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THE ROLL-CALL


BY


ARNOLD BENNETT


THIRD EDITION


BY THE SAME AUTHOR

NOVELS

A Man from the North
Anna of the Five Towns
Leonora
A Great Man
Sacred and Profane Love
Whom God hath Joined
Buried Alive
The Old Wives' Tale
The Glimpse
Helen with the High Hand
Clayhanger
Hilda Lessways
These Twain
The Card
The Regent
The Price of Love
The Lion's Share
The Pretty Lady

FANTASIAS

The Ghost
The Grand Babylon Hotel
The Gates of Wrath
Teresa of Watling Street
The Loot of Cities
The City of Pleasure

SHORT STORIES

Tales of the Five Towns
The Grim Smile of the Five Towns
The Matador of the Five Towns

BELLES-LETTRES

Journalism for Women
Fame and Fiction
How to become an Author
The Truth about an Author
How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Mental Efficiency
The Human Machine
Literary Taste
Those United States
Paris Nights
Friendship and Happiness
Married Life
Liberty
Over There
The Author's Craft
Books and Persons
Self and Self-Management

DRAMA

Polite Farces
Cupid and Common Sense
What the Public Wants
The Honeymoon
The Great Adventure
The Title
Judith
Milestones (in collaboration with EDWARD KNOBLOCK)

(In collaboration with EDEN PHILLPOTTS)
The Sinews of War: A Romance
The Statue: A Romance




THE ROLL-CALL


BY


ARNOLD BENNETT


THIRD EDITION


_LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW_

NOTE
This novel was written before "The Pretty Lady", and is the first of the
author's war-novels.
A.B.


CONTENTS


PART I

CHAP.
   I. THE NEW LODGING
  II. MARGUERITE
 III. THE CHARWOMAN
  IV. THE LUNCHEON
   V. THE TEA
  VI. THE DINNER
 VII. THE RUPTURE
VIII. INSPIRATION
  IX. COMPETITION


PART II

   I. THE TRIUMPH
  II. THE ROLL-CALL
 III. IN THE MACHINE




THE ROLL-CALL

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE NEW LODGING

I


In the pupils' room of the offices of Lucas & Enwright, architects,
Russell Square, Bloomsbury, George Edwin Cannon, an articled pupil,
leaned over a large drawing-board and looked up at Mr. Enwright, the
head of the firm, who with cigarette and stick was on his way out after
what he called a good day's work. It was past six o'clock on an evening
in early July 1901. To George's right was an open door leading to the
principals' room, and to his left another open door leading to more
rooms and to the staircase. The lofty chambers were full of lassitude;
but round about George, who was working late, there floated the tonic
vapour of conscious virtue. Haim, the factotum, could be seen and heard
moving in his cubicle which guarded the offices from the stairs. In the
rooms shortly to be deserted and locked up, and in the decline of the
day, the three men were drawn together like survivors.

"I gather you're going to change your abode," said Mr. Enwright, having
stopped.

"Did Mr. Orgreave tell you, then?" George asked.

"Well, he didn't exactly tell me...."

John Orgreave was Mr. Enwright's junior partner; and for nearly two
years, since his advent in London from the Five Towns, George had lived
with Mr. and Mrs. Orgreave at Bedford Park. The Orgreaves, too, sprang
from the Five Towns. John's people and George's people were closely
entwined in the local annals.

Pupil and principal glanced discreetly at one another, exchanging in
silence vague, malicious, unutterable critical verdicts upon both John
Orgreave and his wife.

"Well, I am!" said George at length.

"Where are you going to?"

"Haven't settled a bit," said George. "I wish I could live in Paris."

"Paris wouldn't be much good to you yet," Mr. Enwright laughed
benevolently.

"I suppose it wouldn't. Besides, of course----"

George spoke in a tone of candid deferential acceptance, which flattered
Mr. Enwright very much, for it was the final proof of the prestige which
the grizzled and wrinkled and peculiar Fellow and Member of the Council
of the Royal Institute of British Architects had acquired in the
estimation of that extremely independent, tossing sprig, George Edwin
Cannon. Mr. Enwright had recently been paying a visit to Paris, and
George had been sitting for the Intermediate Examination. "You can join
me here for a few days after the exam., if you care to," Mr. Enwright
had sent over. It was George's introduction to the Continent, and the
circumstances of it were almost ideal. For a week the deeply experienced
connoisseur of all the arts had had the fine, eager, responsive virgin
mind in his power. Day after day he had watched and guided it amid
entirely new sensations. Never had Mr. Enwright enjoyed himself more
purely, and at the close he knew with satisfaction that he had put Paris
in a proper perspective for George, and perhaps saved the youth from
years of groping misapprehension. As for George, all his preconceived
notions about Paris had been destroyed or shaken. In the quadrangles of
the Louvre, for example, Mr. Enwright, pointing to the under part of the
stone bench that foots so much of the walls, had said: "Look at that
curve." Nothing else. No ecstasies about the sculptures of Jean Goujon
and Carpeaux, or about the marvellous harmony of the East facade! But a
flick of the cane towards the half-hidden moulding! And George had felt
with a thrill what an exquisite curve and what an original curve and
what a modest curve that curve was. Suddenly and magically his eyes had
been opened. Or it might have been that a deceitful mist had rolled away
and the real Louvre been revealed in its esoteric and sole authentic
beauty....

"Why don't you try Chelsea?" said Mr. Enwright over his shoulder,
proceeding towards the stairs.

"I was thinking of Chelsea."

"You were!" Mr. Enwright halted again for an instant. "It's the only
place in London where the structure of society is anything like Paris.
Why, dash it, in the King's Road the grocers know each other's
business!" Mr. Enwright made the last strange remark to the outer door,
and vanished.

"Funny cove!" George commented tolerantly to Mr. Haim, who passed
through the room immediately afterwards to his nightly task of
collecting and inspecting the scattered instruments on the principal's
august drawing-board.

But Mr. Haim, though possibly he smiled ever so little, would not
compromise himself by an endorsement of the criticism of his employer.
George was a mere incident in the eternal career of Mr. Haim at Lucas &
Enwright's.

When the factotum came back into the pupils' room, George stood up
straight and smoothed his trousers and gazed admiringly at his elegant
bright socks.

"Let me see," said George in a very friendly manner. "_You_ live
somewhere in Chelsea, don't you?"

"Yes," answered Mr. Haim.

"Whereabouts, if it isn't a rude question?"

"Well," said Mr. Haim, confidentially and benignantly, captivated by
George's youthful charm, "it's near the Redcliffe Arms." He mentioned
the Redcliffe Arms as he might have mentioned the Bank, Piccadilly
Circus, or Gibraltar. "Alexandra Grove. No. 8. To tell you the truth, I
own the house."

"The deuce you do!"

"Yes. The leasehold, that is, of course. No freeholds knocking about
loose in that district!"

George saw a new and unsuspected Mr. Haim. He was impressed. And he was
glad that he had never broken the office tradition of treating Mr. Haim
with a respect not usually accorded to factotums. He saw a
property-owner, a tax-payer, and a human being behind the spectacles of
the shuffling, rather shabby, ceremonious familiar that pervaded those
rooms daily from before ten till after six. He grew curious about a
living phenomenon that hitherto had never awakened his curiosity.

"Were you really looking for accommodation?" demanded Mr. Haim suavely.

George hesitated. "Yes."

"Perhaps I have something that might suit you."

Events, disguised as mere words, seemed to George to be pushing him
forward.

"I should like to have a look at it," he said. He had to say it; there
was no alternative.

Mr. Haim raised a hand. "Any evening that happens to be convenient."

"What about to-night, then?"

"Certainly," Mr. Haim agreed. For a moment George apprehended that Mr.
Haim was going to invite him to dinner. But Mr. Haim was not going to
invite him to dinner. "About nine, shall we say?" he suggested, with a
courtliness softer even than usual.

Later, George said that he would lock up the office himself and leave
the key with the housekeeper.

"You can't miss the place," said Mr. Haim on leaving. "It's between the
Workhouse and the Redcliffe."


II


At the corner dominated by the Queen's Elm, which on the great route
from Piccadilly Circus to Putney was a public-house and halt second only
in importance to the Redcliffe Arms, night fell earlier than it ought to
have done, owing to a vast rain-cloud over Chelsea. A few drops
descended, but so warm and so gently that they were not like real rain,
and sentimentalists could not believe that they would wet. People,
arriving mysteriously out of darkness, gathered sparsely on the
pavements, lingered a few moments, and were swallowed by omnibuses that
bore them obscurely away. At intervals an individual got out of an
omnibus and adventured hurriedly forth and was lost in the gloom. The
omnibuses, all white, trotted on an inward curve to the pavement,
stopped while the conductor, with hand raised to the bell-string,
murmured apathetically the names of streets and of public-houses, and
then they jerked off again on an outward curve to the impatient double
ting of the bell. To the east was a high defile of hospitals, and to the
west the Workhouse tower faintly imprinted itself on the sombre sky.

The drops of rain grew very large and heavy, and the travellers, instead
of waiting on the kerb, withdrew to the shelter of the wall of the
Queen's Elm. George was now among the group, precipitated like the rest,
as it were, out of the solution of London. George was of the age which
does not admit rain or which believes that it is immune from the usual
consequences of exposure to rain. When advised, especially by women, to
defend himself against the treacheries of the weather, he always
protested confidently that he would 'be all right.' Thus with a stick
and a straw hat he would affront terrible dangers. It was a species of
valour which the event often justified. Indeed he generally was all
right. But to-night, afoot on the way from South Kensington Station in a
region quite unfamiliar to him, he was intimidated by the slapping
menace of the big drops. Reality faced him. His scared thought ran:
"Unless I do something at once I shall get wet through." Impossible to
appear drenched at old Haim's! So he had abandoned all his pretensions
to a magical invulnerability, and rushed under the eave of the Queen's
Elm to join the omnibus group.

He did not harmonize with the omnibus group, being both too elegant and
too high-spirited. His proper rôle in the circumstances would have been
to 'jump into a hansom'; but there were no empty hansoms, and moreover,
for certain reasons of finance, he had sworn off hansoms until a given
date. He regarded the situation as 'rather a lark,' and he somehow knew
that the group understood and appreciated and perhaps resented his
superior and tolerant attitude. An omnibus rolled palely into the
radiance of the Queen's Elm lamp, the horses' flanks and the lofty
driver's apron gleaming with rain. He sprang towards the vehicle; the
whole group sprang. "Full inside!" snapped the conductor inexorably.
Ting, ting! It was gone, glimmering with its enigmatic load into the
distance. George turned again to the wall, humiliated. It seemed wrong
that the conductor should have included him with the knot of common
omnibus-travellers and late workers. The conductor ought to have
differentiated.... He put out a hand. The rain had capriciously ceased!
He departed gaily and triumphantly. He was re-endowed with the magical
invulnerability.

The background of his mind was variegated. The incidents of the
tremendous motor-car race from Paris to Berlin, which had finished
nearly a week earlier, still glowed on it. And the fact that King Edward
VII had driven in a car from Pall Mall to Windsor Castle in sixty
minutes was beautifully present. Then, he was slightly worried
concerning the Mediterranean Fleet. He knew nothing about it, but as a
good citizen he suspected in idle moments, like a number of other good
citizens, that all was not quite well with the Mediterranean Fleet. As
for the war, he had only begun to be interested in the war within the
last six months, and already he was sick of it. He knew that the Boers
had just wrecked a British military train, and his attitude towards such
methods of fighting was rather severe and scornful; he did not regard
them as 'war.' However, the apparent permanence of the war was
splendidly compensated by the victory of the brothers Doherty over the
American lawn-tennis champions in the Gentlemen's Doubles at Wimbledon.
Who could have expected the brothers to win after the defeat of R.H. by
Mr. Gore in the Singles? George had most painfully feared that the
Americans would conquer, and their overthrowing by the twin brothers
indicated to George, who took himself for a serious student of affairs,
that Britain was continuing to exist, and that the new national
self-depreciative, yearning for efficiency might possibly be rather
absurd after all.

In the midst of these and similar thoughts, and of innumerable minor
thoughts about himself, in the very centre of his mind and occupying
nearly the whole of it, was the vast thought, the obsession, of his own
potential power and its fulfilment. George's egotism was terrific, and
as right as any other natural phenomenon. He had to get on. Much money
was included in his scheme, but simply as a by-product. He had to be a
great architect, and--equally important--he had to be publicly
recognized as a great architect, and recognition could not come without
money. For him, the entire created universe was the means to his end. He
would not use it unlawfully, but he would use it. He was using it, as
well as he yet knew how, and with an independence that was as complete
as it was unconscious. In regard to matters upon which his instinct had
not suggested a course of action, George was always ready enough to be
taught; indeed his respect for an expert was truly deferential. But when
his instinct had begun to operate he would consult nobody and consider
nobody, being deeply sure that infallible wisdom had been granted to
him. (Nor did experience seem to teach him.) Thus, in the affair of a
London lodging, though he was still two years from his majority and had
no resources save the purse of his stepfather, Edwin Clayhanger, he had
decided to leave the Orgreaves without asking or even informing his
parents. In his next letter home he would no doubt inform them,
casually, of what he meant to do or actually had done, and if objections
followed he would honestly resent them.

A characteristic example of his independence had happened when at the
unripe age of seventeen he left the Five Towns for London. Upon his
mother's marriage to Edwin Clayhanger his own name had been informally
changed for him to Clayhanger. But a few days before the day of
departure he had announced that, as Clayhanger was not his own name and
that he preferred his own name, he should henceforth be known as
'Cannon,' his father's name. He did not invite discussion. Mr.
Clayhanger had thereupon said to him privately and as one man of the
world to another: "But you aren't really entitled to the name Cannon,
sonny." "Why?" "Because your father was what's commonly known as a
bigamist, and his marriage with your mother was not legal. I thought I'd
take this opportunity of telling you. You needn't say anything to your
mother--unless of course you feel you must." To which George had
replied: "No, I won't. But if Cannon was my father's name I think I'll
have it all the same." And he did have it. The bigamy of his father did
not apparently affect him. Upon further inquiry he learnt that his
father might be alive or might be dead, but that if alive he was in
America.

The few words from Mr. Enwright about Chelsea had sufficed to turn
Chelsea into Elysium, Paradise, almost into Paris. No other quarter of
London was inhabitable by a rising architect. As soon as Haim had gone
George had begun to look up Chelsea in the office library, and as Mr.
Enwright happened to be an active member of the Society for the Survey
of the Memorials of Greater London, the library served him well. In an
hour and a half he had absorbed something of the historical topography
of Chelsea. He knew that the Fulham Road upon which he was now walking
was a boundary of Chelsea. He knew that the Queen's Elm public-house had
its name from the tradition that Elizabeth had once sheltered from a
shower beneath an elm tree which stood at that very corner. He knew that
Chelsea had been a 'village of palaces,' and what was the function of
the Thames in the magnificent life of that village. The secret residence
of Turner in Chelsea, under the strange _alias_ of Admiral Booth,
excited George's admiration; he liked the idea of hidden retreats and
splendid, fanciful pseudonyms. But the master-figure of Chelsea for
George was Sir Thomas More. He could see Sir Thomas More walking in his
majestic garden by the river with the King's arm round his neck, and
Holbein close by, and respectful august prelates and a nagging wife in
the background. And he could see Sir Thomas More taking his barge for
the last journey to the Tower, and Sir Thomas More's daughter coming
back in the same barge with her father's head on board. Curious! He
envied Sir Thomas More.

"Darned bad tower for a village of palaces!" he thought, not of the
Tower of London, but of the tower of the Workhouse which he was now
approaching. He thought he could design an incomparably better tower
than that. And he saw himself in the future, the architect of vast
monuments, strolling in a grand garden of his own at evening with other
distinguished and witty persons.

But there were high-sounding names in the history of Chelsea besides
those of More and Turner. Not names of people! Cremorne and Ranelagh!
Cremorne to the west and Ranelagh to the east. The legend of these
vanished resorts of pleasure and vice stirred his longings and his
sense of romantic beauty--especially Ranelagh with its Rotunda. (He
wanted, when the time came, to be finely vicious, as he wanted to be
everything. An architect could not be great without being everything.)
He projected himself into the Rotunda, with its sixty windows, its
countless refreshment-boxes, its huge paintings, and the orchestra in
the middle, and the expensive and naughty crowd walking round and round
and round on the matting, and the muffled footsteps and the swish of
trains on the matting, and the specious smiles and whispers, and the
blare of the band and the smell of the lamps and candles.... Earl's
Court was a poor, tawdry, unsightly thing after that.

When he had passed under the Workhouse tower he came to a side street
which, according to Haim's description of the neighbourhood, ought to
have been Alexandra Grove. The large lamp on the corner, however, gave
no indication, nor in the darkness could any sign be seen on the blind
wall of either of the corner houses in Fulham Road. Doubtless in daytime
the street had a visible label, but the borough authorities evidently
believed that night endowed the stranger with powers of divination.
George turned hesitant down the mysterious gorge, which had two dim
lamps of its own, and which ended in a high wall, whereat could be
descried unattainable trees--possibly the grove of Alexandra. Silence
and a charmed stillness held the gorge, while in Fulham Road not a
hundred yards away omnibuses and an occasional hansom rattled along in
an ordinary world. George soon decided that he was not in Alexandra
Grove, on account of the size of the houses. He could not conceive Mr.
Haim owning one of them. They stood lofty in the gloom, in pairs,
secluded from the pavement by a stucco garden-wall and low bushes. They
were double-fronted, and their doors were at the summits of flights of
blanched steps that showed through the bars of iron gates. They had
three stories above a basement. Still, he looked for No. 8. But just as
the street had no name, so the houses had no numbers. No. 16 alone could
be distinguished; it had figures on its faintly illuminated fanlight. He
walked back, idly counting.

Then, amid the curtained and shuttered facades, he saw, across the road,
a bright beam from a basement. He crossed and peeped through a gate, and
an interior was suddenly revealed to him. Near the window of a room sat
a young woman bending over a table. A gas-jet on a bracket in the wall,
a few inches higher than her head and a foot distant from it, threw a
strong radiance on her face and hair. The luminous living picture,
framed by the window in blackness, instantly entranced him. All the
splendid images of the past faded and were confuted and invalidated and
destroyed by this intense reality so present and so near to him.
(Nevertheless, for a moment he thought of her as the daughter of Sir
Thomas More.) She was drawing. She was drawing with her whole mind and
heart. At intervals, scarcely moving her head, she would glance aside at
a paper to her left on the table.... She seemed to search it, to drag
some secret out of it, and then she would resume her drawing. She was
neither dark nor fair; she was comely, perhaps beautiful; she had
beautiful lips, and her nose, behind the nostrils, joined the cheek in a
lovely contour, like a tiny bulb. Yes, she was superb. But what mastered
him was less her fresh physical charm than the rapt and extreme vitality
of her existing.... He knew from her gestures and the tools on the table
that she could be no amateur. She was a professional. He thought:
Chelsea!... Marvellous place, Chelsea! He ought to have found that out
long ago. He imagined Chelsea full of such pictures--the only true home
of beauty and romance.

Then the impact of a single idea startled his blood. He went hot. He
flushed. He had tingling sensations all down his back, and in his legs
and in his arms. It was as though he had been caught in a dubious
situation. Though he was utterly innocent, he felt as though he had
something to be ashamed of. The idea was: she resembled old Haim,
facially! Ridiculous idea! But she did resemble old Haim, particularly
in the lobal termination of the nose. And in the lips too. And there was
a vague, general resemblance. Absurd! It was a fancy.... He would not
have cared for anybody to be watching him then, to surprise him watching
her. He heard unmistakable footsteps on the pavement. A policeman darkly
approached. Policemen at times can be very apposite. George moved his
gaze and looked with admirable casualness around.

"Officer, is this Alexandra Grove?" (His stepfather had taught him to
address all policemen as 'officer.')

"It is, sir."

"Oh! Well, which is No. 8? There're no numbers."

"You couldn't be much nearer to it, sir," said the policeman dryly, and
pointed to a large number, fairly visible, on the wide gate-post. George
had not inspected the gate-post.

"Oh! Thanks!"

He mounted the steps, and in the thick gloom of the portico fumbled for
the bell and rang it. He was tremendously excited and expectant and
apprehensive and puzzled. He heard rain flatly spitting in big drops on
the steps. He had not noticed till then that it had begun again. The
bell jangled below. The light in the basement went out. He flushed anew.
He thought, trembling: "She's coming to the door herself!"


III


"It had occurred to me some time ago," said Mr. Haim, "that if ever you
should be wanting rooms I might be able to suit you."

"Really!" George murmured. After having been shown into the room by the
young woman, who had at once disappeared, he was now recovering from the
nervousness of that agitating entry and resuming his normal demeanour of
an experienced and well-balanced man of the world. He felt relieved that
she had gone, and yet he regretted her departure extremely, and hoped
against fear that she would soon return.

"Yes!" said Mr. Haim, as it were triumphantly, like one who had
whispered to himself during long years: "The hour will come." The hour
had come.

Mr. Haim was surprising to George. The man seemed much older in his own
parlour than at the office--his hair thinner and greyer, and his face
more wrinkled. But the surprising part of him was that he had a home and
was master in it, and possessed interests other than those of the firm
of Lucas & Enwright. George had never until that day conceived the man
apart from Russell Square. And here he was smoking a cigarette in an
easy-chair and wearing red morocco slippers, and being called 'father'
by a really stunning creature in a thin white blouse and a blue skirt.

The young girl, opening the front door, had said: "Do you want to see
father?" And instantly the words were out George had realized that she
might have said: "_Did_ you want to see father?" ... in the idiom of the
shop-girl or clerk, and that if she had said 'did' he would have been
gravely disappointed and hurt. But she had not. Of course she had not!
Of course she was incapable of such a locution, and it was silly of him
to have thought otherwise, even momentarily. She was an artist. Entirely
different from the blonde and fluffy Mrs. John Orgreave--(and a good
thing too, for Mrs. John with her eternal womanishness had got on his
nerves)--Miss Haim was without doubt just as much a lady, and probably a
jolly sight more cultured, in the true sense. Yet Miss Haim had not in
the least revealed herself to him in the hall as she indicated the
depository for his hat and stick and opened the door of the
sitting-room. She had barely smiled. Indeed she had not smiled. She had
not mentioned the weather. On the other hand, she had not been prim or
repellent. She had revealed nothing of herself. Her one feat had been to
stimulate mightily his curiosity and his imagination concerning
her--rampant enough even before he entered the house!

The house--what he saw of it--suited her and set her off, and, as she
was different from Mrs. John, so was the house different from the
polished, conventional abode of Mrs. John at Bedford Park. To George's
taste it knocked Bedford Park to smithereens. In the parlour, for
instance, an oak chest, an oak settee, an oak gate-table, one tapestried
easy chair, several rush-bottomed chairs, a very small brass fender, a
self-coloured wall-paper of warm green, two or three old engravings in
maple-wood or tarnished gilt frames, several small portraits in
maple-wood frames, brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece and no clock,
self-coloured brown curtains across the windows (two windows opposite
each other at either end of the long room), sundry rugs on the
dark-stained floor, and so on! Not too much furniture, and not too much
symmetry either. An agreeable and original higgledy-piggledyness! The
room was lighted by a fairly large oil-lamp, with a paper shade
hand-painted in a design of cupids--delightful personal design, rough,
sketchy, adorable! She had certainly done it.

George sat on the oak settle, fronting the old man in the easy chair. It
was a hard, smooth oak settle; it had no upholstering nor cushion; but
George liked it.

"May I smoke?" asked George.

"Please do. Please do," said Mr. Haim, who was smoking a cigarette
himself, with courteous hospitality. However, it was a match and not a
cigarette that he offered to George, who opened his own dandiacal case.

"I stayed rather late at the office to-night," said George, as he blew
out those great clouds with which young men demonstrate to the world
that the cigarette is actually lighted. And as Mr. Haim, who was
accustomed to the boastings of articled pupils, made no comment, George
proceeded, lolling on the settle and showing his socks: "You know, I
like Chelsea. I've always had a fancy for it." He was just about to
continue cosmopolitanly: "It's the only part of London that's like
Paris. The people in the King's Road," etc., when fortunately he
remembered that Mr. Haim must have overheard these remarks of Mr.
Enwright, and ceased, rather awkwardly. Whereupon Mr. Haim suggested
that he should see the house, and George said eagerly that he should
like to see the house.

"We've got one bedroom more than we want," Mr. Haim remarked as he led
George to the hall.

"Oh yes!" said George politely.

The hall had a small bracket-lamp, which Mr. Haim unhooked, and then he
opened a door opposite to the door of the room which they had quitted.

"Now this is a bedroom," said he, holding the lamp high.

George was startled. A ground-floor bedroom would have been unthinkable
at Bedford Park. Still, in a flat.... Moreover, the idea had piquancy.
The bedroom was sparsely furnished. Instead of a wardrobe it had a
corner curtained off with cretonne.

"A good-sized room," said Mr. Haim.

"Very," said George. "Two windows, too, like the drawing-room." Then
they went upstairs to the first floor, and saw two more bedrooms, each
with two windows. One of them was Miss Haim's; there was a hat hung on
the looking-glass, and a table with a few books on it. They did not go
to the second floor. The staircase to the second floor was boarded up at
the point where it turned.

"That's all there is," said Mr. Haim on the landing. "The studio people
have the second floor, but they don't use my front door." He spoke the
last words rather defiantly.

"I see," said George untruthfully, for he was mystified. But the mystery
did not trouble him.

There was no bathroom, and this did not trouble him either, though at
Bedford Park he could never have seriously considered a house without a
bathroom.

"You could have your choice of ground floor or first floor," said Mr.
Haim confidentially, still on the landing. He moved the lamp about, and
the shadows moved accordingly on the stairs.

"Oh, I don't mind in the least," George answered. "Whichever would suit
you best."

"We could give you breakfast, and use of sitting-room," Mr. Haim
proceeded in a low tone. "But no other meals."

"That would be all right," said George cheerfully. "I often dine in
town. Like that I can get in a bit of extra work at the office, you
see."

"Except on Sundays," Mr. Haim corrected himself. "You'd want your meals
on Sundays, of course. But I expect you're out a good deal, what with
one thing or another."

"Oh, I am!" George concurred.

The place was perfect, and he was determined to establish himself in it.
Nothing could baulk him. A hitch would have desolated him completely.

"I may as well show you the basement while I'm about it," said Mr. Haim.

"Do!" said George ardently.

They descended. The host was very dignified, as invariably at the
office, and his accent never lapsed from the absolute correctness of an
educated Londoner. His deportment gave distinction and safety even to
the precipitous and mean basement stairs, which were of stone worn as by
the knees of pilgrims in a crypt. All kinds of irregular pipes ran about
along the ceiling of the basement; some were covered by ancient layers
of wall-paper and some were not; some were painted yellow, and some were
painted grey, and some were not painted. Mr. Haim exhibited first the
kitchen. George saw a morsel of red amber behind black bars, a white
deal table and a black cat crouched on a corner of the table, a chair,
and a tea-cloth drying over the back thereof. He liked the scene; it
reminded him of the Five Towns, and showed reassuringly--if he needed
reassurance, which he did not--that all houses are the same at heart.
Then Mr. Haim, flashing a lamp-ray on the coal-hole and the area door as
he turned, crossed the stone passage into the other basement room.

"This is our second sitting-room," said Mr. Haim, entering.

There she was at work, rapt, exactly as George had seen her from the
outside. But now he saw the right side of her face instead of the left.
It was wonderful to him that within the space of a few minutes he should
have developed from an absolute stranger to her into an acquaintance of
the house, walking about in it, peering into its recesses, disturbing
its secrets, which were hers. But she remained as mysterious, as
withdrawn and intangible, as ever. And then she shifted round suddenly
on the chair, and her absorbed, intent face softened into a most
beautiful, simple smile--a smile of welcome. An astonishing and
celestial change!... She was not one of those queer girls, as perhaps
she might have been. She was a girl of natural impulses. He smiled back,
uplifted.

"My daughter designs bookbindings," said Mr. Haim. "Happens to be very
busy to-night on something urgent."

He advanced towards her, George following.

"Awfully good!" George murmured enthusiastically, and quite sincerely,
though he was not at all in a condition to judge the design. Strange,
that he should come to the basement of an ordinary stock-size house in
Alexandra Grove to see bookbindings in the making! This was a design for
a boy's book. He had possessed many such books. But it had never
occurred to him that the gay bindings of them were each the result of
individual human thought and labour. He pulled at his cigarette.

There was a sound of pushing and rattling outside.

"What's that?" exclaimed Mr. Haim.

"It's the area door. I bolted it. I dare say it's Mrs. Lobley," said the
girl indifferently.

Mr. Haim moved sharply.

"Why did you bolt it, Marguerite? No, I'll go myself."

He picked up the lamp, which he had put down, and shuffled quickly out
in his red morocco slippers, closing the door.

Marguerite? Yes, it suited her; and it was among the most romantic of
names. It completed the picture. She now seemed to be listening and
waiting, her attention on the unseen area door. He felt shy and yet
very happy alone with her. Voices were distinctly heard. Who was Mrs.
Lobley? Was Mr. Haim a little annoyed with his daughter, and was
Marguerite exquisitely defiant? Time hung. The situation was slightly
awkward, he thought. And it was obscure, alluring.... He stood there,
below the level of the street, shut in with those beings unknown,
provocative, and full of half-divined implications. And all Chelsea was
around him and all London around Chelsea.

"Father won't be a moment," said the girl. "It's only the charwoman."

"Oh! That's quite all right," he answered effusively, and turning to the
design: "The outlining of that lettering fairly beats me, you know."

"Not really!... I get that from father, of course."

Mr. Haim was famous in the office as a letterer.

She sat idly glancing at her own design, her plump, small hands lying in
the blue lap. George compared her, unspeakably to her advantage, with
the kind, coarse young woman at the chop-house, whom he had asked to
telephone to the Orgreaves for him, and for whom he had been conscious
of a faint penchant.

"I can't colour it by gaslight," said Marguerite Haim. "I shall have to
do that in the morning."

He imagined her at work again early in the morning. Within a week or so
he might be living in this house with this girl. He would be,--watching
her life! Seducing prospect, scarcely credible! He remembered having
heard when he first went to Lucas & Enwright's that old Haim was a
widower.

"Do excuse me," said Mr. Haim, urgently apologetic, reappearing.

A quarter of an hour later, George had left the house, having accepted
Mr. Haim's terms without the least argument. In five days he was to be
an inmate of No. 8 Alexandra Grove. The episode presented itself to him
as a vast, romantic adventure, staggering and enchanting. His luck
continued, for the rain-cloud was spent. He got into an Earl's Court
bus. The dimly perceived travellers in it seemed all of them in a new
sense to be romantic and mysterious.... "Yes," he thought, "I did say
good-night to her, but I didn't shake hands."




CHAPTER II

MARGUERITE

I


More than two months later George came into the office in Russell Square
an hour or so after his usual time. He had been to South Kensington
Museum to look up, for professional purposes, some scale drawings of
architectural detail which were required for a restaurant then rising in
Piccadilly under the direction of Lucas & Enwright. In his room Mr.
Everard Lucas was already seated. Mr. Lucas was another articled pupil
of the firm; being a remote cousin of the late senior partner, he had
entered on special terms. Although a year older than George he was less
advanced, for whereas George had passed the Intermediate, Mr. Lucas had
not. But in manly beauty, in stylishness, in mature tact, and especially
in persuasive charm, he could beat George.

"Hallo!" Lucas greeted. "How do you feel? Fit?"

"Fit?" said George enthusiastically "I feel so fit I could push in the
side of a house."

"What did I tell you?" said Lucas.

George rubbed his hand all over Lucas's hair, and Lucas thereupon seized
George's other hand and twisted his arm, and a struggle followed. In
this way they would often lovingly salute each other of a morning. Lucas
had infected George with the craze for physical exercises as a remedy
for all ills and indiscretions, including even late nights and excessive
smoking. The competition between them to excel in the quality of fitness
was acute, and sometimes led to strange challenges. After a little
discussion about springing from the toes, Lucas now accused George's
toes of a lack of muscularity, and upon George denying the charge, he
asserted that George could not hang from the mantelpiece by his toes.
They were both men of the world, capable of great heights of dignity,
figures in an important business, aspirants to a supreme
art and profession. They were at that moment in a beautiful
late-eighteenth-century house of a stately and renowned square, and in a
room whose proportions and ornament admittedly might serve as an
exemplar to the student; and not the least lovely feature of the room
was the high carved mantelpiece. The morning itself was historic, for it
was the very morning upon which, President McKinley having expired,
Theodore Roosevelt ascended the throne and inaugurated a new era.
Nevertheless, such was their peculiar time of life that George, a minute
later, was as a fact hanging by his toes from the mantelpiece, while
Lucas urged him to keep the blood out of his head. George had stood on
his hands on a box and lodged his toes on the mantelpiece, and then
raised his hands--and Lucas had softly pushed the box away. George's
watch was dangling against his flushed cheek.

"Put that box back, you cuckoo!" George exploded chokingly.

Then the door opened and Mr. Enwright appeared. Simultaneously some
shillings slipped out of George's pocket and rolled about the floor. The
hour was Mr. Enwright's customary hour of arrival, but he had no fair
excuse for passing through that room instead of proceeding along the
corridor direct to the principals' room. His aspect, as he gazed at
George's hair and at the revealed sateen back of George's waistcoat, was
unusual. Mr. Enwright commonly entered the office full of an intense and
aggrieved consciousness of his own existence--of his insomnia, of the
reaction upon himself of some client's stupidity, of the necessity of
going out again in order to have his chin lacerated by his favourite and
hated Albanian barber. But now he had actually forgotten himself.

"What _is_ this?" he demanded.

Lucas having quickly restored the box, George subsided dangerously
thereon, and arose in a condition much disarrayed and confused, and
beheld Mr. Enwright with shame.

"I--I was just looking to see if the trap of the chimney was shut," said
George. It was foolish in the extreme, but it was the best he could do,
and after all it was a rather marvellous invention. Lucas sat down and
made no remark.

"You might respect the mantelpiece," said Mr. Enwright bitterly, and
went into the principals' room, where John Orgreave could be heard
dictating letters. George straightened his clothes and picked up his
money, and the two men of the world giggled nervously at each other.

Mr. Haim next disturbed them. The shabby, respectable old man smiled
vaguely, with averted glance.

"I think he's heard the result," said he.

Both men knew that 'he' was Mr. Enwright, and that the 'result' was the
result of the open competition for the £150,000 Law Courts which a proud
provincial city proposed to erect for itself. The whole office had
worked very hard on the drawings for that competition throughout the
summer, while cursing the corporation which had chosen so unusual a date
for sending-in day. Even Lucas had worked. George's ideas for certain
details, upon which he had been engaged on the evening of his
introduction to Mr. Haim's household, had been accepted by Mr. Enwright.
As for Mr. Enwright, though the exigencies of his beard, and his regular
morning habit of inveighing against the profession at great length, and
his inability to decide where he should lunch, generally prevented him
from beginning the day until three o'clock in the afternoon, Mr.
Enwright had given many highly concentrated hours of creative energy to
the design. And Mr. Haim had adorned the sheets with the finest
lettering. The design was held to be very good. The principals knew the
identity of all the other chief competitors and their powers, and they
knew also the idiosyncrasies of the Assessor; and their expert and
impartial opinion was that the Lucas & Enwright design ought to win and
would win. This view, indeed, was widespread in the arcana of the
architectural world. George had gradually grown certain of victory. And
yet, at Mr. Haim's words, his hopes sank horribly away.

"Have we won?" he asked sharply.

"That I can't say, Mr. Cannon," answered Haim.

"Well, then, how do you know he's heard? Has he told you?"

"No," said the factotum mysteriously. "But I think he's heard." And upon
this Mr. Haim slouched off quite calmly. Often he had assisted at the
advent of such vital news in the office--news obtained in advance by the
principals through secret channels--and often the news had been bad. But
the firm's calamities seemed never to affect the smoothness of Mr.
Haim's earthly passage.

The door into the principals' room opened, and Mr. Enwright's head
showed. The gloomy, resenting eyes fixed George for an instant.

"Well, you've lost that competition," said Mr. Enwright, and he stepped
into full view. His unseen partner had ceased to dictate, and the
shorthand-clerk could be heard going out by the other door.

"No!" said George, in a long, outraged murmur. The news seemed
incredible and quite disastrous; and yet at the same time had he not, in
one unvisited corner of his mind, always foreknown it? Suddenly he was
distressed, discouraged, disillusioned about the whole of life. He
thought that Everard Lucas, screwing up a compass, was strangely
unmoved. But Mr. Enwright ignored Lucas.

"Who's got it?" George asked.

"Whinburn."

"That chap!... Where are _we_?"

"Nowhere."

"Not placed?"

"Not in it. Skelting's second. And Grant third. I shouldn't have minded
so much if Grant had got it. There was something to be said for his
scheme. I knew _we_ shouldn't get it. I knew that perfectly well--not
with Corver assessing."

George wondered that his admired principal should thus state the exact
opposite of what he had so often affirmed during the last few weeks.
People were certainly very queer, even the best of them. The perception
of this fact added to his puzzled woe.

"But Whinburn's design is grotesque!" he protested borrowing one of Mr.
Enwright's adjectives.

"Of course it is."

"Then why does Sir Hugh Corver go and give him the award? Surely he must
know----"

"Know!" Mr. Enwright growled, destroying Sir Hugh and his reputation and
his pretensions with one single monosyllable.

"Then why did they make him Assessor--that's what I can't understand."

"It's quite simple," rasped Mr. Enwright. "They made him assessor
because he's got so much work to do it takes him all his time to trot
about from one job to another on his blooming pony. They made him
assessor because his pony's a piebald pony. Couldn't you think of that
for yourself? Or have you been stone deaf in this office for two years?
It stands to reason that a man who's responsible for all the largest
new eyesores in London would impress any corporation. Clever chap,
Corver! Instead of wasting his time in travel and study, he made a
speciality of learning how to talk to committees. And he was always full
of ideas like the piebald pony, ever since I knew him."

"It's that façade that did for us," broke in another voice. John
Orgreave stood behind Mr. Enwright. He spoke easily; he was not ruffled
by the immense disappointment, though the mournful greatness of the
topic had drawn him irresistibly into the discussion. John Orgreave had
grown rather fat and coarse. At one period, in the Five Towns, he had
been George's hero. He was so no longer. George was still fond of him,
but he had torn him down from the pedestal and established Mr. Enwright
in his place. George in his heart now somewhat patronized the placid
Orgreave, regarding him as an excellent person who comprehended naught
that was worth comprehending, and as a husband who was the dupe of his
wife.

"You couldn't have any other façade," Mr. Enwright turned on him,
"unless you're absolutely going to ignore the market on the other side
of the Square. Whinburn's façade is an outrage--an outrage. Give me a
cigarette. I must run out and get shaved."

While Mr. Enwright was lighting the cigarette, George reflected in
desolation upon the slow evolving of the firm's design for the Law
Courts. Again and again in the course of the work had he been struck
into a worshipping enthusiasm by the brilliance of Mr. Enwright's
invention and the happy beauty of his ideas. For George there was only
one architect in the world; he was convinced that nobody could possibly
rival Mr. Enwright, and that no Law Courts ever had been conceived equal
to those Law Courts. And he himself had contributed something to the
creation. He had dreamed of the building erected and of being able to
stand in front of some detail of it and say to himself: "That was my
notion, that was." And now the building was destroyed before its birth.
It would never come into existence. It was wasted. And the prospect for
the firm of several years' remunerative and satisfying labour had
vanished. But the ridiculous, canny Whinburn would be profitably
occupied, and his grotesque building would actually arise, and people
would praise it, and it would survive for centuries--at any rate for a
century.

Mr. Enwright did not move.

"It's no use regretting the façade, Orgreave," he said suddenly.
"There's such a thing as self-respect."

"I don't see that self-respect's got much to do with it," Orgreave
replied lightly.

("Of course you don't," George thought. "You're a decent sort, but you
don't see, and you never will see. Even Lucas doesn't see. I alone see."
And he felt savage and defiant.)

"Better shove my self-respect away into this cupboard, I suppose!" said
Mr. Enwright, with the most acrid cynicism, and he pulled open one door
of a long, low cupboard whose top formed a table for portfolios, dusty
illustrated books, and other accumulations.

The gesture was dramatic, and none knew it better than Mr. Enwright. The
cupboard was the cupboard which contained the skeleton. It was full of
designs rejected in public competitions. There they lay, piles and piles
of them, the earliest dating from the late seventies. The cupboard was
crammed with the futility of Enwright's genius. It held monuments enough
to make illustrious a score of cities. Lucas & Enwright was a successful
firm. But, confining itself chiefly to large public works, it could not
escape from the competition system; and it had lost in far more
competitions than it had won. It was always, and always would be, at the
mercy of an Assessor. The chances had always been, and always would be,
against the acceptance of its designs, because they had the fatal
quality of originality combined with modest adherence to the classical
tradition. When they conquered, it was by sheer force. George glanced at
the skeleton, and he was afraid. Something was very wrong with
architecture. He agreed with Mr. Enwright's tiresomely reiterated axiom
that it was the Cinderella of professions and the chosen field of
ghastly injustice. He had embraced architecture; he had determined to
follow exactly in the footsteps of Mr. Enwright; he had sworn to
succeed. But could he succeed? Suppose he failed! Yes, his faith
faltered. He was intensely, miserably afraid. He was the most serious
man in Russell Square. Astounding that only a few minutes ago he had
hung triumphantly by his feet from the mantelpiece!

Mr. Enwright kicked-to the door of the cupboard.

"Look here," he said to his partner, "I shan't be back just yet. I have
to go and see Bentley. I'd forgotten it."

Nobody was surprised at this remark. Whenever Mr. Enwright was
inconveniently set back he always went off to visit Bentley, the
architect of the new Roman Catholic Cathedral at Westminster, on the
plea of an urgent appointment.

"_You_ had a look at the cathedral lately?" he demanded of George as he
left.

"No, I haven't," said George, who, by reason of a series of
unaccountable omissions, and of the fullness of his life as an architect
and a man of the world, had never seen the celebrated cathedral at all.

"Well," said Mr. Enwright sarcastically, "better take just a glance at
it--some time--before they've spoilt the thing with decorations. There's
a whole lot of 'em only waiting till Bentley's out of the way to begin
and ruin it."


