Rupert. Because it is, I think, the hour when London asks why—when it wants to know what it’s all about—when the tedium of activity and the folly of pleasure are equally transparent. It is the hour in which unemployed servant girls, and the spoiled beauties of the slums, walk the streets for hire. . . . It is the hour of winking advertisement signs, and taxis, and buses, and traffic blocks. It is the hour when jaded London theatre audiences are settling down in the darkness to the last acts of plays, of which they know the dénouement only too well. They know that when the curtain’s down, it’ll be just a question of “God Save the King,” and they’ll be bundled out into a chilly and possibly rainy night, where they’ll have to fight for taxis, or rush for trains, or somehow transport themselves home to a cold supper and the prospect of another day to-morrow exactly similar to that which has passed. For others, further horrors are awaiting. The night clubs and cabarets have not yet begun, but they will do so very soon. . . . I could enlarge upon the idea indefinitely. Five-and-twenty to eleven. A horrible hour—a macabre hour, for it is not only the hour of pleasure ended, it is the hour when pleasure itself has been found wanting. There, that is what this hour means to me, and it has, moreover, been thundery. Five-and-twenty to eleven. . . .
Brandon. Yes, Rupert, but by the time you have finished making your speech it will be eleven o’clock. In brief, my dear Rupert, you see no earthly object in living?
Rupert. I fear not. Do you?
Brandon. I? Yes. Of course I do, But then I’m interested in things. Why don’t you get interested in things? Why don’t you take up exploring, or cricket, or making love, or golf, or finance, or lecturing, or something?
Rupert. Or, as you suggested this evening, murder.
[Pause.
Brandon. Or, as you say, murder.
[ 73 ]
