The Tarn

As Foster moved unconsciously across the room, bent towards the
bookcase, and stood leaning forward a little, choosing now one book, now
another, with his eyes, his host, seeing the muscles of the back of his
thin, scraggy neck stand out above his low flannel collar, thought of
the ease with which he could squeeze that throat, and the pleasure, the
triumphant, lustful pleasure, that such an action would give him.

The low, white-walled, white-ceilinged room was flooded with the mellow,
kindly Lakeland sun. October is a wonderful month in the English Lakes,
golden, rich, and perfumed, slow suns moving through apricot-tinted
skies to ruby evening glories; the shadows lie then thick about that
beautiful country, in dark purple patches, in long web-like patterns of
silver gauze, in thick splotches of amber and grey. The clouds pass in
galleons across the mountains, now veiling, now revealing, now
descending with ghost-like armies to the very breast of the plains,
suddenly rising to the softest of blue skies and lying thin in lazy
languorous colour.

Fenwick's cottage looked across to Low Fells; on his right, seen through
side windows, sprawled the hills above Ullswater.

Fenwick looked at Foster's back and felt suddenly sick, so that he sat
down, veiling his eyes for a moment with his hand. Foster had come up
there, come all the way from London, to explain. It was so like Foster
to want to explain, to want to put things right. For how many years had
he known Foster? Why, for twenty at least, and during all those years
Foster had been for ever determined to put things right with everybody.
He could never bear to be disliked; he hated that anyone should think
ill of him; he wanted everyone to be his friends. That was one reason,
perhaps, why Foster had got on so well, had prospered so in his career;
one reason, too, why Fenwick had not.

For Fenwick was the opposite of Foster in this. He did not want friends,
he certainly did not care that people should like him--that is people
for whom, for one reason or another, he had contempt--and he had
contempt for quite a number of people.

Fenwick looked at that long, thin, bending back and felt his knees
tremble. Soon Foster would turn round and that high, reedy voice would
pipe out something about the books. "What jolly books you have,
Fenwick!" How many, many times in the long watches of the night, when
Fenwick could not sleep, had he heard that pipe sounding close
there--yes, in the very shadows of his bed! And how many times had
Fenwick replied to it: "I hate you! You are the cause of my failure in
life! You have been in my way always. Always, always, always!
Patronizing and pretending, and in truth showing others what a poor
thing you thought me, how great a failure, how conceited a fool! I know.
You can hide nothing from me! I can hear you!"