II


Before the regular closing hour of the office the two articled pupils
had left and were walking side by side through Bloomsbury. They skirted
the oval garden of Bedford Square, which, lying off the main track to
the northern termini, and with nothing baser in it than a consulate or
so, took precedence in austerity and selectness over Russell Square,
which had consented to receive a grand hotel or 'modern caravanserai'
and a shorthand school. Indeed the aspect of Bedford Square, where the
great institution of the basement and area still flourished in
perfection, and wealthy menials with traditional manners lived sensually
in caves beneath the spacious, calm salons of their employers and
dupes,--the aspect of Bedford Square gave the illusion that evolution
was not, and that Bloomsbury and the whole impressive structure of
British society could never change. Still, from a more dubious
Bloomsbury, demure creatures with inviting, indiscreet eyes were already
traversing the prim flags of Bedford Square on their way to the
evening's hard diplomacy. Mr. Lucas made quiet remarks about their
qualities, but George did not respond.

"Look here, old man," said Lucas, "there's no use in all this gloom. You
might think Lucas & Enwright had never put up a building in their lives.
Just as well to dwell now and then on what they have done instead of on
what they haven't done. We're fairly busy, you know. Besides----"

He spoke seriously, tactfully, with charm, and he had a beautiful voice.

"Quite right! Quite right!" George willingly agreed, swinging his stick
and gazing straight ahead. And he thought: "This chap has got his head
screwed on. He's miles wiser than I am, and he's really nice. I could
never be nice like that."

In a moment they were at the turbulent junction of Tottenham Court Road
and Oxford Street, where crowds of Londoners, deeply unconscious of
their own vulgarity, and of the marvellous distinction of Bedford
Square, and of the moral obligation to harmonize socks with neckties,
were preoccupying themselves with omnibuses and routes, and constituting
the spectacle of London. The high-heeled, demure creatures were lost in
this crowd, and Lucas and George were lost in it.

"Well," said Lucas, halting on the pavement. "You're going down to the
cathedral."

"It'll please the old cock," answered George, anxious to disavow any
higher motive. "You aren't coming?"

Lucas shook his head. "I shall just go and snatch a hasty".... 'Cup of
tea' was the unuttered end of the sentence.

"Puffin's?"

Lucas nodded. Puffin's was a cosy house of sustenance in a half-new
street on the site of the razed slums of St. Giles's. He would not
frequent the orthodox tea-houses, which were all alike and which had
other serious disadvantages. He adventured into the unusual, and could
always demonstrate that what he found was subtly superior to anything
else.

"That affair still on?" George questioned.

"It's not off."

"She's a nice little thing--that I will say."

"It all depends," Lucas replied sternly. "I don't mind telling you she
wasn't so jolly nice on Tuesday."

"Wasn't she?" George raised his eyebrows.

Lucas silently scowled, and his handsomeness vanished for an instant.

"However----" he said.

As George walked alone down Charing Cross Road, he thought: "That girl
will have to look out,"--meaning that in his opinion Lucas was not a man
to be trifled with. Lucas was a wise and an experienced man, and knew
the world. And what he did could not be other than right. This notion
comforted George, who had a small affair of his own, which he had not
yet even mentioned to Lucas. Delicacy as well as diffidence had
prevented him from doing so. It was a very different affair from any of
Lucas's, and he did not want Lucas to misesteem it; neither did he want
Lucas to be under the temptation to regard him as a ninny.

Not the cathedral alone had induced George to leave the office early.
The dissembler had reflected that if he called in a certain conventional
tea-shop near Cambridge Circus at a certain hour he would probably meet
Marguerite Haim. He knew that she had an appointment with one of her
customers, a firm of bookbinders, that afternoon, and that on similar
occasions she had been to the tea-shop. In fact he had already once
deliciously taken tea with her therein. To-day he was disappointed, to
the extent of the tea, for he met her as she was coming out of the shop.
Their greetings were rather punctilious, but beneath superficial
formalities shone the proofs of intimacy. They had had large
opportunities to become intimate, and they had become intimate. The
immediate origin of and excuse for the intimacy was a lampshade. George
had needed a lampshade for his room, and she had offered to paint one.
She submitted sketches. But George also could paint a bit. Hence
discussions, conferences, rival designs, and, lastly, an agreement upon
a composite design. Before long, the lampshade craze increasing in
virulence, they had between them re-lampshaded the entire house. Then
the charming mania expired; but it had done its work. During the summer
holiday George had written twice to Marguerite, and he had thought
pleasurably about her the whole time. He had hoped that she would open
the door for him upon his return, and that when he saw her again he
would at length penetrate the baffling secret of her individuality. She
had opened the door for him, exquisitely, but the secret had not yielded
itself. It was astonishing to George, how that girl could combine the
candours of honest intimacy with a profound reserve.

"Were you going in there for tea?" she asked, looking up at him gravely.

"No," he said. "I don't want any tea. I have to wend my way to the Roman
Catholic Cathedral--you know, the new one, near Victoria. I suppose you
wouldn't care to see it?"

"I should love to," she answered, with ingenuous eagerness. "I think it
might do me good."

A strange phrase, he thought! What did she mean?

"Would you mind walking?" she suggested.

"Let me take that portfolio, then."

So they walked. She had her usual serious expression, as it were full of
the consciousness of duty. It made him think how reliable she would
always be. She held herself straight and independently, and her
appearance was very simple and very trim. He considered it wrong that a
girl with such beautiful lips should have to consult callous
bookbinders and accept whatever they chose to say. To him she was like a
lovely and valiant martyr. The spectacle of her was touching. However,
he could not have dared to hint at these sentiments. He had to pretend
that her exposure to the stresses of the labour-market was quite natural
and right. Always he was careful in his speech with her. When he got to
know people he was apt to be impatient and ruthless; for example, to
John Orgreave and his wife, and to his mother and stepfather, and
sometimes even to Everard Lucas. He would bear them down. But he was
restrained from such freedoms with Enwright, and equally with Marguerite
Haim. She did not intimidate him, but she put him under a spell.

Crossing Piccadilly Circus he had a glimpse of the rising walls and the
scaffolding of the new restaurant. He pointed to the building without a
word. She nodded and smiled.

In the Mall, where the red campanile of the cathedral was first
descried, George began to get excited. And he perceived that Marguerite
sympathetically responded to his excitement. She had never even noticed
the campanile before, and the reason was that the cathedral happened not
to be on the route between Alexandra Grove and her principal customers.
Suddenly, out of Victoria Street, they came up against the vast form of
the Byzantine cathedral. It was hemmed in by puny six-story blocks of
flats, as ancient cathedrals also are hemmed in by the dwellings of
townsfolk. But here, instead of the houses having gathered about the
cathedral, the cathedral had excavated a place for itself amid the
houses. Tier above tier the expensively curtained windows of dark
drawing-rooms and bedrooms inhabited by thousands of the well-to-do
blinked up at the colossal symbol that dwarfed them all. George knew
that he was late. If the watchman's gate was shut for the night he would
look a fool. But his confidence in his magic power successfully to run
risks sustained him in a gallant and assured demeanour. The gate in the
hoarding that screened the west front was open. With a large gesture he
tipped the watchman a shilling, and they passed in like princes. The
transition to the calm and dusty interior was instantaneous and almost
overwhelming. Immense without, the cathedral seemed still more immense
within. On one side of the nave was a steam-engine; on the other some
sort of a mill; and everywhere lay in heaps the wild litter of
construction, among which moved here and there little parties of aproned
pygmies engaged silently and industriously on sub-contracts; the main
army of labourers had gone. The walls rose massively clear out of the
white-powdered confusion into arches and high domes; and the floor of
the choir, and a loftier floor beyond that, also rose clear.
Perspectives ended in shadow and were illimitable, while the afternoon
light through the stone grille of the western windows made luminous
spaces in the gloom.

The sensation of having the mysterious girl at his elbow in that
wonder-striking interior was magnificent.

He murmured, with pride:

"Do you know this place has the widest nave of any cathedral in the
world? It's a much bigger cathedral than St. Paul's. In fact I'm not
sure if it isn't the biggest in England."

"You know," he said again, "in the whole of the nineteenth century only
one cathedral was built in England."

"Which was that?"

"Truro.... And you could put Truro inside this and leave a margin all
round. Mr. Enwright says this is the last cathedral that ever will be
built, outside America."

They gazed, more and more aware of a solemn miracle.

"It's marvellous--marvellous!" he breathed.

After a few moments, glancing at her, a strong impulse to be
confidential mastered him. He was obliged to tell that girl.

"I say, we've lost that competition--for the Law Courts."

He smiled, but the smile had no effect.

"Oh!" She positively started.

He saw that her eyes had moistened, and he looked quickly away, as
though he had seen something that he ought not to have seen. She cared!
She cared a great deal! She was shocked by the misfortune to the firm,
by the injustice to transcendent merit! She knew nothing whatever about
any design in the competition. But it was her religion that the Lucas &
Enwright design was the best, and by far the best. He had implanted the
dogma, and he felt that she was ready to die for it. Mystery dropped
away from her. Her soul stood bare to him. He was so happy and so proud
that the intensity of his feeling dismayed him. But he was enheartened
too, and courage to surmount a thousand failures welled up in him as
from an unimagined spring.

"I wonder who that is?" she said quietly and ordinarily, as if a
terrific event had not happened.

On the highest floor, at the other extremity of the cathedral, in front
of the apse, a figure had appeared in a frock-coat and a silk hat. The
figure stood solitary, gazing around in the dying light.

"By Jove! It's Bentley! It's the architect!"

George literally trembled. He literally gave a sob. The vision of
Bentley within his masterpiece, of Bentley whom Enwright himself
worshipped, was too much for him. Renewed ambition rushed through him in
electric currents. All was not wrong with the world of architecture.
Bentley had succeeded. Bentley, beginning life as an artisan, had
succeeded supremely. And here he stood on the throne of his triumph.
Genius would not be denied. Beauty would conquer despite everything.
What completed the unbearable grandeur of the scene was that Bentley had
cancer of the tongue, and was sentenced to death. Bentley's friends knew
it; the world of architecture knew it; Bentley knew it.... "Shall I tell
her?" George thought. He looked at her; he looked at the vessel which he
had filled with emotion. He could not speak. A highly sensitive decency,
an abhorrence of crudity, restrained him. "No," he decided, "I can't
tell her now. I'll tell her some other time."


III


With no clear plan as to his dinner he took her back to Alexandra Grove.
The dusk was far advanced. Mounting the steps quickly Marguerite rang
the bell. There was no answer. She pushed up the flap of the
letter-aperture and looked within.

"Have you got your latchkey?" she asked, turning round on George.
"Father's not come home--his hat's not hanging up. He promised me
certain that he would be here at six-thirty at the latest. Otherwise I
should have taken the big key."

She did not show resentment against her father; nor was there impatience
in her voice. But she seemed to be firmly and impassively judging her
father, as his equal, possibly even as somewhat his superior. And George
admired the force of her individuality. It flattered him that a being so
independent and so strong should have been so meltingly responsive to
him in the cathedral.

An adventurous idea occurred to him in a flash and he impulsively
adopted it. His latchkey was in his pocket, but if the house door was
once opened he would lose her--he would have to go forth and seek his
dinner and she would remain in the house; whereas, barred out of the
house, she would be bound to him--they would be thrust together into
exquisite contingencies, into all the deep potentialities of dark
London.

"Dash it!" he said, first fumbling in one waistcoat pocket, and then
ledging the portfolio against a step and fumbling in both waistcoat
pockets simultaneously. "I must have left it in my other clothes."

It is doubtful whether his conscience troubled him. But he had a very
exciting sense of risk and of romance and of rapture, as though he had
done something wonderful and irremediable.

"Ah! Well!" she murmured, instantly acquiescent, and without the least
hesitation descended the steps.

How many girls (he demanded) would or could have made up their minds and
faced the situation like that? Her faculty of decision was simply
masculine! He looked at her in the twilight and she was inimitable,
unparalleled. And yet by virtue of the wet glistening of her eyes in the
cathedral she had somehow become mystically his! He. permitted himself
the suspicion: "Perhaps she guesses that I'm only pretending about the
latchkey." The suspicion which made her an accessory to his crime did
not lower her in his eyes. On the contrary, the enchanting naughtiness
with which it invested her only made her variety more intoxicant and
perfection more perfect. His regret was that the suspicion was not a
certainty.

Before a word could be said as to the next move, a figure in a grey suit
and silk hat, and both arms filled with packages, passed in front of the
gate and then halted.

"Oh! It's Mr. Buckingham Smith!" exclaimed Marguerite. "Mr. Buckingham
Smith, we're locked out till father comes." She completed the tale of
the mishap, to George's equal surprise and mortification.

Mr. Buckingham Smith, with Mr. Alfred Prince, was tenant of the studio
at the back of No. 8. He raised his hat as well as an occupied arm would
allow.

"Come and wait in the studio, then," he suggested bluntly.

"You know Mr. Cannon, don't you?" said Marguerite, embarrassed.

George and Mr. Buckingham Smith had in fact been introduced to one
another weeks earlier in the Grove by Mr. Haim. Thereafter Mr.
Buckingham Smith had, as George imagined, saluted George with a kind of
jealous defiance and mistrust, and the acquaintance had not progressed.
Nor, by the way, had George's dreams been realized of entering deeply
into the artistic life of Chelsea. Chelsea had been no more welcoming
than Mr. Buckingham Smith. But now Mr. Buckingham Smith grew affable and
neighbourly. Behind the man's inevitable insistence that George should
accompany Miss Haim into the studio was a genuine, eager hospitality.

The studio was lofty and large, occupying most of the garden space of
No. 8. Crimson rep curtains, hung on a thick, blackened brass rod,
divided it into two unequal parts. By the wall nearest the house a
staircase ran up to a door high in the gable, which door communicated by
a covered bridge with the second floor of No. 8, where the artists had
bedrooms. The arrangement was a characteristic example of the manner in
which building was added to building in London contrary to the intention
of the original laying-out, and George in his expert capacity wondered
how the plans had been kept within the by-laws of the borough, and by
what chicane the consent of the ground-landlord had been obtained.

Mr. Alfred Prince, whom also George knew slightly, was trimming a huge
oil-lamp which depended by a wire from the scarcely visible apex of the
roof. When at length the natural perversity of the lamp had been
mastered and the metal shade replaced, George got a general view of the
immense and complex disorder of the studio. It was obviously very
dirty--even in the lamplight the dust could be seen in drifts on the
moveless folds of the curtains--it was a pigsty; but it was romantic
with shadowed spaces, and gleams of copper and of the pale arms of the
etching-press, and glimpses of pictures; and the fellow desired a studio
of his own! He was glad, now, that Mr. Buckingham Smith had invited them
in. He had wanted to keep Marguerite Haim to himself; but it was worth
while to visit the studio, and it was especially worth while to watch
her under the illumination of the lamp.

"Lucky we have a clean tablecloth," said Mr. Buckingham Smith, opening
his packages and setting a table. "Brawn, Miss Haim! And beer, Miss
Haim! That is to say, Pilsener. From the only place in Chelsea where you
can get it."

And his packages really did contain brawn and beer (four bottles of the
Pilsener); also bread and a slice of butter. The visitors learnt that
they had happened on a feast, a feast which Mr. Buckingham Smith had
conceived and ordained, a feast to celebrate the triumph of Mr. Alfred
Prince. An etching by Mr. Prince had been bought by Vienna. Mr.
Buckingham Smith did not say that the etching had been bought by any
particular gallery in Vienna. He said 'by Vienna,' giving the idea that
all Vienna, every man, woman, and child in that distant and enlightened
city where etchings were truly understood, had combined for the
possession of a work by Mr. Prince. Mr. Buckingham Smith opined that
soon every gallery in Europe would be purchasing examples of Alfred
Prince. He snatched from a side-table and showed the identical authentic
letter from Vienna to Mr. Alfred Prince, with its official heading,
foreign calligraphy, and stilted English. The letter was very
complimentary.

In George's estimation Mr. Prince did not look the part of an etcher of
continental renown. He was a small, pale man, with a small brown beard,
very shabby, and he was full of small nervous gestures. He had the
innocently-red nose which pertains to indigestion. His trousers bagged
horribly at the knees, and he wore indescribable slippers. He said
little, in an extremely quiet, weak voice. His eyes, however, were
lively and attractive. He was old, probably at least thirty-five. Mr.
Buckingham Smith made a marked contrast to him. Tall, with newish
clothes, a powerful voice and decisive gestures, Mr. Buckingham Smith
dominated, though he was younger than his friend. He tried to please,
and he mingled the grand seigneurial style with the abrupt. It was he
who played both the parlourmaid and the host. He forced Marguerite to
have some brawn, serving her with a vast portion; but he could not force
her to take Pilsener.

"Now, Mr. Cannon," he said, pouring beer into a glass with an up-and-down
motion of the bottle so as to put a sparkling head on the beer.

"No, thank you," said George decidedly. "I won't have beer."

Mr. Buckingham Smith gazed at him challengingly out of his black eyes.
"Oh! But you've got to," he said. It was as if he had said: "I am
generous. I love to be hospitable, but I am not going to have my
hospitality thwarted, and you needn't think it."

George accepted the beer and joined in the toasting of Mr. Alfred
Prince's health.

"Old chap!" Mr. Buckingham Smith greeted his chum, and then to George
and Marguerite, informingly and seriously: "One of the best."

It was during the snack that Mr. Buckingham Smith began to display the
etchings of Mr. Alfred Prince, massed in a portfolio. He extolled them
with his mouth half-full of brawn, or between two gulps of Pilsener.
They impressed George deeply--they were so rich and dark and austere.

"Old Princey boy's one of the finest etchers in Europe to-day, if you
ask me," said Mr. Buckingham Smith off-handedly, and with the air of
stating the obvious. And George thought that Mr. Prince was. The
etchings were not signed 'Alfred Prince,' but just 'Prince,' which was
quietly imposing. Everybody agreed that Vienna had chosen the best one.

"It's a dry-point, isn't it?" Marguerite asked, peering into it. George
started. This single remark convinced him that she knew all about
etching, whereas he himself knew nothing. He did not even know exactly
what a dry-point was.

"Mostly," said Mr. Prince. "You can only get that peculiar quality of
line in dry-point."

George perceived that etching was an entrancing subject, and he
determined to learn something about it--everything about it.

Then came the turn of Mr. Buckingham Smith's paintings. These were not
signed 'Smith' as the etchings were signed 'Prince.' By no means! They
were signed 'Buckingham Smith.' George much admired them, though less
than he admired the etchings. They were very striking and ingenious, in
particular the portraits and the still-life subjects. He had to admit
that these fellows to whom he had scarcely given a thought, these
fellows who existed darkly behind the house, were prodigiously
accomplished.

"Of course," said Mr. Buckingham Smith negligently, "you can't get any
idea of them by this light--though," he added warningly, "it's the
finest artificial light going. Better than all your electricity."

There was a pause, and Mr. Prince sighed and said:

"I was thinking of going up to the Promenades to-night, but Buck won't
go."

George took fire at once. "The Glazounov ballet music?"

"Glazounov?" repeated Mr. Prince uncertainly. "No. I rather wanted to
hear the new Elgar."

George was disappointed, for he had derived from Mr. Enwright positive
opinions about the relative importance of Elgar and Glazounov.

"Go often?" he asked.

"No," said Mr. Prince. "I haven't been this season yet, but I'm always
meaning to." He smiled apologetically. "And I thought to-night----"
Despite appearances, he was not indifferent after all to his great
Viennese triumph; he had had some mild notion of his own of celebrating
the affair.

"I suppose this is what etchings are printed with," said George to Mr.
Buckingham Smith, for the sake of conversation, and he moved towards the
press. The reception given to the wonderful name of Glazounov in that
studio was more than a disappointment for George; he felt obscurely that
it amounted to a snub.

Mr. Buckingham Smith instantly became the urbane and alert showman. He
explained how the pressure was regulated. He pulled the capstan-like
arms of the motive wheel and the blanketed steel bed slid smoothly under
the glittering cylinder. Although George had often been in his
stepfather's printing works he now felt for the first time the
fascination of manual work, of artisanship, in art, and he regretted
that the architect had no such labour. He could indistinctly hear Mr.
Prince talking to Marguerite.

"This is a monotype," said Mr. Buckingham Smith, picking up a dusty
print off the window-sill. "I do one occasionally."

"Did you do this?" asked George, who had no idea what a monotype was and
dared not inquire.

"Yes. They're rather amusing to do. You just use a match or your finger
or anything."

"It's jolly good," said George. "D'you know, it reminds me a bit of
Cézanne."

Of course it was in Paris that he had heard of the great original, the
martyr and saviour of modern painting. Equally of course it was Mr.
Enwright who had inducted him into the esoteric cult of Cézanne, and
magically made him see marvels in what at the first view had struck him
as a wilful and clumsy absurdity.

"Oh!" murmured Buck, stiffening.

"What do you think of Cézanne?"

"Rule it out!" said Buck, with a warning cantankerous inflection, firmly
and almost brutally reproving this conversational delinquency of
George's. "Rule it out, young man! We don't want any of that sort of
mountebanking in England. We know what it's worth."

George was cowed. More, his faith in Cézanne was shaken. He smiled
sheepishly and was angry with himself. Then he heard Mr. Prince saying
calmly and easily to Miss Haim--the little old man could not in fact be
so nervous as he seemed:

"I suppose _you_ wouldn't come with me to the Prom?"

George was staggered and indignant. It was inconceivable, monstrous,
that those two should be on such terms as would warrant Mr. Prince's
astounding proposal. He felt that he simply could not endure them
marching off together for the evening. Her acceptance of the proposal
would be an outrage. He trembled. However, she declined, and he was
lifted from the rack.

"I must really go," she said. "Father's sure to be home by now."

"May I?" demanded Mr. Buckingham Smith, stooping over Marguerite's
portfolio of designs, and glancing round at her for permission to open
it. Already his hand was on the tape.

"On no account!" she cried. "No! No!... Mr. Cannon, please take it from
him!" She was serious.

"Oh! All right! All right!" Mr. Buckingham Smith rose to the erect
good-humouredly.

After a decent interval George took the portfolio under his arm.
Marguerite was giving thanks for hospitality. They left. George was
singularly uplifted by the fact that she never concealed from him those
designs upon which Mr. Buckingham Smith had not been allowed to gaze.
And, certain contretemps and disappointments notwithstanding, he was
impressed by the entity of the studio. It had made a desirable picture
in his mind: the romantic paraphernalia, the etchings, the canvases, the
lights and shadows, the informality, the warm odours of the lamp and of
the Pilsener, the dazzling white of the tablecloth, the quick, positive
tones of Buckingham Smith, who had always to be convincing not only
others but himself that he was a strong man whose views were
unassailable, the eyes of Buckingham Smith like black holes in his
handsome face, the stylish gestures and coarse petulance of Buckingham
Smith, the shy assurance of little old Prince. He envied the pair. Their
existence had a cloistral quality which appealed to something in him.
They were continually in the studio, morning, afternoon, evening. They
were independent. They had not to go forth to catch omnibuses and
trains, to sit in offices, to utilize the services of clerks, to take
orders, to consider the idiosyncrasies of superiors. They were
self-contained, they were consecrated, and they were free. No open
competitions for them! No struggles with committees and with
contractors! And no waiting for the realization of an idea! They sat
down and worked, and the idea came at once to life, complete, without
the necessity of other human co-operation! They did not sit in front of
a painting or etching and say, as architects had too often to say in
front of their designs: "That is wasted! That will never come into
being." Architecture might be the art of arts, and indeed it was, but
there were terrible drawbacks to it....

And next he was outside in the dark with Marguerite Haim, and new,
intensified sensations thrilled him. She was very marvellous in the
dark.

Mr. Haim had not returned.

"Well!" she muttered; and then dreamily: "What a funny little man Mr.
Prince is, isn't he?" She spoke condescendingly.

"Anyhow," said George, who had been respecting Mr. Alfred Prince,
"anyhow, I'm glad you didn't go to the concert with him."

"Why?" she asked, with apparent simplicity. "I adore the Proms. Don't
you?"

"Let's go, then," he suggested. "We shan't be very late, and what else
is there for you to do?"

His audacity frightened him. There she stood with him in the porch,
silent, reflective. She would never go. For sundry practical and other
reasons she would refuse. She must refuse.

"I'll go," she said, as if announcing a well-meditated decision. He
could scarcely believe it. This could not be London that he was in.

They deposited the portfolio under the mat in the porch.


IV


When they got into the hall the band was sending forth a tremendous
volume of brilliant exhilarating sound. A vast melody seemed to ride on
waves of brass. The conductor was very excited, and his dark locks shook
with the violence of his gestures as he urged onward the fingers and
arms of the executants flying madly through the maze of the music to a
climax. There were flags; there was a bank of flowers; there was a
fountain; there were the huge crimson-domed lamps that poured down their
radiance; and there was the packed crowd of straw-hatted and
floral-hatted erect figures gazing with upturned, intent faces at the
immense orchestral machine. Then came a final crash, and for an instant
the thin, silvery tinkle of the fountain supervened in an enchanted
hush; and then terrific applause, with yells and thuds above and below
the hand-clapping, filled and inflamed the whole interior. The
conductor, recovering from a collapse, turned round and bowed low with
his hand on his shirt-front; his hair fell over his forehead; he
straightened himself and threw the hair back again, and so he kept on,
time after time casting those plumes to and fro. At last, sated with
homage, he thought of justice, and pointed to the band and smiled with
an unconvincing air of humility, as if saying: "I am naught. Here are
the true heroes." And on the end of his stick he lifted to their feet
eighty men, whose rising drew invigorated shouts. Enthusiasm reigned;
triumph was accomplished. Even when the applause had expired, enthusiasm
still reigned; and every person present had the illusion of a share in
the triumph. It was a great night at the Promenades.

George and Marguerite looked at each other happily. They both were
inspired by the feeling that life was a grand thing, and that they had
reached suddenly one of the summits of existence. George, observing the
excitement in her eyes, thought how wonderful it was that she too should
be excited.

"What was that piece?" she asked.

"I don't quite know," he said. "There don't appear to be any programmes
about." He wished he had been able to identify the piece, but he was too
content to be ashamed of his ignorance. Moreover, his ignorance was hers
also, and he liked that.

The music resumed. He listened, ready to put himself into the mood of
admiration if it was the Glazounov item. Was it Glazounov? He could not
be certain. It sounded fine. Surely it sounded Russian. Then he had a
glimpse of a programme held by a man standing near, and he peered at it.
"No. 4. Elgar--Sea-Pictures." No. 5 was the Glazounov.

"It's only the Elgar," he said, with careless condescension, perceiving
at once, by the mere virtue of a label, that the music was not fine and
not Russian. He really loved music, but he happened to be at that age,
from which some people never emerge, at which the judgment depends
almost completely on extraneous suggestion.

"Oh!" murmured Marguerite indifferently, responding to his tone.

"Glazounov's next," he said.

"I suppose we couldn't sit down," she suggested.

Yet it was she who had preferred the Promenade to the Grand Circle or
the Balcony.

"We'll find something," he said, with his usual assurance. And in the
corridor that surrounded the hemicycle they climbed up on to a narrow
ledge in the wall and sat side by side in perfect luxury, not dreaming
that they were doing anything unusual or undignified. As a fact, they
were not. Other couples were perched on other ledges, and still others
on the cold steam-pipes. A girl with a big face and heavy red lips sat
alone, lounging, her head aslant. She had an open copy of _Home Notes_
in one hand. Elgar had sent the simple creature into an ecstasy, and she
never stirred; probably she did not know anyone named Enwright.
Promenaders promenaded in and out of the corridor, and up and down the
corridor, and nobody troubled to glance twice either at the
heavy-lipped, solitary girl or at the ledged couples.

Through an arched doorway could be seen the orchestra and half the
auditorium.

"This is the best seat in the hall," George observed proudly. Marguerite
smiled at him.

When the "Sea-Pictures" were finished she gave a sigh of appreciation,
having forgotten, it seemed, that persons who had come to admire
Glazounov ought not to relish Elgar. And George, too, reflecting upon
the sensations produced within him by Elgar, was ready to admit that,
though Elgar could of course not be classed with the foreigner, there
might be something to be said for him after all.

"This is just what I needed," she murmured.

"Oh?"

"I was very depressed this afternoon," she said.

"Were you?" He had not noticed it.

"Yes. They've cut down my price from a pound to seventeen and six."
'They' were the employing bookbinders, and the price was the fixed price
for a design--side and back.

He was shocked, and he felt guilty. How was it that he had noticed
nothing in her demeanour? He had been full of the misfortune of the
firm, and she had made the misfortune her own, keeping silence about the
grinding harshness of bookbinders. He was an insensible egotist, and
girls were wondrous. At any rate this girl was wondrous. He had an
intense desire to atone for his insensibility and his egotism by
protecting her, spoiling her, soothing her into forgetfulness of her
trouble.... Ah! He understood now what she meant when she had replied to
his suggestion as to visiting the cathedral: "It might do me good."

"How rotten!" he exclaimed, expressing his sympathy by means of disgust.
"Couldn't you tell them to go to the dickens?"

"You have to take what they'll give," she answered. "Especially when
they begin to talk about bad trade and that sort of thing."

"Well, it's absolutely rotten!"

It was not the arbitrary reduction of her earnings that he resented, but
the fact of her victimhood. Scandalous, infamous, that this rare and
delicate creature should be defenceless against commercial brutes!

The Glazounov ballet music, "The Seasons," started. Knowing himself
justified, he surrendered himself to it, to its exoticism, to its
Russianism, to its wilful and disconcerting beauty. And there was no
composer like Glazounov. Beneath the sensory spell of the music, his
memory wandered about through the whole of his life. He recalled days in
his mother's boarding-house at Brighton; musical evenings, at which John
Orgreave was present, at his stepfather's house in the Five Towns; and
in all kinds of scenes at the later home at Ladderedge Hall--scenes in
which his mother again predominated, becoming young again and learning
sports and horsewomanship as a girl might have learnt them.... And they
were all beautiful beneath the music. The music softened; the fountain
was heard; the striking of matches was heard.... Still, all was
beautiful. Then he touched Marguerite's hand as it rested a little
behind her on the ledge. The effect of contact was surprising. With all
his other thoughts he had not ceased to think of the idea of shielding
and enveloping her. But now this idea utterly possessed him. The music
grew louder, and as it were under cover of the music he put his hand
round her hand. It was a venturesome act with such a girl; he was
afraid.... The hand lay acquiescent within his! He tightened the
pressure. The hand lay acquiescent; it accepted. The flashing
realization of her compliance overwhelmed him. He was holding the very
symbol of wild purity, and there was no effort to be free. None
guessed. None could see. They two had the astonishing, the incredible
secret between them. He looked at her profile, taking precautions. No
sign of alarm or disturbance. Her rapt glance was fixed steadily on the
orchestra framed in the arched doorway.... Incredible, the soft, warm
delicacy of the cotton glove!

The applause at the end of the number awoke them. He released her hand.
She slipped neatly down from the ledge.

"I think I ought to be going back home.... Father ..." she murmured. She
met his eyes; but his embarrassed eyes would not meet hers.

"Certainly!" he agreed quickly, though they had been in the hall little
more than half an hour. He would have agreed to any suggestion from her.
It seemed to him that the least he could do at that moment was to fulfil
unquestioningly her slightest wish. Then she looked away, and he saw
that a deep blush gradually spread over her lovely face. This was the
supreme impressive phenomenon. Before the blush he was devotional.


V


They walked down Regent Street almost in silence, enjoying
simultaneously the silence and solitude of the curving thoroughfare and
the memory of the bright, crowded, triumphant scene which they had left.
At Piccadilly Circus George inquired for the new open motor-buses which
had just begun to run between the Circus and Putney, passing the
Redcliffe Arms. Already, within a year, the time was historically
distant when a policeman had refused to allow the automobile of a Member
of Parliament to enter Palace Yard, on the ground that there was no
precedent for such a desecration. The new motor-buses, however, did not
run at night. Human daring had limits, and it was reported that at least
one motor-driver, succumbing to the awful nervous strain of guiding
these fast expresses through the traffic of the West End, had been taken
to the lunatic asylum. George called a hansom, of which there were
dozens idling about. Marguerite seemed tacitly to object to this act as
the germ of extravagance; but it was the only classic thing to do, and
he did it.

The hansom rolled rapidly and smoothly along upon that well-established
novelty, india-rubber tyres. Bits of the jingling harness oscillated
regularly from side to side. At intervals the whip-thong dragged gently
across the horse's back, and the horse lifted and shook its head. The
shallow and narrow interior of the hansom was constructed with
exactitude to hold two. Neither occupant could move in any direction,
and neither desired to move. The splendidly lighted avenues, of which
every detail could be discerned as by day, flowed evenly past the
vehicle.

"I've never been in a hansom before," said Marguerite timidly--because
the situation was so dismaying in its enchantment.

He, from the height of two years of hansom-using, was touched,
delighted, even impressed. The staggering fact increased her virginal
charm and its protectiveness. He thought upon the simplicity of her
existence. Of course she had never been in a hansom! Hansoms were
obviously outside her scheme. He said nothing, but he sought for and
found her hand beneath the apron. She did not resist. He reflected "Can
she resist? She cannot." Her hand was in a living swoon. Her hand was
his; it was admittedly his. She could never deny it, now. He touched the
button of the glove, and undid it. Then, moving her passive hand, he
brought both his to it, and with infinitely delicate and considerate
gestures he slowly drew off the glove, and he held her hand ungloved.
She did not stir nor speak. Nothing so marvellous as her exquisite and
confiding stillness had ever happened.... The hansom turned into
Alexandra Grove, and when it stopped he pushed the glove into her hand,
which closed on it. As they descended the cabman, accustomed to peer
down on loves pure and impure, gave them a beneficent look.

"He's not come in," said Marguerite, glancing through the flap of the
front door. She was exceedingly self-conscious, but beneath her
self-consciousness could be noticed an indignant accusation against old
Haim. She had rung the bell and knocked.

"Are you sure? Can you see the hat-stand?"

"I can see it enough for that."

"Look here," George suggested, with false lightness, "I expect I could
get in through my window." His room was on the ground floor, and not
much agility was needed to clamber up to its ledge from the level of the
area. He might have searched his pockets again and discovered his
latchkey, but he would not. Sooner than admit a deception he would have
remained at the door with her all night.

"Think you could?"

"Yes. I could slide the window-catch."

He jumped down the steps and showed her how he could climb. In two
minutes he was opening the front door to her from the inside. She moved
towards him in the gloom.

"Oh! My portfolio!" She stopped, and bent down to the mat.

Then she busily lighted the little hall-lamp with his matches, and
hurried down, taking the matches, to the kitchen. After a few moments
George followed her; he was obliged to follow her. She had removed her
coat; it lay on the sole chair. The hat and blouse which she wore seemed
very vivid in the kitchen--vestiges of past glorious episodes in
concert-halls and hansoms. She had lighted the kitchen-lamp and was
standing apparently idle. The alarum-clock on the black mantelpiece
ticked noisily. The cat sat indifferently on the corner of the clean,
bare table. George hesitated in the doorway. He was extremely excited,
because the tremendous fact of what he had done and what she had
permitted, with all the implications, had to be explicitly acknowledged
between them. Of course it had to be acknowledged! They were both fully
aware of the thing, she as well as he, but spoken words must
authenticate its existence as only spoken words could.

She said, beginning sternly and finishing with a peculiar smile:

"I do think this business of father and Mrs. Lobley is going rather
far."

And George had a sudden new sense of the purely feminine adroitness of
women. In those words she had clearly conceded that their relations were
utterly changed. Never before had she made even the slightest, most
distant reference to the monstrous household actuality, unadmitted and
yet patent, of the wooing of Mrs. Lobley the charwoman by her father,
the widower of her mother. If Mr. Haim stayed away from home of an
evening, Mrs. Lobley was the siren who deflected him from the straight
domestic path. She knew it; George surmised it; the whole street had its
suspicions. But hitherto Marguerite had given no sign. She now created
George the confidant of her resentment. And her smile was not an
earnest of some indulgence for her father--her smile was for George
alone.

He went boldly up to her, put his arms round her, and kissed her. She
did not kiss. But she allowed herself to be kissed, and she let her body
loose in his embrace. She looked at him with her eyes nearly upon his,
and her eyes glittered with a mysterious burning; he knew that she was
content. That she should be content, that it should please her to let
him have the unimaginable experience of holding that thrilled and
thrilling body close to his, seemed to him to be a marvellous piece of
sheer luck and overwhelming good fortune. She was so sensuous and yet so
serious. Her gaze stimulated not only love but conscience. In him
ambition was superlatively vigorous. Nevertheless he felt then as though
he had never really known ambition till that moment. He thought of the
new century and of a new life. He perceived the childishness and folly
of his favourite idea that an artist ought to pass through a phase of
Don Juanism. He knew that the task of satisfying the lofty and exacting
and unique girl would be immense, and that he could fulfil it, but on
the one condition that it monopolized his powers. Thus he was both
modest and proud, anxious and divinely elated. His mind was the scene of
innumerable impulses and sensations over which floated the banner of the
male who has won an impassioned allegiance.

"Don't let's tell anyone yet," she murmured.

"No."

"I mean for a long time," she insisted.

"No, we won't," he agreed, and added scornfully: "They'd only say we're
too young."

The notion of secrecy was an enchanting notion.

She cut magic cake and poured out magic milk. And they ate and drank
together, for they were hungry. And at this point the cat began to show
an interest in their doings.

And after they were both in their beds, but not after they were asleep,
Mr. Haim, by the clicking of a latchkey in a lock, reminded them of
something which they had practically forgotten--his disordered
existence.




CHAPTER III

THE CHARWOMAN

I


George entered Alexandra Grove very early the next evening, having dined
inadequately and swiftly so that he might reach the neighbourhood of
Marguerite at the first moment justifiable. He would have omitted dinner
and trusted to Marguerite's kitchen, only that, in view of the secrecy
resolved upon, appearances had to be preserved. The secrecy in itself
was delicious, but even the short experiences of the morning had shown
both of them how extremely difficult it would be for two people who were
everything to each other to behave as though they were nothing to each
other. George hoped, however, that Mr. Haim would again be absent, and
he was anticipating exquisite hours.

At the precise instant when he put his latchkey in the door the door was
pulled away from him by a hand within, and he saw a woman of about
thirty-five, plump but not stout, in a blue sateen dress, bonneted but
not gloved. She had pleasant, commonplace features and brown hair.
Several seconds elapsed before George recognized in her Mrs. Lobley, the
charwoman of No. 8, and when he did so he was a little surprised at her
presentableness. He had met her very seldom in the house. He was always
late for breakfast, and his breakfast was always waiting for him. On
Sundays he was generally out. If he did catch sight of her, she was
invariably in a rough apron and as a rule on her knees. Their
acquaintance had scarcely progressed far enough for him to call her
'Mrs. Lob' with any confidence. He had never seen her at night, though
upon occasion he had heard her below in the basement, and for him she
was associated with mysterious nocturnal goings and comings by the
basement door. That she should be using the front door was as startling
as that she should be so nobly attired in blue sateen.

"Good evening--Mr. Cannon," she said, in her timid voice, too thin for
her body. He noticed that she was perturbed. Hitherto she had always
addressed him as 'sir.'

"Excuse me," she said, and with an apologetic air she slipped past him
and departed out of the house.

Mr. Haim was visible just within the doorway of the sitting-room, and
behind him the table with the tea-things still on it. George had felt
considerably self-conscious in Mr. Haim's presence at the office; and he
was so preoccupied by his own secret mighty affair that his first
suspicion connected the strange apparition of a new Mrs. Lobley and the
peculiar look on Mr. Haim's face with some disagreeable premature and
dramatic explosion of the secret mighty affair. His thoughts, though
absurd, ran thus because they could not run in any other way.

"Ah, Mr. Cannon!" said Mr. Haim queerly. "You're in early to-night."

"A bit earlier," George admitted, with caution. "Have to read, you
know." He was using the word 'read' in the examination sense.

"If you could spare me a minute," smiled Mr. Haim

"Certainly."

"Have a cigarette," said Mr. Haim, as soon as George had deposited his
hat and come into the room. This quite unprecedented offer reassured
George, who in spite of reason had continued to fear that the landlord
had something on his mind about his daughter and his lodger. Mr. Haim
presented his well-known worn cigarette-case, and then with precise and
calm gestures carefully shut the door.

"The fact is," said he, "I wanted to tell you something. I told Mr.
Enwright this afternoon, as I thought was proper, and it seems to me
that you are the next person who ought to be informed."

"Oh yes?"

"I am going to be married."

"The deuce you are!"

The light words had scarcely escaped from young George before he
perceived that his tone was a mistake, and that Mr. Haim was in a state
of considerable emotion, which would have to be treated very carefully.
And George too now suddenly partook of the emotion. He felt himself to
be astonished and even shaken by Mr. Haim's news. The atmosphere of the
interview changed in an instant. Mr. Haim moved silently on slippered
feet to the mantelpiece, out of the circle of lamplight, and dropped
some ash into the empty fire-place.

"I congratulate you," said George.

"Thank you!" said Mr. Haim brightly, seizing gratefully on the fustian
phrase, eager to hall-mark it as genuine and put it among his treasures.
Without doubt he was flattered. "Yes," he proceeded, as it were
reflectively, "I have asked Mrs. Lobley to be my wife, and she has done
me the honour to consent." He had the air of having invented the words
specially to indicate that Mrs. Lobley was descending from a throne in
order to espouse him. It could not have occurred to him that they had
ever been used before and that the formula was classic. He smiled again,
and went on: "Of course I've known and admired Mrs. Lobley for a long
time. What we should have done without her valuable help in this house I
don't like to think. I really don't."

"'Her help in this house,'" thought the ruthless George, behind
cigarette smoke. "Why doesn't he say right out she's the charwoman? If I
was marrying a charwoman, I should say I was marrying a charwoman." And
then he had a misgiving: "Should I? I wonder whether I should." And he
remembered that ultimately the charwoman was going to be his own
mother-in-law. He was aware of a serious qualm.

"Mrs. Lobley has had an uphill fight since her first husband's death,"
said Mr. Haim. "He was an insurance agent--the Prudential. She's come
out of it splendidly. She's always kept up her little home, though it
was only two rooms, and she'll only leave it because I can offer her a
better one. I have always admired her, and I'm sure the more you know
her the more you'll like her. She's a woman in a thousand, Mr. Cannon."

"I expect she is," George agreed feebly. He could not think of anything
to say.

