The Tale of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice

The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown -
Chelsea
by V. Sackville West

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Chelsea
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Title: The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice From "The New
Decameron", Volume III.
Author: V. Sackville West
Release Date: August 31, 2007 [EBook #22476]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALE
OF MR. PETER BROWN ***

Produced by David Widger

THE TALE OF MR. PETER BROWN--CHELSEA JUSTICE
From "The New Decameron"--Volume III.
By V. Sackville West
THE first thing which attracted my attention to the man was the shock
of white hair above the lean young face. But for this, I should not have
looked twice at him: long, spare, and stooping, a shabby figure, he
crouched over a cup of coffee in a corner of the dingy restaurant, at
fretful enmity with the world; typical, I should have said, of the furtive
London nondescript. But that white hair startled me; it gleamed out,
unnaturally cleanly in those not overclean surroundings, and although I
had propped my book up against the water-bottle at my own table,
where I sat over my solitary dinner, I found my eyes straying from the
printed page to the human face which gave the promise of greater
interest. Before very long he became conscious of my glances, and
returned them when he thought I was not observing him. Inevitably,
however, the moment came when our eyes met, We both looked away
as though taken in fault, but when, having finished his coffee and laid
out the coppers in payment on his table, he rose to make his way out
between the tables, he let his gaze dwell on me as he passed; let it dwell
on me quite perceptibly, quite definitely, with an air of curious
speculation, a hesitation, almost an appeal, and I thought he was about
to speak, but instead of that he crushed his hat, an old black wideawake,
down over his strange white hair, and hurrying resolutely on towards
the swing-doors of the restaurant, he passed out and was lost in the
London night.
I was uncomfortably haunted, after that evening, by a sense of guilt. I
was quite certain, with unjustifiable certainty born of instinct, that the
man had wanted to speak to me, and that the smallest response on my
part would have encouraged him to do so. Why hadn't I given the
response? A smile would have sufficed; a smile wasn't much to demand
by one human being of another. I thought it very pitiable that the
conventions of our social system should persuade one to withhold so
small a thing from a fellow-creature who, perhaps, stood in need of it.
That smile, which I might have given, but had withheld, became for me

a sort of symbol. I grew superstitious about it; built up around it all
kinds of extravagant ideas; pictured to myself the splash of a body into
the river; and then, recovering my sense of proportion, told myself that
one really couldn't go about London smiling at people. Yet I didn't get
the man's face out of my head. It was not only the white hair that had
made an impression on my mind, but the unhappy eyes, the timidly
beseeching look. The man was lonely, I was quite sure of that; utterly
lonely. And I had refused a smile.
I don't know whether to say with more pride than shame, or more
shame than pride, that I went back to the restaurant a week later. I had
been kept late at my work, and there were few diners; but he was there,
sitting at the same table, hunched up as before over a cup of coffee. Did
the man live on coffee? He was thin enough, in all conscience, rather
like a long, sallow bird, with a snowy crest. And he had no occupation,
no book to read; nothing better to do than to bend his long curves over
the little table and to stab at the sugar in his coffee with his spoon. He
glanced up when I came in, casually, at the small stir I made; then by
his suddenly startled look I saw that he had recognised me. I didn't nod
to him, but I returned his look so steadily that it amounted to a greeting.
You know those moments, when understanding flickers between
people? Well, that was one of those moments.
I sat down at