent, almost sophisticated mind, which had repudiated education. On purpose he kept the midland accent in his speech. He understood perfectly what a personification was-- and an allegory. But he preferred to be illiterate.

Josephine found out what a miner's checkweighman was. She tried to find out what sort of wife Aaron had--but, except that she was the daughter of a publican and was delicate in health, she could learn nothing.

"And do you send her money?" she asked.

"Ay," said Aaron. "The house is mine. And I allow her so much a week out of the money in the bank. My mother left me a bit over a thousand when she died."

"You don't mind what I say, do you?" said Josephine.

"No I don't mind," he laughed.

He had this pleasant-seeming courteous manner. But he really kept her at a distance. In some things he reminded her of Robert: blond, erect, nicely built, fresh and English-seeming. But there was a curious cold distance to him, which she could not get across. An inward indifference to her--perhaps to everything. Yet his laugh was so handsome.

"Will you tell me why you left your wife and children?--Didn't you love them?"

Aaron looked at the odd, round, dark muzzle of the girl. She had had her hair bobbed, and it hung in odd dark folds, very black, over her ears.

"Why I left her?" he said. "For no particular reason. They're all right without me."

Josephine watched his face. She saw a pallor of suffering under its freshness, and a strange tension in his eyes.

"But you couldn't leave your little girls for no reason at all--"

"Yes, I did. For no reason--except I wanted to have some free room round me--to loose myself--"

"You mean you wanted love?" flashed Josephine, thinking he said lose.

"No, I wanted fresh air. I don't know what I wanted. Why should I know?"

"But we must know: especially when other people will be hurt," said she.

"Ah, well! A breath of fresh air, by myself. I felt forced to feel --I feel if I go back home now, I shall be