"And I'm thankful I _can_ offer her a better home. I don't mind telling
you now that at one time I began to fear I shouldn't have a home. I've
had my ambitions, Mr. Cannon. I was meant for a quantity surveyor. I was
one--you may say. But it was not to be. I came down in the world, but I
kept my head above water. And then in the end, with a little money I had
I bought this house. £575. It needed some negotiation. Ground-rent £10
per annum, and seventy years to run. You see, all along I had had the
idea of building a studio in the garden. I was one of the first to see
the commercial possibilities of studios in Chelsea. But of course I know
Chelsea. I made the drawings for the studio myself. Mr. Enwright kindly
suggested a few improvements. With all my experience I was in a position
to get it put up as cheaply as possible. You'd be surprised at the
number of people in the building line anxious to oblige me. It cost
under £300. I had to borrow most of it. But I've paid it off. What's the
consequence? The consequence is that the rent of the studio and the top
rooms brings me in over eight per cent on all I spent on the house and
the studio together. And I'm living rent free myself."

"Jolly good!"

"Yes.... If I'd had capital, Mr. Cannon, I could have made thousands out
of studios. Thousands. I fancy I've the gift. But I've never had the
capital. And that's all there is to it." He smacked his lips, and leaned
back against the mantelpiece. "You may tell me I've realized my
ambitions. Not all of them, Mr. Cannon. Not all of them. If I'd had
money I should have had leisure, and I should have improved myself.
Reading, I mean. Study. Literature. Music. Painting. History of
architecture. All that sort of thing. I've got the taste for it. I know
I've got the taste for it. But what could I do? I gave it up. You'll
never know how lucky you are, Mr. Cannon. I gave it up. However, I've
nothing to be ashamed of. At any rate I hope not."

George nodded appreciatively. He was touched. He was even impressed. He
admitted the _naiveté_ of the ageing man, his vanity, his
sentimentality. But he saw himself to be in the presence of an
achievement. And though the crown of Mr. Haim's achievement was to marry
a charwoman, still the achievement impressed. And the shabby man with
the lined, common face was looking back at the whole of his life--there
was something positively formidable in that alone. He was at the end;
George was at the beginning, and George felt callow and deferential. The
sensation of callowness at once heightened his resolve to succeed. All
George's sensations seemed mysteriously to transform themselves into
food for this great resolve.

"And what does Miss Haim say to all this?" he asked, rather timidly and
wildly. It was a venturesome remark; it might well have been called an
impertinence; but the image of Marguerite was involved in all the
workings of his mind, and it would not be denied expression.

Mr. Haim lifted his back from the mantelpiece sharply. Then he
hesitated, moving forward a little.

"Mr. Cannon," he said, "it's curious you should ask that." His voice
trembled, and at the vibration George was suddenly apprehensive. Mr.
Haim had soon recovered from his original emotion, but now he seemed to
be in danger of losing control of himself.

George nervously cleared his throat and apologized.

"I didn't mean----"

"I'd better tell you," Mr. Haim interrupted him, rather loudly. "We've
just had a terrible scene with my daughter, a terrible scene!" He seldom
referred to Marguerite by her Christian name, "Mr. Cannon, I had hoped
to get through my life without a scandal, and especially an open
scandal. But it seems as if I shouldn't--if I know my daughter! It was
not my intention to say anything. Far from it. Outsiders ought not to be
troubled.... I--I like you, Mr. Cannon. She left us a few minutes ago
And as she didn't put her hat on she must be either at the studio or at
Agg's...."

"She went out of the house?" George questioned awkwardly.

Mr. Haim nodded, and then without warning he dropped like an inert lump
on to a chair and let his head fall on to his hand.

George was frightened as well as mystified. The spectacle of the old
man--at one moment boasting ingenuously of his career, and at the next
almost hysterical with woe--roused his pity in a very disconcerting
manner, and from his sight the Lucas & Enwright factotum vanished
utterly, and was supplanted by a tragic human being. But he had no idea
how to handle the unexampled situation with dignity; he realized
painfully his own lack of experience, and his over-mastering impulse was
to get away while it was still possible to get away. Moreover, he
desired intensely to see and hear Marguerite.

"Perhaps I had better find out where she is," he absurdly suggested, and
departed from the room feeling like a criminal reprieved.

The old man did not stir.


II


"Can I come in?" said George, hatless, pushing open the door of the
studio, which was ajar.

There were people in the bright and rather chilly studio, and none of
them moved until the figure arriving out of the darkness was identified.
Mr. Prince, who in the far corner was apparently cleaning or adjusting
his press, then came forward with a quiet, shy, urbane welcome.
Marguerite herself stood nearly under the central lamp, talking to Agg,
who was seated. The somewhat celebrated Agg immediately rose and said in
her somewhat deep voice to Marguerite:

"I must go."

Agg was the eldest daughter of the Agg family, a broad-minded and
turbulent tribe who acknowledged the nominal headship of a hard-working
and successful barrister. She was a painter, and lived and slept in
semi-independence in a studio of her own in Manresa Road, but maintained
close and constant relations with the rest of the tribe. In shape and
proportions fairly tall and fairly thin, she counted in shops among the
stock-sizes; but otherwise she was entitled to call herself unusual. She
kept her hair about as short as the hair of a boy who has postponed
going to the barber's for a month after the proper time, and she
incompletely covered the hair with the smallest possible hat. Her coat
was long and straight and her skirt short. Her boots were high, reaching
well up the calf, but they had high heels and were laced in some
hundreds of holes. She carried a cane in a neatly gloved hand. She was
twenty-seven. In style Marguerite and Agg made a great contrast with one
another. Each was fully aware of the contrast, and liked it.

"Good evening, Mr. Cannon," said Agg firmly, not shaking hands.

George had met her once in the way of small-talk at her father's house.
Having yet to learn the important truth that it takes all sorts to make
a world, he did not like her and wondered why she existed. He could
understand Agg being fond of Marguerite, but he could not understand
Marguerite being fond of Agg; and the friendship between these two, now
that he actually for the first time saw it in being, irked him.

"Is anything the matter?... Have you seen father?" asked Marguerite in a
serious, calm tone, turning to him. Like George, she had run into the
studio without putting on any street attire.

George perceived that there was no secret in the studio as to the crisis
in the Haim family. Clearly the topic had been under discussion. Prince
as well as Agg was privy to it. He did not quite like that. He was
vaguely jealous of both Prince and Agg. Indeed he was startled to find
that Marguerite could confide such a matter to Prince--at any rate
without consulting himself. While not definitely formulating the claim
in his own mind, he had somehow expected of Marguerite that until she
met him she would have existed absolutely sole, without any sentimental
connexions of any sort, in abeyance, waiting for his miraculous advent.
He was glad that Mr. Buckingham Smith was not of the conclave; he felt
that he could not have tolerated Mr. Buckingham Smith.

"Yes, I've seen him," George answered.

"Did he tell you?"

"Yes."

Mr. Prince, after a little hovering, retired to his press, and a wheel
could be heard creaking.

"What did he tell you?"

"He told me about--the marriage.... And I gathered there'd been a bit of
a scene."

"Nothing else?"

"No."

Agg then interjected, fixing her blue eyes on George:

"Marguerite is coming to live with me in my studio."

And her challenging gaze met George's.

"Oh!" George could not suppress his pained inquietude at this decision
having been made without his knowledge. Both girls misapprehended his
feeling. "That's it, is it?"

"Well," said Agg, "what can Mr. Haim expect? Here Marguerite's been
paying this woman two shillings a day and her food, and letting her take
a parcel home at nights. And then all of a sudden she comes dressed up
for tea, and sits down, and Mr. Haim says she's his future wife. What
_does_ he expect? Does he expect Marguerite to kiss her and call her
mamma? The situation's impossible."

"But you can't stop people from falling in love, Agg, you know. It's not
a crime," said Mr. Prince in his weak voice surprisingly from the press.

"I know it's not a crime," said Agg sharply. "And nobody wants to stop
people from falling in love. If Mr. Haim chooses to go mad about a
charwoman, when his wife, and such a wife, 's been dead barely three
years, that's his concern. It's true the lady isn't much more than half
his age, and that the whole business would be screamingly funny if it
wasn't disgusting; but still he's a free agent. And Marguerite's a free
agent too, I hope. Of course he's thunder-struck to discover that
Marguerite _is_ a free agent. He would be!"

"He certainly is in a state," said George, with an uneasy short laugh.

Agg continued:

"And why is he in a state? Because Marguerite says she shall leave the
house? Not a bit. Only because of what he thinks is the scandal of her
leaving. Mr. Haim is a respectable man. He's simply all respectability.
Respectability's his god--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Always has been.
He'd sacrifice everything to respectability--except the lovely Lobley.
It's not respectable in a respectable family for a girl to leave home on
account of her stepmother. And so he's in a state, if you please!... If
he wanted to carry on with Mrs. Lobley, let him carry on with her. But
no! That's not respectable. He's just got to marry her!" Agg sneered.

George was startled, perhaps excusably, at the monstrous doctrine
implied in Agg's remarks. He had thought himself a man of the world,
experienced, unshockable. But he blenched, and all his presence of mind
was needed to preserve a casual, cool demeanour. The worst of the trial
was Marguerite's tranquil acceptance of the attitude of her friend. She
glanced at Agg in silent, admiring approval. He surmised that until that
moment he had been perfectly ignorant of what girls really were.

"I see," said George courageously. And then, strangely, he began to
admire too. And he pulled himself together.

"I think I shall leave to-morrow," Marguerite announced. "Morning. It
will be much better. She can look after him. I don't see that I owe any
duty ..."

"Yes, you do, dear," Agg corrected her impressively. "You owe a duty to
your mother--to her memory. That's the duty you owe. I'll come round for
you to-morrow myself in a four-wheeler--let me see, about eleven."

George hated the sound of the word 'duty.'

"Thank you, dear," Marguerite murmured, and the girls shook hands; they
did not kiss.

"Bye-bye, Princey."

"Bye-bye, Agg."

"Good night, Mr. Cannon."

Agg departed, slightly banging the door.

"I think I'll go back home now," said Marguerite, in a sweet, firm tone.
"Had they gone out?"

"Who? Your father and What's-her-name? She's gone, but he hasn't. If you
don't want to meet him to-night again, hadn't you better----"

"Oh! If she's gone, he'll be gone too by this time. Trust him!"

Mr. Prince approached them, urging Marguerite soothingly to stay as long
as she liked. She shook her head, and pressed his hand affectionately.


III


When George and Marguerite re-entered No. 8 by the front door, Mr. Haim
was still sitting overcome at the tea-table. They both had sight of him
through the open door of the parlour. Marguerite was obviously disturbed
to see him there, but she went straight into the room. George moved into
the darkness of his own room. He heard the voices of the other two.

"Then you mean to go?" Haim asked accusingly.

Marguerite answered in a calm, good-humoured, sweet tone:

"Of course, if you mean to marry Mrs. Lobley."

"Marry Mrs. Lobley! Of course I shall marry her!" Haim's voice rose.
"What right have you to settle where I shall marry and where I shan't?"

"I've fixed everything up with Celia Agg," said Marguerite very quietly.

"You've soon arranged it!"

No reply from Marguerite. The old man spoke again:

"You've no right--It'll be an open scandal."

Then a silence. George now thought impatiently that a great fuss was
being made about a trifle, and that a matter much more important
deserved attention. His ear caught a violent movement. The old man came
out of the parlour, and, instead of taking his hat and rushing off to
find the enchantress, he walked slowly and heavily upstairs, preceded by
his immense shadow thrown from the hall-lamp. He disappeared round the
corner of the stairs. George, under the influence of the apparition, was
forced to modify his view that all the fuss was over a trifle. He
tiptoed into the parlour. Marguerite was standing at the table. As soon
as George came in she began to gather the tea-things together on the
tray.

"I _say_!" whispered George.

Marguerite's bent, tranquil face had a pleasant look as she handled the
crockery.

"I shall get him a nice breakfast to-morrow," she said, also in a
whisper. "And as soon as he's gone to the office I shall pack. It won't
take me long, really."

"But won't Mrs. Lobley be here?"

"What if she is? I've nothing against Mrs. Lobley. Nor, as far as that
goes, against poor father either--you see what I mean."

"He told me you'd had a terrible scene. That's what he said'--a terrible
scene."

"It depends what you call a scene," she said smoothly. "I was rather
upset just at first--who wouldn't be?--but ..." She stopped, listening,
with a glance at the ceiling. There was not the slightest sound
overhead. "I wonder what he's doing?"

She picked up the tray.

"I'll carry that," said George.

"No! It's all right. I'm used to it. You might bring me the tablecloth.
But you won't drop the crumbs out of it, will you?"

He followed her with the bunched-up tablecloth down the dangerous
basement steps into the kitchen. She passed straight into the little
scullery, where the tray with its contents was habitually left for the
attention of Mrs. Lobley the next morning. When she turned again, he
halted her, as it were, at the entrance from the scullery with a
question.

"Shall you be all right?"

"With Agg?"

"Yes."

"How do you mean--'all right'?"

"Well, for money, and so on."

"Oh yes!" She spoke lightly and surely, with a faint confident smile.

"I was thinking as they'd cut down your prices----"

"I shall have heaps. Agg and I--why, we can live splendidly for next to
nothing. You'll see."

He was rebuffed. He felt jealous of both Agg and Prince, but especially
of Prince. It still seemed outrageous to him that Prince should have
been taken into her confidence. Prince had known of the affair before
himself. He was more than jealous; he had a greater grievance.
Marguerite appeared to have forgotten all about love, all about the
mighty event of their betrothal. She appeared to have put it away, as
casually as she had put away the tray. Yet ought not the event to count
supreme over everything else--over no matter what? He was desolate and
unhappy.

"Did you tell Agg?" he asked.

"What about?"

"Our being engaged--and so on."

She started towards him.

"Dearest!" she protested, not in the least irritated or querulous, but
kindly, affectionately. "Without asking you first? Didn't we agree we
wouldn't say anything to anybody? But we shall have to think about
telling Agg."

He met her and suddenly seized her. They kissed, and she shut her eyes.
He was ecstatically happy.

"Oh!" she murmured in his embrace. "I'm so glad I've got you."

And she opened her eyes and tears fell from them. She cried quietly,
without excitement and without shame. She cried with absolute
naturalness. Her tears filled him with profound delight. And in the
exquisite subterranean intimacy of the kitchen, he saw with his eyes and
felt with his arms how beautiful she was. Her face, seen close, was
incredibly soft and touching. Her nose was the most wonderful nose ever
witnessed. He gloated upon her perfection. For, literally, to him she
was perfect. With what dignity and with what a sense of justice she had
behaved, in the studio, in the parlour, and here. He was gloriously
reassured as he realized how in their joint future he would be able to
rely upon her fairness, her conscientiousness, her mere pleasantness
which nothing could disturb. Throughout the ordeal of the evening she
had not once been ruffled. She had not said an unkind word, nor given an
unkind gesture, nor exhibited the least trace of resentment. Then, she
had taste, and she was talented. But perhaps the greatest quality of all
was her adorable beauty and charm. And yet no! The final attraction was
that she trusted him, depended on him, cried in his embrace.... He
loosed her with reluctance, and she deliciously wiped her eyes on his
handkerchief, and he took her again.

"I suppose I must leave here too, now," he said.

"Oh, George!" she exclaimed. "You mustn't! Why should you? I don't want
you to."

"Don't you? Why?"

"Oh! I don't! Truly. You'll be just as well looked after as if I was
here. I do hope you'll stay."

That settled it. And Manresa Road was not far off.

She sat on the table and leaned against him a long time. Then she said
she must go upstairs to her room--she had so much to do. He could not
forbid, because she was irresistible. She extinguished the kitchen-lamp,
and, side by side, they groped up the stairs to the first floor. The cat
nonchalantly passed them in the hall.

"Put the lights out here, will you, when you go to bed?" she whispered.
He felt flattered.

She offered her face.... The lovely thing slipped away upstairs with
unimaginable, ravishing grace. She vanished. There was silence. After a
moment George could hear the clock ticking in the kitchen below. He
stood motionless, amid the dizzying memories of her glance, her
gestures, the softness of her body. What had happened to him was past
belief. He completely forgot the existence of the old man in love.




CHAPTER IV

THE LUNCHEON

I


George, having had breakfast in bed, opened his door for the second time
that morning, and duly found on the mat the can of hot water (covered
with a bit of old blanket) and the can of cold water which comprised the
material for his bath. There was no sound in the house. The new spouse
might be upstairs or she might be downstairs--he could not tell; but the
cans proved that she was immanent and regardful; indeed, she never
forgot anything. And George's second state at No. 8 was physically even
better than his first. In the transition through autumn from summer to
winter--a transition which, according to the experience of tens of
thousands of London lodgers, is capable of turning comparative comfort
into absolute discomfort--Mrs. Haim had behaved with benevolence and
ingenuity. For example, the bedroom fire, laid overnight, was now
burning up well from the mere touch of the lodger's own match. Such
things are apt to count, and they counted with George.

As for Mr. Haim, George knew that he was still in bed, because, since
his marriage, Mr. Haim had made a practice of staying in bed on Sunday
mornings. The scheme was his wife's; she regarded it as his duty to
himself to exercise this grand male privilege of staying in bed; to do
so gave him majesty, magnificence, and was a sign of authority. A copy
of _The Referee_, fresh as fruit new-dropped from the bough, lay in the
hall at the front door. Mr. Haim had read _The Referee_ since _The
Referee_ was. He began his perusal with the feature known as "Mustard
and Cress," which not only amused him greatly, but convinced him that
his own ideas on affairs were really very sagacious. His chief and most
serious admiration, however was kept for "Our Hand-Book." "It's my
Bible," he had once remarked, "and I'm not ashamed to say it. And there
are scores and scores of men who'd say the same." Church bells could not
be heard at No. 8. _The Referee_ lying in the hall was the gracious sign
of Sabbath morning. Presently Mrs. Haim would carry it upstairs,
respectfully. For her it was simply and unanalysably _The Referee_. She
did not dream of looking into it. Mr. Haim did not expect her to look
into it. Her mission was to solace and to charm, his alone to supply the
intellectual basis upon which their existence reposed. George's nose
caught the ascending beautiful odour of bacon; he picked up his cans and
disappeared.

When he was dressed, he brought forward the grindstone to the fire, and
conscientiously put his nose to it, without even lighting a cigarette.
It had been agreed between himself and Marguerite that there should be
no more cigarettes until after lunch. It had also been agreed that he
should put his nose to the grindstone that Sunday morning, and that she
should do the same away in Manresa Road. George's grindstone happened to
be Miers and Crosskey's _The Soil in Relation to Health_. He was
preparing for his Final Examination. In addition to the vast
imperial subject of Design, the Final comprised four other
subjects--Construction, Hygiene, Properties and Uses of Building
Materials, and Ordinary Practice of Architecture. George was now busy
with one branch of the second of these subjects. Perhaps he was not
following precisely the order of tactics prescribed by the most wily
tacticians, for as usual he had his own ideas and they were arbitrary;
but he was veritably and visibly engaged in the slow but exciting
process of becoming a great architect. And he knew and felt that he was.
And the disordered bed, and the untransparent bath-water, and the
soap-tin by the side of the bath, and the breakfast-tray on a chair,
were as much a part of the inspiring spectacle as himself tense and
especially dandiacal in the midst.

Nevertheless appearances deceived. On a table were the thirteen folio
and quarto glorious illustrated volumes of Ongania's _Basilica di San
Marco_, which Mr. Enwright had obtained for him on loan, and which had
come down to No. 8 in a big box by Carter Paterson van. And while George
sat quite still with his eyes and his volition centred fiercely on Miers
and Crosskey, his brain would keep making excursions across the room to
the Church of St. Mark at Venice. He brought it back again and again
with a jerk but he could not retain it in place. The minutes passed; the
quarters passed, until an hour and a half had gone. Then he closed Miers
and Crosskey. He had sworn to study Miers and Crosskey for an hour and a
half. He had fought hard to do so, and nobody could say that he had not
done so. He was aware, however, that the fight had not been wholly
successful; he had not won it; on the other hand neither had he lost it.
Honour was saved, and he could still sincerely assert that in regard to
the Final Examination he had got time fiercely by the forelock. He rose
and strolled over to the _Basilica di San Marco_, and opened one or two
of those formidable and enchanting volumes. Then he produced a
cigarette, and struck a match, and he was about to light the cigarette,
when squinting down at it he suddenly wondered: "Now how the deuce did
that cigarette come into my mouth?" He replaced the cigarette in his
case, and in a moment he had left the house.

He was invited to Mrs. John Orgreave's new abode at Bedford Park for
lunch. In the early part of the year, Mrs. John had inherited
money--again, and the result had been an increase in the spaciousness of
her existence. George had not expected to see the new house, for he had
determined to have nothing more to do with Mrs. John. He was, it is to
be feared, rather touchy. He and Mrs. John had not openly quarrelled,
but in their hearts they had quarrelled. George had for some time
objected to her attitude towards him as a boarder. She would hint that,
as she assuredly had no need of boarders, she was conferring a favour on
him by boarding him. It was of course true, but George considered that
her references to the fact were offensive. He did not understand and
make allowances for Adela. Moreover, he thought that a woman who had
been through the Divorce Court ought to be modest in demeanour towards
people who had not been through the Divorce Court. Further, Adela
resented his frequent lateness for meals. And she had said, with an
uncompromising glance: "I hope you'll turn over a new leaf when we get
into the new house." And he had replied, with an uncompromising glance:
"Perhaps _I_ shan't get into the new house." Nothing else. But that
ended it. After that both felt that mutual detestation had set in. John
Orgreave was not implicated in the discreet rupture. Possibly he knew of
it; possibly he didn't; he was not one to look for trouble, and he
accepted the theory that it was part of George's vital scheme to inhabit
Chelsea. And then Adela, all fluffiness and winsomeness, had called, in
the previous week, at Russell Square and behaved like a woman whose sole
aim in life is to please and cosset men of genius. "I shall be
dreadfully hurt if you don't come to one of my Sunday lunches, George!"
she had said. And also: "We _miss_ you, you know," and had put her head
on one side.

Marguerite had thoroughly approved his acceptance of the invitation. She
thought that he 'ought' to accept. He had promised, as she had an urgent
design to do, not to arrive at the studio before 8 p.m., and he had
received a note from her that morning to insist on the hour.


II


The roads were covered with a very even, very thin coating of mud; it
was as though a corps of highly skilled house-painters had laid on the
mud, and just vanished. The pavements had a kind of yellowish-brown
varnish. Each of the few trees that could be seen--and there were a
few--carried about six surviving leaves. The sky was of a blue-black
with golden rents and gleams that travelled steadily eastwards. Except
the man with newspapers at the corner of Alexandra Grove, scarcely a
sign of life showed along the vistas of Fulham Road; but the clock over
the jeweller's was alive and bearing the usual false witness. From the
upper open galleries of the Workhouse one or two old men and old women
in uniform looked down indifferently upon the free world which they had
left for ever. Then an omnibus appeared faintly advancing from the
beautiful grey distance of the straight and endless street. George
crossed the road on his way towards Redcliffe Gardens and Earl's Court.
He was very smart, indeed smarter than ever, having produced in himself
quite naturally and easily a fair imitation of the elegant figures
which, upon his visits to the restaurant-building in Piccadilly, he had
observed airing themselves round about Bond Street. His hair was smooth
like polished marble; his hat and stick were at the right angle; his
overcoat was new, and it indicated the locality of his waist; the spots
of colour in his attire complied with the operative decrees. His young
face had in it nothing that obviously separated him from the average
youth of his clothes. Nobody would have said of him, at a glance, that
he might be a particularly serious individual. And most people would
have at once classed him as a callow pleasure-seeking person in the act
of seeking pleasure.

Nevertheless he was at that moment particularly serious, and his
seriousness was growing. His secret engagement had affected him, in part
directly, and in part by the intensification of ambitious endeavour
which had resulted from contact with that fount of seriousness,
Marguerite. Although still entirely dependent--even to cigarette
money--upon the benevolence of a couple of old individuals a hundred and
fifty miles off, he reckoned that he was advancing in the world. The
Intermediate Examination was past, and already he felt that he had come
to grips with the Final and would emerge victorious. He felt too that
his general knowledge and the force and variety of his ideas were
increasing. At times, when he and Marguerite talked, he was convinced
that both of them had achieved absolute knowledge, and that their
criticisms of the world were and would always be unanswerable. After the
Final, he hoped, his uncle would buy him a share in the Lucas & Enwright
practice. In due season, his engagement would be revealed, and all would
be immensely impressed by his self-restraint and his good taste, and the
marriage would occur, and he would be a London architect, an established
man--at the mature age of, say, twenty-two.

No cloud would have obscured the inward radiance caused by the lovely
image of Marguerite and by his confidence in himself, had it not been
for those criticisms of the world. He had moods of being rather gravely
concerned as to the world, and as to London. He was recovering from the
first great attack of London. He saw faults in London. He was capable of
being disturbed by, for example, the ugliness and the inefficiency of
London. He even thought that something ought to be done about it. Upon
this Sunday morning, fresh from visions of Venice, and rendered a little
complacent by the grim execution of the morning's programme of work, he
was positively pained by the aspect of Redcliffe Gardens. The Redcliffe
Arms public-house, locked and dead, which was the daily paradise of
hundreds of human beings, and had given balm and illusion to whole
generations, seemed simply horrible to him in its Sunday morning coma.
The large and stuffy unsightliness of it could not be borne. (However,
the glimpse of a barmaid at an upper window interested him pleasantly
for a moment.) And the Redcliffe Arms was the true gate to the stucco
and areas of Redcliffe Gardens. He looked down into the areas and saw
therein the furtive existence of squalor behind barred windows. All the
obscene apparatus of London life was there. And as he raised his eyes to
the drawing-room and bedroom stories he found no relief. His eyes could
discover nothing that was not mean, ugly, frowzy, and unimaginative. He
pictured the heavy, gloomy, lethargic life within. The slatternly
servants pottering about the bases of the sooty buildings sickened and
saddened him. A solitary Earl's Court omnibus that lumbered past with
its sinister, sparse cargo seemed to be a spectacle absolutely
tragic--he did not know why. The few wayfarers were obviously prim and
smug. No joy, no elegance, anywhere! Only, at intervals, a feeling that
mysterious and repulsive wealth was hiding itself like an ogre in the
eternal twilight of fastnesses beyond the stuccoed walls and the grimy
curtains.... The city worked six days in order to be precisely this on
the seventh. Truly it was very similar to the Five Towns, and in
essentials not a bit better.--A sociological discovery which startled
him! He wanted to destroy Redcliffe Gardens, and to design it afresh and
rebuild it under the inspiration of St. Mark's and of the principles of
hygiene as taught for the Final Examination. He had grandiose ideas for
a new design. As for Redcliffe Square, he could do marvels with its
spaces.

He arrived too soon at Earl's Court Station, having forgotten that the
Underground Railway had a treaty with the Church of England and all the
Nonconformist churches not to run trains while the city, represented by
possibly two per cent of its numbers, was at divine worship. He walked
to and fro along the platforms in the vast echoing cavern peopled with
wandering lost souls, and at last a train came in from the void, and it
had the air of a miracle, because nobody had believed that any train
ever would come in. And at last the Turnham Green train came in, and
George got into a smoking compartment, and Mr. Enwright was in the
compartment.

Mr. Enwright also was going to the Orgreave luncheon. He was in what the
office called 'one of his moods.' The other occupants of the compartment
had a stiff and self-conscious air: some apparently were proud of being
abroad on Sunday morning; some apparently were ashamed. Mr. Enwright's
demeanour was as free and natural as that of a child. His lined and
drawn face showed worry and self-absorption in the frankest manner. He
began at once to explain how badly he had slept; indeed he asserted that
he had not slept at all; and he complained with extreme acerbity of the
renewal of his catarrh. 'Constant secretion. Constant secretion,' was
the phrase he used to describe the chief symptom. Then by a forced
transition he turned to the profession of architecture, and restated his
celebrated theory that it was the Cinderella of professions. The firm
had quite recently obtained a very important job in a manufacturing
quarter of London, without having to compete for it; but Mr. Enwright's
great leading ideas never fluctuated with the fluctuation of facts. If
the multiplicity of his lucrative jobs had been such as to compel him to
run round from one to another on a piebald pony in the style of Sir Hugh
Corver, his view of the profession would not have altered. He spoke with
terrible sarcasm apropos of a rumour current in architectural circles
that a provincial city intended soon to invite competitive designs for a
building of really enormous proportions, and took oath that in no case
should his firm, enter for the competition. In short, his condition was
markedly pessimistic.

George loved him, and was bound to humour him; and in order to respond
sympathetically to Enwright's pessimism he attempted to describe his
sensations concerning the London Sunday, and in particular the Sunday
morning aspect of Earl's Court streets. He animadverted with virulence,
and brought forward his new startling discovery that London was in truth
as provincial as the provinces.

"Well, I don't think it is," said Enwright, instantly becoming a
judicial truth-seeker.

"Why don't you?"

"Simply because it's bigger--so much bigger. That's the principal
difference, and you'll never get over it. You must appreciate size. An
elephant is a noble animal, but it wouldn't be if it was only as big as
a fly. London's an elephant, and forget it not."

"It's frightfully ugly, most of it, anyhow, and especially on Sunday
morning," George persisted.

"Is it? I wonder whether it is, now. The architecture's ugly. But what's
architecture? Architecture isn't everything. If you can go up and down
London and see nothing but architecture, you'll never be an A1
architect." He spoke in a low, kindly, and reasonable tone. "I like
London on Sunday mornings. In fact it's marvellous. You say it's untidy
and all that ... slatternly, and so on. Well, so it ought to be when it
gets up late. Jolly bad sign if it wasn't. And that's part of it! Why,
dash it, look at a bedroom when you trail about, getting up! Look how
you leave it! The existence of a big city while it's waking up--lethargy
business--a sort of shamelessness--it's like a great animal! I think
it's marvellous, and I always have thought so."

George would not openly agree, but his mind was illuminated with a new
light, and in his mind he agreed, very admiringly.

The train stopped; people got out; and the two were alone in the
compartment.

"I thought all was over between you and Adela," said Mr. Enwright,
confidentially and quizzically.

George blushed a little. "Oh no!"

"I don't know what I'm going to her lunch for, I'm sure. I suppose I
have to go."

"I have, too," said George.

"Well, she won't do you any good, you know. I was glad when you left
there."

George looked worldly. "Rum sort, isn't she?"

I'll tell you what she is, now. You remember _Aida_ at the Paris Opéra.
The procession in the second act where you lost your head and said it
was the finest music ever written. And those girls in white, waving
palms in front of the hero--What's-his-name. There are some women who
are born to do that and nothing else. Thin lips. Fixed idiotic smile.
They don't think a bit about what they're doing. They're thinking about
themselves all the time. They simply don't care a damn about the hero,
or about the audience, or anything, and they scarcely pretend to.
Arrogance isn't the word. It's something more terrific--it's stupendous!
Mrs. John's like that. I thought of it as I was coming along here."

"Is she?" said George negligently. "Perhaps she is. I never thought of
her like that."

Turnham Green Station was announced.


III


Despite the fresh pinky horrors of its external architecture, and
despite his own desire and firm intention to the contrary, George was
very deeply impressed by the new Orgreave home. It was far larger than
the previous house. The entrance was spacious, and the drawing-room,
with a great fire at either end, immense. He had never been in an
interior so splendid. He tried to be off-hand in his attitude towards
it, but did not fully succeed. The taste shown in the decoration and
furniture was almost unexceptionable. White walls--Heppel-white;
chintz--black, crackling chintz strewn with tens of thousands of giant
roses. On the walls were a few lithographs--John's contribution to the
general effect. John having of late years begun to take himself
seriously as a collector of lithographs.

One-third of the room was divided from the rest by an arched and fretted
screen of red lacquer, and within this open cage stood Mrs. John,
surveying winsomely the expanse of little tables, little chairs, big
chairs, huge chairs, sofas, rugs, flower-vases, and knick-knacks. She
had an advantage over most blondes nearing the forties in that she had
not stoutened. She was in fact thin as well as short; but her face was
too thin. Still, it dimpled, and she held her head knowingly on one
side, and her bright hair was wonderfully done up. Dressed richly as she
was, and assisted by the rejuvenating magic of jewels, she produced, in
the shadow of the screen, a notable effect of youthful vivacity, which
only the insult of close inspection could destroy. With sinuous gestures
she waved Mr. Enwright's metaphorical palm before the approaching
George. Her smile flattered him; her frail, dinging hand flattered him.
He had known her in her harsh morning moods; he had seen that
persuasive, manufactured mask vanish for whole minutes, to reveal a
petty egotism, giving way, regardless of appearances, to rage; he
clearly observed now the hard, preoccupied eyes. Nevertheless, the charm
which she exercised was undeniable. Her husband was permanently under
its spell. There he stood, near her, big, coarsening, good-natured,
content, proud of her. He mixed a cocktail and he threw a match into the
fire, in exactly the old Five Towns manner, which he would never lose.
But as for her, she had thrown off all trace of the Five Towns; she had
learnt London, deliberately, thoroughly. And even George, with the
unmerciful, ruthless judgment of his years, was obliged to admit that
she possessed a genuine pertinacity and had marvellously accomplished an
ambition. She had held John Orgreave for considerably over a decade; she
had had the tremendous courage to Leave the heavy provincial
manufacturer, her first husband; she had passed through the Divorce
Court as a respondent without blenching; she had slowly darned her
reputation with such skill that you could scarcely put your finger on
the place where the hole had been; and lo! she was reigning in Bedford
Park and had all she wanted--except youth. Nor did she in the least show
the resigned, disillusioned air of women who have but recently lost
their youth. She bore herself just as though she still had no fear of
strong lights, and as though she was still the dazzling, dashing blonde
of whom John in his earliest twenties used to say, with ingenuous
enthusiasm, that she was 'ripping'--the ripping Mrs. Chris Hamson. An
epical creature!

This domestic organism created by Mrs. John inspired George, and
instantly he was rapt away in dreams of his own future. He said to
himself again, and more forcibly, that he had a natural taste for luxury
and expensiveness, and that he would have the one and practise the
other. He invented gorgeous interiors which would be his and in which he
would be paramount and at ease. He positively yearned for them. He was
impatient to get back home and resume the long labours that would lead
him to them. Every grand adjunct of life must be his, and he could not
wait. Absurd to apprehend that Marguerite would not rise to his dreams!
Of course she would! She would fit herself perfectly into them,
completing them. She would understand all the artistic aspects of them,
because she was an artist; and in addition she would be mistress, wife,
hostess, commanding impeccable servants, receiving friends with beauty
and unsurpassable sweet dignity, wearing costly frocks and jewels as
though she had never worn anything else. She had the calm power, she had
the individuality, to fulfil all his desires for her. She would be the
authentic queen of which Mrs. John was merely the imitation. He wanted
intensely to talk to her about the future.... And then he had the
seductive idea of making presentable his bed-sitting-room at Mr. Haim's.
He saw the room instantaneously transformed; he at once invented each
necessary dodge for absolutely hiding during the day the inconvenient
fact that it had to serve as a bedroom at night; he refurnished it; he
found the money to refurnish it. And just as he was impatient to get
back home in order to work, so he was impatient to get back home in
order to transform his chamber into the ideal. Delay irked him
painfully. And yet he was extremely happy in the excitement of the
dreams that ached to be fulfilled.

"Now, Mr. Enwright," said Mrs. John in an accent to draw honey out of a
boulder. "You haven't told me what you think of it."

Enwright was wandering about by himself.

"He's coming on with his lithographs," he replied, as if after a
decision. "One or two of these are rather interesting."

"Oh! I don't mean the lithographs. You know those are all Jack's
affairs. I mean--well, the room. Now do pay me a compliment."

The other guests listened.

Enwright gave a little self-conscious smile, characteristic of him in
these dilemmas, half kind and half malicious.

"You must have taken a great deal of trouble over it," he said, with
bright amiability; and then relapsing from the effort: "it's all very
nice and harmless."

"Oh! Mr. Enwright! Is that all?" She pouted, though still waving the
palm. "And you so fond of the eighteenth century, too!"

"But I heard a rumour at the beginning of this year that we're living in
the twentieth," said Enwright.

"And I thought I should please you!" sighed Adela. "What _ought_ I to
have done?"

"Well, you might have asked me to design you some furniture. Nobody ever
has asked me yet." He rubbed his eyeglasses and blinked.

"Oh! You geniuses.... Janet darling!"

Mrs. John moved forward to meet Miss Orgreave, John's appreciably elder
sister, spinster, who lived with another brother, Charles, a doctor at
Ealing. Janet was a prim emaciated creature, very straight and
dignified, whose glance always seemed to hesitate between benevolence
and fastidiousness. Janet and Charles had consented to forget the
episode of the Divorce Court. Marion, however, the eldest Orgreave
sister, mother of a family of daughters, had never received the
divorcee. On the other hand the divorcee, obeying her own code, had
obstinately ignored the wife of Jim Orgreave, a younger brother, who,
according to the universal opinion, had married disgracefully.

When the sisters-in-law had embraced, with that unconvincing fulsomeness
which is apt to result from a charitable act of oblivion, Janet turned
lovingly to George and asked after his mother. She was his mother's most
intimate friend. In the past he had called her Auntie, and was
accustomed to kiss her and be kissed. Indeed he feared that she might
want to kiss him now, but he was spared. As with negligence of tone he
answered her fond inquiries, he was busy reconstructing quite anew his
scheme for the bed-sittingroom--for it had actually been an
eighteenth-century scheme, and inspired by the notions of Mrs. John!

At the lunch-table George found that the party consisted of ten persons,
of whom one, seated next to himself, was a youngish, somewhat plump
woman who had arrived at the last moment. He had not been introduced to
her, nor to the four other strangers, for it had lately reached Bedford
Park that introductions were no longer the correct prelude to a meal. A
hostess who wished to be modern should throw her guests in ignorance
together and leave them to acquire knowledge by their own initiative.
This device added to the piquancy of a gathering. Moreover, there was
always a theory that each individual was well known, and that therefore
to introduce was subtly to insult. On Mrs. John's right was a
beautifully braided gentleman of forty or so, in brown, with brown
necktie and hair to match, and the hair was so perfect and ended so
abruptly that George at first took it for a wig; but soon afterwards he
decided that he had been unkind. Mr. Enwright was opposite to this brown
gentleman.

Mrs. John began by hoping that the brown gentleman had been to church.

"I'm afraid I haven't," he replied, with gentle regret in his voice.

And in the course of the conversation he was frequently afraid.
Nevertheless his attitude was by no means a fearful attitude; on the
contrary it was very confident. He would grasp the edge of the table
with his hands, and narrate at length, smiling amiably, and looking from
side to side regularly like a public speaker. He narrated in detail the
difficulties which he had in obtaining the right sort of cutlets rightly
cooked at his club, and added: "But of course there's only one club in
London that would be satisfactory in all this--shall I say?--finesse,
and I'm afraid I don't belong to it."

"What club's that?" John Orgreave sent the inquiry down the table.

"The Orleans."

"Oh yes, the Orleans! I suppose that _is_ the best."

And everybody seemed glad and proud that everybody had known of the
culinary supremacy of the Orleans.

"I'm afraid you'll all think I'm horribly greedy," said the brown
gentleman apologetically. And then at once, having noticed that Mr.
Enwright was gazing up at the great sham oak rafters that were glued on
to the white ceiling, he started upon this new architectural
picturesqueness which was to London and the beginning of the twentieth
century what the enamelled milking-stool had been to the provinces and
the end of the nineteenth century--namely, a reminder that even in an
industrial age romance should still survive in the hearts of men. The
brown gentleman remarked that with due deference to 'you professional
gentlemen,' he was afraid he liked the sham rafters, because they
reminded him of the good old times and all that sort of thing.

He was not only a conscientious conversationalist, but he originated
talk in others, and listened to them with his best attention. And he
invariably stepped into gaps with praise-worthy tact and skill. Thus the
chat meandered easily from subject to subject--the Automobile Club's
tour from London to Southsea, the latest hotel, Richter, the war (which
the brown gentleman treated with tired respect, as some venerable
survival that had forgotten to die), the abnormally early fogs, and the
abnormally violent and destructive gales. An argument arose as to
whether these startling weather phenomena were or were not a hint to
mankind from some undefined Higher Power that a new century had in truth
begun and that mankind had better mind what it was about. Mrs. John
favoured the notion, and so did Miss Orgreave, whereas John Orgreave
coarsely laughed at it. The brown gentleman held the scales admirably;
he was chivalrously sympathetic to the two ladies, and yet he respected
John's materialism. He did, however, venture to point out the
contradictions in the character of 'our host,' who was really very
responsive to music and art, but who seemed curiously to ignore certain
other influences--etc. etc.

"How true that is!" murmured Mrs. John.

The brown gentleman modestly enjoyed his triumph. With only three people
had he failed--Mr. Enwright, George, and the youngish woman next to
George.

"And how's Paris, Miss Ingram?" he pointedly asked the last.

George was surprised. He had certainly taken her for a married woman,
and one of his generalizations about life was that he did not like young
married women; hence he had not liked her. He now regarded her with
fresh interest. She blushed a little, and looked very young indeed.

"Oh! Paris is all right!" she answered shortly.

The brown gentleman after a long, musing smile, discreetly abandoned the
opening; but George, inquiring in a low voice if she lived in Paris,
began a private talk with Miss Ingram, who did live in Paris. He had his
doubts about her entire agreeableness, but at any rate they got on to a
natural, brusque footing, which contrasted with the somewhat ceremonious
manner of the general conversation. She exceeded George in brusqueness,
and tended to patronize him as a youngster. He noticed that she had
yellow eyes.

"What do you think of his wig?" she demanded in an astonishing whisper,
when the meal was over and chairs were being vacated.

"_Is_ it a wig?" George exclaimed ingenuously.

"Oh, you boys!" she protested, with superiority. "Of course it's a wig."

"But how do you know it's a wig?" George insisted stoutly.

"'Is it a wig!'" she scorned him.

"Well, I'm not up in wigs," said George. "Who is he, anyhow?"

"I forget his name. I've only met him once, here at tea. I think he's a
tea-merchant. He seemed to remember me all right."

"A tea-merchant! I wonder why Mrs. John put him on her right, then, and
Mr. Enwright on her left." George resented the precedence.

"Is Mr. Enwright really very great, then?"

"Great! You bet he is.... I was in Paris with him in the summer.
Whereabouts do you live in Paris?"

She improved, especially at the point where she said that Mr. Enwright's
face was one of the most wonderful faces that she had ever seen.
Evidently she knew Paris as well as George knew London. Apparently she
had always lived there. But their interchanges concerning Paris, on a
sofa in the drawing-room, were stopped by a general departure. Mr.
Enwright began it. The tea-merchant instantly supported the movement.
Miss Ingram herself rose. The affair was at an end. Nothing interesting
had been said in the general talk, and little that was sincere. No topic
had been explored, no argument taken to a finish. No wit worth
mentioning had glinted. But everybody had behaved very well, and had
demonstrated that he or she was familiar with the usages of society and
with aspects of existence with which it was proper to be familiar. And
everybody--even Mr. Enwright--thanked Mrs. John most heartily for her
quite delightful luncheon; Mrs. John insisted warmly on her own pleasure
and her appreciation of her guests' extreme good nature in troubling to
come, and she was beyond question joyously triumphant. And George,
relieved, thought, as he tried to rival the rest in gratitude to Mrs.
John:

"What was it all about? What did they all come for? _I_ came because she
made me. But why did the others come?"

The lunch had passed like a mild nightmare, and he felt as though, with
the inconsequence of dream-people, these people had gone away without
having accomplished some essential act which had been the object of
their gathering.


IV


When George came out of the front door, he beheld Miss Ingram on the
kerb, in the act of getting into a very rich fur coat. A chauffeur, in a
very rich livery, was deferentially helping her. Behind them stretched a
long, open motor-car. This car, existing as it did at a time when the
public acutely felt that automobiles splashed respectable foot-farers
with arrogant mud and rendered unbearable the lives of the humble in
village streets, was of the immodest kind described, abusively, as
'powerful and luxurious.' The car of course drew attention, because it
had yet occurred to but few of anybody's friends that they might
themselves possess even a modest car, much less an immodest one. George
had not hitherto personally known a single motor-car owner.

But what struck him even more than the car was the fur coat, and the
haughty and fastidious manner in which Miss Ingram accepted it from the
chauffeur, and the disdainful, accustomed way in which she wore it--as
though it were a cheap rag--when once it was on her back. In her
gestures he glimpsed a new world. He had been secretly scorning the
affairs of the luncheon and all that it implied, and he had been
secretly scorning himself for his pitiful lack of brilliancy at the
luncheon. These two somewhat contradictory sentiments were suddenly
shrivelled in the fire of his ambition which had flared up anew at
contact with a spark. And the spark was the sight of the girl's costly
fur coat. He must have a costly fur coat, and a girl in it, and the girl
must treat the fur coat like a cheap rag. Otherwise he would die a
disappointed man.

"Hallo!" called Miss Ingram.

"Hallo!" She had climbed into the car, and turned her head to look at
him. He saw that she was younger even than he had thought. She seemed
quite mature when she was still, but when she moved she had the lithe
motions of immaturity. As a boy, he now infallibly recognized a girl.

"Which way are you going?"

"Well--Chelsea more or less."

"I'll give you a lift."

He ought to have said: "Are you sure I shan't be taking you out of your
way?" But he said merely: "Oh! Thanks awfully!"

The chauffeur held the door for him, and then arranged a fur rug over
the knees of the boy and the girl. To be in the car gave George intense
pleasure, especially when the contrivance thrilled into life and began
to travel. He was thankful that his clothes were as smart as they ought
to be. She could not think ill of his clothes--no matter who her friends
were.

"This is a great car," he said. "Had it long?"

"Oh! It's not mine," answered Miss Ingram. "It's Miss Wheeler's."

"Who's Miss Wheeler, if I may ask?"

"Miss Wheeler! She's a friend of mine. She lives in Paris. But she has a
flat in London too. I came over with her. We brought the car with us.
She was to have come to the Orgreaves's to-day, but she had a headache.
So I took the car--and her furs as well. They fit me, you see.... I say,
what's your Christian name? I hate surnames, don't you?"

"George. What's yours?"

"Mine's Lois."

"What? How do you spell it?"

She spelt it, adding 'Of course.' He thought it was somehow a very
romantic name. He decidedly liked the name. He was by no means sure,
however, that he liked the girl. He liked her appearance, though she was
freckled; she was unquestionably stylish; she had ascendancy; she
imposed herself; she sat as though the world was the instrument of her
individuality. Nevertheless he doubted if she was kind, and he knew that
she was patronizing. Further, she was not a conversationalist. At the
luncheon she had not been at ease; but here in the car she was at ease
absolutely, yet she remained taciturn.

"D'you drive?" he inquired.

"Yes," she said. "Look here, would you like to sit in front? And I'll
drive."

"Good!" he agreed vigorously. But he had a qualm about the safety of
being driven by a girl.

She abruptly stopped the car, and the chauffeur swerved to the pavement.

"I'm going to drive, Cuthbert," she said.

"Yes, miss," said the chauffeur willingly. "It's a bit side-slippy,
miss."

She gave no answer to this remark, but got out of the car with a
preoccupied, frowning air, as if she was being obliged to take a
responsible post, which she could fill better than anybody else, rather
against her inclination. A few persons paused to watch. She carefully
ignored them; so did George.

As soon as she had seized the wheel, released the brake and started the
car, she began to talk, looking negligently about her. George thought:
"She's only showing off." Still, the car travelled beautifully, and
there was a curious illusion that she must have the credit for that. She
explained the function of handles, pedals, and switches, and George
deemed it proper to indicate that he was not without some elementary
knowledge of the subject. He leaned far back, as Lois leaned, and as the
chauffeur had leaned, enjoying the brass fittings, the indicators, and
all the signs of high mechanical elaboration.

He noticed that Lois sounded her horn constantly, and often upon no
visible provocation. But once as she approached cross-roads at
unslackened speed, she seemed to forget to sound it and then sounded it
too late. Nothing untoward happened; Sunday traffic was thin, and she
sailed through the danger-zone with grand intrepidity.

"I say, George," she remarked, looking now straight in front of her.
("She's a bit of a caution," he reflected happily.) "Have you got
anything special on this afternoon?"

"Nothing what you may call deadly special," he answered. He wanted to
call her 'Lois,' but his volition failed at the critical moment.

"Well, then, won't you come and have tea with Miss Wheeler and me?
There'll only be just a few people, and you must be introduced to Miss
Wheeler."

"Oh! I don't think I'd better." He was timid.

"Why not?" She pouted.

"All right, then. Thanks. I should like to."

"By the way, what's your surname?"

("She _is_ a caution," he reflected.)

"I wasn't quite sure," she said, when he had told her.

He was rather taken aback, but he reassured himself. No doubt girls of
her environment did behave as she behaved. After all, why not?

They entered Hammersmith. It was a grand and inspiring sensation to
swing through Hammersmith thus aristocratically repudiating the dowdy
Sunday crowd that stared in ingenuous curiosity. And there was a
wonderful quality in the spectacle of the great, formidable car being
actuated and controlled by the little gloved hands and delicately shod
feet of this frail, pampered, wilful girl.

In overtaking a cab that kept nearly to the middle of the road, Lois
hesitated in direction, appeared to defy the rule, and then corrected
her impulse.

"It's rather confusing," she observed, with a laugh. "You see, in France
you keep to the right and overtake things on their left."

"Yes. But this is London," said George dryly.

Half a minute later, just beyond the node of Hammersmith, where bright
hats and frocks were set off against the dark-shuttered fronts of shops,
Lois at quite a good speed inserted the car between a tramcar and an
omnibus, meeting the tram and overtaking the omnibus. The tram went by
like thunder, all its glass and iron rattling and shaking; the noise
deafened, and the wind blew hard like a squall. There appeared to be
scarcely an inch of space on either side of the car. George's heart
stopped. For one horrible second he expected a tremendous smash. The car
emerged safe. He saw the omnibus-driver gazing down at them with
reproof. After the roar of the tram died he heard the trotting of the
omnibus horses and Lois's nervous giggle. She tried, and did not fail,
to be jaunty; but she had had a shock, and the proof was that by mere
inadvertence she nearly charged the posts of the next street-refuge....
George switched off the current. She herself had shown him how to do it.
She now saw him do it. The engine stopped, and Lois, remembering in a
flash that her dignity was at stake, raised her hand and drew up fairly
neatly at the pavement.

"What's the matter?" she demanded imperiously.

"Are you going to drive this thing all the way into London, Lois?" he
demanded in turn.

They looked at each other. The chauffeur got down. "Of course."

"Not with me in it, anyhow!"

She sneered. "Oh! You boys! You've got no pluck."

"Perhaps not," he returned viciously. "Neither have you got any sense of
danger. Girls like you never have. I've noticed that before." Even his
mother with horses had no sense of danger.

"You're very rude," she replied. "And it was very rude of you to stop
the car."

"I dare say. But you shouldn't have told me you could drive."

He was now angry. And she not less so. He descended, and slammed the
door.

"Thanks so much," he said, raised his hat, and walked away. She spoke,
but he did not catch what she said. He was saying to himself: "Pluck
indeed!" (He did not like her accusation.) "Pluck indeed! Of all the
damned cheek!... We might all have been killed--or worse. The least she
could have done was to apologize. But no! Pluck indeed! Women oughtn't
to be allowed to drive. It's too infernally silly for words."

He glanced backward. The chauffeur had started the car again, and was
getting in by Lois's side. Doubtless he was a fatalist by profession.
She drove off.

"Yes!" thought George. "And you'd drive home yourself now even if you
knew for certain you'd have an accident. You're just that stupid kind."

The car looked superb as it drew away, and she reclined in the driver's
seat with a superb effrontery. George was envious; he was pierced by
envy. He hated that other people, and especially girls, should command
luxuries which he could not possess. He hated that violently. "You
wait!" he said to himself. "You wait! I'll have as good a car as that,
and a finer girl than you in it. And she won't want to drive either.
You wait." He was more excited than he knew by the episode.




CHAPTER V

THE TEA

I


"Tea is ready, Mr. Cannon," said Mr. Haim in his most courteous style,
coming softly into George's room. And George looked up at the old man's
wrinkled face, and down at his crimson slippers, with the benevolent air
of a bookworm permitting himself to be drawn away from an ideal world
into the actual. Glasses on the end of George's nose would have set off
the tableau, but George had outgrown the spectacles which had disfigured
his boyhood. As a fact, since his return that afternoon from Mrs.
John's, he had, to the detriment of modesty and the fostering of
conceit, accomplished some further study for the Final, although most of
the time had been spent in dreaming of women and luxury.

"All right," said he. "I'll come."

"I don't think that lamp's been very well trimmed to-day," said Mr. Haim
apologetically, sniffing.

"Does it smell?"

"Well, I do notice a slight odour."

"I'll open the window," said George heartily. He rose, pulled the
curtains, and opened the front French window with a large gesture. The
wild, raw, damp air of Sunday night rushed in from the nocturnal Grove,
and instantly extinguished the lamp.

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Haim, rather nervously.

"Saved me the trouble," said George.

As he emerged after Mr. Haim from the dark room, he was thinking that it
was ridiculous not to have electricity, and that he must try to come to
some arrangement with Mr. Haim for the installation of electricity.
Fancy oil-lamps in the middle of London in the twentieth century! Shocks
were waiting in George's mind for Mr. Haim. He intended, if he could, to
get the room on the first floor, empty since the departure of
Marguerite, and to use it for a bedroom, while keeping the ground-floor
room exclusively for work and society. His project would involve shocks
also for Mr. Edwin Clayhanger in the Five Towns, who would be called
upon to pay; but George had an airy confidence in the ability of his
stepfather to meet such shocks in a satisfactory manner.

To George's surprise, Mr. Alfred Prince was in the sitting-room. Shabby
and creased as usual, he looked far more like a clerk in some
establishment where clerks were not morally compelled to imitate dandies
than like an etcher of European renown. But, also as usual, he was
quietly at ease and conversational; and George at once divined that he
had been invited with the object of relieving the social situation
created by the presence of the brilliant young lodger at tea. This tea
was the first meal to be taken by George with Mr. and Mrs. Haim, for he
was almost never at home on Sunday afternoons, and he was not expected
to be at home. The table showed, as Mr. Haim's nervousness had shown,
that the importance of the occasion had been realized. It was an
obviously elaborate table. The repast was ready in every detail; the
teapot was under the cosy; the cover was over the hot crumpets; Mrs.
Haim alone lacked.

"Where's missus?" asked George lightly. Mr. Haim had not come into the
room.

"I don't know," said Mr. Prince. "She brought the tea in a minute ago.
You been working this afternoon?"

At that moment Mr. Haim entered. He said:

"Mrs. Haim isn't feeling very well. She's upstairs. She says she's sure
she'll be all right in a little while. In the meantime she prefers us to
go on with our tea."

Mr. Prince and Mr. Haim looked at each other, and George looked at Mr.
Haim. The older men showed apprehension. The strange idea of
unconquerable destiny crossed George's mind--destiny clashing ruthlessly
with ambition and desire. The three males sat down in obedience to the
wish of the woman who had hidden herself in the room above. All of them
were dominated by the thought of her. They did not want to sit down and
eat and drink, and they were obliged to do so by the invisible
volitional force of which Mr. Haim was the unwilling channel. Mr. Haim,
highly self-conscious, began to pour out the tea. Mr. Prince, highly
self-conscious, suggested that he should make himself useful by
distributing the crumpets while they were hot. George, highly
selfconscious, accepted a crumpet. Mr. Prince chatted; George responded
in a brave worldly fashion; Mr. Haim said 'Yes,' 'Ye-es,' very absently.

And then Mrs. Haim appeared smiling in the doorway. "Ah!" breathed
everybody, assuaged. "Ah!" Mr. Haim moved from in front of the tea-tray
to the next seat. Mrs. Haim was perhaps somewhat pale, but she gave a
sincere, positive assurance that she was perfectly well again.
Reassurance spread throughout the company. Forebodings vanished; hearts
lightened; gladness reigned; the excellence of crumpets became
apparent. And all this swift, wonderful change was brought about by the
simple entry of the woman. But beneath the genuine relief and
satisfaction of the men there stirred vaguely the thought of the
mysteriousness of women, of the entire female sex. Mrs. Haim, charwoman,
was just as mysterious as any other woman. As for George, despite the
exhilaration which he could feel rising in him effortless and unsought,
he was preoccupied by more than women's mysteriousness; the conception
of destiny lingered and faintly troubled him. It was as though he had
been walking on a clear path through a vast and empty and safe forest,
and the eyes of a tiger had gleamed for an instant in the bush and gone.
Not a real tiger! And if a real tiger, then a tiger that would never
recur, and the only tiger in the forest!... Yet the entire forest was
transformed.

Mrs. Haim was wearing the blue sateen. It was a dress unsuited to her
because it emphasized her large bulk; but it was her best dress; it
shone and glittered; it imposed. Her duty was to wear it on that Sunday
afternoon. She was shy, without being self-conscious. To preside over a
society consisting of young bloods, etchers of European renown, and
pillars of the architectural profession was an ordeal for her. She did
not pretend that it was not an ordeal. She did not pretend that the
occasion was not extraordinary. She was quite natural in her calm
confusion. She was not even proud, being perhaps utterly incapable of
social pride. Her husband was proud for her. He looked at her earnestly,
wistfully. He could not disguise his anxiety for her success. Was she
equal to the rôle? She was. Of course she was. He had never doubted that
she would be (he said to himself). His pride increased, scarcely escaped
being fatuous.

"I must congratulate you on the new front doormat, Mrs. Haim," said Mr.
Prince, with notable conversational tact. "I felt it at once in the
dark."

Mrs. Haim smiled.

"I do like a good doormat," she said. "It saves so much work, I always
think. I told Mr. Haim I thought we needed a new one, and bless me if he
didn't take me straight out to buy one."

The new doormat expressed Mrs. Haim's sole and characteristic criticism
of the organism into which she had so unassumingly entered. Secure in
the adoration of Mr. Haim, she might safely have turned the place
upside-down and proved to the Grove that she could act the mistress with
the best of them; but she changed nothing except the doormat. The
kitchen and scullery had already been hers before the eye of Mr. Haim
had fallen upon her; she was accustomed to them and had largely
fashioned their arrangements. Her own furniture, such of it as was
retained, had been put into the spare bedroom and the kitchen, and was
hardly noticeable there. The dramatic thing for her to do would have
been to engage another charwoman. But Mrs. Haim was not dramatic; she
was accommodating. She fitted herself in. The answer to people who asked
what Mr. Haim could see in her, was that what Mr. Haim first saw was her
mere way of existing, and that in the same way she loved. At her
tea-table, as elsewhere, she exhibited no special quality; she said
little; she certainly did not shine. Nevertheless the three men were
quite happy and at ease, because her way of existing soothed and
reinspired them. George especially got gay; and he narrated the
automobile adventure of the afternoon with amusing gusto. He was thereby
a sort of hero, and he liked that. He was bound by his position in the
world and by his clothes and his style to pretend to some extent that
the adventure was much less extraordinary to him than it seemed to them.
The others made no pretence. They were open-mouthed. Their attitude
admitted frankly that above them was a world to which they could not
climb, that they were not familiar with it and knew nothing about it.
They admired George; they put it to his credit that he was acquainted
with these lofty matters and moved carelessly and freely among them; and
George too somehow thought that credit was due to him and that his
superiority was genuine.

"And do you mean to say she'd never met you before?" exclaimed Mr. Haim.

"Never in this world!"

Mr. Prince remarked calmly: "You must have had a very considerable
effect on her then." His eyes twinkled.

George flushed slightly. The idea had already presented itself to him
with great force. "Oh no!" He negligently pooh-poohed it.

"Well, does she go about asking every man she meets what his Christian
name is?"

"I expect she just does."

There was silence for a moment. Mrs. Haim refilled a cup.

"Something will have to be done soon about these motor-cars," observed
Mr. Haim at length, sententiously, in the vein of 'Mustard and Cress.'
"That's very evident."

"They cost so much," said Mr. Prince. "Why! They cost as much as a
house, some of them."

"More!" said George.

"Nay, nay!" Mr. Haim protested. The point had come at which his
imagination halted.

"Anyhow, you had a lucky escape," said Mr. Prince. "You might have been
lamed for life--or anything."

George laughed.

"I am always lucky," said he. He thought: "I wonder whether I _am_!" He
was afraid.

Mrs. Haim was half-way towards the door before any of the men noticed
what she was about. She had risen silently and quickly; she could
manoeuvre that stout frame of hers with surprising facility. There was a
strange, silly look on her face as she disappeared, and the face was
extremely pale. Mr. Haim showed alarm, and Mr. Prince concern. Mr.
Haim's hands clasped the arms of his chair; he bent forward
hesitatingly.

"What----?"

Then was heard the noise of a heavy subsidence, apparently on the
stairs. George was out of the room first. But the other two were
instantly upon him. Mrs. Haim had fallen at the turn of the stairs; her
body was distributed along the little half-landing there.

"My God! She's fainted!" muttered Mr. Haim.

"We'd better get her into the bedroom," said Mr. Prince, with awe.

The trouble had come back, but in a far more acute form. The prostrate
and unconscious body, all crooked and heaped in the shadow, intimidated
the three men, convicting them of helplessness and lack of ready wit.
George stood aside and let the elder pair pass him. Mr. Haim hurried up
the stairs, bent over his wife, and seized her under the arms. Mr.
Prince took her by the legs. They could not lift her. They were both
thin little men, quite unaccustomed to physical exertion. Mrs. Haim lay
like a giantess, immovably recumbent between their puny, straining
figures.

"Here, let me try," said George eagerly, springing towards the group.

With natural reluctance Mr. Haim gave way to him. George stooped and
braced himself to the effort. His face was close to the blanched, blind
face of Mrs. Haim. He thought she looked very young, astonishingly young
in comparison with either Haim or Prince. Her complexion was damaged but
not destroyed. Little fluffy portions of her hair seemed absolutely
girlish. Her body was full of nice curves, which struck George as most
enigmatically pathetic. But indeed the whole of her was pathetic, very
touching, very precious and fragile. Even her large, shiny, shapeless
boots and the coarse sateen stuff of her dress affected him. A lump
embarrassed his throat. He suddenly understood the feelings of Mr. Haim
towards her. She was inexpressibly romantic.... He lifted her torso
easily; and pride filled him because he could do easily what others
could not do at all. Her arms trailed limp. Mr. Haim and Mr. Prince
jointly raised her lower limbs. George staggered backwards up the
remainder of the stairs. As they steered the burden into the bedroom,
where a candle was burning, Mrs. Haim opened her eyes and, gazing
vacantly at the ceiling, murmured in a weak, tired voice:

"I'm all right. It's nothing. Please put me down."

"Yes, yes, my love!" said Mr. Haim, agitated.

They deposited her on the bed. She sighed; then smiled. A slight flush
showed on her cheek under the light of the candle which Mr. Prince was
holding aloft. Mysterious creature, with the mysterious forces of life
flowing and ebbing incomprehensibly within her! To George she was
marvellous, she was beautiful, as she lay defenceless and silently
appealing.

"Thank you, Mr. Cannon. Thank you very much," said Mr. Haim, turning to
the strong man.

It was a dismissal. George modestly departed from the bedroom, which was
no place for him. After a few minutes Mr. Prince also descended. They
stood together at the foot of the stairs in the draught from the open
window of George's room.

"Hadn't I better go for a doctor?" George suggested.

"That's what I said," replied Mr. Prince. "But she won't have one."

"But----"

"Well, she won't."

The accommodating, acquiescent dame, with scarcely strength to speak,
was defeating all three of them on that one point.

"What is it?" asked George confidentially.

"Oh! I don't suppose it's anything, really."


II


That George should collect the tea-things together on the tray, and
brush and fold the cloth, and carry the loaded tray downstairs into the
scullery, was sufficiently strange. But it was very much more strange
that he should have actually had the idea of washing-up the tea-things
himself. In his time, in the domestic crises of Bursley, he had boyishly
helped ladies to wash-up, and he reckoned that he knew all about the
operation. There he stood, between the kitchen and the scullery,
elegantly attired, with an inquiring eye upon the kettle of warm water
on the stove, debating whether he should make the decisive gesture of
emptying the kettle into the large tin receptacle that lay on the
slop-stone. Such was the miraculous effect on him of Mrs. Haim's
simplicity, her weakness, and her predicament. Mrs. Haim was a different
woman for him now that he had carried her upstairs and laid her all limp
and girlish on the solemn conjugal bed! He felt quite sure that old Haim
was incapable of washing-up. He assuredly did not want to be caught in
the act of washing-up, but he did want to be able to say in his
elaborately nonchalant manner, answering a question about the
disappearance of the tea-things: "I thought I might as well wash-up
while I was about it." And he did want Mrs. Haim to be put in a flutter
by the news that Mr. George Cannon had washed-up for her. The affair
would positively cause a sensation.

He was about to begin, taking the risks of premature discovery, when he
heard a noise above. It was Mr. Haim at last descending the stairs to
the ground floor. George started. He had been alone in the lower parts
of the house for a period which seemed long. (Mr. Prince had gone to the
studio, promising to return later.) The bedroom containing Mr. and Mrs.
Haim had become for him the abode of mystery. The entity of the
enchanted house had laid hold of his imagination. He had thought of
Marguerite as she used to pervade the house, and of his approaching
interview with her at the Manresa Road studio. He had thought very
benevolently of Marguerite and also of, Mr. and Mrs. Haim. He had
involved them all three, in his mind, in a net of peace and goodwill. He
saw the family quarrel as something inevitable, touching, absurd--the
work of a maleficent destiny which he might somehow undo and exorcise
by the magic act of washing-up, to be followed by other acts of a more
diplomatic and ingenious nature. And now the dull, distant symptoms of
Mr. Haim on the stairs suddenly halted him at the very outset of his
benignant machinations. He listened. If the peace of the world had
depended upon his washing-up he could not have permitted himself to be
actually seen in the rôle of kitchen-girl by Mr. Haim--so extreme was
his lack of logic and right reason. There was a silence, a protracted
silence, and then Mr. Haim unmistakably came down the basement stairs,
and George thanked God that he had not allowed his impulse to wash-up
run away with his discretion, to the ruin of his dignity.

Mr. Haim, hesitating in the kitchen doorway, peered in front of him as
if at a loss. George had shifted the kitchen lamp from its accustomed
place.

"I'm here," said George, moving slightly in the dim light. "I thought I
might as well make myself useful and clear the table for you. How is she
going on?" He spoke cheerfully, even gaily, and he expected Mr. Haim to
be courteously appreciative--perhaps enthusiastic in gratitude.

"Mrs. Haim is quite recovered, thank you. It was only a passing
indisposition," said Mr. Haim, using one of his ridiculously stilted
phrases. His tone was strange; it was very strange.

"Good!" exclaimed George, with a gaiety that was now forced, a bravado
of gaiety.

He thought:

"The old chump evidently doesn't like me interfering. Silly old pompous
ass!" Nevertheless his attitude towards the huffy landlord, if scornful,
was good-humoured and indulgent.

Then he noticed that Mr. Haim held in his hand a half-sheet of
note-paper which disturbingly seemed familiar. "What is the meaning of
this, Mr. Cannon?" Mr. Haim demanded, advancing towards the brightness
of the lamp and extending the paper. He was excessively excited.
Excitement always intensified his age.

The offered document was the letter which George had that morning
received from Marguerite. The missive was short, a mere note, but its
terms could leave no doubt as to the relations between the writer and
the recipient. Moreover, it ended with a hieroglyphic sign, several
times repeated, whose significance is notorious throughout the civilized
world.

"Where did you get that?" muttered George, with a defensive menace half
formed in his voice. He faltered. His mood had not yet become
definitive.

Mr. Haim answered:

"I have just picked it up in the hall, sir. The wind must have blown it
off the table in your room, and the door was left open. I presume that I
have the right to read papers I find lying about in my own house."

George was dashed. On returning home from Mrs. John's lunch he had
changed his suit for another one almost equally smart, but of Angora and
therefore more comfortable. He liked to change. He had taken the letter
out of a side-pocket of the jacket and put it with his watch, money, and
other kit on the table while he changed, and he had placed everything
back into the proper pockets, everything except the letter.
Carelessness! A moment of negligence had brought about the irremediable.
The lovely secret was violated. The whole of his future life and of
Marguerite's future life seemed to have been undermined and contaminated
by that single act of omission. Marguerite wrote seldom to him because
of the risks. But precautions had been arranged for the occasions when
she had need to write, and she possessed a small stock of envelopes
addressed by himself, so that Mr. Haim might never by chance, picking up
an envelope from the hall floor, see George's name in his daughter's
hand. And now Mr. Haim had picked up an actual letter from the hall
floor. And the fault for the disaster was George's own.

"May I ask, sir, are you engaged to my daughter?" demanded Mr. Haim,
getting every instant still more excited.

George had once before seen him agitated about Marguerite, but by no
means to the same degree. He trembled. He shook. His dignity had a touch
of the grotesque; yet it remained dignity, and it enforced respect. For
George, destiny seemed to dominate the kitchen and the scullery like a
presence. He and the old man were alone together in that presence, and
he was abashed. He was conscious of awe. The old man's mien accused him
of an odious crime, of something base and shameful. Useless to argue
with himself that he was entirely guiltless, that he had the right to be
the betrothed of either Mr. Haim's daughter or any other girl, and to
publish or conceal the betrothal as he chose and as she chose. Yes,
useless! He felt, inexplicably, a criminal. He felt that he had
committed an enormity. It was not a matter of argument; it was a matter
of instinct. The old man's frightful and irrational resentment was his
condemnation. He could not face the old man.

He thought grievously: "I am up against this man. All politeness and
conventions have vanished. It's the real, inmost me, and the real,
inmost him." Nobody else could take a part in the encounter. And he was
sad, because he could not blame the old man. Could he blame the old man
for marrying a charwoman? Why, he could only admire him for marrying the
charwoman. In marrying the charwoman the old man had done a most
marvellous thing. Could he blame Marguerite? Impossible. Marguerite's
behaviour was perfectly comprehensible. He understood Marguerite and he
understood her father; he sympathized with both of them. But Marguerite
could not understand her father, and her father could not understand
either his daughter or George. Never could they understand! He alone
understood. And his understanding gave him a melancholy, hopeless
feeling of superiority, without at all lessening the strange conviction
of guilt. He had got himself gripped by destiny. Destiny had captured
all three of them. But not the fourth. The charwoman possessed the
mysterious power to defy destiny. Perhaps the power lay in her
simplicity.... Fool! An accursed negligence had eternally botched his
high plans for peace and goodwill.

"Yes," he said. "I am."

"And how long have you been engaged, sir?"

"Oh! Since before Marguerite left here." He tried to talk naturally and
calmly.

"Then you've been living here all this time like a spy--a dirty spy. My
daughter behaves to us in an infamous manner. She makes an open scandal.
And all the time you're----"

George suddenly became very angry. And his anger relieved and delighted
him. With intense pleasure he felt his anger surging within him. He
frowned savagely. His eyes blazed. But he did not move.

"Excuse me," he interrupted, with cold and dangerous fury. "She didn't
do anything of the kind."

Mr. Haim went wildly on, intimidated possibly by George's defiance, but
desperate:

"And all the time, I say, you stay on here, deceiving us, spying on us.
Going every night to that wicked, cruel, shameful girl and
tittle-tattling. Do you suppose that if we'd had the slightest idea----"

George walked up to him.

"I'm not going to stand here and listen to you talking about Marguerite
like that."

Their faces were rather close together. George forced himself away by a
terrific effort and left the kitchen.

"Jackanapes!"

George swung round, very pale. Then with a hard laugh he departed. He
stood in the hall, and thought of Mrs. Haim upstairs. The next moment he
had got his hat and overcoat and was in the street. A figure appeared in
the gloom. It was Mr. Prince.

"Hallo! Going out? How are things?"

"Oh! Fine!" He could scarcely articulate. A ghastly sob impeded the
words. Tears gushed into his eyes. The dimly glowing oblongs in the dark
façades of the Grove seemed unbearably tragic.


III


No. 6 Romney Studios, Manresa Road, Chelsea, was at the end of the
narrow alley which, running at right angles to the road, had a blank
wall on its left and Romney Studios on its right. The studios themselves
were nondescript shanties which reminded George of nothing so much as
the office of a clerk-of-the-works nailed together anyhow on ground upon
which a large building is in course of erection. They were constructed
of brick, wood, waterproof felting, and that adaptable material,
corrugated iron. No two were alike. None had the least pretension to
permanency, comeliness, or even architectural decency. They were all
horribly hot in summer, and they all needed immense stoves to render
them habitable in winter. In putting them up, however, cautiously and
one by one, the landlord had esteemed them to be the sort of thing that
was good enough for artists and that artists would willingly accept. He
had not been mistaken. Though inexpensive they were dear, but artists
accepted them with eagerness. None was ever empty. Thus it was
demonstrated once more that artists were exactly what capitalists and
other sagacious persons had always accused them of being.

When George knocked on the door of No. 6, the entire studio, and No. 5
also, vibrated. As a rule Agg, the female Cerberus of the shanty,
answered any summons from outside; but George hoped that to-night she
would be absent; he knew by experience that on Sunday nights she usually
paid a visit to her obstreperous family in Alexandra Grove.

The door was opened by a young man in a rich but torn and soiled
eighteenth-century costume, and he looked, in the half-light of the
entrance, as though he was just recovering from a sustained debauch. The
young man stared haughtily in silence. Only after an appreciable
hesitation did George see through the disguise and recover himself
sufficiently to remark with the proper nonchalance:

"Hallo, Agg! What's the meaning of this?"

"You're before your time," said she, shutting the door.

While he took off his overcoat Agg walked up the studio. She made an
astonishingly life-like young man. George and Agg were now not
unfriendly; but each constantly criticized the other in silence, and
both were aware of the existence of this vast body of unspoken
criticism. Agg criticized more than George, who had begun to take the
attitude that Agg ought to be philosophically accepted as
incomprehensible rather than criticized. He had not hitherto seen her in
male costume, but he would not exhibit any surprise.

"Where's Marguerite?" he inquired, advancing to the Stove and rubbing
his hands above it.

"Restrain your ardour," said Agg lightly. "She'll appear in due season.
I've told you--you're before your time."

George offered no retort. Despite his sharp walk, he was still terribly
agitated and preoccupied, and the phenomena of the lamplit studio had
not yet fully impressed his mind. He saw them, including Agg, as
hallucinations gradually turning to realities. He could not be worried
with Agg. His sole desire was to be alone with Marguerite immediately,
and he regarded the fancy costume chiefly as an obstacle to the
fulfilment of that desire, because Agg could not depart until she had
changed it for something else.

Then his gaze fell upon a life-size oil-sketch of Agg in the
eighteenth-century male dress. The light was bad, but it disclosed the
sketch sufficiently to enable some judgment on it to be formed. The
sketch was exceedingly clever, painted in the broad, synthetic manner
which Steer and Sickert had introduced into England as a natural
reaction from the finicking, false exactitudes of the previous age. It
showed Agg, glass in hand, as a leering, tottering young drunkard in
frills and velvet. The face was odious, but it did strongly resemble
Agg's face. The hair was replaced by a bag wig.

"Who did that?"

"I did, of course," said Agg. She pointed to the large mirror at the
opposite side of the studio.

"The dickens you did!" George murmured, struck. But now that he knew the
sketch to be the work of a woman he at once became more critical,
perceiving in it imitative instead of original qualities. "What is it? I
mean, what's the idea at the back of it, if it isn't a rude question,
Agg?"

"Title: 'Bonnie Prince Charlie,'" said Agg, without a smile. She was
walking about, in a convincingly masculine style. Unfortunately she
could not put her hands in her pockets, as the costume was without
pockets.

"Is that your notion of the gent?"

"Didn't you know I'm supposed to be very like him?" cried Agg, vain. The
stern creature had frailties. Then she smiled grimly. "Look at my cold
blue eyes, my sharp chin, my curly-curly lips, my broad forehead, my
clear complexion. And I hope I'm thin enough. Look!" She picked up the
bag wig, which was lying on a chair, and put it on, and posed. The pose
was effective.

"You seem to know a lot about this Charlie."

"Well, our well-beloved brother Sam is writing a monograph on him, you
see. Besides, every one----"

"But what's the idea? What's the scheme? Why is he drunk?"

"He always was drunk. He was a confirmed drunkard at thirty. Both his
fair ladies had to leave him because he was just a violent brute. And so
on and so on. I thought it was about time Charlie was shown up in his
true colours. And I'm doing it!... After all the sugar-stick Academy
pictures of him, my picture will administer a much-needed tonic to our
dear public. I expect I can get it into next year's New English Art
Club, and if I do it will be the sensation of the show.... I haven't
done with it yet. In fact I only started yesterday. There's going to be
a lot more realism in it. All those silly Jacobite societies will
furiously rage together.... And it's a bit of pretty good painting, you
know."

"It is," George agreed. "But it's a wild scheme."

"Not so wild as you think, my minstrel boy. It's very, much needed. It's
symbolic, that picture is. It's a symbolic antidote. Shall I tell you
what put me on to it? Look here."

She led him to Marguerite's special work-table, under the curtained
window. There, on a sheet of paper stretched upon a drawing-board, was
the finished design which Marguerite had been labouring at for two days.
It was a design for a bookbinding, and the title of the book was, _The
Womanly Woman,_ and the author of the book was Sir Amurath Onway, M.D.,
D.Sc., F.R.S., a famous specialist in pathology. Marguerite, under
instruction from the bookbinders, had drawn a sweet picture, in quiet
colours, of a womanly woman in a tea-gown, sitting in a cosy corner of a
boudoir. The volume was destined to open the spring season of a
publishing firm of immense and historic respectability.

"Look at it! Look at it!" Agg insisted. "I've read the book myself. Poor
Marguerite had to go through the proofs, so that she could be sure of
getting the spirit of the binding right. Do you know why he wrote it? He
hates his wife--that's why. His wife isn't a womanly woman, and he's put
all his hatred of her into this immortal rubbish. Read this great work,
and you will be made to see what fine, noble creatures we men are"--she
strode to and fro--"and how a woman's first duty is to recognize her
inferiority to us, and be womanly.... Damme!... As soon as I saw what
poor Marguerite had to do I told her I should either have to go out and
kill some one, or produce an antidote. And then it occurred to me to
tell the truth about one of the leading popular heroes of history." She
bowed in the direction of the canvas. "I began to feel better at once. I
got the costume from a friend of the learned Sam's, and I've ruined
it.... I'm feeling quite bright to-night."

She gazed at George with her cold blue eyes, arraigning in his person
the whole sex which she thought she despised but which her deepest
instinct it was to counterfeit. George, while admiring, was a little
dismayed. She was sarcastic. She had brains and knowledge and ideas.
There was an intellectual foundation to her picture. And she could
paint--like a witch! Oh! She was ruthlessly clever! Well, he did not
like her. What he wanted, though he would not admit it, was old Onway's
womanly woman. And especially in that hour he wanted the womanly woman.

"What's Marguerite up to?" he asked quietly.

"After the heat and the toil of the day she's beautifying herself for
your august approval," said Agg icily. "I expect she's hurrying all she
can. But naturally you expect her to be in a permanent state of waiting
for you--fresh out of the cotton-wool."

The next instant Marguerite appeared from the cubicle or dressing-room
which had been contrived in a corner of the studio to the left of the
door. She was in her plain, everyday attire, but she had obviously just
washed, and her smooth hair shone from the brush.

"Well, George."

"Well, Marguerite."

Both spoke casually. Celia Agg was the only person in the world privy to
their engagement; but they permitted themselves no freedoms in front of
her. As Marguerite came near to George, she delicately touched his
arm--nothing more. She was smiling happily, but as soon as she looked
close at his face under the lamp, her face changed completely. He
thought: "She understands there's something up."

She said, not without embarrassment:

"George, I really must have some fresh air. I haven't had a breath all
day. Is it raining?"

"No. Would you like to go for a walk?"

"Oh! I should!"

He was very grateful, and also impressed by the accuracy of her
intuitions and her quick resourcefulness. She had comprehended at a
glance that he had a profound and urgent need to be alone with her. She
was marvellously comforting, precious beyond price. All his
susceptibilities, wounded by the scene at Alexandra Grove, and further
irritated by Agg, were instantaneously salved and soothed. Her tones,
her scarcely perceptible gesture of succour, produced the assuaging
miracle. She fulfilled her role to perfection. She was a talented and
competent designer, but as the helpmeet of a man she had genius. His
mind dwelt on her with rapture.

"You'll be going out as soon as you've changed, dear?" she said
affectionately to Agg.

"Yes," answered Agg, who at the mirror was wiping from her face the
painted signs of alcoholism. She had thrown off the bag wig. "You'd
better take the key with you. You'll be back before I am." She sat down
on one of the draped settees which were beds in disguise, and
Marguerite got a hat, cloak, and gloves.

While George was resuming his overcoat, which Marguerite held for him,
Agg suddenly sprang up and rushed towards them.

"Good night, Flora Macdonald," she murmured in her deep voice in
Marguerite's ear, put masculine arms round her, and kissed her. It was a
truly remarkable bit of male impersonating, as George had to admit,
though he resented it.

Then she gave a short, harsh laugh.

"Good night, old Agg," said Marguerite, with sweet responsiveness, and
smiled ingenuously at George.

George, impatient, opened the door, and the damp wind swept anew into
the studio.


IV


It was a fine night; the weather had cleared, and the pavements were
drying. George, looking up in a pause of the eager conversational
exchanges, drew tonic air mightily into his lungs.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Tite Street," said Marguerite. "That's the Tower House." And she nodded
towards the formidable sky-scraper which another grade of landlord had
erected for another grade of artists who demanded studios from the
capitalist. Marguerite, the Chelsea girl, knew Chelsea, if she knew
nothing else; her feet turned corners in the dark with assurance, and
she had no need to look at street-signs. George regarded the short
thoroughfare made notorious by the dilettantism, the modishness, and the
witticisms of art. It had an impressive aspect. From the portico of one
highly illuminated house a crimson carpet stretched across the pavement
to the gutter; some dashing blade of the brush had maliciously
determined to affront the bourgeois Sabbath. George stamped on the
carpet; he hated it because it was not his carpet; and he swore to
himself to possess that very carpet or its indistinguishable brother.

"I was a most frightful ass to leave that letter lying about!" he
exclaimed.

"Oh! George!" she protested lovingly. "It could so easily happen--a
thing like that could. It was just bad luck."

A cushion! The divinest down cushion! That was what she was! She was
more. She defended a man against himself. She restored him to
perfection. Her affectionate faith was a magical inspiration to him; it
was, really, the greatest force in the world. Most women would have
agreed with him, however tactfully, that he had been careless about the
letter. An Adela would certainly have berated him in her shrewish, thin
tones. A Lois would have been sarcastic, scornfully patronizing him as a
'boy.' And what would Agg have done?... They might have forgiven and
even forgotten, but they would have indulged themselves first.
Marguerite was exteriorly simple. She would not perhaps successfully
dominate a drawing-room. She would cut no figure playing with lives at
the wheel of an automobile. After all, she would no doubt be ridiculous
in the costume of Bonnie Prince Charlie. But she was finer than the
other women whose images floated in his mind. And she was worth millions
of them. He was overpowered by the sense of his good fortune in finding
her. He went cold at the thought of what he would have missed if he had
not found her. He would not try to conceive what his existence would be
without her, for it would be unendurable. Of this he was convinced.

"Do you think he'll go talking about it?" George asked, meaning of
course Mr. Haim.

"More likely _she_ will," said Marguerite.

He positively could feel her lips tightening. Futile to put in a word
for Mrs. Haim! When he had described the swoon, Marguerite had shown
neither concern nor curiosity. Not the slightest! Antipathy to her
stepmother had radiated from her almost visibly in the night like the
nimbus round a street lamp. Well, she did not understand; she was
capable of injustice; she was quite wrong about Mrs. Haim. What matter?
Her whole being was centralized on himself. He was aware of his
superiority.

He went on quietly:

"If the old man gets chattering at the office, the Orgreaves will know,
and the next minute the news'll be in the Five Towns. I can't possibly
let my people hear from anybody else of _my engagement_ before they hear
from me. However, if it comes to the point, we'll tell everybody. Why
not?"

"Oh, but dearest! It was so nice it being a secret. It was the loveliest
thing in the world."

"Yes, it was jolly."

"Perhaps father will feel differently in the morning, and then you
can----"

"He won't," said George flatly. "You don't know what a state he's in. I
didn't tell you--he called me a spy in the house, a dirty spy. Likewise
a jackanapes. Doubtless a delicate illusion to my tender years."

"He _didn't_!"

"He did, honestly."

"So that was what upset you so!" Marguerite murmured. It was her first
admission that she had noticed his agitation.

"Did I look so upset, then?"

"George, you looked terrible. I felt the only thing to do was for us to
go out at once."

"Oh! But surely I wasn't so upset as all that?" said George, finding in
Marguerite's statement a reflection upon his ability to play the part of
an imperturbable man of the world. "Agg didn't seem to see anything."

"Agg doesn't know you like I do."

She insinuated her arm into his. He raised his hand and took hold of
hers. In the left pocket of his overcoat he could feel the somewhat
unwieldy key of the studio. He was happy. The domestic feel of the key
completed his happiness.

"Of course I can't stay on there," said he.

"At father's? Oh! I do wish father hadn't talked like that." She spoke
sadly, not critically.

"I suppose I must sleep there to-night. But I'm not going to have my
breakfast there to-morrow morning. No fear! I'll have it up town.
Lucas'll be able to put me up to some new digs. He always knows about
that sort of thing. Then I'll drive down and remove all my worldly in a
four-wheeler."

He spoke with jauntiness, in his role of male who is easily equal to any
situation. But she said in a low, tenderly commiserating voice:

"It's a shame!"

"Not a bit!" he replied. Then he suddenly stood still and brought her to
a halt. Under his erratic guidance they had turned along Dilke Street,
and northwards again, past the Botanical Garden. "And this is Paradise
Row!" he said, surveying the broad street which they had come into.

"Paradise Row?" she corrected him softly. "No, dear, it's Queen's Road.
It runs into Pimlico Road."

"I mean it used to be Paradise Row," he explained. "It was the most
fashionable street in Chelsea, you know. Everybody that was anybody
lived here."

"Oh! Really!" She showed an amiable desire to be interested, but her
interest did not survive more than a few seconds. "I didn't know. I know
Paradise Walk. It's that horrid little passage down there on the right."

She had not the historic sense; and she did not understand his mood, did
not in the slightest degree suspect that events had been whipping his
ambition once more, and that at that moment he was enjoying the
seventeenth and even the sixteenth centuries, and thinking of Sir Thomas
More and Miss More, and all manner of grandiose personages and abodes,
and rebelling obstinately against the fact, that he was as yet a
nonentity in Chelsea, whereas he meant in the end to yield to nobody in
distinction and renown. He knew that she did not understand, and he
would not pretend to himself that she did. There was no reason why she
should understand. He did not particularly want her to understand.

"Let's have a look at the river, shall we?" he suggested, and they moved
towards Cheyne Walk.

"Dearest," she said, "you must come and have breakfast at the studio
to-morrow morning. I shall get it myself."

"But Agg won't like me poking my nose in for breakfast."

"You great silly! Don't you know she simply adores you?"

He was certainly startled by this remark, and he began to like Agg.

"Old Agg! Not she!" he protested, pleased, but a little embarrassed.
"Will she be up?"

"You'll see whether she'll be up or not. Nine o'clock's the time, isn't
it?"

They reached the gardens of Cheyne Walk. Three bridges hung their double
chaplets of lights over the dark river. On the southern shore the shapes
of high trees waved mysteriously above the withdrawn woodland glades
that in daytime were Battersea Park. Here and there a tiny red gleam
gave warning that a pier jutted out into the stream; but nothing moved
on the water. The wind that swept clean the pavements had unclouded ten
million stars. It was a wind unlike any other wind that ever blew, at
once caressing and roughly challenging. The two, putting it behind them,
faced eastward, and began to pass one by one the innumerable ornate
gas-lamps of Chelsea Embankment, which stretched absolutely rectilinear
in front of them for a clear mile. No soul but themselves was afoot. But
on the left rose gigantic and splendid houses, palaces designed by
modern architects, vying with almost any houses in London, some dark,
others richly illuminated and full of souls luxurious, successful, and
dominant. As the girl talked creatively about the breakfast, her arm
pressed his, and his fingers clasped her acquiescent fingers, and her
chaste and confiding passion ran through him in powerful voltaic
currents from some inexhaustible source of energy in her secret heart. It
seemed to him that since their ride home in the hansom from the
Promenade concert her faculty for love had miraculously developed. He
divined great deeps in her, and deeps beyond those deeps. The tenderness
which he felt for her was inexpressible. He said not a word, keeping to
himself the terrific resolves to which she, and the wind, and the
spectacular majesty of London inspired him. He and she would live
regally in one of those very houses, and people should kowtow to her
because she was the dazzling wife of the renowned young architect,
George Cannon. And he would show her to Mrs. John Orgreave and to Lois,
and those women should acknowledge in her a woman incomparably their
superior. They should not be able to hide their impressed astonishment
when they saw her.

Nothing of all this did he impart to her as she hung supported and
inspiring on his arm. He held it all in reserve for her. And then,
thinking again for a moment of what she had said about Agg's liking for
him, he thought of Agg's picture and of Marguerite's design which had
originated the picture. It was a special design, new for Marguerite,
whose bindings were generally of conventional patterns; it was to be
paid for at a special price because of its elaborateness; she had worked
on it for nearly two days; in particular she had stayed indoors during
the whole of Sunday to finish it; and it was efficient, skilful, as good
as it could be. It had filled her life for nearly two days--and he had
not even mentioned it to her! In the ruthless egotism of the ambitious
man he had forgotten it, and forgotten to imagine sympathetically the
contents of her mind. Sharp remorse overcame him; she grew noble and
pathetic in his eyes.... Contrast her modest and talented industry with
the exacting, supercilious, incapable idleness of a Lois!

"That design of yours is jolly good," he said shortly without any
introductory phrases.

She perceptibly started.

"Oh! George! I'm so glad you think so. I was afraid. You know it was
horribly difficult--they give you no chance."

"I know. I know. You've come out of it fine."

She was in heaven; he also, because it was so easy for him to put her
there. He glanced backwards a few hours into the past, and he simply
could not comprehend how it was that he had been so upset by the
grotesque scene with Mr. Haim in the basement of No. 8. Everything was
all right; everything was utterly for the best.




CHAPTER VI

THE DINNER

I


Early on the morning of a Tuesday in the second half of June 1903,
George Cannon was moving fast on a motor-bicycle westwards down the
slope of Piccadilly. At any rate he had the sensation of earliness, and
was indeed thereby quite invigorated; it almost served instead of the
breakfast which he had not yet taken. But thousands of people travelling
in the opposite direction in horse-omnibuses and in a few motor-buses
seemed to regard the fact of their being abroad at that hour as dully
normal. They had fought, men and girls, for places in the crammed
vehicles; they had travelled from far lands such as Putney; they had
been up for hours, and the morning, which was so new to George, had lost
its freshness for them; they were well used to the lustrous summer
glories of the Green Park; what they chiefly beheld in the Green Park
was the endless lines of wayfarers, radiating from Victoria along the
various avenues, on the way, like themselves, to offices, ware-houses,
and shops. Of the stablemen, bus-washers, drivers, mechanics,
chauffeurs, and conductors, who had left their beds much in advance even
of the travellers, let us not speak--even they had begun the day later
than their wives, mothers, or daughters. All this flying population,
urged and preoccupied by pitiless time, gazed down upon George and saw a
gay young swell without a care in the world rushing on 'one of those
motor-bikes' to freedom.

George was well aware of the popular gaze, and he supported it with
negligent pride. He had the air of having been born to greatness;
cigarette smoke and the fumes of exploded petrol and the rattle of
explosions made a fine wake behind his greatness. In two years, since he
had walked into Mr. Haim's parlour, his body had broadened, his eyes
had slightly hardened, and his complexion and hair had darkened. And
there was his moustache, very sprightly, and there was a glint of gold
in his teeth. He had poor teeth, but luxuriant hair, ruthlessly cut and
disciplined and subjugated. His trousers were clipped tightly at the
ankles, and his jacket loosely buttoned by the correct button; his soft
felt hat achieved the architect's ideal of combining the perfectly
artistic with the perfectly modish. But the most remarkable and
envy-raising portion of his attire was the loose, washable, yellow
gloves, with large gauntlets, designed to protect the delicately tended
hands when they had to explore among machinery.

He had obtained the motor-bicycle in a peculiar way. On arriving at Axe
Station for the previous Christmas holidays, he had seen two low-hung
lamps brilliantly flashing instead of the higher and less powerful lamps
of the dogcart, and there had been no light-reflecting flanks of a horse
in front of the lamps. The dark figure sitting behind the lamps proved
to be his mother. His mother herself had driven him home. He noted
calmly that as a chauffeur she had the same faults as the contemned Lois
Ingram. Still, she did drive, and they reached Ladderedge Hall in
safety. He admired, and he was a little frightened by, his mother's
terrific volition to widen her existence. She would insist on doing
everything that might be done, and nobody could stop her. Who would have
dreamt that she, with her narrow, troubled past, and her passionate
temperament rendered somewhat harsh by strange experiences, would at the
age of forty-six or so be careering about the country at the wheel of a
motor-car? Ah! But she would! She would be a girl. And by her individual
force she successfully carried it off! Those two plotters, she and his
stepfather, had conspired to buy a motor-car in secret from him. No
letter from home had breathed a word of the motor-car. He was
thunder-struck, and jealous. He had spent the whole of the Christmas
holidays in that car, and in four days could drive better than his
mother, and also--what was more difficult--could convince her obstinate
self-assurance that he knew far more about the mechanism than she did.
As a fact, her notions of the mechanism, though she was convinced of
their rightness, were mainly fantastic. George of course had had to
punish his parents. He had considered it his duty to do so. "The _least_
you can do," he had said discontentedly and menacingly, "the _least_ you
can do is to give me a decent motor-bike!" The guilty pair had made
amends in the manner thus indicated for them. George gathered from
various signs that his stepfather was steadily and rapidly growing
richer. George had acted accordingly--not only in the matter of the
motor-bicycle, but in other matters.

Now, on this June morning he had just begun to breast the slope rising
from the hollow to Hyde Park Corner when a boy shot out from behind a
huge, stationary dust-cart on the left and dashed unregarding towards
him. George shouted. The boy, faced with sudden death, was happily so
paralysed that he fell down, thus checking his momentum by the severest
form of friction. George swerved aside, missing the small, outstretched
hands by an inch or two, but missing also by an inch or two the front
wheel of a tremendous motor-bus on his right. He gave a nervous giggle
as he flashed by the high red side of the motor-bus; and then he
deliberately looked back at the murderous boy, who had jumped up. At the
same moment George was brought to a sense of his own foolishness in
looking back by a heavy jolt. He had gone over half a creosoted wood
block which had somehow escaped from a lozenge-shaped oasis in the road
where two workmen were indolently using picks under the magic protection
of a tiny, dirty red flag. Secure in the guardianship of the bit of
bunting, which for them was as powerful and sacred as the flag of an
empire, the two workmen gazed with indifference at George and at the
deafening traffic which swirled affronting but harmless around them.
George slackened speed, afraid lest the jar might have snapped the
plates of his accumulator. The motor-bicycle was a wondrous thing, but
as capricious and delicate as a horse. For a trifle, for nothing at all,
it would cease to function. The high-tension magneto and the float-feed
carburetter, whose invention was to transform the motor-bicycle from an
everlasting harassment into a means of loco-motion, were yet years away
in the future. However, the jar had done no harm. The episode, having
occupied less than ten seconds, was closed. George felt his heart
thumping. He thought suddenly of the recent Paris-Madrid automobile
race, in which the elite of the world had perished. He saw himself
beneath the motor-bus, and a futile staring crowd round about. Simply by
a miracle was he alive. But this miracle was only one of a score of
miracles. He believed strongly in luck. He had always believed in it.
The smoke of the cigarette displayed his confidence to all Piccadilly.
Still, his heart was thumping.

And it had not ceased to thump when a few minutes later he turned into
Manresa Road. Opposite the entrance to the alley of Romney Studios,
there happened to be a small hiatus in the kerbstone. George curved the
machine largely round and, mounting the pavement through this hiatus,
rode gingerly up the alley, in defiance of the regulations of a great
city, and stopped precisely at the door of No. 6. It was a matter of
honour with him to arrive thus. Not for a million would he have walked
the machine up the alley. He got off, sounded a peremptory call on the
horn, and tattooed with the knocker. No answer came. An apprehension
visited him. By the last post on the previous night he had received a
special invitation to breakfast from Marguerite. Never had he been kept
waiting at the door. He knocked again. Then he heard a voice from the
side of the studio:

"Come round here, George."

In the side of the studio was a very small window from which the girls,
when unpresentable, would parley with early tradesmen. Agg was at the
window. He could see only her head and neck, framed by the window. Her
short hair was tousled, and she held a dressing-gown tight about her
neck. For the first time she seemed to him like a real feminine girl,
and her tones were soft as they never were when Marguerite was present
with her.

"I'm very sorry," she said. "You woke me. I was fast asleep. You can't
come in."

"Anything up?" he questioned, rather anxiously. "Where's Marguerite?"

"Oh, George! A dreadful night!" she answered, almost plaintively, almost
demanding sympathy from the male--she, Agg! "We were wakened up at two
o'clock. Mr. Prince came round to fetch Marguerite to go to No. 8."

"To go to No. 8?" he repeated, frightened, and wondered why he should be
frightened. "What on earth for?"

"Mrs. Haim very ill!" Agg paused. "Something about a baby."

"And did she go?"

"Yes; she put on her things and went off at once."

He was silent. He felt the rough grip of destiny, of some strange power
irresistible and unescapable, just as he had momentarily felt it in the
basement of No. 8 more than eighteen months before, when the outraged
Mr. Haim had quarrelled with him. The mere idea of Marguerite being at
No. 8 made him feel sick. He no longer believed in his luck. "How soon
d'ye think she'll be back?"

"I--I don't know, George. I should have thought she'd have been back
before this."

"I'll run round there," he said curtly.

Agg was disconcertingly, astoundingly sympathetic. Her attitude
increased his disturbance.


II


When George rang the bell at No. 8 Alexandra Grove his mysterious qualms
were intensified. He dreaded the moment when the door should open, even
though it should be opened by Marguerite herself. And yet he had a
tremendous desire to see Marguerite--merely to look at her face, to
examine it, to read it. His summons was not answered. He glanced about.
The steps were dirty. The brass knob and the letter-flap had not been
polished. After a time he pushed up the flap and gazed within, and saw
the interior which he knew so well and which he had not entered for so
many months. Nothing was changed in it, but it also had a dusty and
neglected air. Every detail roused his memory. The door of what had once
been his room was shut; he wondered what the room was now. This house
held the greatest part of his history. It lived in his mind as vitally
as even the boarding-house kept by his mother in a side-street in
Brighton, romantic and miserable scene of his sensitive childhood. It
was a solemn house for him. Through the basement window on a dark night
he had first glimpsed Marguerite. Unforgettable event! Unlike anything
else that had ever happened to anybody!... He heard a creak, and caught
sight through the letter-aperture of a pair of red slippers, and then
the lower half of a pair of trousers, descending the stairs. And he
dropped the flap hurriedly. Mr. Haim was coming to open the door. Mr.
Haim did open the door, started at the apparition of George, and stood
defensively and forbiddingly in the very centre of the doorway.

"Oh!" said George nervously. "How is Mrs. Haim?"

"Mrs. Haim is very ill indeed." The reply was emphatic and inimical.

"I'm sorry."

Mr. Haim said nothing further. George had not seen him since the
previous Saturday, having been excused by Mr. Enwright from the office
on Monday on account of examination work. He did not know that Mr. Haim
had not been to the office on Monday either. In the interval the man had
shockingly changed. He seemed much older, and weaker too; he seemed worn
out by acute anxiety. Nevertheless he so evidently resented sympathy
that George was not sympathetic, and regarded him coldly as a tiresome
old man. The official relations between the two had been rigorously
polite and formal. No reference had ever been made by either to the
quarrel in the basement or to the cause of it. And for the world in
general George's engagement had remained as secret as before. Marguerite
had not seen her father in the long interval, and George had seen only
the factotum of Lucas & Enwright. But he now saw Marguerite's father
again--a quite different person from the factotum.... Strange, how the
house seemed forlorn! 'Something about a baby,' Agg had said vaguely.
And it was as though something that Mr. Haim and his wife had concealed
had burst from its concealment and horrified and put a curse on the
whole Grove. Something not at all nice! What in the name of decent
propriety was that slippered old man doing with a baby? George would not
picture to himself Mrs. Haim lying upstairs. He did not care to think of
Marguerite secretly active somewhere in one of those rooms. But she was
there; she was initiated. He did not criticize her.

"I should like to see Marguerite," he said at length. Despite himself he
had a guilty feeling.

"My daughter!" Mr. Haim took up the heavy rôle.

"Only for a minute," said George boyishly, and irritated by his own
boyishness.

"You can't see her, sir."

"But if she knows I'm here, she'll come to me," George insisted. He saw
that the old man's hatred of him was undiminished. Indeed, time had
probably strengthened it.

"You can't see her, sir. This is my house."

George considered himself infinitely more mature than in the November of
1901 when the old man had worsted him. And yet he was no more equal to
this situation than he had been to the former one.

"But what am I to do, then?" he demanded, not fiercely, but crossly.

"What are you to do? Don't ask me, sir. My wife is very ill indeed, and
you come down the Grove making noise enough to wake the dead"--he
indicated the motor-bicycle, of which the silencer was admittedly
defective--"and you want to see my daughter. My daughter has more
important work to do than to see you. I never heard of such callousness.
If you want to communicate with my daughter you had better write--so
long as she stays in this house."

Mr. Haim shut the door, which rendered his advantage over George
complete.

From the post office nearly opposite the end of the Grove George
dispatched a reply-paid telegram to Marguerite:

"Where and when can I see you?--GEORGE. Russell Square."

It seemed a feeble retort to Mr. Haim, but he could think of nothing
better.

On the way up town he suddenly felt, not hungry, but empty, and he
called in at a tea-shop. He was the only customer, in a great expanse of
marble-topped tables. He sat down at a marble-topped table. On the
marble-topped table next to him were twenty-four sugar-basins, and on
the next to that a large number of brass bells, and on another one an
infinity of cruets. A very slatternly woman was washing the linoleum in
a corner of the floor. Two thin, wrinkled girls in shabby black were
whispering together behind the counter. The cash-den was empty. Through
the open door he could keep an eye on his motor-bicycle, which was being
surreptitiously regarded by a boy theoretically engaged in cleaning the
window. A big van drove up, and a man entered with pastry on a wooden
tray and bantered one of the girls in black. She made no reply, being
preoccupied with the responsibility of counting cakes. The man departed
and the van disappeared. Nobody took the least notice of George. He
might have been a customer invisible and inaudible. After the fiasco of
his interview with Mr. Haim, he had not the courage to protest. He
framed withering sentences to the girls in black, such as: "Is this
place supposed to be open for business, or isn't it?" but they were not
uttered. Then a girl in black with a plain, ugly white apron and a dowdy
white cap appeared on the stairs leading from the basement, and removed
for her passage a bar of stained wood lettered in gilt: 'Closed,' and
she halted at George's table. She spoke no word. She just stood over
him, unsmiling, placid, flaccid, immensely indifferent. She was pale, a
poor sort of a girl, without vigour. But she had a decent, honest face.
She was not aware that she ought to be bright, welcoming, provocative,
for a penny farthing an hour. She had never heard of Hebe. George
thought of the long, desolating day that lay before her. He looked at
her seriously. His eyes did not challenge hers as they were accustomed
to challenge Hebe's. He said in a friendly, matter-of-fact tone:

"A meat-pie, please, and a large coffee."

And she repeated in a thin voice:

"Meat-pie. Large coffee."

A minute later she dropped the order on the table, as it might have
been refuse, and with it a bit of white paper. The sadness of the city,
and the inexplicable sadness of June mornings, overwhelmed George as he
munched at the meat-pie and drank the coffee, and reached over for the
sugar and reached over for the mustard. And he kept saying to himself:

"She doesn't see her father at all for nearly two years, and then she
goes off to him like that in the middle of the night--at a word."


III


The office was not at its normal. The empty cubicle of the factotum
looked strange enough. But there was more than that in the abnormality.
There were currents of excitement in the office. The door of the
principals' room was open, and George saw John Orgreave and Everard
Lucas within, leaning over one of the great flat desks. The hour was
early for Lucas, and self-satisfaction was on Lucas's face as he raised
it to look at the entering of George.

"I say," he remarked quietly through the doorway, "that town hall scheme
is on again."

"Oh!" said George, depositing his hat and gloves and strolling into the
principals' room. "Good morning, Mr. Orgreave. Got the conditions
there?" For a moment his attitude of interest was a pose, but very
quickly it became sincere. Astonishing how at sight of a drawing-board
and a problem he could forget all that lay beyond them! He was genuinely
and extremely disturbed by the course of affairs at Chelsea;
nevertheless he now approached Mr. Orgreave and Lucas with eagerness,
and Chelsea slipped away into another dimension.

"No," said John Orgreave, "the conditions aren't out yet. But it's all
right this time. I know for a fact."

The offices of all the regular architectural competitors in London were
excited that morning. For the conception of the northern town hall was a
vast one. Indeed, journalists had announced, from their mysterious
founts of information, that the town hall would be the largest public
building erected in England during half a century. The scheme had been
the sport of municipal politics for many months, for years. Apparently
it could not get itself definitely born. And now the Town Clerk's wife
had brought about the august parturition. It is true that her agency was
unintentional. The Town Clerk had belonged to a powerful provincial
dynasty of town clerks. He had the illusion that without him a great
town would cease to exist. There was nothing uncommon in this illusion,
which indeed is rife among town clerks; but the Town Clerk in question
had the precious faculty of being able to communicate it to mayors,
aldermen, and councillors. He was a force in the municipal council.
Voteless, he exercised a moral influence over votes. And he happened to
be opposed to the scheme for the new town hall. He gave various
admirable reasons for the postponement of the scheme, but he never gave
the true reasons, even to himself. The true reasons were, first, that he
hated and detested the idea of moving office, and, second, that he
wanted acutely to be able to say in the fullness of years that he had
completed half a century of municipal work in one and the same room. If
the pro-scheme party had had the wit to invent a pretext for allowing
the Town Clerk to remain in the old municipal buildings, the scheme
would instantly have taken life. The Town Clerk, being widowed, had
consoled himself with a young second wife. This girl adored dancing; the
Town Clerk adored her; and therefore where she danced he deemed it
prudent to attend. Driving home from a January ball at 4 a.m. the Town
Clerk had caught pneumonia. In a week he was dead, and his dynasty with
him. In a couple of months the pro-scheme party had carried the council
off its feet. Such are the realities, never printed in newspapers, of
municipal politics in the grim north.

Sketches of the site had appeared in the architectural press. John
Orgreave and Lucas were pencilling in turn upon one of these, a page
torn out of a weekly. George inserted himself between them, roughly
towards Lucas and deferentially towards Mr. John.

"But you've got the main axis wrong!" he exclaimed.

"How, wrong?" John Orgreave demanded.

"See here--give me the pencil, Looc."

George felt with a little thrill of satisfaction the respect for him
which underlay John Orgreave's curt tone of a principal--and a principal
from the Midlands. He did not miss, either, Lucas's quick, obedient,
expectant gesture in surrendering the pencil. Ideas for the plan of the
building sprang up multitudinously in his mind. He called; they came. He
snatched towards him a blank sheet of tracing-paper, and scrawled it
over with significant lines.

"That's my notion. I thought of it long ago," he said. "Or if you
prefer--"

The other two were impressed. He himself was impressed. His notion,
which he was modifying and improving every moment, seemed to him perfect
and ever more perfect. He was intensely and happily stimulated in the
act of creation; and they were all three absorbed.

"Why hasn't my desk been arranged?" said a discontented voice behind
them. Mr. Enwright had arrived by the farther door from the corridor.

Lucas glanced up.

"I expect Haim hasn't come again to-day," he answered urbanely,
placatingly.

"Why hasn't he come?"

"I hear his wife's very ill," said George.

"Who told you?"

"I happened to be round that way this morning."

"Oh! I thought all was over between you two."

George flushed. Nothing had ever been said in the office as to his
relations with Haim, though it was of course known that George no longer
lodged with the factotum. Mr. Enwright, however, often had disconcerting
intuitions concerning matters to which Mr. Orgreave and Lucas were
utterly insensible.

"Oh no!" George haltingly murmured.

"Well, this is all very well, this is----!" Mr. Enwright ruthlessly
proceeded, beginning to marshal the instruments on his desk.

He had been a somewhat spectacular martyr for some time past. A
mysterious facial neuralgia had harried his nights and days. For the
greater part of a week he had dozed in an arm-chair in the office under
the spell of eight tabloids of aspirin per diem. Then a specialist had
decided that seven of his side teeth, already studded with gold, must
leave him. Those teeth were not like any other person's teeth, and in
Mr. Enwright's mind the extracting of them had become a major operation,
as, for example, the taking off of a limb. He had spent three days in a
nursing home in Welbeck Street. His life was now saved, and he was a
convalescent, and passed several hours daily in giving to friends
tragi-farcical accounts of existence in a nursing home. Mr. Enwright's
career was one unending romance.

"I was just looking at that town hall affair," said John Orgreave.

"What town hall?" his partner snapped.

"_The_ town hall," answered the imperturbable John. "George here has got
an idea."

"I suppose you know Sir Hugh Corver, Bart., is to be the assessor," said
Mr. Enwright in a devastating tone.

Sir Hugh Corver, formerly a mere knight, had received a baronetcy, to
Mr. Enwright's deep disgust. Mr. Enwright had remarked that any
decent-minded man who had been a husband and childless for twenty-four
years would have regarded the supplementary honour as an insult, but
that Sir Hugh was not decent-minded and, moreover, was not capable of
knowing an insult when he got one. This theory of Mr. Enwright's,
however, did not a bit lessen his disgust.

"Oh yes," John Orgreave admitted lamely.

"I for one am not going in for any more competitions with Corver as
assessor," said Mr. Enwright. "I won't do it."

Faces fell. Mr. Enwright had previously published this resolve, but it
had not been taken quite seriously. It was entirely serious. Neuralgia
and a baronetcy had given it the consistency of steel.

"It isn't as if we hadn't got plenty of work in the office," said Mr.
Enwright.

This was true. The firm was exceedingly prosperous.

Nobody else spoke.

"What _can_ you expect from a fellow like Corver?" Mr. Enwright cried,
with a special glance at George. "He's the upas-tree of decent
architecture."

George's mood changed immediately. Profound discouragement succeeded to
his creative stimulation. Mr. Enwright had reason on his side. What
_could_ you expect from a fellow like Corver? With all the ardour of a
disciple George dismissed the town hall scheme, and simultaneously his
private woes surged up and took full possession of him. He walked
silently out of the room, and Lucas followed. As a fact, Mr. Enwright
ought not to have talked in such a way before the pupils. A question of
general policy should first have been discussed in private between the
partners, and the result then formally announced to the staff. Mr.
Enwright was not treating his partner with proper consideration. But
Mr. Enwright, as every one said at intervals, was 'like that'; and his
partner did not seem to care greatly.

Lucas shut the door between the principals' room and the pupils' room.

"I say," said Lucas importantly. "I've got a show on to-night. Women.
Café Royal. I want a fourth. You must come."

"Yes," sneered George. "And what about my exam., I should like to
know.... Besides, I can't."

The Final was due to begin on Thursday.

"That's all right," Lucas answered, with tact. "That's all right. I'd
thought of the exam., of course. You'll have to-morrow to recover. It'll
do you all the good in the world. And you know you're more than ready
for the thing. You don't want to be overtrained, my son. Besides, you'll
sail through it. As for 'can't,' 'can't' be damned. You've got to."

A telegraph boy, after hesitating at the empty cubicle, came straight
into the room.

"Name of Cannon?"

George nodded, trembling.

The telegram read:

"Impossible to-day.--MARGUERITE."

It was an incredible telegram, as much by what it said as by what it
didn't say. It overthrew George.

"Seven forty-five, and I'll drive you round," said Lucas.

"Tis well," said George.

Immediately afterwards Mr. Enwright summoned Lucas.


IV


The two young men of fashion were silent that evening as they drove to
the Café Royal in the car which Lucas loosely called 'my car,' but which
was his mother's and only to be obtained by him upon his own conditions
after delicate diplomacies. The chief of his conditions was that the
chauffeur should not accompany the car. Lucas, having been engaged upon
outdoor work for the firm, had not seen George throughout the day.
Further, he was late in calling for George, and therefore rather
exacerbated in secret; and if George had not been ready and waiting for
him at the club trouble might have arisen. George understood his host's
mood and respected it. Lucas drove rapidly and fiercely, with
appropriate frowns and settings of cruel teeth; his mien indeed had the
arrogance of the performer who, having given only a fraction of his time
to the acquirement of skill, reckons that he can beat the professional
who has given the whole of his time. Lucas's glances at chauffeurs who
hindered his swiftness were masterpieces of high disdain, and he would
accelerate, after circumventing them, with positive ferocity.

George himself, an implacable critic, could not find fault with the
technique of Lucas's driving. But exacerbation tells, even in the young,
and at Piccadilly Circus, Lucas, in obeying a too suddenly uplifted hand
of a policeman, stopped his engine. The situation, horribly humiliating
for Lucas and also for George, provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs
and drivers in Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocularity
of a kind then fairly new. Lucas cursed the innocent engine, and George
leapt down to wield the crank. But the engine, apparently resenting
curses, refused to start again. No, it would not start. Lucas leapt down
too. "Get out of the way," he muttered savagely to George, and scowled
at the bonnet as if saying to the engine: "I'm not going to stand any of
your infernal nonsense!" But still the engine refused to start.

The situation, humiliating before, was now appalling. Two entirely
correct young gentlemen, in evening dress, with light overcoats and
opera hats, struggling with a refractory car that in its obstinacy was
far more dignified than themselves--and the car obstructing traffic at
the very centre of the world in the very hour when the elect of Britain
were driving by on the way to _Tristan_ at the Opera! Sebastians both,
they were martyrized by the poisoned arrows of vulgar wit, shot at them
from all sides and especially from the lofty thrones of hansom-cab
drivers. The policeman ordered them to shove the car to the kerb, and
with the aid of a boy and the policeman himself they did so, opposite
the shuttered front of Swan & Edgar's.

The two experts then examined the engine in a professional manner; they
did everything but take it down; they tried in vain all known devices to
conquer the recalcitrancy of engines; and when they had reached despair
and fury George, startlingly visited by an idea, demanded:

"Any petrol in the tank?..." In those days men of fashion were apt to
forget, at moments of crisis, that the first necessity of the engine was
petrol. George behaved magnanimously. He might have extinguished Lucas
with a single inflection as Lucas, shamed to the uttermost, poured a
spare half-tin of petrol into the tank. He refrained.

In one minute, in less than one minute, they were at the side entrance
to the Café Royal, which less than a minute earlier had been
inconceivably distant and unattainable. Lucas dashed first into the
restaurant. To keep ladies waiting in a public place was for him the
very worst crime, surpassing in turpitude arson, embezzlement, and the
murder of innocents. The ladies must have been waiting for a quarter of
an hour, half an hour! His reputation was destroyed!

However, the ladies had not arrived.

"That's all right," Lucas breathed, at ease at last. The terrible scowl
had vanished from his face, which was perfectly recomposed into its
urbane, bland charm.

"Now perhaps you'll inform me who they are, old man," George suggested,
relinquishing his overcoat to a flunkey, and following Lucas into the
cloister set apart for the cleansing of hands which have meddled with
machinery.

"The Wheeler woman is one--didn't I tell you?" Lucas answered,
unsuccessfully concealing his pride.

"Wheeler?"

"Irene Wheeler. You know."

George was really impressed. Lucas had hitherto said no word as to his
acquaintance with this celebrated woman. It was true that recently Lucas
had been spreading himself in various ways--he had even passed his
Intermediate--but George had not anticipated such a height of
achievement as the feat of entertaining at a restaurant a cynosure like
Irene Wheeler. George had expected quite another sort of company at
dinner, for he had publicly dined with Lucas before. All day he had been
abstracted, listless, and utterly desolate. All day he had gone over
again and again the details of the interview with Mr. Haim, his telegram
to Marguerite and her unspeakable telegram to him, hugging close a
terrific grievance. Only from pique against Marguerite had he accepted
Lucas's invitation. The adventure in Piccadilly Circus had somewhat
enlivened him, and now the fluttering prospect of acquaintance with the
legendary Irene Wheeler pushed Marguerite into the background of his
mind, and excitement became quite pleasant. "And a Miss Ingram," Lucas
added.

"Not Lois Ingram?" exclaimed George, suddenly dragging the names of
Ingram and Wheeler out of the same drawer of his memory.

"No. Laurencine. But she has a sister named Lois. What do _you_ know
about her?" Lucas spoke challengingly, as if George had trespassed on
preserves sacred to himself alone. He had not yet admitted that it was
merely Mrs. John Orgreave who had put him in the way of Irene Wheeler.

George was surprised and shocked that it had never occurred to him to
identify Lois Ingram's wealthy friend Miss Wheeler with the Irene
Wheeler of society columns of newspapers. And Lois Ingram rose in his
esteem, not because of the distinction of her friend, but because she
had laid no boastful stress on the distinction of her friend.

"Don't you remember?" he said. "I told you once about a girl who jolly
nearly got me into a motor accident all through her fancying herself as
a chauffeur. That was Lois Ingram. Paris girl. Same lot, isn't it?"

"Oh! Was _that_ Lois?" Lucas murmured. "Well, I'm dashed!"

They returned in a hurry to the entrance-hall, fearful lest the ladies
might have arrived. However, the ladies had not arrived. Lucas had the
inexpressible satisfaction of finding in an illustrated weekly a
full-page portrait of Miss Irene Wheeler.

"Here you are!" he ejaculated, with an air of use, as though he was
habitually picking up from the tables of fashionable restaurants
high-class illustrated papers containing portraits of renowned beauties
to whom he said "Come!" and they came. It was a great moment for Lucas.

Ten minutes later the ladies very calmly arrived, seeming perfectly
unaware that they were three-quarters of an hour behind time. Lucas felt
that, much as he already knew about life, he had learned something
fresh.

To George, Irene Wheeler was not immediately recognizable as the
original of her portrait. He saw the resemblance when he looked for it,
but if after seeing the photograph he had met the woman in the street he
would have passed her by unknowing. At first he was disappointed in her.
He had never before encountered celebrated people--except architects,
who, Enwright always said, never could be really celebrated--and he had
to learn that celebrated people seldom differ in appearance from
uncelebrated people. Nevertheless it was not to be expected that George
should escape where the most experienced and the most wary of two
capitals had not escaped. He did not agree that she was beautiful, but
her complexion enthralled him. He had never seen such a complexion;
nobody had ever seen such a complexion. It combined extremely marvellous
whites and extremely marvellous pinks, and the skin had the exquisite,
incredible softness of a baby's. Next he was struck by her candid,
ingenuous, inquiring gaze, and by her thin voice with the slight
occasional lisp. The splendid magnificence of her frock and jewels came
into play later. Lastly her demeanour imposed itself. That simple gaze
showed not the slightest diffidence, scarcely even modesty; it was more
brazen than effrontery. She preceded the other three into the
restaurant, where electricity had finally conquered the expiring
daylight, and her entry obviously excited the whole room; yet, guided by
two waving and fawning waiters, and a hundred glances upon her, she
walked to the appointed table without a trace of self-consciousness--as
naturally as a policeman down a street. When she sat down, George on her
right, Lucas on her left, and the tall, virginal Laurencine Ingram
opposite, she was the principal person in the restaurant. George had
already passed from disappointment to an impressed nervousness. The
inquisitive diners might all have been quizzing him instead of Irene
Wheeler. He envied Lucas, who was talking freely to both Miss Wheeler
and Laurencine about what he had ordered for dinner. That morning over a
drawing-board and an architectural problem, Lucas had been humble enough
to George, and George by natural right had laid the law down to Lucas;
but now Lucas, who--George was obliged to admit--never said anything
brilliant or original, was outshining him.... It was unquestionable that
in getting Irene Wheeler to dinner, Lucas, by some mysterious talent
which he possessed, had performed a feat greater even than George had at
first imagined--a prodigious feat.

George waited for Irene Wheeler to begin to talk. She did not begin to
talk. She was content with the grand function of existing. Lucas showed
her the portrait in the illustrated paper, which he had kept. She said
that it was comparatively an old one, and had been taken at the Durbar
in January. "Were you at the Durbar?" asked the simpleton George. Irene
Wheeler looked at him. "Yes. I was in the Viceroy's house-party," she
answered mildly. And then she said to Lucas that she had sat three times
to photographers that week--"They won't leave me alone"--but that the
proofs were none of them satisfactory. At this Laurencine Ingram boldly
and blushingly protested, maintaining that one of them was lovely.
George was attracted to Laurencine, in whom he saw no likeness to her
sister Lois. She could not long have left school. She was the product
finished for the world; she had been taught everything that was
considered desirable--even to the art of talking easily and yet
virginally on all subjects at table; and she was a nice, honest,
handsome girl, entirely unspoilt by the mysterious operations practised
upon her. She related how she had been present when a famous
photographer arrived at Miss Wheeler's flat with his apparatus, and what
the famous photographer had said. The boys laughed. Miss Wheeler smiled
faintly. "I'm glad we didn't have to go to that play to-night," she
remarked, quitting photography. "However, I shall have to go to-morrow
night. And I don't care for first nights in London, only they will have
me go." In this last phrase, and in the intonation of it, was the first
sign she had given of her American origin; her speech was usually
indistinguishable from English English, which language she had in fact
carefully acquired years earlier. George gathered that Lucas's success
in getting Miss Wheeler to dinner was due to the accident of a first
night being postponed at the last moment and Miss Wheeler thus finding
herself with an empty evening. He covertly examined her. Why was the
feat of getting Miss Wheeler to dinner enormous? Why would photographers
not leave her alone? Why would theatrical managers have her accept boxes
gratis which they could sell for money? Why was she asked to join the
Viceregal party for the Durbar? Why was the restaurant agog? Why was he
himself proud and flattered--yes, proud and flattered--to be seen at the
same table with her?... She was excessively rich, no doubt; she was
reputed to be the niece of a railway man in Indianapolis who was one of
the major rivals of Harriman. She dressed superbly, perhaps too
superbly. But there were innumerable rich and well-dressed women on
earth. After all, she put her gold bag and her gloves down on the table
with just the same gesture as other women did; and little big Laurencine
had a gold bag too. She was not witty. He questioned whether she was
essentially kind. She was not young; her age was an enigma. She had not
a remarkable figure, nor unforgettable hair, nor incendiary eyes. She
seemed too placid and self-centred for love. If she had loved, it must
have been as she sat to photographers or occupied boxes on first
nights--because 'they' would have it so. George was baffled to discover
the origin of her prestige. He had to seek it in her complexion. Her
complexion was indubitably miraculous. He enjoyed looking at it, though
he lacked the experience to know that he was looking at a complexion
held by connoisseurs who do naught else but look at complexions to be a
complexion unique in Europe. George, unsophisticated, thought that the
unaffected simplicity--far exceeding self-confidence--with which she
acquiesced in her prestige was perhaps more miraculous than her
complexion. It staggered him.

The dinner was a social success. Irene Wheeler listened adroitly, if
without brilliance, and after one glass of wine George found himself
quite able to talk in the Enwright manner about architecture and the
profession of architecture, and also to talk about automobiles. The
casualness with which he mentioned his Final Examination was superb--the
examiners might have been respectfully waiting for him to arrive and
discomfit them. But of course the main subject was automobiles. Even
Laurencine knew the names of all the leading makers, and when the names
of all the leading makers had been enumerated and their products
discussed, the party seemed to think that it had accomplished something
that was both necessary and stylish. When the tablecloth had been
renewed, and the solemn moment came for Everard Lucas to order liqueurs,
George felt almost gay. He glanced round the gilded and mirrored
apartment, now alluringly animated by the subdued yet vivacious
intimacies of a score of white tables, and decided that the institution
of restaurants was a laudable and agreeable institution. Marguerite had
receded further than ever into the background of his mind; and as for
the Final, it had diminished to a formality.

"And you?" Everard asked Laurencine, after Miss Wheeler.

George had thought that Laurencine was too young for liqueurs. She had
had no wine. He expected her to say 'Nothing, thanks,' as conventionally
as if her late head mistress had been present. But she hesitated,
smiling, and then, obedient to the profound and universal instinct
which seems to guide all young women to the same liqueur, she said:

"May I have a _crême de menthe_? I've never had _crême de menthe_."

George was certainly shocked for an instant. But no one else appeared to
be shocked. Miss Wheeler, in charge of Laurencine, offered no protest.
And then George reflected: "And why not? Why shouldn't she have a _crême
de menthe_?" When Laurencine raised the tiny glass to her firm, large
mouth, George thought that the sight of the young virginal thing tasting
a liqueur was a fine and a beautiful sight.

"It's just heavenly!" murmured Laurencine ecstatically.

Miss Wheeler was gazing at George.

"What's the matter?" he demanded, smiling, and rested one elbow on the
table and looked enigmatically through the smoke of his cigar.

"I was just wondering about you," said Miss Wheeler. Her voice, always
faint, had dropped to a murmur which seemed to expire as it reached
George's ear.

"Why?" He was flattered.

"I've been wanting to see you."

"Really!" he laughed, rather too loudly. "What a pity I didn't know
earlier!" He was disturbed as well as flattered, for such a remark from
such a person as Irene Wheeler to such a person as himself was bound to
be disturbing. His eyes sought audaciously to commune with hers, but
hers were not responsive; they were entirely non-committal.

"You _are_ the man that wouldn't let my friend Lois drive him in my car,
aren't you?"

"Yes," he said defiantly, but rather guiltily. "Did she tell you about
that? It's an awful long time ago."

"She told me something about it."

"And you've remembered it all this long while!"

"Yes," she answered, and her thin, queer tone and her tepid, impartial
glance had the effect of a challenge to him to justify himself.

"And don't you think I was quite right?" he ventured.

"She drives very well." It was not the sort of answer he was expecting.
His desire was to argue.

"She didn't drive very well then," he said, with conviction.

"Was that a reason for your leaving her to drive home alone?"

Women were astounding!

"She ought to have let the chauffeur drive," he maintained.

"Ah! A man mustn't expect too much from a woman."

"But I was risking my life in that car! Do you mean to say I ought to
have kept on risking it?"

"I don't express any opinion on that. That was for you to decide.... You
must admit it was very humiliating for poor Lois."

He felt himself cornered, but whether justly or unjustly he was
uncertain.

"Was she vexed?"

"No, she wasn't vexed. Lois isn't the woman to be vexed. But I have an
idea she was a little hurt."

"Did she say so?"

"Say so? Lois? She'd never say anything against anybody. Lois is a
perfect angel.... Isn't she, Laurencine?"

Laurencine was being monopolized by Everard.

"What did you say?" the girl asked, collecting herself.

"I was just saying what an angel Lois is."

"Oh, she _is_!" the younger sister agreed, with immense and sincere
emphasis.

George, startled, said to himself suddenly:

"Was I mistaken in her? Some girls you _are_ mistaken in! They're
regular bricks, but they keep it from you at first."

Somehow, in spite of a slight superficial mortification, he was very
pleased by the episode of the conversation, and his curiosity was
titillated.

"Lois would have come to-night instead of Laurencine," Miss Wheeler went
on, "only she wasn't feeling very well."

"Is she in London? I've only seen her once from that day to this, and
then we didn't get near each other owing to the crush. So we didn't
speak. It was at Mrs. Orgreave's."

"Yes, I know."

"Did she tell you?"

"Yes."

"Is she at your flat?"

"Yes; but she's not well."

"Not in bed, I hope, or anything like that?"

"Oh no! She's not in bed."

Laurencine threw laughingly across the table:

"She's as well as I am."

It was another aspect of the younger sister.

When they left the restaurant it was nearly empty. They left easily,
slowly, magnificently. The largesse of Everard Lucas--his hat slightly
raked--in the foyer and at the portico was magnificent in both quantity
and manner. There was no need to hurry; the hour, though late for the
end of dinner, was early for separation. They moved and talked without
the slightest diffidence, familiar and confident; the whole world was
reformed and improved for them by the stimulus of food and alcohol. The
night was sultry and dark. The two women threw their cloaks back from
their shoulders, revealing the whiteness of toilettes. At the door the
head-lights of Miss Wheeler's automobile shot horizontally right across
Regent Street. The chauffeur recognized George, and George recognized
the car; he was rather surprised that Miss Wheeler had not had a new car
in eighteen months. Lucas spoke of his own car, which lay beyond in the
middle of the side-street like a ship at anchor. He spoke in such a
strain that Miss Wheeler deigned to ask him to drive her home in it. The
two young men went to light the head-lights. George noticed the angry
scowl on Everard's face when three matches had been blown out in the
capricious breeze. The success of the fourth match restored his face to
perfect benignity. He made the engine roar triumphantly, imperiously
sounded his horn, plunged forward, and drew the car up in front of Miss
Wheeler's. His bliss, when Miss Wheeler had delicately inserted herself
into the space by his side, was stern and yet radiant. The big car, with
George and Laurencine on board, followed the little one like a cat
following a mouse, and Laurencine girlishly interested herself in the
chase. George, with his mind on Lois, kept saying to himself: "She's
been thinking about that little affair ever since last November but one.
They've all been thinking about it." He felt apprehensive, but his
satisfaction amounted to excitement. His attitude was: "At any rate I
gave them something to think about!" Also he breathed appreciatively the
atmosphere of the three women--two seen and one unseen. How
extraordinarily different all of them were from Agg! They reminded him
acutely of his deep need of luxury. After all, the life lived by those
two men about town, George and Everard, was rather humdrum and
monotonous. In spite of Everard's dash, and in spite of George's secret
engagement, neither of them met enough women or enough sorts of women.
George said to himself: "I shall see her to-night. We shall go up to the
flat. She isn't in bed. I shall see her to-night." He wanted to see her
because he had hurt her, and because she had remembered and had talked
about him and had raised curiosity about him in others. Was she really
unwell? Or had she been excusing herself! Was she an angel? He wanted to
see her again in order to judge for himself whether she was an angel. If
Laurencine said she was an angel she must be an angel. Laurencine was a
jolly, honest girl. To be in the car with her was agreeable. But she was
insipid. So he assessed the splendidly budding Laurencine, patronizing
her a little. Miss Wheeler gave him pause. Her simple phrases had
mysterious intonations. He did not understand her glance. He could not
settle the first question about her--her age. She might be very wicked;
certainly she could be very ruthless. And he had no hold over her. He
could give her nothing that she wanted. He doubted whether any man
could.

"Have you been in London long?" he asked Laurencine.

"A week," she said. "I came over with Miss Wheeler. I didn't think
mother would let me, but she did."

"And did your sister come with you?"

"No; Lois only came yesterday."

"By herself?"

"Yes."

"I suppose you go about a lot?"

"Oh, we _do_ It's such a change from Paris."

"Well, I should prefer Paris."

"You wouldn't! London's much more romantic. Paris is so hard and
matter-of-fact."

"So's London."

She squirmed about lissomly on the seat.

"You don't know what I mean," she said. "I never _can_ make people see
what I mean--about anything."

He smiled indulgently and dropped the point.

"Miss Wheeler taken you to Mrs. Orgreave's yet?"

"Yes; we were there on Saturday afternoon."

"Well, what do you think of Mrs. Orgreave?"

"Oh! She's very nice," Laurencine answered, with polite tepidity; and
added eagerly: "Mr. Orgreave's a dear."

George was glad that she had not been enthusiastic about Mrs. Orgreave.
Her reserve showed that she could discriminate. Ecstasy was not
altogether a habit. If she said that Lois was an angel, Lois probably
was an angel.

The cars stopped at the foot of a huge block of masonry in a vast leafy
square. George suddenly became very nervous. He thought: "I shall be
seeing her in a minute."

Then, as he got out of the car, he heard Miss Wheeler saying to Lucas:

"Well, good night. And thank you so much. It's been most delightful....
We expect you soon, of course."

She actually was not asking them to go up! George was excessively
disappointed. He watched Miss Wheeler and Laurencine disappear into the
rich and guarded interior with envy, as though they had entered a
delectable paradise to which he could not aspire; and the fact that Miss
Wheeler had vaguely invited him to call did not brighten him very much.
He had assumed that he would see Lois the angel that night.


V


The young men finished the evening at Pickering's. Pickering's was
George's club. George considered, rightly, that in the matter of his
club he had had great luck. Pickering's was a small club, and it had had
vicissitudes. Most men whose worldly education had been completed in St.
James's were familiar with its historical name, but few could say
off-hand where it was. Its address was Candle Court, and Candle Court
lay at the end of Candle Alley (a very short passage), between Duke
Street and Bury Street. The Court was in fact a tiny square of several
houses, chiefly used by traders and agents of respectability--as
respectability is understood in St. James's; it had a lamp-post of its
own. The report ran, and was believed by persons entitled to an opinion,
that the Duke of Wellington had for some years hidden there the lovely
desire of his heart from an inquisitive West End. Pickering's had, of
course, originally been a coffee-house; later, like many other
coffee-houses in the neighbourhood, it had developed into a proprietary
club. Misfortunes due to the caprices of taste and to competition had
brought about an arrangement by which the ownership was vested in a
representative committee. The misfortunes had continued, and at the
beginning of the century a crisis was reached, and Pickering's tried
hard to popularize itself, thereby doing violence to its feelings. Rules
were abated, and the entrance-fee fell. It was in this period that
Everard Lucas, whose ears were always open for useful items, heard of it
and suggested it to George. George wanted to join Lucas's club, which
was in St. James's Street itself, but Lucas wisely pointed out that if
they belonged to different clubs each would in practice have two clubs.
Moreover, he said that George might conceivably get a permanent bedroom
there. The first sight of the prim, picturesque square, the first hint
of scandal about the Duke of Wellington, decided George. It was
impossible for a man about town to refuse the chance of belonging to a
club in a Court where the Duke of Wellington had committed follies.

George was proposed, seconded, and duly elected, together with other new
blood. Some of the old blood naturally objected, but the feud was never
acute. Solely owing to the impression which his young face made on the
powerful and aged hall-porter, George obtained a bedroom. It was small,
and at the top of the house; but it was cheap, it solved the even more
tiresome and uncomfortable problem of lodging; and further it was a
bedroom at Pickering's, and George could say that he lived at his
club--an imposing social advantage. He soon learnt how to employ the
resources of the club for his own utmost benefit. Nobody could surpass
him in choosing a meal inexpensively. He could have his breakfast in his
bedroom for tenpence, or even sixpence when his appetite was poor. He
was well served by a valet who apparently passed his whole life on
stairs and landings. This valet, courteous rather in the style of old
Haim, had a brain just equal to the problems presented by his vocation.
Every morning George would say: "Now, Downs, how soon can I have my
bath?" or "Now, Downs, what can I have for breakfast?" And Downs would
conscientiously cerebrate, and come forth after some seconds with sound
solutions, such as: "I'll see if I can put you in before Mr. de Gales if
you're in a hurry, sir," or "Scrambled eggs, sir--it'll make a bit of a
change." And when George agreed, Downs would exhibit a restrained but
real satisfaction. Yes, George had been very lucky. The club too was
lucky. The oldest member, who being paralysed had not visited the club
for eleven years, died and bequeathed ten thousand pounds to the
institution where he had happily played cards for several decades.
Pickering's was refurnished, and the stringency of its rules
re-established. The right wing of the committee wished that the oldest
member could have managed to die a year or two earlier and so obviated
the crisis. It was recognized, however, by the more reasonable, that you
cannot have everything in this world.

Pickering's was very dull; but it was still Pickering's. George was
often bored at Pickering's. He soon reached the stage at which a club
member asserts gloomily that the club cookery is simply damnable.
Nevertheless he would have been desolated to leave Pickering's. The
place was useful to him in another respect than the purely material. He
learnt there the code which governs the familiar relations of men about
town.

On the night of the Café Royal dinner, George and Lucas reclined in two
easy chairs in the inner smoking-room of Pickering's. They were alone.
Through the wide archway that marked the division between the inner and
the outer smoking-rooms they could see one solitary old gentleman dozing
in an attitude of abandonment, a magazine on his knees. Ash-trays were
full of ash and cigarette ends and matches. Newspapers were scattered
around, some folded inside out, some not folded, some whose component
sheets had been divided for ever like the members of a ruined family.
The windows were open, and one gave a view of the Court's watchful
lamp-post, and the other of the house--now occupied by an art dealer and
a commission agent--where the Duke had known both illusion and
disillusion. The delicate sound of the collision of billiard-balls came
from somewhere, and the rat-tatting of a tape-machine from somewhere
else. The two friends had arrived at the condition of absolute wisdom
and sagacity and tolerance which is apt to be achieved at a late hour in
clubs by young and old men who have discussed at length the phenomena of
society.

"Well, I must be toddling," said Lucas, yawning as he looked idly at the
coloured horses on each wall who were for ever passing winning-posts or
soaring over bullfinches or throwing riders into brooks.

"Here! Hold on!" George protested. "It's early."

"Is it?"

They began again to smoke and talk.

"Nice little thing, What's-her-name! What's her funny name?"

"Laurencine, do you mean? Yes." Lucas spoke coldly, with a careful
indifference. George, to whom insight had not been denied, understood
that Everard did not altogether care for Laurencine to be referred to as
a little thing, that he had rendered Laurencine sacred by his secret
approval.

"I say," said George, sitting up slightly, and increasing the intimacy
of his tone, "devilish odd, wasn't it, that the Wheeler woman didn't ask
us up?"

Hitherto they had avoided this question in their profound gossip. It had
lain between them untouched, like a substance possibly dangerous and
explosive. Yet they could not have parted without touching it, and
George, with characteristic moral courage or rashness, had touched it
first. Lucas was of a mind to reply succinctly that the Wheeler woman's
conduct was not a bit devilish odd. But sincerity won. The dismissal at
the entrance to the Mansions had affected him somewhat deeply. It had
impaired the perfection of his most notable triumph. The temptation to
release his feelings was too strong.

"Well, if you ask me," he answered, it was. After a little pause he went
on:

"Especially seeing that she practically asked me to ask them to dinner."
His nice features loosened to dissatisfaction. "The deuce she did!"

"Yes! Practically asked me! Anyhow, gave me the tip What can you do?" He
implied that, far from deriving unique and unhoped-for glory from the
condescension of Irene Wheeler in consenting to dine with him, he had
conferred a favour on her by his invitation. He implied that brilliant
women all over London competed for his invitations. His manner was
entirely serious; it probably deceived even himself. George's manner
corresponded, instinctively, chivalrously; but George was not
deceived--at any rate in the subconscious depth of his mind.

"Exactly!" murmured George.

"Yes" said Lucas. "She said: 'I could bring Laurencine with me, if you
can get another man. That would make a four.' She said she wanted to
wake Laurencine up."

"Did you tell her you should ask me?" George questioned.

"Oh! She seemed to know all about you, my boy."

"Well, but she couldn't know all about me," said George insincerely.
"Well, if you want to know then, she suggested I should ask you."

"But she'd never seen me!"

"She's heard of you. Mrs. Orgreave, I expect."

"Odd!... Odd!" George now pretended to be academically assessing an
announcement that had no intrinsic interest for him. In reality he was
greatly excited.

"Well you know what those sort of women are!" Lucas summed up wisely, as
if referring to truths of knowledge common among men of their kidney.

"Oh, of course!"

The magazine slid from the knees of the sleeper. The sleeper snorted and
woke up. The spell was broken. Lucas rose suddenly. "Bye-bye!" He was
giving an ultimatum as to his departure.

George rose also, but slowly.

"All that doesn't explain why she didn't ask us up," said he.

But in his heart he thought he knew why Miss Wheeler hadn't asked them
up. The reason was that she maliciously wanted to tantalize him, George.
She had roused his curiosity about Lois, and then she had said to
herself: "You think you're going to see her to-night, but you just
aren't." Such, according to George, was Irene Wheeler the illustrious.
He reflected on the exasperating affair until he had undressed and got
into bed. But as soon as he had put out the light Marguerite appeared
before him, and at the back of her were the examiners for the Final. He
slept ill.




CHAPTER VII

THE RUPTURE

I


During the whole of the next day George waited for a letter from
Marguerite. There was nothing at the club by the first post; he went to
the office, hoping that as he had addressed his telegram from Russell
Square she might have written to Russell Square; there was nothing at
Russell Square. At lunch-time no word had arrived at the club; when the
office closed no word had arrived at the office; the last post brought
nothing to the club. He might have sent another telegram to Alexandra
Grove, but he was too proud to do so. He dined alone and most miserably
at the club. Inspired by unhappiness and resentment, he resolved to go
to bed; in bed he might read himself to sleep. But in the hall of the
club his feet faltered. Perhaps it was the sight of hats and sticks that
made him vacillate, or a glimpse of reluctantly dying silver in the
firmament over Candle Court. He wavered; he stood still at the foot of
the stairs. The next moment he was in the street. He had decided to call
on Agg at the studio. Agg might have the clue to Marguerite's astounding
conduct, though he had it not. He took a hansom, after saying he would
walk; he was too impatient for walking. Possibly Marguerite would be at
the studio; possibly a letter of hers had miscarried; letters did
miscarry. He was in a state of peculiar excitement as he paid the
cabman--an enigma to himself.

The studio was quite dark. Other studios showed lights, but not Agg's.
From one studio came the sound of a mandolin--he thought it was a
mandolin--and the sound seemed pathetic, tragic, to his ears. Agg was
perhaps in bed; he might safely arouse her; she would not object. But
no! He would not do that. Pride again! It would be too humiliating for
him, the affianced, to have to ask Agg: "I say, do you know anything
about Marguerite?" The affianced ought to be the leading authority as to
the doings of Marguerite. He turned away, walked a little, and perceived
the cabman swinging himself cautiously down from his perch in order to
enter a public-house. He turned back. Marguerite too might be in bed at
the studio. Or the girls might be sitting in the dark, talking--a habit
of theirs.... Fanciful suppositions! At any rate he would not knock at
the door of the studio, would not even enter the alley again. What
carried him into the Fulham Road and westwards as far as the Workhouse
tower and the corner of Alexandra Grove? Feet! But surely the feet of
another person, over which he had no control! He went in the lamplit
dimness of Alexandra Grove like a thief; he crept into it. The silver
had not yet died out of the sky; he could see it across the spaces
between the dark houses; it was sad in exactly the same way as the sound
of the mandolin had been sad.

What did he mean to do in the Grove? Nothing! He was just walking in it
by chance. He could indeed do nothing. For if he rang at No. 8 old Haim
would again confront him in the portico. He passed by No. 8 on the
opposite side of the road. No light showed, except a very dim glow
through the blind of the basement window to the left of the front door.
Those feet beneath him strolled across the road. The basement window was
wide open. The blind being narrower than the window-frame, he could see,
through the railings, into the room within. He saw Marguerite. She was
sitting, in an uncomfortable posture, in the rather high-seated
arm-chair in which formerly, when the room was her studio, she used to
sit at her work. Her head had dropped, on one shoulder. She was asleep.
On the table a candle burned. His heart behaved strangely. He flushed.
All his flesh tingled. The gate creaked horribly as he tiptoed into the
patch of garden. He leaned over the little chasm between the level of
the garden and the window, and supported himself with a hand on the
lower sash. He pushed the blind sideways with the other hand.

"Marguerite!" in a whisper. Then louder: "Marguerite!"

She did not stir. She was in a deep sleep. Her hands hung limp. Her face
was very pale and very fatigued. She liberated the same sadness as the
sound of the mandolin and the gleam of silver in the June sky, but it
was far more poignant. At the spectacle of those weary and unconscious
features and of the soft, bodily form, George's resentment was
annihilated. He wondered at his resentment. He was aware of nothing in
himself but warm, protective love. Tenderness surged out from the
impenetrable secrecy of his heart, filled him, overflowed, and floated
in waves towards the sleeper. In the intense sadness, and in the
uncertainty of events, he was happy.

An older man might have paused, but without hesitancy George put his
foot on the window-sill, pushed down the window farther, and clambered
into the room in which he had first seen Marguerite. His hat, pressing
backward the blind, fell off and bounced its hard felt on the floor,
which at the edges was uncarpeted. The noise of the hat and the general
stir of George's infraction disturbed Marguerite, who awoke and looked
up. The melancholy which she was exhaling suddenly vanished. Her steady
composure in the alarm delighted George.

"Couldn't wake you," he murmured lightly. It was part of his Five Towns
upbringing to conceal excitement. "Saw you through the window."

"Oh! George! Was I asleep?"

Pleasure shone on her face. He deposited his stick and sprang to her. He
sat on the arm of the chair. He bent her head back and examined her
face. He sat on her knee and held her. She did not kiss; she was kissed;
he liked that. Her fatigue was adorable.

"I came here for something, and I just sat down for a second because I
was so tired, and I must have gone right off.... No! No!"

The admonishing negative was to stop him from getting up off her knee.
She was exhausted, yet she had vast resources of strength to bear him on
her knee. She was wearing her oldest frock. It was shabby. But it
exquisitely suited her then. It was the frock of her capability, of her
great labours, of her vigil, of her fatigue. It covered, but did not
hide, her beautiful contours. He thought she was marvellously
beautiful--and very young, far younger than himself. As for him, he was
the dandy, in striking contrast to her. His dandyism as he sat on her
knee pleased both of them. He looked older than his years, his shoulders
had broadened, his dark moustache thickened. In his own view he was
utterly adult, as she was in hers. But their young faces so close
together, so confident, were touchingly immature. As he observed her
grave satisfaction at his presence, the comfort which he gave her, he
felt sure of her, and the memory of his just resentment came to him, and
he was tenderly reproachful.

"I expected to hear from you," he said. The male in him relished the
delicate accusation of his tone.

Marguerite answered with a little startled intake of breath:

"She's dead!"

"Dead?"

"She died this afternoon. The layer-out left about half an hour ago."

Death parted them. He rose from her knee, and Marguerite did not try to
prevent him. He was profoundly shocked. With desolating vividness he
recalled the Sunday afternoon when he had carried upstairs the plump,
living woman now dead. He had always liked Mrs. Lob--it was as Mrs. Lob
that he thought of her. He had seen not much of her. Only on that Sunday
afternoon had he and she reached a sort of intimacy--unspoken but real.
He had liked her. He had even admired her. She was no ordinary being.
And he had sympathized with her for Marguerite's quite explicable
defection. He had often wished that those two, the charwoman and his
beloved, could somehow have been brought together. The menaces of death
had brought them together. Mrs. Lob was laid out in the bedroom which he
had once entered. Mrs. Lob had been dying while he dined richly with
Miss Wheeler and Laurencine, and while he talked cynically with Everard
Lucas. And while he had been resenting Marguerite's neglect Marguerite
was watching by the dying bed. Oh! The despicable superficialities of
restaurants and clubs! He was ashamed. The mere receding shadow of death
shamed him.

"The baby's dead too, of course," Marguerite added. "She ought never to
have had a baby. It seems she had had two miscarriages."

There were tears in Marguerite's eyes and in her voice. Nevertheless her
tone was rather matter-of-fact as she related these recondite and
sinister things. George thought that women were very strange. Imagine
Marguerite quietly talking to him in this strain! Then the sense of the
formidable secrets that lie hidden in the history of families, and the
sense of the continuity of individual destinies, overwhelmed him. There
was silence.

"And your exam. begins to-morrow," whispered the astonishing Marguerite.

"Where's the old gentleman?"

"He's sitting in the parlour in the dark."

It was a terrible house: they two intimidated and mournful in the
basement; the widower solitary on the ground floor; the dead bodies, the
wastage and futility of conception and long bearing, up in the bedroom.
And in all the house the light of one candle! George suddenly noticed,
then, that Marguerite was not wearing the thin, delicate ring which he
had long ago given her. Had she removed it because of her manual duties?
He wanted to ask the question, but, even unspoken, it seemed too trivial
for the hour....

There was a shuffling sound beyond the door, and a groping on the outer
face of the door. Marguerite jumped up. Mr. Haim stumbled into the room.
He had incredibly aged; he looked incredibly feeble. But as he pointed a
finger at George he was in a fury of anger, and his anger was senile,
ridiculous, awful.

"I thought I heard voices," he said, half squeaking. "How did you get
in? You didn't come in by the door. Out of my house! My wife lying dead
upstairs, and you choose this night to break in!" He was implacable
against George, absolutely; and George recoiled.

The opening of the door had created a draught in which the candle-flame
trembled, and the shadow of the old man trembled on the door.

"You'd better go. I'll write. I'll write," Marguerite murmured to George
very calmly, very gently, very persuasively. She stood between the two
men. Her manner was perfect. It eternally impressed itself on George.
"Father, come and sit down."

The old man obeyed her. So did George. He snatched his hat and stick. By
the familiar stone steps of the basement, and along the familiar hall,
he felt his way to the door, turned the familiar knob, and departed.


II


The examination began the next day. Despite his preoccupation about
Marguerite, George's performances during the first days were quite
satisfactory to himself. Indeed, after a few minutes in the
examination-room, after the preliminary critical assessing of the
difficulty of the problems in design, and the questions, and of his
ability to deal with them, George successfully forgot everything except
the great seven-day duel between the self-constituted autocratic
authorities backed by prestige and force, and the aspirants who had
naught but their wits to help them. He was neither a son, nor a friend,
nor a lover; he ceased to have human ties; he had become an examinee.
Marguerite wrote him two short letters which were perfect, save that he
always regarded her handwriting as a little too clerical, too like her
father's. She made no reference whatever to the scene in the basement
room. She said that she could not easily arrange to see him immediately,
and that for the sake of his exam. he ought not to be distracted. She
would have seen him on the Saturday, but on Saturday George learnt that
her father was a little unwell and required, even if he did not need,
constant attention. The funeral, unduly late, occurred by Mr. Haim's
special desire on the Sunday, most of which day George spent with
Everard Lucas. On the Monday he had a rendezvous at eight o'clock with
Marguerite at the studio.

She opened the door herself; and her welcome was divine. Her gestures
spoke, delicate, and yet robust in their candour. But she was in deep
mourning.

"Oh!" he said, holding her. "You're wearing black, then."

"Of course!" she answered sweetly. "You see, I had to be there all
through the funeral. And father would have been frightfully shocked if I
hadn't been in black--naturally."

"Of course!" he agreed. It was ridiculous that he should be surprised
and somewhat aggrieved to find her in mourning; still, he was surprised
and somewhat aggrieved.

"Besides----" she added vaguely.

And that 'besides' disquieted him, and confirmed his grievance. Why
should she wear mourning for a woman to whom she was not related, whom
she had known simply as a charwoman, and who had forced her to leave her
father's house? There was no tie between Marguerite and her stepmother.
George, for his part, had liked the dead woman, but Marguerite had not
even liked her. No, she was not wearing black in honour of the dead, but
to humour the living. And why should her father be humoured? George
privately admitted the unreasonableness, the unsoundness, of these
considerations--obviously mourning wear was imperative for
Marguerite--nevertheless they were present in his mind.

"That frock's a bit tight, but it suits you," he said, advancing with
her into the studio.

"It's an old one," she smiled.

"An old one?"

"It's one I had for mother."

He had forgotten that she had had a mother, that she had known what
grief was, only a very few years earlier. He resented these bereavements
and the atmosphere which they disengaged. He wanted a different
atmosphere.

"Is the exam. really all right?" she appealed to him, taking both his
hands and leaning against him and looking up into his face.

"What did I tell you in my letter?"

"Yes, I know."

"The exam. is as right as rain."

"I knew it would be."

"You didn't," he laughed. He imitated her: "'Is the exam. really all
right?'" She just smiled. He went on confidently: "Of course you never
know your luck, you know. There's the viva to-morrow.... Where's old
Agg?"

"She's gone home."

"Thoughtful child! How soon will she be back?"

"About nine," said Marguerite, apparently unaware that George was being
funny.

"Nine!"

"Oh, George!" Marguerite exclaimed, breaking away from him. "I'm awfully
sorry, but I must get on with my packing."

"What packing?"

"I have to take my things home."

"What home?"

"Father's, I mean."

She was going to live with her father, who would not willingly allow
him, George, to enter the house! How astounding girls were! She had
written to him twice without giving the least hint of her resolve. He
had to learn it as it were incidentally, through the urgency of packing.
She did not tell him she was going--she said she must get on with her
packing! And there, lying on the floor, was an open trunk; and two of
her drawing-boards already had string round them.

George inquired:

"How is the old man--to-day?"

"He's very nervy," said Marguerite briefly and significantly. "I'd
better light the lamp; I shall see better." She seemed to be speaking to
herself. She stood on a chair and lifted the chimney off the central
lamp. George absently passed her his box of matches.

As she, was replacing the chimney, he said suddenly in a very resolute
tone:

"This is all very well, Marguerite. But it's going to be jolly awkward
for me."

She jumped lightly down from the chair, like a little girl.

"Oh! George! I know!" she cried. "It will be awkward for both of us. But
we shall arrange something." She might have resented his tone. She might
have impulsively defended herself. But she did not. She accepted his
attitude with unreserved benevolence. Her gaze was marvellously
sympathetic.

"I can't make out what your father's got against me," said George
angrily, building his vexation on her benevolence. "What have I done, I
should like to know."

"It's simply because you lived there all that time without him knowing
we were engaged. He says if he'd known he would never have let you stay
there a day." She smiled, mournfully, forgivingly, excusingly.

"But it's preposterous!"

"Oh! It is."

"And how does he behave to _you_? Is he treating you decently?"

"Oh! Fairly. You see, he's got a lot to get over. And he's most
frightfully upset about--his wife. Well, you saw him yourself, didn't
you?"

"That's no reason why he should treat you badly."

"But he doesn't, George!"

"Oh! I know! I know! Do you think I don't know? He's not even decent to
you. I can hear it in your voice. Why should you go back and live with
him if he isn't prepared to appreciate it?"

"But he expects it, George. And what am I to do? He's all alone. I can't
leave him all alone, can I?"

George burst out:

"I tell you what it is. Marguerite. You're too good-natured. That's what
it is. You're too good-natured. And it's a very bad thing."

Tears came into her eyes; she could not control them. She was grieved by
his remark.

"I'm not, George, truly. You must remember father's been through a lot
this last week. So have I."

"I know! I know! I admit all that. But you're too good-natured, and
I'll stick to it."

She was smiling again.

"You only think that because you're fond of me. Nobody else would say
it, and I'm not. Help me to lift this trunk on to the chest."

While the daylight withdrew, and the smell of the lamp strengthened and
then faded, and the shadows cast by the lamp-rays grew blacker, she went
on rapidly with her packing, he serving her at intervals. They said
little. His lower lip fell lower and lower. The evening was immensely,
horribly different from what he had expected and hoped for. He felt once
more the inescapable grip of destiny fastening upon him.

"Why are you in such a hurry?" he asked, after a long time.

"I told father I should be back at a quarter-past nine."

This statement threw George into a condition of total dark disgust. He
made no remark. But what remarks he could have made--sarcastic, bitter,
unanswerable! Why indeed in the name of heaven should she promise her
father to be back at a quarter-past nine, or at a quarter-past anything?
Was she a servant? Had she no rights? Had he himself, George, no rights?

A little before nine Agg arrived. Marguerite was fastening the trunk.

"Now be sure, Agg," said Marguerite. "Don't forget to hang out the
Carter Paterson card at the end of the alley to-morrow morning. I must
have these things at home to-morrow night for certain. The labels are
on. And here's twopence for the man."

"Do I forget?" retorted Agg cheerfully. "By the way, George, I want to
talk to you." She turned to Marguerite and repeated in quite a different
voice: "I want to talk to him, dear, to-night. Do, let him stay. Will
you?"

Marguerite gave a puzzled assent.

"I'll call after I've taken Marguerite to Alexandra Grove, Agg--on my
way back to the club."

"Oh no, you won't!" said Agg. "I shall be gone to bed then. Look at that
portrait and see how I've worked. My family's concerned about me. It
wants me to go away for a holiday."

George had not till then noticed the portrait at all.

"But I must take Marguerite along to the Grove," he insisted. "She can't
go alone."

"And why can't she go alone? What sort of a conventional world do you
think you live in? Don't girls go home alone? Don't they come in alone?
Don't I? Anybody would think, to listen to some people, that the purdah
flourished in Chelsea. But it's all pretence. I don't ask for the honour
of a private interview with you every night. You've both of you got all
your lives before you. And for once in a way Marguerite's going out
alone. At least, you can take her to the street, I don't mind that. But
don't be outside more than a minute."

Agg, who had sat down, rose and slowly removed her small hat. With pins
in her mouth she said something about the luggage to Marguerite.

"All right! All right!" George surrendered gloomily. In truth he was not
sorry to let Marguerite depart solitary. And Agg's demeanour was very
peculiar; he would have been almost afraid to be too obstinate in
denying her request. He had never seen her hysterical, but a suspicion
took him that she might be capable of hysteria.... You never knew, with
that kind of girl, he thought sagaciously.

In the darkness of the alley George said to Marguerite, feigning
irritation:

"What on earth does she want?"

"Agg? Oh! It's probably nothing. She does get excited sometimes, you
know."

The two girls had parted with strange, hard demonstrations of affection
from Agg.

"I suppose you'll write," said George coldly.

"To-morrow, darling," she replied quite simply and gravely.

Her kiss was warm, complete, faithful, very loving, very sympathetic.
Nothing in her demeanour as she left him showed that George had received
it in a non-committal manner. Yet she must have noticed his wounded
reserve. He did not like such duplicity. He would have preferred her to
be less miraculously angelic.

When he re-entered the studio, Agg, who very seldom smoked, was puffing
violently at a cigarette. She reclined on one elbow on the settee, her
eyes fixed on the portrait of herself. George was really perturbed by
the baffling queerness of the scenes through which he was passing.

"Look here, infant-in-arms," she began immediately. "I only wanted to
say two words to you about Marguerite. Can you stand it?"

There was a pause. George walked in front of her, hiding the easel.

"Yes," he said gruffly.

"Well, Marguerite's a magnificent girl. She's extraordinarily capable.
You'd think she could look after herself as well as anyone. But she
can't. I know her far better than you do. She needs looking after.
She'll make a fool of herself if she isn't handled."

"How do you mean?"

"You know how I mean."

"D'you mean about the old man?"

"I mean about the perfectly horrid old man.... Ah! If I was in your
place, if I was a man," she said passionately, "do you know what I
should do with Marguerite? I should carry her off. I should run away
with her. I should drag her out of the house, and she should know what a
real man was. I'm not going to discuss her with you. I'm not going to
say any more at all. I'm off to bed. But before you go, I do think you
might tell me my portrait's a pretty good thing."

And she did not say any more.


III


The written part of the examination lasted four days; and then there was
an interval of one day in which the harassed and harried aspirants might
restore themselves for the two days' ordeal of the viva voce. George had
continued to be well satisfied with his work up to the interval. He
considered that he had perfectly succeeded in separating the lover and
the examinee, and that nothing foreign to the examination could vitiate
his activity therein. It was on the day of repose, a Wednesday, that a
doubt suddenly occurred to him as to the correctness of his answer, in
the "Construction" paper, to a question which began with the following
formidable words: "A girder, freely supported at each end and forty feet
long, carries a load of six tons at a distance of six feet from one end
and another load of ten tons----" Thus it went on for ten lines. He had
always been impatient of detail, and he hated every kind of calculation.
Nevertheless he held that calculations were relatively easy, and that he
could do them as well as the driest duffer in the profession when he set
his mind to them. But the doubt as to the correctness of his answer
developed into a certainty. Facing the question in private again, he
obtained four different solutions in an hour; it was John Orgreave who
ultimately set him right, convicting him of a most elementary
misconception. Forthwith his faith in his whole "Construction" paper
vanished. He grumbled that it was monstrous to give candidates an
unbroken stretch of four hours' work at the end of a four-day effort.
Yet earlier he had been boasting that he had not felt the slightest
fatigue. He had expected to see Marguerite on the day of repose. He did
not see her. She had offered no appointment, and he said to himself
that he had not the slightest intention of running after her. Such had
become the attitude of the lover to the beloved.

On the Thursday morning, however, he felt fit enough to face a dozen
oral examiners, and he performed his morning exercises in the club
bedroom with a positive ferocity of vigour. And then he was gradually
overtaken by a black moodiness which he could not explain. He had passed
through similar though less acute moods as a boy; but this was the first
of the inexplicable sombre humours which at moments darkened his
manhood. He had not the least suspicion that prolonged nervous tension
due to two distinct causes had nearly worn him out. He was melancholy,
and his melancholy increased. But he was proud; he was defiant. His
self-confidence, as he looked back at the years of genuine hard study
behind him, was complete. He disdained examiners. He knew that with all
their damnable ingenuity they could not floor him.

The crisis arrived in the afternoon of the first of the two days. His
brain was quite clear. Thousands of details about drainage, ventilation,
shoring, architectural practice, lighting, subsoils, specifications,
iron and steel construction, under-pinning, the properties of building
materials, strains, thrusts, water-supply; thousands of details about
his designs--the designs in his 'testimonies of study,' the design for
his Thesis, and the designs produced during the examination itself--all
these peopled his brain; but they were in order; they were under
control; they were his slaves. For four and a half hours, off and on, he
had admirably displayed the reality of his knowledge, and then he was
sent into a fresh room to meet a fresh examiner. There he stood in the
room alone with his designs for a small provincial town hall--a
key-plan, several one-eighth scale-plans, a piece of half-inch detail,
and two rough perspective sketches which he knew were brilliant. The
room was hot; through the open window came the distant sound of the
traffic of Regent Street. The strange melancholy of a city in summer
floated towards him from the outside and reinforced his own.

The examiner, who had been snatching tea, entered briskly and sternly.
He was a small, dapper, fair man of about fifty, with wonderfully tended
finger-nails. George despised him because Mr. Enwright despised him, but
he had met him once in the way of the firm's business and found him
urbane.

"Good afternoon," said George politely.

The examiner replied, trotting along the length of the desk with quick,
short steps:

"Now about this work of yours. I've looked at it with some care----" His
speech was like his demeanour and his finger-nails.

"Boor!" thought George. But he could not actively resent the slight. He
glanced round at the walls; he was in a prison. He was at the mercy of a
tyrant invested with omnipotence.

The little tyrant, however, was superficially affable. Only now and then
in his prim, courteous voice was there a hint of hostility and cruelty.
He put a number of questions, the answers to which had to be George's
justification. He said "H'm!" and "Ah!" and "Really?" He came to the
matter of spouting.

"Now, I object to hopper-heads," he said. "I regard them as unhygienic."

And he looked coldly at George with eyebrows lifted. George returned the
gaze.

"I know you do, sir," George replied.

Indeed it was notorious that hopper-heads to vertical spouting were a
special antipathy of the examiner's; he was a famous faddist. But the
reply was a mistake. The examiner, secure in his attributes, ignored the
sally. A little later, taking up the general plan of the town hall, he
said:

"The fact is, I do--not--care for this kind of thing. The whole
tendency----"

"Excuse me, sir," George interrupted, with conscious and elaborate
respectfulness. "But surely the question isn't one of personal
preferences. Is the design good or is it bad?"

"Well, I call it bad," said the examiner, showing testiness. The
examiner too could be impulsive, was indeed apt to be short-tempered.
The next instant he seized one of the brilliant perspective sketches,
and by his mere manner of holding it between his thumb and finger he
sneered at it and condemned it.

He snapped out, not angrily--rather pityingly:

"And what the devil's this?"

George, furious, retorted:

"What the hell do you think it is?"

He had not foreseen that he was going to say such a thing. The traffic
in Regent Street, which had been inaudible to both of them, was loud in
their ears.

The examiner had committed a peccadillo, George a terrible crime. The
next morning the episode, in various forms, was somehow common knowledge
and a source of immense diversion. George went through the second day,
but lifelessly. He was sure he had failed. Apart from the significance
of the fact that the viva voce counted for 550 marks out of a total of
1200, he felt that the Royal Institute of British Architects would know
how to defend its dignity. On the Saturday morning John Orgreave had
positive secret information that George would be plucked.


IV


On that same Saturday afternoon George and Marguerite went out together.
She had given him a rendezvous in Brompton Cemetery, choosing this spot
partly because it was conveniently near and partly in unconscious
obedience to the traditional instinct of lovers for the society of the
undisturbing dead. Each of them had a roofed habitation, but neither
could employ it for the ends of love. No. 8 was barred to George as much
by his own dignity as by the invisible sword of the old man; and of
course he could not break the immemorial savage taboo of a club by
introducing a girl into it. The Duke of Wellington himself, though
Candle Court was his purdah, could never have broken the taboo of even
so modest a club as Pickering's. Owing to the absence of Agg, who had
gone to Wales with part of her family, the studio in Manresa Road was
equally closed to the pair.

Marguerite was first at the rendezvous. George saw her walking sedately
near the entrance. Despite her sedateness she had unmistakably the air
of waiting at a tryst. Anybody at a glance would have said that she was
expecting a man. She had the classical demure innocency of her
situation. George did not care for that. Why? She in fact was expecting
a man, and in expecting him she had nothing to be ashamed of. Well, he
did not care for it. He did not care for her being like other girls of
her class. In his pocket he had an invitation from Miss Wheeler for the
next evening. Would Miss Wheeler wait for a man in a public place,
especially a cemetery? Would Lois Ingram? Would Laurencine? He could not
picture them so waiting. Oh, simpleton, unlearned in the world! A snob
too, no doubt! (He actually thought that Hyde Park would have been
'better' than the cemetery for their rendezvous.) And illogical! If No.
8 had been open to them, and the studio, and the club, he would have
accepted with gusto the idea of an open-air rendezvous. But since there
was no alternative to an open-air rendezvous the idea of it humiliated
and repelled him.

Further, in addition to her culpable demure innocency, Marguerite was
wearing black. Of course she was. She had no choice. Still, he hated her
mourning. Moreover, she was too modest; she did not impose herself. Some
girls wore mourning with splendid defiance. Marguerite seemed to
apologize; seemed to turn the other cheek to death.... He arrived
critical, and naturally he found matter to criticize.

Her greeting showed quite candidly the pleasure she had in the sight of
him. Her heart was in the hand she gave him; he felt its mystic
throbbings there.

"How are things?" he began. "I rather thought I should have been hearing
from you." He softened his voice to match the tenderness of her smile,
but he did it consciously.

She replied:

"I thought you'd have enough to worry about with the exam. without me."

It was not a wise speech, because it implied that he was capable of
being worried, of being disturbed in the effort of absorption necessary
for the examination. He laughed a little harshly.

"Well, you see the result!"

He had written to tell her of the disastrous incident and that failure
was a certainty; a sort of shame had made him recoil from telling her to
her face; it was easier to be casual in writing than in talking; the
letter had at any rate tempered for both of them the shock of
communication. Now, he was out of humour with her because he had played
the ass with an ass of an examiner--not because she was directly or
indirectly responsible for his doing so; simply because he had done so.
She was the woman. It was true that she in part was indirectly
responsible for the calamity, but he did not believe it, and anyhow
would never have admitted it.

"Oh! George! What a shame it was!" As usual, not a trace of reproach
from her: an absolute conviction that he was entirely blameless. "What
shall you do? You'll have to sit again."

"Sit again? Me?" he exclaimed haughtily. "I never shall! I've done with
exams." He meant it.

"But--shall you give up architecture, then?"

"Certainly not! My dear girl, what are you thinking of? Of course I
shan't give up architecture. But you needn't pass any exams, to be an
architect. Anybody can call himself an architect, and be an architect,
without passing exams. Exams. are optional. That's what makes old
Enwright so cross with our beautiful profession."

He laughed again harshly. All the time, beneath his quite genuine
defiance, he was thinking what an idiot he had been to cheek the
examiner, and how staggeringly simple it was to ruin years of industry
by one impulsive moment's folly, and how iniquitous was a world in which
such injustice could be.

Marguerite was puzzled. In her ignorance she had imagined that
professions were inseparably connected with examinations. However, she
had to find faith to accept his dictum, and she found it.

"Now about this afternoon," he said. "I vote we take a steamboat down
the river. I've made up my mind I must have a look at Greenwich again
from the water. And we both need a blow."

"But won't it take a long time?" she mildly objected.

He turned on her violently, and spoke as he had never spoken:

"What if it does?"

He knew that she was thinking of her infernal father, and he would not
have it. He remembered all that Agg had said. Assuredly Agg had shown
nerve, too much nerve, to tackle him in the way she did, and the more he
reflected upon Agg's interference the more he resented it as
impertinent. Still, Agg had happened to talk sense.

"Oh, nothing!" Marguerite agreed quickly, fearfully. "I should like to
go. I've never been. Do we go to Chelsea Pier? Down Fernshaw Road will
be the nearest."

"We'll go down Beaufort Street," he decided. He divined that she had
suggested Fernshaw Road in order to avoid passing the end of the Grove,
where her father might conceivably see them. Well, he was not going out
of his way to avoid her father. Nay, he was going slightly out of his
way in order to give her father every chance of beholding them
together.

Although the day was Saturday there was no stir on Chelsea Pier. The
pier-keeper, indeed, was alone on the pier, which rose high on the
urgent flood-tide, so that the gangway to it sloped unusually upwards.
No steamer was in sight, and it seemed impossible that any steamer
should ever call at that forlorn and decrepit platform that trembled
under the straining of the water. Nevertheless, a steamer did after a
little while appear round the bend, in Battersea Reach; she dropped her
funnel, aimed her sharp nose at an arch of Battersea Bridge, and
finally, poising herself against the strong stream, bumped very gently
and neatly into contact with the pier. The pier-keeper went through all
the classic motions of mooring, unbarring, barring, and casting off, and
in a few seconds the throbbing steamer, which was named with the name of
a great Londoner, left the pier again with George and Marguerite on
board. Nobody had disembarked. The shallow and handsome craft, flying
its gay flags, crossed and recrossed the river, calling at three piers
in the space of a few minutes; but all the piers were like Chelsea Pier;
all the pier-keepers had the air of castaways upon shaking islets. The
passengers on the steamer would not have filled a motor-bus, and they
carried themselves like melancholy adventurers who have begun to doubt
the authenticity of the inspiration which sent them on a mysterious
quest. Such was travel on the Thames in the years immediately before
Londoners came to a final decision that the Thames was meet to be
ignored by the genteel town which it had begotten.

George and Marguerite sat close together near the prow, saying little,
the one waiting to spring, the other to suffer onslaught. It was in
Lambeth Reach that the broad, brimming river challenged and seized
George's imagination. A gusty, warm, south-west wind met the rushing
tide and blew it up into foamy waves. The wind was powerful, but the
tide was irresistible. Far away, Land's End having divided the Atlantic
surge, that same wind was furiously driving vast waters up the English
Channel and round the Forelands, and also vast waters up the west coast
of Britain. The twin surges had met again in the outer estuary of the
Thames and joined their terrific impulses to defy the very wind which
had given them strength, and the mighty flux swept with unregarding
power through the mushroom city whose existence on its banks was a
transient episode in the everlasting life of the river.

The river seemed to threaten the city that had confined it in stone. And
George, in the background of his mind, which was obsessed by the
tormenting enigma of the girl by his side, also threatened the city.
With the uncompromising arrogance of the student who has newly acquired
critical ideas, he estimated and judged it. He cursed the Tate Gallery
and utterly damned Doulton's works. He sternly approved Lambeth Palace,
the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Somerset House, Waterloo
Bridge, and St. Paul's. He cursed St. Thomas's Hospital and the hotels.
He patronized New Scotland Yard. The "Isambard Brunel" penetrated more
and more into the heart of the city, fighting for every yard of her
progress. Flags stood out straight in the blue sky traversed by swift
white clouds. Huge rudder-less barges, each with a dwarf in the stern
struggling at a giant's oar, were borne westwards broadside on like
straws upon the surface of a hurrying brook. A launch with an orchestra
on board flew gaily past. Tugs with a serpentine tail of craft threaded
perilously through the increasing traffic. Railway trains, cabs,
coloured omnibuses, cyclists, and footfarers mingled in and complicated
the scene. Then the first ocean-going steamer appeared, belittling all
else. And then the calm, pale beauty of the custom-house at last humbled
George, and for an instant made him think that he could never do
anything worth doing. His pride leapt up, unconquerable. The ocean-going
steamers, as they multiplied on the river, roused in him wild and
painful longings to rush to the ends of the earth and gorge himself on
the immense feast which the great romantic earth had to offer.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed passionately. "I'd give something to go to
Japan."

"Would you?" Marguerite answered with mildness. She had not the least
notion of what he was feeling. Her voice responded to him, but her
imagination did not respond. True, as he had always known, she had no
ambition! The critical quality of his mood developed. The imperious
impulse came to take her to task.

"What's the latest about your father?" he asked, with a touch of
impatient, aggrieved disdain. Both were aware that the words had opened
a crucial interview between them. She moved nervously on the seat. The
benches that ran along the deck-rails met in an acute angle at the stem
of the steamer, so that the pair sat opposite each other with their
knees almost touching. He went on: "I hear he hasn't gone back to the
office yet."

"No," said Marguerite. "But he'll start again on Monday, I think."

"But is he fit to go back? I thought he looked awful."

She flushed slightly--at the indirect reference to the episode in the
basement on the night of the death.

"It will do him good to go back," said Marguerite. "I'm sure he misses
the office dreadfully."

George gazed at her person. Under the thin glove he suddenly detected
the form of her ring. She was wearing it again, then. (He could not
remember whether she had worn it at their last meeting, in Agg's studio.
The very curious fact was that at their last meeting he had forgotten to
look for the ring.) Not only was she wearing the ring, but she carried a
stylish little handbag which he had given her. When he bought that bag,
in the Burlington Arcade, it had been a bag like any other bag. But now
it had become part of her, individualized by her personality, a
mysterious and provocative bag. Everything she wore, down to her boots
and even her bootlaces so neatly threaded and knotted, was mysterious
and provocative. He examined her face. It was marvellously beautiful; it
was ordinary; it was marvellously beautiful. He knew her to the depths;
he did not know her at all; she was a chance acquaintance; she was a
complete stranger.

"How are you getting on with him? You know you really ought to tell me."

"Oh, George!" she said, earnestly vivacious. "You're wrong in thinking
he's not nice to me. He is. He's quite forgiven me."

"Forgiven you!" George took her up. "I should like to know what he had
to forgive."

"Well," she murmured timorously. "You understand what I mean."

He drummed his elegant feet on the striated deck. Out of the corner of
his left eye he saw the mediaeval shape of the Tower rapidly
disappearing. In front were the variegated funnels and masts of fleets
gathered together in St. Katherine's Dock and London Dock. The steamer
gained speed as she headed from Cherry Gardens Pier towards the middle
of the river. She was a frail trifle compared with the big boats that
lined the wharves; but in herself she had size and irresistible force,
travelling quite smoothly over the short, riotous, sparkling waves which
her cut-water divided and spurned away on either side. Only a tremor
faintly vibrated throughout her being.

"Has he forgiven you for being engaged?" George demanded, with rough
sarcasm.

She showed no resentment of his tone, but replied gently:

"I did try to mention it once, but it was no use--he wasn't in a
condition. He made me quite afraid--not for me of course, but for him."

"Well, I give it up!" said George. "I simply give it up! It's past me.
How soon's he going to _be_ in condition? He can't keep us walking about
the streets for ever."

"No, of course not!" She smiled to placate him.

There was a pause, and then George, his eyes fixed on her hand,
remarked:

"I see you've got your ring on."

She too looked at her hand.

"My ring? Naturally. What do you mean?"

He proceeded cruelly:

"I suppose you don't wear it in the house, so that the sight of it
shan't annoy him."

She flushed once more.

"Oh, George, dear!" Her glance asked for mercy, for magnanimity.

"Do you wear it when you're in the house, or don't you?"

Her eyes fell.

"I daren't excite him. Truly, I daren't. It wouldn't do. It wouldn't be
right."

She was admitting George's haphazard charge against her. He was
astounded. But he merely flung back his head and raised his eyebrows. He
thought:

"And yet she sticks to it he's nice to her! My God!"

He said nothing aloud. The Royal Hospital, Greenwich, showed itself in
the distance like a domed island rising fabulously out of the blue-green
water. Even far off, before he could decipher the main contours of the
gigantic quadruple pile, the vision excited him. His mind, darkened by
the most dreadful apprehensions concerning Marguerite, dwelt on it
darkly, sardonically, and yet with pleasure. And he proudly compared his
own disillusions with those of his greatest forerunners. His studies,
and the example of Mr. Enwright, had inspired him with an extremely
enthusiastic worship of Inigo Jones, whom he classed, not without
reason, among the great creative artists of Europe. He snorted when he
heard the Royal Hospital referred to as the largest and finest
charitable institution in the world. For him it was the supreme English
architectural work. He snorted at the thought of that pompous and absurd
monarch James I ordering Inigo Jones to design him a palace surpassing
all palaces and choosing a sublime site therefor, and then doing
nothing. He snorted at the thought of that deluded monarch Charles I
ordering Inigo Jones to design him a palace surpassing all palaces, and
receiving from Inigo Jones the plans of a structure which would have
equalled in beauty and eclipsed in grandeur any European structure of
the Christian era--even Chambord, even the Escurial, even
Versailles--and then accomplishing nothing beyond a tiny fragment of the
sublime dream. He snorted at the thought that Inigo Jones had died at
the age of nearly eighty ere the foundations of the Greenwich palace had
begun to be dug, and without having seen more than the fragment of his
unique Whitehall--after a youth spent in arranging masques for a stupid
court, and an old age spent in disappointment. But then no English
monarch had ever begun and finished a palace. George wished, rather
venturesomely, that he had lived under Francis I!...

The largest and finest charitable institution! The ineffable William and
Mary had merely turned it into a charitable institution because they did
not know what else to do with it. The mighty halls which ought to have
resounded to the laughter of the mistresses of Charles II were diverted
to the inevitable squalor of almsgiving. The mutilated victims of the
egotism and the fatuity of kings were imprisoned there together under
the rules and regulations of charity, the cruellest of all rules and
regulations. And all was done meanly--that is, all that interested
George. Christopher Wren, who was building St. Paul's and fighting
libels and slanders at a salary of two hundred a year, came down to
Greenwich and for years worked immortally for nothing amid material
difficulties that never ceased to multiply; and he too was beaten by the
huge monster. Then Vanbrugh arrived and blithely finished in corrupt
brick and flaming manifestations of decadence that which the pure and
monumental genius of Inigo Jones had first conceived. The north
frontages were marvels of beauty; the final erections to the south
amounted to an outrage upon Jones and Wren. Still, the affair was the
largest and finest charitable institution on earth! What a country,
thought George, hugging injustice! So it had treated Jones and Wren and
many another. So it had treated Enwright. And so it would treat, was
already treating, him, George. He did not care. As the steamer
approached Greenwich, and the details of the aborted palace grew
clearer, and he could distinguish between the genius of Jones and the
genius of Wren, he felt grimly and victoriously sure that both Jones and
Wren had had the best of the struggle against indifference and
philistinism--as he too would have the best of the struggle, though he
should die obscure and in penury. He was miserable and resentful, and
yet he was triumphant. The steamer stopped at the town-pier.

"Are we there?" said Marguerite. "Already?"

"Yes," said he. "And I think we may as well go back by the same
steamer."

She concurred. However, an official insisted on them disembarking, even
if they meant to re-embark at once. They, went ashore. The facade of the
palace-hospital stretched majestically to the left of them, in sharp
perspective, a sensational spectacle.

"It's very large," Marguerite commented. Her voice was nervous.

"Yes, it's rather more than large," he said dryly.

He would not share his thoughts with her. He knew that she had some
inklings of taste, but in that moment he preferred to pretend that her
artistic perception was on a level with that of William and Mary. They
boarded the steamer again, and took their old places; and the menacing
problem of their predicament was still between them.

"We can have some tea downstairs if you like," he said, after the
steamer had turned round and started upstream.

She answered in tones imperfectly controlled:

"No, thank you. I feel as if I couldn't swallow anything." And she
looked up at him very quickly; with the embryo of a smile, and then
looked down again very quickly, because she could not bring the smile to
maturity.

George thought:

"Am I going to have a scene with her--on the steamer?" It would not
matter much if a scene did occur. There was nobody else on deck forward
of the bridge. They were alone--they were more solitary than they might
have been in the studio, or in any room at No. 8. The steamer was now
nearly heading the wind, but she travelled more smoothly, for she had
the last of the flood-tide under her.

George said kindly and persuasively:

"Upon my soul, I don't know what the old gentleman's got against me."

She eagerly accepted his advance, which seemed to give her courage.

"But there's nothing to know, dear. We both know that. There's nothing
at all. And yet of course I can understand it. So can you. In fact it
was you who first explained it to me. If you'd left No. 8 when I did and
he'd heard of our engagement afterwards, he wouldn't have thought
anything of it. But it was you staying on in the house that did it, and
him not knowing of the engagement. He thought you used to come to see me
at nights at the studio, me and Agg, and make fun of everything at No.
8--especially of his wife. He's evidently got some such idea in his
head, and there's no getting it out again."

"But it's childish."

"I know. However, we've said all this before, haven't we?"

"But the idea's _got_ to be got out of his head again!" said George
vigorously--more dictatorially and less persuasively than before.

Marguerite offered no remark.

"And after all," George continued, "he couldn't have been so desperately
keen on--your stepmother. When he married her your mother hadn't been
dead so very long, had she?"

"No. But he never cared for mother anything like so much as he cared for
Mrs. Lobley--at least not as far back as I can remember. It was a
different sort of thing altogether. I think he was perfectly mad about
Mrs. Lobley. Oh! He stood mother's death much--much better than hers!
You've no idea--"

"Oh yes, I have. We know all about that sort of thing," said George the
man of the world impatiently.

Marguerite said tenderly:

"It's broken him."

"Nonsense!"

"It has, George." Her voice was very soft.

But George would not listen to the softness of her voice.

"Well," he objected firmly and strongly, "supposing it has! What then?
We're sorry for him. What then? That affair has nothing to do with our
affair. Is all that reason why I shouldn't see you in your own home? Or
are we to depend on Agg--when she happens to be at her studio? Or are we
always to see each other in the street, or in museums and things--or
steamers--just as if you were a shop-girl? We may just as well look
facts in the face, you know."

She flushed. Her features changed under emotion.

"Oh! George! I don't know what to do."

"Then you think he's determined not to have anything to do with me?"

She was silent.

"You think he's determined not to have anything to do with me, I say?"

"He may change," Marguerite murmured.

"'May change' be dashed! We've got to know where we stand."

He most surprisingly stood up, staring at her. She did not speak, but
she lifted her eyes to his with timid courage. They were wet. George
abruptly walked away along the deck. The steamer was passing the
custom-house again. The tide had now almost slacked. Fresh and heavier
clouds had overcast the sky. All the varied thoughts of the afternoon
were active in George's head at once: architecture, architects, beauty,
professional injustices, girls--his girl. Each affected the others, for
they were deeply entangled. It is a fact that he could not put Inigo
Jones and Christopher Wren out of his head; he wondered what had been
their experiences with women, histories and textbooks of architecture
did not treat of this surely important aspect of architecture! He
glanced at Marguerite from the distance. He remembered what Agg had said
to him about her; but what Agg had said did not appear to help him
practically.... Why had he left Marguerite? Why was he standing thirty
feet from her and observing her inimically? He walked back to her, sat
down, and said calmly:

"Listen to me, darling. Suppose we arrange now, definitely, to get
married in two years' time. How will that do for you?"

"But, George, can you be sure that you'll be able to marry in two
years?"

He put his chin forward.

"You needn't worry about that," said he. "You needn't think because I've
failed in an exam. I don't know what I'm about. You leave all that to
me. In two years I shall be able enough to keep a wife--_and_ well! Now,
shall we arrange to get married in two years' time?"

"It might be a fearful drag for you," she said. "Because, you know, I
don't really earn very much."

"That's not the point. I don't care what you earn. I shan't want you to
earn anything--so far as that goes. Any earning that's wanted I shall be
prepared to do. I'll put it like this: Supposing I'm in a position to
keep you, shall we arrange to get married in two years' time?" He found
a fierce pleasure in reiterating the phrase. "So long as that's
understood, I don't mind the rest. If we have to depend on Agg, or meet
in the streets--never mind. It'll be an infernal nuisance, but I expect
I can stand it as well as you can. Moreover, I quite see your
difficulty--quite. And let's hope the old gentleman will begin to have a
little sense."

"Oh, George! If he only would!"

He did not like her habit of "Oh, George! Oh! George!"

"Well?" He waited, ignoring her pious aspiration.

"I don't know what to say, George."

He restrained himself.

"We're engaged, aren't we?" She gave no answer, and he repeated: "We're
engaged, aren't we?"

"Yes."

"That's all right. Well, will you give me your absolute promise to marry
me in two years' time--if I'm in a position to keep you? It's quite
simple. You say you don't know what to say. But you've got to know what
to say." As he looked at her averted face, his calmness began to leave
him.

"Oh, George! I can't promise that!" she burst out, showing at length her
emotion. The observant skipper on the bridge noted that there were a boy
and a girl forward having a bit of a tiff.

George trembled. All that Agg had said recurred to him once more. But
what could he do to act on it? Anger was gaining, on him.

"Why not?" he menaced.

"It would have to depend on how father was. Surely you must see that!"

"Indeed I don't see it. I see quite the contrary. We're engaged. You've
got the first call on me, and I've got the first call on you--not your
father." The skin over his nose was tight, owing to the sudden swelling
of two points, one on either side of the bone.

"George, I couldn't leave him--again. I think now I may have been wrong
to leave him before. However, that's over. I couldn't leave him again.
It would be very wrong. He'd be all alone."

"Well, then, let him be friends with me."

"I do wish he would."

"Yes. Well, wishing won't do much good. If there's any trouble it's
entirely your father's fault. And what I want to know is--will you give
me your absolute promise to marry me in two years' time?"

"I can't, George. It wouldn't be honest. I can't! I can't! How can you
ask me to throw over my duty to father?"

He rose and walked away again. She was profoundly moved, but no sympathy
for her mitigated his resentment. He considered that her attitude was
utterly monstrous--monstrous! He could not find a word adequate for it.
He was furious; his fury increased with each moment. He returned to the
prow, but did not sit down.

"Don't you think, then, you ought to choose between your father and me?"
he said in a low, hard voice, standing over her.

"What do you mean?" she faltered.

"What do I mean? It's plain enough what I mean, isn't it? Your father
may live twenty years yet. Nobody knows. The older he gets the more
obstinate he'll be. We may be kept hanging about for years and years and
years. Indefinitely. What's the sense of it? You say you've got your
duty, but what's the object of being engaged?"

"Do you want to break it off, George?"

"Now don't put it like that. You know I don't want to break it off. You
know I want to marry you. Only you won't, and I'm not going to be made a
fool of. I'm absolutely innocent."

"Of course you are!" she agreed eagerly.

"Well, I'm not going to be made a fool of by your father. If we're
engaged, you know what it means. Marriage. If it doesn't mean that, then
I say we've no right to be engaged."

Marguerite seemed to recoil at the last words, but she recovered
herself. And then, heedless of being in a public place, she drew off her
glove, and drew the engagement ring from her finger, and held it out to
George. She could not speak. The gesture was her language. George was
extremely staggered. He was stupefied for an instant. Then he took the
ring, and under an uncontrollable savage impulse he threw it into the
river. He did not move for a considerable time, staring at the river in
front. Neither did she move. At length he said in a cold voice, without
moving his head:

"Here's Chelsea Pier."

She got up and walked to the rail amidships. He followed. The steamer
moored. A section of rail slid aside. The pier-keeper gave a hand to
Marguerite, who jumped on to the pier. George hesitated. The pier-keeper
challenged him testily:

"Now then, are ye coming ashore or aren't ye?"

George could not move. The pier-keeper banged the rail to close the gap,
and cast off the ropes, and the steamer resumed her voyage.

A minute later George saw Marguerite slowly crossing the gangway from
the pier to the embankment. There she went! She was about to be
swallowed up in the waste of human dwellings, in the measureless and
tragic expanse of the indifferent town.... She was gone. Curse her, with
her reliability! She was too reliable. He knew that. Her father could
rely on her. Curse her, with her outrageous, incredibly cruel, and
unjust sense of duty! She had held him once. Once the sight of her had
made him turn hot and cold. Once the prospect of life without her had
seemed unbearable. He had loved her instinctively and intensely. He now
judged and condemned her. Her beauty, her sweetness, her belief in him,
her reliability--these qualities were neutralized by her sense of duty,
awful, uncompromising, blind to fundamental justice. The affair was
over. If he knew her, he knew also himself. The affair was over. He was
in despair. His mind went round and round like a life-prisoner
exercising in an enclosed yard. No escape! Till then, he had always
believed in his luck. Infantile delusion! He was now aware that destiny
had struck him a blow once for all. But of course he did not perceive
that he was too young, not ripe, for such a blow. The mark of destiny
was on his features, and it was out of place there.... He had lost
Marguerite. And what had he lost? What was there in her? She was not
brilliant; she had no position; she had neither learning nor wit. He
could remember nothing remarkable that they had ever said to each other.
Indeed, their conversations had generally been rather banal. But he
could remember how they had felt, how he had felt, in their hours
together.... The sensation communicated to him by her hand when he had
drawn off her glove in the tremendous silence of the hansom! Marvellous,
exquisite, magical sensation that no words of his could render! And
there had been others as rare. These scenes were love; they were
Marguerite; they were what he had lost.... Strange, that he should throw
the ring into the river! Nevertheless it was a right gesture. She
deserved it. She was absolutely wrong; he was absolutely right--she had
admitted it. Towards him she had no excuse. Logically her attitude was
absurd. Yet no argument would change it. Stupid--that was what she was!
Stupid! And ruthless! She would be capable of martyrizing the whole
world to her sense of duty, her damnable, insane sense of duty.... She
was gone. He was ruined; she had ruined him. But he respected her. He
hated to respect her, but he respected her.

A thought leapt up in his mind--and who could have guessed it? It was
the thought that the secrecy of the engagement would save him from a
great deal of public humiliation. He would have loathed saying: "We've
broken it off."




CHAPTER VIII

INSPIRATION

I


George, despite his own dispositions, as he went up in the lift, to
obviate the danger of such a mishap, was put out of countenance by the
overwhelming splendour of Miss Irene Wheeler's flat. And he did not
quite recover his aplomb until the dinner was nearly finished. The rooms
were very large and lofty; they blazed with electric light, though the
day had not yet gone; they gleamed with the polish of furniture, enamel,
bookbindings, marble, ivory, and precious metals; they were ennobled by
magnificent pictures, and purified by immense quantities of lovely
flowers. George had made the mistake of arriving last. He found in the
vast drawing-room five people who had the air of being at home and
intimate together. There were, in addition to the hostess, Lois and
Laurencine Ingram, Everard Lucas, and a Frenchman from the French
Embassy whose name he did not catch. Miss Wheeler wore an elaborate
Oriental costume, and apologized for its simplicity on the grounds that
she was fatigued by a crowded and tiresome reception which she had held
that afternoon, and that the dinner was to be without ceremony. This
said, her conversation seemed to fail, but she remained by George's
side, apart from the others. George saw not the least vestige of the
ruinous disorder which, in the society to which he was accustomed,
usually accompanied a big afternoon tea, or any sign of a lack of
ceremony. He had encountered two male servants in the hall, and had also
glimpsed a mulatto woman in a black dress and a white apron, and a
Frenchwoman in a black dress and a black apron. Now a third man-servant
entered, bearing an enormous silver-gilt tray on which were
multitudinous bottles, glasses, decanters, and jugs. George comprehended
that _apéritifs_ were being offered. The tray contained enough cocktails
and other combinations, some already mingled and some not, to produce a
factitious appetite in the stomachs of a whole platoon. The girls
declined, Miss Wheeler declined, the Frenchman declined, George declined
(from prudence and diffidence); only Lucas took an _apéritif_, and he
took it, as George admitted, in style. The man-servant, superbly
indifferent to refusals, marched processionally off with the loaded
tray. The great principle of conspicuous ritualistic waste had been
illustrated in a manner to satisfy the most exacting standard of the
leisured class; and incidentally a subject of talk was provided.

George observed the name of 'Renoir' on the gorgeous frame of a gorgeous
portrait in oils of the hostess.

"Is that a Renoir?" he asked the taciturn Miss Wheeler, who seemed to
jump at the opening with relief.

"Yes," she said, with her slight lisp. "I'm glad you noticed it. Come
and look at it. Do you think it's a good one? Do you like Renoir?"

By good fortune George had seen a Renoir or two in Paris under the
guidance of Mr. Enwright. They stared at the portrait together.

"It's awfully distinguished," he decided, employing a useful adjective
which he had borrowed from Mr. Enwright.

"Isn't it!" she said, turning her wondrous complexion towards him, and
admiring his adjective. "I have a Boldini too."

He followed her across the room to the Boldini portrait of herself,
which was dazzling in its malicious flattery.

"And here's a Nicholson," she said.

Those three portraits were the most striking pictures in the _salon_,
but there were others of at least equal value.

"Are you interested in fans?" she demanded, and pulled down a switch
which illuminated the interior of a large cabinet full of fans. She
pointed out fans painted by Lami, Glaize, Jacquemart. "That one is
supposed to be a Lancret," she said. "But I'm not sure about it, and I
don't know anybody that is. Here's the latest book on the subject." She
indicated Lady Charlotte Schreiber's work in two volumes which, bound in
vellum and gold, lay on a table. "But of course it only deals with
English fans. However, Conder is going to do me a couple. He was here
yesterday to see me about them. Of course you know him. What a wonderful
man! The only really cosmopolitan artist in England, I say, now
Beardsley's dead. I've got a Siegfried drawing by Beardsley. He was a
great friend of mine. I adored him."

"This is a fine thing," said George, touching a bronze of a young girl
on the same table as the books.

"You think so?" Miss Wheeler responded uncertainly. "I suppose it _is_.
It's a Gilbert. He gave it me. But do you really think it compares with
this Barye? It doesn't, does it?" She directed him to another bronze of
a crouching cheetah.

So she moved him about. He was dazed. His modest supply of adjectives
proved inadequate. When she paused, he murmured:

"It's a great room you've managed to get here."

"Ah!" she cried thinly. "But you've no idea of the trouble I've had over
this room. Do you know it's really two rooms. I had to take two flats in
order to fix this room."

She was launched on a supreme topic, and George heard a full history.
She would not have a house. She would have a flat. She instructed
house-agents to find for her the best flat in London. There was no best
flat in London. London landlords did not understand flats, which were
comprehended only in Paris. The least imperfect flats in London were two
on a floor, and as their drawing-rooms happened to be contiguous on
their longer sides, she had the idea of leasing two intolerable flats so
as to obtain one flat that was tolerable. She had had terrible
difficulties about the central heating. No flats in London were
centrally heated except in the corridors and on the staircases. However,
she had imposed her will on the landlord, and radiators had appeared in
every room. George had a vision of excessive wealth subjugating the
greatest artists and riding with implacable egotism over the customs and
institutions of a city obstinately conservative. The cost and the
complexity of Irene Wheeler's existence amazed and intimidated
George--for this double flat was only one of her residences. He wondered
what his parents would say if they could see him casually treading the
oak parquetry and the heavy rugs of the resplendent abode. And then he
thought, the humble and suspicious upstart: "There must be something
funny about her, or she wouldn't be asking _me_ here!"

They went in to dinner, without ceremony. George was last, the hostess
close to his side.

"Who's the Frenchman?" he inquired casually, with the sudden boldness
that often breaks out of timidity. "I didn't catch."

"It's Monsieur Defourcambault," said Miss Wheeler in a low voice of
sincere admiration. "He's from the Embassy. A most interesting man. Been
everywhere. Seen everything. Read everything. Done everything."

George could not but be struck by the ingenuous earnestness of her tone,
so different from the perfunctory accents in which she had catalogued
her objects of art.

The dining-room, the dinner, and the service of the dinner were equally
superb. The broad table seemed small in the midst of the great
mysterious chamber, of which the illumination was confined by shades to
the centre. The glance wandering round the obscurity of the walls could
rest on nothing that was not obviously in good taste and very costly.
The three men-servants, moving soundless as phantoms, brought burdens
from a hidden country behind a gigantic screen, and at intervals in the
twilight near the screen could be detected the transient gleam of the
white apron of the mulatto, whose sex clashed delicately and piquantly
with the grave, priest-like performances of the male menials. The table
was of mahogany covered with a sheet of plate-glass. A large gold
épergne glittered in the middle. Suitably dispersed about the rim of the
board were six rectangular islands of pale lace, and on each island lay
a complete set of the innumerable instruments and condiments necessary
to the proper consumption of the meal. Thus, every diner dined
independently, cut off from his fellows, but able to communicate with
them across expanses of plate-glass over mahogany. George was confused
by the multiplicity of metal tools and crystal receptacles--he alone had
four wine-glasses--but in the handling of the tools he was saved from
shame by remembering the maxim--a masterpiece of terse clarity worthy of
a class which has given its best brains to the perfecting of the
formalities preliminary to deglutition: "Take always from the outside."

The man from the French Embassy sat on the right of the hostess, and
George on her left. George had Lois Ingram on his left. Laurencine was
opposite her sister. Everard Lucas, by command of the hostess, had taken
the foot of the table and was a sort of 'Mr. Vice.' The six people were
soon divided into two equal groups, one silent and the other talkative,
the talkative three being M. Defourcambault, Laurencine and Lucas. The
diplomatist, though he could speak diplomatic English, persisted in
speaking French. Laurencine spoke French quite perfectly, with exactly
the same idiomatic ease as the Frenchman. Lucas neither spoke nor
understood French--he had been to a great public school. Nevertheless
these three attained positive loquacity. Lucas guessed at words, or the
Frenchman obliged with bits of English, or Laurencine interpreted.
Laurencine was far less prim and far more girlish than at the Café
Royal. She kept all the freshness of her intensely virginal quality, but
she was at ease. Her rather large body was at ease, continually restless
in awkward and exquisite gestures; she laughed at ease, and made fun at
ease. She appeared to have no sex-consciousness, nor even to suspect
that she was a most delightful creature. The conversation was disjointed
in its gaiety, and had no claim to the attention of the serious.
Laurencine said that Lucas ought really to know French. Lucas said he
would learn if she would teach him. Laurencine said that she would teach
him if he would have his first lesson instantly, during dinner. Lucas
said that wasn't fair. Laurencine said that it was. Both of them
appealed to M. Defourcambault. M. Defourcambault said that it was fair.
Lucas said that there was a plot between them, but that he would consent
to learn at once if Laurencine would play the piano for him after
dinner. Laurencine said she didn't play. Lucas said she did. M.
Defourcambault, invoked once again, said that she played magnificently.
Laurencine blushed, and asked M. Defourcambault how he could!... And so
on, indefinitely. It was all naught; yet the taciturn three, smiling
indulgently and glancing from one to another of the talkers, as taciturn
and constrained persons must, envied that peculiar ability to maintain a
rush and gush of chatter.

George was greatly disappointed in Lois. In the period before dinner his
eyes had avoided her, and now, since they sat side by side, he could not
properly see her without deliberately looking at her: which he would not
do. She gave no manifestation. She was almost glum. Her French, though
free, was markedly inferior to Laurencine's. She denied any interest in
music. George decided, with self-condemnation, that he had been
deliberately creating in his own mind an illusion about her; on no other
hypothesis could either his impatience to meet her to-night, or his
disappointment at not meeting her on the night of the Café Royal dinner,
be explained. She was nothing, after all. And he did not deeply care for
Miss Irene Wheeler, whom he could watch at will. She might be concealing
something very marvellous, but she was dull, and she ignored the finer
responsibilities of a hostess. She collected many beautiful things; she
had some knowledge of what they were; she must be interested in them--or
why should she trouble to possess them? She must have taste. And yet had
she taste? Was she interested in her environment? A tone, a word, will
create suspicion that the exhibition of expertise for hours cannot
allay. George did not like the Frenchman. The Frenchman was about
thirty--small, thin, fair, with the worn face of the man who lives
several lives at once. He did not look kind; he did not look reliable;
and he offered little evidence in support of Miss Wheeler's ardent
assertion that he had been everywhere, seen everything, read everything,
done everything. He assuredly had not, for example, read Verlaine, who
was mentioned by Miss Wheeler. Now George had read one or two poems of
Verlaine, and thought them unique; hence he despised M. Defourcambault.
He could read French, in a way, but he was incapable of speaking a
single word of it in the presence of compatriots; the least
mono-syllable would have died on his lips. He was absurdly envious of
those who could speak two languages; he thought sometimes that he would
prefer to be able to speak two languages than to do anything else in the
world; not to be able to speak two languages humiliated him intensely;
he decided to 'take up French seriously' on the morrow; but he had
several times arrived at a similar decision.

If Lois was glum, George too was glum. He wished he had not come to the
dinner; he wished he could be magically transported to the solitude of
his room at the club. He slipped into a reverie about the Marguerite
affair. Nobody could have divined that scarcely twenty-four hours
earlier he had played a principal part in a tragedy affecting his whole
life. He had borne the stroke better than he otherwise would have done
for the simple reason that nobody knew of his trouble. He had not to
arrange his countenance for the benefit of people who were aware what
was behind the countenance. But also he was philosophical. He recognized
that the Marguerite affair was over. She would never give way, and he
would never give way. She was wrong. He had been victimized. He had
behaved with wisdom and with correctness (save for the detail of
throwing the ring into the Thames). Agg's warnings and injunctions were
ridiculous. What could he have done that he had not done? Run away with
Marguerite, carry her off? Silly! No, he was well out of the affair. He
perceived the limitations of the world in which Marguerite lived. It was
a world too small and too austere for him. He required the spaciousness
and the splendour of the new world in which Irene Wheeler and the
Ingrams lived. Yea, though it was a world that excited the sardonic in
him, he liked it. It flattered authentic, if unsuspected, appetites in
him. Still, the image of Marguerite inhabited his memory. He saw her as
she stood between himself and old Haim in the basement of No. 8. He
heard her.... She was absolutely unlike any other girl; she was so
gentle, so acquiescent. Only she put her lover second to her father....
What would Miss Wheeler think of the basement of No. 8?

The chatterers, apropos of songs in musical comedies, were talking about
a French popular song concerning Boulanger.

"You knew Boulanger, didn't you, Jules?" Miss Wheeler suggested.

M. Defourcambault looked round, content. He related in English how his
father had been in the very centre of the Boulangist movement, and had
predicted disaster to the General's cause from the instant that Madame
de Bonnemain came on the scene. (Out of consideration for the girls, M.
Defourcambault phrased his narrative with neat discretion.) His
grandfather also had been of his father's opinion, and his grandfather
was in the Senate, and had been Minister at Brussels.... He affirmed
that Madame de Bonnemain had telegraphed to Boulanger to leave Paris at
the very moment when his presence in Paris was essential, and Boulanger
had obediently gone. He said that he always remembered what his mother
had said to him: a clever woman irregularly in love with a man may make
his fortune, but a stupid woman is certain to ruin it. Finally he
related how he, Jules Defourcambault, had driven the General's carriage
on a famous occasion through Paris, and how the populace in its frenzy
of idolatry had even climbed on to the roof of the carriage.

"And what did you do, then?" George demanded in the hard tone of a
cross-examiner.

"I drove straight on," said M. Defourcambault, returning George's cold
stare.

This close glimpse into history--into politics and passion--excited
George considerably. He was furiously envious of M. Defourcambault, who
had been in the middle of things all his life, whose father, mother, and
grandfather were all in the middle of things. M. Defourcambault had an
immense and unfair advantage over him. To whatever heights he might
rise, George would never be in a position to talk as M. Defourcambault
talked of his forbears. He would always have to stand alone, and to
fight for all he wanted. He could not even refer to his father. He
scorned M. Defourcambault because M. Defourcambault was not worthy of
his heritage. M. Defourcambault was a little rotter, yet he had driven
the carriage of Boulanger in a crisis of the history of France! Miss
Wheeler, however, did not scorn M. Defourcambault. On the contrary, she
looked at him with admiration, as though he had now proved that he had
been everywhere, seen everything, and done everything. George's mood was
black. He was a nobody; he would always be a nobody; why should he be
wasting his time and looking a fool in this new world?


II


After dinner, in the drawing-room which had cost Irene Wheeler an extra
flat, there was, during coffee, a certain amount of general dullness,
slackness, and self-consciousness which demonstrated once more Miss
Wheeler's defects as a hostess. Miss Wheeler would not or could not act
as shepherdess and inspirer to her guests. She reclined, and charmingly
left them to manufacture the evening for her. George was still
disappointed and disgusted; for he had imagined, very absurdly as he
admitted, that artistic luxuriousness always implied social dexterity
and the ability to energize and reinvigorate diversion without apparent
effort. There were moments during coffee which reminded him of the
maladroit hospitalities of the Five Towns.

Then Everard Lucas opened the piano, and the duel between him and
Laurencine was resumed. The girl yielded. Electric lights were adjusted.
She began to play, while Lucas, smoking, leaned over the piano. George
was standing by himself at a little distance behind the piano. He had
perhaps been on his way to a chair when suddenly caught and immobilized
by one of those hazards which do notoriously occur--the victim never
remembers how--in drawing-rooms. Hands in pockets, he looked aimlessly
about, smiling perfunctorily, and wondering where he should settle or
whether he should remain where he was. In the deep embrasure of the
large east bow-window Lois was lounging. She beckoned to him, not with
her hand but with a brief, bright smile--she smiled rarely--and with a
lifting of the chin. He responded alertly and pleasurably, and went to
sit beside her. Such invitations from young women holding themselves
apart in obscurity are never received without excitement and never
unanswered.

Crimson curtains of brocaded silk would have cut off the embrasure
entirely from the room had they been fully drawn, but they were not
fully drawn; one was not drawn at all, and the other was only half
drawn. Still, the mere fact of the curtains, drawn or undrawn, did
morally separate the embrasure from the _salon_; and the shadows
thickened in front of the window. The smile had gone from Lois's face,
but it had been there. Sequins glittered on her dark dress, the line of
the low neck of which was distinct against the pallor of the flesh.
George could follow the outlines of her slanted, plump body from the
hair and freckled face down to the elaborate shoes. The eyes were half
closed. She did not speak. The figure of Laurencine, whose back was
towards the window, received an aura from the electric light immediately
over the music-stand of the piano. She played brilliantly. She played
with a brilliance that astonished George.... She was exceedingly clever,
was this awkward girl who had not long since left school Her body might
be awkward, but not her hands. The music radiated from the piano and
filled the room with brightness, with the illusion of the joy of life,
and with a sense of triumph. To George it was an intoxication.

A man-servant entered with a priceless collection of bon-bons, some of
which he deferentially placed on a small table in the embrasure. To do
so he had to come into the embrasure, disturbing the solitude, which had
already begun to exist, of Lois and George. He ignored the pair. His
sublime indifference seemed to say: "I am beyond good and evil." But at
the same time it left them more sensitively awake to themselves than
before. The hostess indolently muttered an order to the man, and in
passing the door on his way out he extinguished several lights. The
place and the hour grew romantic. George was impressed by the scene, and
he eagerly allowed it to impress him. It was, to him, a marvellous
scene; the splendour of the apartment, the richly attired girls, the
gay, exciting music, the spots of high light, the glooms, the glimpses
everywhere of lovely objects. He said to himself: "I was born for this."

Lois turned her head slowly and looked out of the window.

"Wonderful view from here," she murmured.

George turned his head. The flat was on the sixth story. The slope of
central London lay beneath. There was no moon, but there were stars in a
clear night. Roofs; lighted windows; lines of lighted traffic; lines of
lamps patterning the invisible meadows of a park; hiatuses of blackness;
beyond, several towers scarcely discernible against the sky--the towers
of Parliament, and the high tower of the Roman Catholic Cathedral: these
were London.

"You haven't seen it in daytime, have you?" said Lois.

"No. I'd sooner see it at night."

"So would I."

The reply, the sympathy in it, the soft, thrilled tone of It, startled
him. His curiosity about Lois was being justified, after all. And he was
startled too at the extraordinary surprises of his own being. Yesterday
he had parted from Marguerite; not ten years ago, but yesterday. And now
already he was conscious of pleasure, both physical and spiritual, in
the voice of another girl heard in the withdrawn obscurity of the
embrasure. Yes, and a girl whom he had despised! Yesterday he had
seriously believed himself to be a celibate for life; he had dismissed
for ever the hope of happiness. He had seen naught but a dogged and
eternal infelicity. And now he was, if not finding happiness, expecting
it. He felt disloyal--less precisely to Marguerite than to a vanished
ideal. He felt that he ought to be ashamed. For Marguerite still
existed; she was existing at that moment less than three miles
off--somewhere over there in the dark.

"See the Cathedral tower?" he said.

"Yes," she answered. "What a shame Bentley died, wasn't it?"

He was more than startled, now--he was amazed and enchanted. Something
touching and strange in her voice usually hard; something in the elegant
fragility of her slipper! Everybody knew that Bentley was the architect
of the Cathedral and that he had died of cancer on the tongue. The
knowledge was not esoteric; it did not by itself indicate a passion for
architecture or a comprehension of architecture. Yet when she said the
exclamatory words, leaning far back in the seat, her throat emerging
from the sequined frock, her tapping slipper peeping out beneath the
skirt, she cast a spell on him. He perceived in her a woman gifted and
endowed. This was the girl whom he had bullied in the automobile. She
must have bowed in secret to his bullying; though he knew she had been
hurt by it, she had given no sign of resentment, and her voice was
acquiescent. Above all, she had remembered him.

"You only like doing very large buildings, don't you?" she suggested.

"Who told you?"

"Everard."

"Oh! Did old Lucas tell you? Well, he's quite right."

He had a sudden desire to talk to her about the great municipal building
in the north that was soon to be competed for. He yielded to the desire.
She listened, motionless. He gave vent to his regret that Mr. Enwright
absolutely declined to enter for the competition. He said he had had
ideas for it, and would have liked to work for it.

"But why don't you go in for it yourself, George?" she murmured gravely.

"Me!" he exclaimed, almost frightened. "It wouldn't be any good. I'm too
young. Besides----"

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-one."

"Good heavens! You look twenty-five at least! I know I should go in for
it if I were you--if I were a man."

He understood her. She could not talk well. She could not easily be
agreeable; she could easily be rude; she could not play the piano like
the delightful Laurencine. But she was passionate. And she knew the
force of ambition. He admired ambition perhaps more than anything.
Ambition roused him. She was ambitious when she drove the automobile and
endangered his life.... She had called him by his Christian name quite
naturally. There was absolutely no nonsense about her. Now Marguerite
was not in the slightest degree ambitious. The word had no significance
for her.

"I couldn't!" he insisted humbly. "I don't know enough. It's a terrific
affair."

She made no response. But she looked at him, and suddenly he saw the
angel that Irene Wheeler and Laurencine had so enthusiastically spoken
of at the Cafe Royal!

"I couldn't!" he murmured.

He was insisting too much. He was insisting against himself. She had
implanted the idea in his mind. Why had he not thought of it? Certainly
he had not thought of it. Had he lacked courage to think of it? He
beheld the idea as though it was an utterly original discovery,
revolutionary, dismaying, and seductive. His inchoate plans for the
building took form afresh in his brain. And the luxury by which he was
surrounded whipped his ambition till it writhed.

Curious, she said no more! After a moment she sat up and took a sweet.

George saw, in a far corner, Jules Defourcambault talking very quietly
to Irene Wheeler, whose lackadaisical face had become ingenuous and
ardent as she listened to him under the shelter of the dazzling music.
George felt himself to be within the sphere of unguessed and highly
perturbing forces.


III


He left early. Lucas seemed to regard his departure as the act of a
traitor, but he insisted on leaving. And in spite of Lucas's great
social success he inwardly condescended to Lucas. Lucas was not a
serious man and could not comprehend seriousness. George went because he
had to go, because the power of an idea drove him forth. He had no
intention of sleeping. He walked automatically through dark London, and
his eyes, turned within, saw nothing of the city. He did not walk
quickly--he was too preoccupied to walk quickly--yet in his brain he was
hurrying, he had not a moment to lose. The goal was immensely far off.
His haste was as absurd and as fine as that of a man who, starting to
cross Europe on foot, must needs run in order to get out of Calais and
be fairly on his way.

At Russell Square he wondered whether he would be able to get into the
office. However, there was still a light in the basement, and he rang
the house-bell. The housekeeper's daughter, a girl who played at being
parlourmaid in the afternoons and brought bad tea and thick
bread-and-butter to the privileged in the office, opened the front door
with bridling exclamations of astonishment. She had her best frock on;
her hair was in curling-pins; she smelt delicately of beer; the
excitement of the Sunday League excursion and of the evening's dalliance
had not quite cooled in this respectable and experienced young creature
of central London. She was very feminine and provocative and
unparlourmaidish, standing there in the hall, and George passed by her
as callously as though she had been a real parlourmaid on duty. She had
to fly to her mother for the key of the office. Taking the key from the
breathless, ardent little thing, he said that he would see to the front
door being properly shut when he went out. That was all. Her legitimate
curiosity about his visit had to go to bed hungry.

In the office he switched on the lights in Haim's cubicle, in the
pupils' room, and in the principals' room. He enjoyed the illumination
and the solitude. He took deep breaths. He walked about. After rummaging
for the sketches and the printed site-plan of the town hall projected by
the northern city, he discovered them under John Orgreave's desk. He
moved them to Mr. Enwright's desk, which was the best one, and he bent
over them rapturously. Yes, the idea of entering for the competition
himself was a magnificent idea. Strange that it should have occurred
not to him, but to Lois! A disconcerting girl, Lois! She had said that
he looked twenty-five. He liked that. Why should he not enter for the
competition himself? He would enter for it. The decision was made, as
usual without consulting anybody; instinct was his sole guide. Failure
in the final examination was beside the point. Moreover, though he had
sworn never to sit again, he could easily sit again in December; he
could pass the exam, on his head. He might win the competition; to be
even in the selected first six or ten would rank as a glorious
achievement. But why should he not win outright? He was lucky, always
had been lucky. It was essential that he should win outright. It was
essential that he should create vast and grandiose structures, that he
should have both artistic fame and worldly success. He could not wait
long for success. He required luxury. He required a position enabling
him to meet anybody and everybody on equal terms, and to fulfil all his
desires.

He would not admit that he was too young for the enterprise. He was not
too young. He refused to be too young. And indeed he felt that he had
that very night become adult, and that a new impulse, reducing all
previous impulses to unimportance, had inspired his life. He owed the
impulse to the baffling Lois. Marguerite would never have given him such
an impulse. Marguerite had no ambition either for herself or for him.
She was profoundly the wrong girl for him. He admitted his error
candidly, with the eagerness of youth. He had no shame about the
blunder. And the girl's environment was wrong for him also. What had he
to do with Chelsea? Chelsea was a parish; it was not the world. He had
been gravely disappointed in Chelsea. Marguerite had no shimmer of
romance. She was homely. And she was content with her sphere. And she
was not elegant; she had no kind of smartness; who would look twice at
her? And she was unjust, she was unfair. She had lacerated his highly
sensitive pride. She had dealt his conceit a frightful wound. He would
not think of it.

And in fact he could ignore the wound in the exquisite activity of
creating town halls for mighty municipalities. He drew plans with
passion and with fury; he had scores of alternative schemes; he was a
god fashioning worlds. Having drawn plans, he drew elevations and
perspectives; he rushed to the files (rushed--because he was in haste to
reach the goal) and studied afresh the schedules of accommodation for
other municipal buildings that had been competed for in the past. Much
as he hated detail, he stooped rather humbly to detail that night, and
contended with it in all honesty. He worked for hours before he thought
of lighting a cigarette.

It was something uncanny beyond the large windows that first gently and
perceptibly began to draw away his mind from the profusion of town halls
on the desk, and so indirectly reminded him of the existence of
cigarettes. When he lighted a cigarette he stretched himself and glanced
at the dark windows, of which the blinds had not been pulled down. He
understood then what was the matter. Dawn was the matter. The windows
were no longer quite dark. He looked out. A faint pallor in the sky, and
some stars sickening therein, and underneath the silent square with its
patient trees and indefatigable lamps! The cigarette tasted bad in his
mouth, but he would not give it up. He yawned heavily. The melancholy of
the square, awaiting without hope the slow, hard dawn, overcame him
suddenly.... Marguerite was a beautiful girl; her nose was marvellous;
he could never forget it. He could never forget her gesture as she
intervened between him and her father in the basement at Alexandra
Grove. They had painted lamp-shades together. She was angelically kind;
she could not be ruffled; she would never criticize, never grasp, never
exhibit selfishness. She was a unique combination of the serious and the
sensuous. He felt the passionate, ecstatic clinging of her arm as they
walked under the interminable chain of lamp-posts on Chelsea Embankment.
Magical hours!... And how she could absorb herself in her work! And what
a damned shame it was that rascally employers should have cut down her
prices! It was intolerable; it would not bear thinking about. He dropped
the cigarette and stamped on it angrily. Then he returned to the desk,
and put his head in his hands and shut his eyes.

He awakened with a start of misgiving. He was alone in the huge house
(for the basement was under the house and, somehow, did not count).
Something was astir in the house. He could hear it through the doors
ajar. His flesh crept. It was exactly like the flap of a washing-cloth
on the stone stairs; it stopped; it came nearer. He thought inevitably
of the dead Mrs. Haim, once charwoman and step cleaner. In an instant he
believed fully in all that he had ever heard about ghosts and spirit
manifestations. An icy wave passed down his spine. He felt that if the
phantom of Mrs. Haim was approaching him he simply could not bear to
meet it. The ordeal would kill him. Then he decided that the sounds were
not those of a washing-cloth, but of slippered feet. Odd that he should
have been so deluded. Somebody was coming down the long stairs from the
upper stories, uninhabited at night. Burglars? He was still very
perturbed, but differently perturbed. He could not move a muscle. The
suspense as the footsteps hesitated at the cubicle was awful. George
stood up straight and called out in a rough voice--louder than he
expected it to be:

"Who's there?"

Mr. Enwright appeared. He was wearing beautiful blue pyjamas and a
plum-coloured silk dressing-gown and doe-skin slippers. His hair was
extremely deranged; he blinked rapidly, and his lined face seemed very
old.

"Well, I like this, I like this!" he said in a quiet, sardonic tone.
"Sitting at my desk and blazing my electricity away! I happened to get
up, and I looked out of the window and noticed the glare below. So I
came to see what was afoot. Do you know you frightened me?--and I don't
like being frightened."

"I hadn't the slightest notion you ever slept here," George feebly
stammered.

"Didn't you know I'd decided to keep a couple of rooms here for myself?"

"I had heard something about it, but I didn't know you'd really moved
in. I--I've been away so much."

"I moved in, as you call it, to-day--yesterday, and a nice night you're
giving me! And even supposing I hadn't moved in, what's that got to do
with your being here? Give me a cigarette."

With hurrying deference George gave the cigarette, and struck a match
for it, and as he held the match he had a near view of Mr. Enwright's
prosaic unshaved chin. The house was no longer the haunt of lurking
phantoms; it was a common worldly house without any mystery or any
menace. George's skin was no longer the field of abnormal phenomena.
Dawn was conquering Russell Square. On the other hand, George was no
longer a giant of energy, initiating out of ample experience a
tremendous and superb enterprise. He was suddenly diminished to a boy,
or at best a lad. He really felt that it was ridiculous for him to be
sketching and scratching away there in the middle of the night in his
dress-clothes. Even his overcoat, hat, and fancy muffler cast on a chair
seemed ridiculous. He was a child, pretending to be an adult. He glanced
like a child at Mr. Enwright; he roughened his hair with his hand like a
child. He had the most wistful and apologetic air.

He said:

"I just came along here for a bit instead of going to bed. I didn't know
it was so late."

"Do you often just come along here?"

"No. I never did it before. But to-night----"

"What is it you're _at_?"

"I'd been thinking a bit about that new town hall."

"What new town hall?"

"You know----"

Mr. Enwright did know.

"But haven't I even yet succeeded in making it clear that this firm is
not going in for that particular competition?"

Mr. Enwright's sarcastic and discontented tone challenged George, who
stiffened.

"Oh! I know the firm isn't going in for it. But what's the matter with
me going in for it?"

He forced himself to meet Mr. Enwright's eyes, but he could not help
blushing. He was scarcely out of his articles; he had failed in the
Final; and he aspired to create the largest English public building of
the last half-century.

"Are you quite mad?" Mr. Enwright turned away from the desk to the
farther window, hiding his countenance.

"Yes," said George firmly. "Quite!"

Mr. Enwright, after a pause, came back to the desk.

"Well, it's something to admit that," he sneered. "At any rate, we know
where we are. Let's have a look at the horrid mess."

He made a number of curt observations as he handled the sheets of
sketches.

"I see you've got that Saracenic touch in again."

"What's the scale here?"

"Is this really a town hall, or are you trying to beat the Temple at
Karnak?"

"If that's meant for an Ionic capital, no assessor would stand it. It's
against all the textbooks to have Ionic capitals where there's a
side-view of them. Not that it matters to me."

"Have you made the slightest attempt to cube it up? You'd never get out
of this under half a million, you know."

Shaking his head, he retired once more to the window. George began to
breathe more freely, as one who has fronted danger and still lives. Mr.
Enwright addressed the window:

"It's absolute folly to start on a thing like that before the conditions
are out. Absolute folly. Have you done all that to-night?"

"Yes."

"Well, you've shifted the stuff.... But you haven't the slightest notion
what accommodation they want. You simply don't know."

"I know what accommodation they _ought_ to want with four hundred
thousand inhabitants," George retorted pugnaciously.

"Is it four hundred thousand?" Mr. Enwright asked, with bland innocence.
He generally left statistics to his partner.

"Four hundred and twenty-five."

"You've looked it up?"

"I have."

Mr. Enwright was now at the desk yet again.

"There's an idea to it," he said shortly, holding up the principal sheet
and blinking.

"_I shall go in for it_!" The thought swept through George's brain like
a fierce flare, lighting it up vividly to its darkest corners, and
incidentally producing upon his skin phenomena similar to those produced
by uncanny sounds on the staircase. He had caught admiration and
benevolence in Mr. Enwright's voice. He was intensely happy,
encouraged, and proud. He began to talk eagerly; he babbled, entrusting
himself to Mr. Enwright's benevolence.

"Of course there's the Final. If they give six months for the thing I
could easily get through the Final before sending-in day. I could take a
room somewhere. I shouldn't really want any assistance--clerk, I mean. I
could do it all myself...." He ran on until Mr. Enwright stopped him.

"You could have a room here--upstairs."

"Could I?"

"But you would want some help. And you needn't think they'll give six
months, because they won't. They might give five."

"That's no good."

"Why isn't it any good?" snapped Mr. Enwright. "You don't suppose
they're going to issue the conditions just yet, do you? Not a day before
September, not a day. And you can take it from me!"

"Oh! Hurrah!"

"But look here, my boy, let's be clear about one thing."

"Yes?"

"You're quite mad."

They looked at each other.

"The harmless kind, though," said George confidently, well aware that
Mr. Enwright doted upon him.

In another minute the principal had gone to bed, without having uttered
one word as to his health. George had announced that he should tidy the
sacred desk before departing. When he had done that he wrote a letter,
in pencil. "It's the least I can do," he said to himself seriously. He
began:

"DEAR MISS INGRAM."--"Dash it!--She calls me 'George,'" he thought, and
tore up the sheet.--"DEAR LOIS,--I think after what you said it's only
due to you to tell you that I've decided to go in for that competition
on my own. Thanks for the tip.--Yours, GEORGE CANNON"

He surveyed the message.

"That's about right," he murmured.

Then he looked at his watch. It showed 3.15, but it had ceased to beat.
He added at the foot of the letter: "Monday, 3.30 a.m." He stole one of
John Orgreave's ready-stamped envelopes.

In quitting the house he inadvertently banged the heavy front door.

"Do 'em good!" he said, thinking of awakened sleepers.

It was now quite light. He dropped the letter into the pillar-box round
the corner, and as soon as he had irretrievably done so, the thought
occurred to him: "I wish I hadn't put '3.30 a.m.' There's something
rottenly sentimental about it." The chill fresh air was bracing him to a
more perfect sanity. He raised the collar of his overcoat.


IV


At the club on Tuesday morning Downs brought to his bedside a letter
addressed in a large, striking, and untidy hand. Not until he had
generally examined the letter did he realize that it was from Lois
Ingram. He remembered having mentioned to her that he lived at his
club--Pickering's; but he had laid no stress on the detail, nor had she
seemed to notice it. Yet she must have noticed it.

"DEAR GEORGE,--I am so glad. Miss Wheeler is going to her bootmaker's in
Conduit Street to-morrow afternoon. She's always such a long time there.
Come and have tea with me at the new Prosser's in Regent Street, four
sharp. I shall have half an hour.--L.I."

In his heart he pretended to jeer at this letter. He said it was 'like'
Lois. She calmly assumed that at a sign from her he, a busy man, would
arrange to be free in the middle of the afternoon! Doubtless the letter
was the consequence of putting '3.30 a.m.' on his own letter. What could
a fellow expect?...

All pretence! In reality the letter flattered and excited him. He
thought upon the necktie he would wear.

By the same post arrived a small parcel: it contained a ring, a few
other bits of jewellery, and all the letters and notes that he had ever
written or scribbled to Marguerite. He did not want the jewellery back;
he did not want the letters back. To receive them somehow humiliated
him. Surely she might have omitted this nauseous conventionality! She
was so exasperatingly conscientious. Her neat, clerk-like calligraphy,
on the label of the parcel, exasperated him. She had carefully kept
every scrap of a missive from him. He hated to look at the letters. What
could he do with them except rip them up? And the miserable
trinkets--which she had worn, which had been part of her? As for him, he
had not kept all her letters--not by any means. There might be a few,
lying about in drawers. He would have to collect and return them. Odious
job! And he could not ask anybody else to do it for him.

He was obliged to question Lucas about the Regent Street Prosser's, of
which, regrettably, he had never heard. He did not, in so many words,
request John Orgreave for the favour of an hour off. He was now out of
his articles, though still by the force of inertia at the office, and
therefore he informed John Orgreave that unless Mr. John had any
objection he proposed to take an hour off. Mr. Enwright was not in.
Lucas knew vaguely of the rendezvous, having somewhere met Laurencine.

From the outside Prosser's was not distinguishable from any other part
of Regent Street. But George could not mistake it, because Miss
Wheeler's car was drawn up in front of the establishment, and Lois was
waiting for him therein. Strange procedure! She smiled and then frowned,
and got out sternly. She said scarcely anything, and he found that he
could make only such silly remarks as: "Hope I'm not late, am I?"

The new Prosser's was a grandiose by-product of chocolate. The firm had
taken the leading ideas of the chief tea-shop companies catering for the
million in hundreds of establishments arranged according to pattern, and
elaborated them with what is called in its advertisements 'cachet.' Its
prices were not as cheap as those of the popular houses, but they could
not be called dear. George and Lois pushed through a crowded lane of
chocolate and confectionery, past a staircase which bore a large notice:
"Please keep to the right." This notice was needed. They came at length
to the main hall, under a dome, with a gallery between the dome and the
ground. The floor was carpeted. The multitudinous small tables had
cloths, flowers, silver, and menus knotted with red satin ribbon. The
place was full of people, people seated at the tables and people walking
about. Above the rail of the gallery could be seen the hats and heads of
more people. People were entering all the time and leaving all the time.
Scores of waitresses, in pale green and white, moved to and fro like an
alien and mercenary population. The heat, the stir, the hum, and the
clatter were terrific. And from on high descended thin, strident music
in a rapid and monotonous rhythm.

"No room!" said George, feeling that he had at last got into the true
arena of the struggle for life.

"Oh yes!" said Lois, with superior confidence.

She bore mercilessly across the floor. Round the edge of the huge room,
beneath the gallery, were a number of little alcoves framed in fretted
Moorish arches of white-enamelled wood. Three persons were just emerging
from one of these. She sprang within, and sank into a wicker arm-chair.

"There is always a table," she breathed, surveying the whole scene with
a smile of conquest.

George sat down opposite to her with his back to the hall; he could
survey nothing but Lois, and the world of the mirror behind her.

"That's one of father's maxims," she said.

"What is?"

"'There is always a table.' Well, you know, there always is."

"He must be a very wise man."

"He is."

"What's his special line?"

She exclaimed:

"Don't you know father? Hasn't Miss Wheeler told you? Or Mrs. Orgreave?"

"No."

"But you must know father. Father's 'Parisian' in _The Sunday Journal_."

Despite the mention of this ancient and very dignified newspaper, George
felt a sense of disappointment. He had little esteem for journalists,
whom Mr. Enwright was continually scoffing at, and whom he imagined to
be all poor. He had conceived Mr. Ingram as perhaps a rich cosmopolitan
financier, or a rich idler--but at any rate rich, whatever he might be.

"Of course he does lots of other work besides that. He writes for the
_Pall Mall Gazette_ and the _St. James's Gazette._ In fact it's his
proud boast that he writes for all the gazettes, and he's the only man
who does. That's because he's so liked. Everybody adores him. I adore
him myself. He's a great pal of mine. But he's very strict."

"Strict?"

"Yes," she insisted, rather defensively. "Why not? I should like a
strawberry ice, and a lemon-squash, and a millefeuille cake. Don't be
alarmed, please. I'm a cave-woman. You've got to get used to it."

"What's a cave-woman?"

"It's something primitive. You must come over to Paris. If father likes
you, he'll take you to one of the weekly lunches of the Anglo-American
Press Circle. He always does that when he likes anyone. He's the
Treasurer.... Haven't you got any millefeuille cakes?" she demanded of
the waitress, who had come to renew the table and had deposited a basket
of various cakes.

"I'm afraid we haven't, miss," answered the waitress, not comprehending
the strange word any better than George did.

"Bit rowdy, isn't it?" George observed, looking round, when the waitress
had gone.

Lois said with earnestness:

"I simply love these big, noisy places. They make me feel alive."

He looked at her. She was very well dressed--more stylistic than any
girl that he could see in the mirror. He could not be sure whether or
not her yellow eyes had a slight cast; if they had, it was so slight as
to be almost imperceptible. There was no trace of diffidence in them;
they commanded. She was not a girl whom you could masculinely protect.
On the contrary, she would protect not only herself but others.

"Haven't you cream?" she curtly challenged the waitress, arriving with
ice, lemon-squash, and George's tea.

The alien mercenary met her glance inimically for a second, and then,
shutting her lips together, walked off with the milk. At Prosser's the
waitresses did not wear caps, and were, in theory, ladies. Lois would
have none of the theory; the waitress was ready to die for it and
carried it away with her intact. George preferred milk to cream, but he
said nothing.

"Yes," Lois went on. "You ought to come to Paris. You have been, haven't
you? I remember you told me. We're supposed to go back next week, but if
Irene doesn't go, I shan't." She frowned.

George said that positively he would come to Paris.

When they had fairly begun the rich, barbaric meal, Lois asked abruptly:

"Why did you write in the middle of the night?"

Sometimes her voice was veiled.

"Why did I write in the middle of the night? Because I thought I would."
He spoke masterfully. He didn't mean to stand any of her cheek.

"Oh!" she laughed nicely. "_I_ didn't mind. I liked it--awfully. It was
just the sort of thing I should have done myself. But you might tell me
all about it. I think I deserve that much, don't you?"

Thus he told her all about it--how he had arranged everything, got a
room, meant to have his name painted on the door, meant to make his
parents take their holiday on the north-east coast for a change, so that
he could study the site, meant to work like a hundred devils, etc. He
saw with satisfaction that the arrogant, wilful creature was impressed.

She said:

"Now listen to me. You'll win that competition."

"I shan't," he said. "But it's worth trying, for the experience--that's
what Enwright says."

She said:

"I don't care a fig what Enwright says. You'll win that competition. I'm
always right when I sort of feel--you know."

For the moment he believed in the miraculous, inexplicable intuitions of
women.

"Oh!" she cried, as the invisible orchestra started a new tune. "Do you
know that? It's the first time I've heard it in London. It's the
_machiche_. It's all over Paris. I think it's the most wonderful tune in
the world." Her body swayed; her foot tapped.

George listened. Yes, it was a maddening tune.

"It is," he agreed eagerly.

She cried:

"Oh! I do love pleasure! And success! And money! Don't you?"

Her eyes had softened; they were liquid with yearning; but there was
something frankly sensual in them. This quality, swiftly revealed,
attracted George intensely for an instant.

Immediately afterwards she asked the time, and said she must go.

"I daren't keep Irene waiting," she said. Her eyes now had a hard
glitter.

In full Regent Street he put the haughty girl into Irene's automobile,
which had turned round; he was proud to be seen in the act; he privately
enjoyed the glances of common, unsuccessful persons. As he walked away
he smiled to himself, to hide from himself his own nervous excitement.
She was a handful, she was. Within her life burned and blazed. He
remembered Mr. Prince's remark: "You must have made a considerable
impression on her," or words to that effect. The startling thought
visited him: "I shall marry that woman." Then another thought: "Not if I
know it! I don't like her. I do not like her. I don't like her eyes."

She had, however, tremendously intensified in him the desire for
success. He hurried off to work. The days passed too slowly, and yet
they were too short for his task. He could not wait for the fullness of
time. His life had become a breathless race. "I shall win. I can't
possibly win. The thing's idiotic. I might.... Enwright's rather
struck." Yes, it was Mr. Enwright's attitude that inspired him. To have
impressed Mr. Enwright--by Jove, it was something!




CHAPTER IX

COMPETITION

I


On the face of the door on the third floor of the house in Russell
Square the words 'G.E. Cannon' appeared in dirty white paint and the
freshly added initials 'A.R.I.B.A.' in clean white paint. The addition
of the triumphant initials (indicating that George had kissed the rod of
the Royal Institute of British Architects in order to conquer) had put
the sign as a whole out of centre, throwing it considerably to the right
on the green door-face. Within the small and bare room, on an evening in
earliest spring in 1904, sat George at the customary large flat desk of
the architect. He had just switched on the electric light over his head.
He looked sterner and older; he looked very worried, fretful, exhausted.
He was thin and pale; his eyes burned, and there were dark patches under
the eyes; the discipline of the hair had been rather gravely neglected.
In front of George lay a number of large plans, mounted on thick
cardboard, whose upper surface had a slight convex curve. There were
plans of the basement of the projected town hall, of the ground floor,
of the building at a height of twelve feet from the ground, of the
mezzanine floor, of the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth floors;
these plans were coloured. Further, in plain black and white, there were
a plan of the roof (with tower), a longitudinal section on the central
axis, two other sections, three elevations, and a perspective view of
the entire edifice. Seventeen sheets in all.

The sum of work seemed tremendous; it made the mind dizzy; it made
George smile with terrible satisfaction at his own industry. For he had
engaged very little help. He would have been compelled to engage more,
had not the Corporation extended by one month the time for sending in.
The Corporation had behaved with singular enlightenment. Its schedules
of required accommodation (George's copy was scored over everywhere in
pencil and ink and seriously torn) were held to be admirably drawn, and
its supplementary circular of answers to questions from competitors had
displayed a clarity and a breadth of mind unusual in corporations.
Still more to the point, the Corporation had appointed a second assessor
to act with Sir Hugh Corver. In short, it had shown that it was under no
mandarin's thumb, and that what it really and seriously wanted was the
best design that the profession could produce. Mr. Enwright, indeed, had
nearly admitted regret at having kept out of the immense affair. John
Orgreave had expressed regret with vigour and candour. They had in the
main left George alone, though occasionally at night Mr. Enwright, in
the little room, had suggested valuable solutions of certain problems.
In detail he was severely critical of George's design, and he would pour
delicate satires upon the idiosyncrasy which caused the wilful boy to
'impurify' (a word from Enwright's private vocabulary) a Renaissance
creation with Saracenic tendencies in the treatment of arches and
wall-spaces.

Nevertheless Mr. Enwright greatly respected the design in its entirety,
and both he and John Orgreave (who had collected by the subterranean
channels of the profession a large amount of fact and rumour about the
efforts of various competitors) opined that it stood a fair chance of
being among the selected six or ten whose authors would be invited to
submit final designs for the final award. George tried to be hopeful;
but he could not be hopeful by trying. It was impossible to believe that
he would succeed; the notion was preposterous; yet at moments, when he
was not cultivating optimism, optimism would impregnate all his being,
and he would be convinced that it was impossible not to win. How
inconceivably grand! His chief rallying thought was that he had
undertaken a gigantic task and had accomplished it. Well or ill, he had
accomplished it. He said to himself aloud:

"I've done it! I've done it!"

And that he actually had done it was almost incredible. The very sheets
of drawings were almost incredible. But they existed there. All was
complete. The declaration that the design was G.E. Cannon's personal
work, drawn in his own office by his ordinary staff, was there, in the
printed envelope officially supplied by the Corporation. The estimate of
cost and the cubing was there. The explanatory report on the design,
duly typewritten, was there. Nothing lacked.

"I've done it! I've done it!"

And then, tired as he was, the conscience of the creative artist and of
the competitor began to annoy him and spur him. The perspective drawing
did not quite satisfy--and there was still time. The point of view for
the perspective drawing was too high up, and the result was a certain
marring of the nobility of the lines, and certainly a diminishment of
the effect of the tower. He had previously started another perspective
drawing with a lower view-point, but he had mistakenly cast it aside. He
ought to finish the first one and substitute it for the second one. 'The
perspective drawing had a moral importance; it had a special influence
on the assessors and committees. Horrid, tiresome labour! Three, four,
five, or six hours of highly concentrated tedium. Was it worth while? It
was not. Mr. Enwright liked the finished drawing. He, George, could not
face a further strain. And yet he was not content.... Pooh! Who said he
could not face a further strain? Of course he could face it. If he did
not face it, his conscience would accuse him of cowardice during the
rest of his life, and he would never be able to say honestly: "I did my
level best with the thing." He snapped his fingers lightly, and in one
second had decided to finish the original perspective drawing, and in
his very finest style. He would complete it some time during the night.
In the morning it could be mounted. The drawings were to go to the north
in a case on the morrow by passenger train, and to be met at their
destination by a commissionaire common to several competitors; this
commissionaire would deliver them to the Town Clerk in accordance with
the conditions. In a few minutes George was at work, excited, having
forgotten all fatigue. He was saying to himself that he would run out
towards eight o'clock for a chop or a steak. As he worked he perceived
that he had been quite right to throw over the second drawing; he
wondered that he could have felt any hesitation; the new drawing would
be immeasurably superior.

Mr. Haim 'stepped up,' discreetly knocking, entering with dignity. The
relations between these two had little by little resumed their old,
purely formal quality. Both seemed to have forgotten that passionate
anger had ever separated them and joined them together. George was
young, and capable of oblivion. Mr. Haim had beaten him in the struggle
and could afford to forget. They conversed politely, as though the old
man had no daughter and the youth had never had a lover. Mr. Haim had
even assisted with the lettering of the sheets--not because George
needed his help, but because Mr. Haim's calligraphic pride needed to
help. To refuse the stately offer would have been to insult. Mr. Haim
had aged, but not greatly.

"You're wanted on the telephone, Mr. Cannon."

"Oh! Dash it!... Thanks!"

After all George was no longer on the staff of Lucas & Enwright, and Mr.
Haim was conferring a favour.

Down below in the big office everybody had gone except the factotum.

George seized the telephone receiver and called brusquely for attention.

"Is that Mr. Cannon?"

"Yes. Who is it?"

"Oh! It's you, George! How nice to hear your voice again!"

He recognized, but not instantly, the voice of Lois Ingram. He was not
surprised. Indeed he had suspected that the disturber of work must be
either Lois or Miss Wheeler, or possibly Laurencine. The three had been
in London again for several days, and he had known from Lucas that a
theatre-party had been arranged for that night to witness the
irresistible musical comedy, _The Gay Spark_, Lucas and M.
Defourcambault were to be of the party. George had not yet seen Lois
since her latest return to London; he had only seen her twice since the
previous summer; he had not visited Paris in the interval. The tone of
her voice, even as transformed by the telephone, was caressing. He had
to think of some suitable response to her startling amiability, and to
utter it with conviction. He tried to hold fast in his mind to the image
of the perspective with its countless complexities and the co-ordination
of them all; the thing seemed to be retreating from him, and he dared
not let it go.

"Do you know," said Lois, "I only came to London to celebrate the
sending-in of your design. I hear it's marvellous. Aren't you glad
you've finished it?"

"Well, I haven't finished it," said George. "I'm on it now."

What did the girl mean by saying she'd only come to London to celebrate
the end of his work? An invention on her part! Still, it flattered him.
She was very strange.

"But Everard's told us you'd finished a bit earlier than you'd expected.
We counted on seeing your lordship to-morrow. But now we've got to see
you to-night."

"Awfully sorry I can't."

"But look here, George. You must really. The party's all broken up. Miss
Wheeler's had to go back to Paris to-night, and Jules can't come.
Everything's upset. The flat's going to be closed, and Laurencine and, I
will have to leave to-morrow. It's most frightfully annoying. We've got
the box all right, and Everard's coming, and you must make the fourth.
We must have a fourth. Laurencine's here at the phone, and she says the
same as me."

"Wish I could!" George answered shortly. "Look here! What train are you
going by to-morrow? I'll come and see you off. I shall be free then."

"But, George. We _want_ you to come to-night." There seemed positively
to be tears in the faint voice. "Why can't you come? You must come."

"I haven't finished one of the drawings. I tell you I'm on it now. It'll
take me half the night, or more. I'm just in the thick of it, you see."
He spoke with a slight resentful impatience--less at her
over-persuasiveness than at the fact that his mind and the drawing were
being more and more separated. Soon he would have lost the right mood,
and he would be compelled to re-create it before he could resume the
work. The forcible, gradual dragging away of his mind from its
passionately gripped objective was torture. He had an impulse to throw
down the receiver and run off.

The distant squeaking voice changed to the petulant:

"You are horrid. You could come right enough if you wanted to."

"But don't you understand? It's awfully important for me."

He was astounded, absolutely astounded. She would not understand. She
had decided that he must go to the musical comedy and nothing else
mattered. His whole future did not matter.

"Oh! Very well, then," Lois said, undisguisedly vexed. "Of course, if
you won't, you won't. But really when two girls _implore_ you like
that.... And we have to leave to-morrow, and everything's upset!... I do
think it's ... However, good night."

"Here! Hold hard a sec. I'll come for an hour or so. What's the number
of the box?"

"Fourteen," said the voice brokenly.

Immediately afterwards she rang off. George was hurt and bewildered. The
girl was incredibly ruthless. She was mad. Why had he yielded? Only a
silly conventional feeling had made him yield. And yet he was a great
scorner of convention. He went upstairs again to the perspective
drawing. He looked at his watch. He might work for half an hour before
leaving to dress. No, he could not. The mood had vanished. The
perspective had slipped into another universe. He could not even pick up
a pen. He despised himself terribly, despairingly, for yielding.


II


In spite of all this he anticipated with pleasure the theatre-party. He
wanted to go; he was glad he was going; the memory of Lois in the
tea-palace excited him. And he could refuse a hearing to his conscience,
and could prevent himself from thinking uncomfortably of the future, as
well as most young men. His secret, unadmitted voluptuous eagerness was
alloyed only by an apprehension that after the scene over the telephone
Lois might be peevish and ungracious. The fear proved to be baseless.

Owing to the imperfections of the club laundry and the erring humanity
of Downs, he arrived late. _The Gay Spark_ had begun. He found a
darkened auditorium and a glowing stage. In the dim box Lois and
Laurencine were sitting in front on gilt chairs. Lucas sat behind
Laurencine, and there was an empty chair behind Lois. Her gesture, her
smile, her glance, as she turned to George and looked up, were touching.
She was delighted to see him; she had the mien of a child who has got
what it wanted and has absolutely forgotten that it ever pouted,
shrieked, and stamped its foot. She was determined to charm her
uttermost. Her eye in the gloom was soft with mysterious invitations.
George looked about the interior of the box; he saw the rich cloaks of
the girls hanging up next to glossy masculine hats, the large mirror on
the wall, and mother-of-pearl opera-glasses, chocolates, and flowers on
the crimson ledge. He was very close to the powerfully built and yet
plastic Lois. He could watch her changing curves as she breathed; the
faint scent she used rose to his nostrils. He thought, with contained
rapture: "Nothing in the world is equal to this." He did not care a fig
for the effect of perspective drawings or the result of the competition.
Lois, her head half-turned towards him, her gaze lost in the sombre
distances of the auditorium, talked in a low tone, ignoring the
performance. He gathered that the sudden departure of Irene Wheeler had
unusually impressed and disconcerted and, to a certain extent, mortified
the sisters, who could not explain it, and who resented the compulsion
to go back to Paris at once. And he detected in Lois, not for the first
time, a grievance that Irene kept her, Lois, apart from the main current
of her apparently gorgeous social career. Obviously an evening at which
the sole guests were two girls and a youth all quite unknown to
newspapers could not be a major item in the life of a woman such as
Irene Wheeler. She had left them unceremoniously to themselves at the
last moment, as it were permitting them to do what they liked within the
limits of goodness for one night, and commanding them to return sagely
home on the morrow. A red-nosed actor, hands in pockets, waddled
self-consciously on to the stage, and the packed audience, emitting
murmurs of satisfaction, applauded. Conversations were interrupted.
George, expectant, gave his attention to the show. He knew little or
nothing of musical comedy, having come under influences which had taught
him to despise it. His stepfather, for example, could be very sarcastic
about musical comedy, and through both Enwright and John Orgreave George
had further cultivated the habit of classical music, already acquired in
boyhood at home in the Five Towns. In the previous year, despite the
calls upon his time of study for examinations, George had attended the
Covent Garden performances of the Wagnerian "Ring" as he might have
attended High Mass. He knew by name a considerable percentage of the
hundred odd themes in "The Ring," and it was his boast that he could
identify practically all the forty-seven themes in _The Meistersingers_.
He raved about Ternina in _Tristan_. He had worshipped the Joachim
quartet. He was acquainted with all the popular symphonies of Beethoven,
Schubert, Schumann, Mozart, Glazounov, and Tschaikovsky. He even
frequented the Philharmonic Concerts, which were then conducted by a
composer of sentimental drawing-room ballads, and though he would not
class this conductor with Richter or Henry J. Wood, he yet believed that
somehow, by the magic of the sacred name of the Philharmonic Society,
the balladmonger in the man expired in the act of raising the baton and
was replaced by a serious and sensitive artist. He was accustomed to
hear the same pieces of music again and again and again, and they were
all or nearly all very fine, indisputably great. It never occurred to
him that once they had been unfamiliar and had had to fight for the
notice of persons who indulged in music exactly as he indulged in music.
He had no traffic with the unfamiliar. Unfamiliar items on a programme
displeased him. He had heard compositions by Richard Strauss, but he
could make nothing of them, and his timid, untravelled taste feared to
like them. Mr. Enwright himself was mainly inimical to Strauss, as to
most of modern Germany, perhaps because of the new architecture in
Berlin. George knew that there existed young English composers with such
names as Cyril Scott, Balfour Gardiner, Donald Tovey--for he had seen
these names recently on the front page of _The Daily Telegraph_--but he
had never gone to the extent of listening to their works. He was
entirely sure that they could not hold a candle to Wagner, and his
sub-conscious idea was that it was rather like their cheek to compose at
all. He had not noticed that Hugo Wolf had just died, nor indeed had he
noticed that Hugo Wolf had ever lived.

Nevertheless this lofty and exclusive adherent of the 'best' music was
not prejudiced in advance against _The Gay Spark_. He was anxious to
enjoy it and he expected to enjoy it. _The Gay Spark_ had already an
enormous prestige; it bore the agreeable, captivating label of Vienna;
and immense sums were being made out of it in all the capitals of the
world. George did not hope for immortal strains, but he anticipated a
distinguished, lilting gaiety, and in the 'book' a witty and
cosmopolitan flavour that would lift the thing high above such English
musical comedies as he had seen. It was impossible that a work of so
universal and prodigious a vogue should not have unquestionable virtues.

The sight of the red-nosed comedian rather shocked George, who had
supposed that red-nosed comedians belonged to the past. However, the man
was atoned for by three extremely beautiful and graceful young girls who
followed him. Round about the small group was ranged a semicircle of
handsome creatures in long skirts, behind whom was another semicircle of
young men in white flannels; the scene was a street in Mandalay. The
red-nosed comedian began by making a joke concerning his mother-in-law,
and another concerning mendacious statements to his wife to explain his
nocturnal absences from home, and another concerning his intoxicated
condition. The three extremely beautiful and graceful young girls
laughed deliriously at the red-nosed comedian; they replied in a similar
vein. They clasped his neck and kissed him rapturously, and thereupon he
sang a song, of which the message was that all three extremely beautiful
and graceful girls practised professionally the most ancient and stable
of feminine vocations; the girls, by means of many refrains, confirmed
this definition of their status in society. Then the four of them
danced, and there was enthusiastic applause from every part of the house
except the semicircle of European odalisques lost, for some unexplained
reason, in Mandalay. These ladies, the indubitable physical attractions
of each of whom were known by the management to fill five or six stalls
every night, took no pains whatever to hide that they were acutely bored
by the whole proceedings. Self-sufficient in their beauty, deeply aware
of the power of their beauty, they deigned to move a lackadaisical arm
or leg at intervals in accordance with the respectful suggestions of the
conductor.

Soon afterwards the gay spark herself appeared, amid a hysteria of
applause. She played the part of the wife of a military officer, and
displayed therein a marvellous, a terrifying vitality of tongue, leg,
and arm. The young men in white flannels surrounded her, and she could
flirt with all of them; she was on intimate terms with the red-nosed
comedian, and also with the trio of delightful wantons, and her ideals
in life seemed to be identical with theirs. When, through the arrival of
certain dandies twirling canes, and the mysterious transformation of the
Burmese street into a Parisian cafe, these ideals were on the point of
realization, there was a great burst of brass in the orchestra,
succeeded by a violent chorus, some kicking, and a general wassail, and
the curtain fell on the first act. It had to be raised four times before
the gratefully appreciative clapping would cease.

The auditorium shone with light; it grew murmurous with ecstatic
approval. The virginal face of Laurencine shot its rapture to Lucas as
she turned to shake hands with George.

"Jolly well done, isn't it?" said Lucas.

"Yes," said George.

Lucas, too content to notice the perfunctoriness of George's
affirmative, went on:

"When you think that they're performing it this very night in St.
Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, and, I fancy, Rome, but I'm not
sure--marvellous, isn't it?"

"It is," said George ambiguously.

Though continuing to like him, he now definitely despised Everard. The
fellow had no artistic perceptions; he was a child. By some means he had
got through his Final, and was soon to be a junior partner in Enwright &
Lucas. George, however, did not envy Everard the soft situation; he only
pitied Enwright & Lucas. Everard had often urged George to go to musical
comedies more frequently, hinting that they were frightfully better
than George could conceive. _The Gay Spark_ gave Lucas away entirely; it
gave away his method of existence.

"I don't believe you like it," said sharp Laurencine.

"I adore it," George protested. "Don't you?"

"Oh! _I_ do, of course," said Laurencine. "I knew I should."

Lucas, instinctively on the defence, said:

"The second act's much better than the first."

George's hopes, dashed but not broken, recovered somewhat. After all
there had been one or two gleams of real jokes, and a catchiness in
certain airs; and the spark possessed temperament in profusion. It was
possible that the next act might be diverting.

"You do look tired," said Laurencine.

"Oh no, darling!" Lois objected. "I think he looks splendid."

She was intensely happy in the theatre. The box was very well
placed--since Irene had bought it--with a view equally good of the stage
and of the semicircle of boxes. Lois' glance wandered blissfully round
the boxes, all occupied by gay parties, and over the vivacious stalls.
She gazed, and she enjoyed being gazed at. She bathed herself in the
glitter and the gaudiness and the opulence and the humanity, as in tonic
fluid. She seemed to float sinuously and voluptuously immersed in it, as
in tepid water lit with sunshine.

"Do have a choc.," she invited eagerly.

George took a chocolate. She took one. They all took one. They all had
the unconscious pride of youth that does not know itself young. Each was
different from the others. George showed the reserve of the artist;
Lucas the ease of the connoisseur of mundane spectacles; Laurencine the
sturdy, catholic, girlish innocence that nothing can corrupt. And the
sovereign was Lois. She straightened her shoulders; she leaned
languorously; she looked up, she looked down; she spoke softly and
loudly; she laughed and smiled. And in every movement and in every
gesture and tone she symbolized the ecstasy of life. She sought
pleasure, and she had found it, and she had no afterthought. She was
infectious; she was irresistible, and terrible too. For it was
dismaying, at any rate to George, to dwell on the fierceness of her
instinct and on the fierceness of its satisfaction. To George her
burning eyes were wistful, pathetic, in their simplicity. He felt a sort
of fearful pity for her. And he admired her--she was something
definite; she was something magnificently outright; she did live. Also
he liked her; the implications in her glance appealed to him. The
peculiar accents in which she referred to the enigma of Irene Wheeler
were extraordinarily attractive to that part of his nature which was
perverse and sophisticated. "At least she is not a simpleton," he
thought. "And she doesn't pretend to be. Some day I shall talk to her."

The orchestra resumed; the lights went out. Lois settled herself to
fresh enchantment as the curtain rolled up to disclose the bright halls
and staircases of a supper-club. The second act was an amplification and
inflammation of the themes of the first. As for the music, George
listened in vain for an original tune, even for a tune of which he could
not foretell the end from the beginning; the one or two engaging bits of
melody which enlivened the first act were employed again in the second.
The disdainful, lethargic chorus was the same; the same trio of
delicious wantons fondled and kissed the same red-nosed comedian, who
was still in the same state of inebriety, and the gay spark flitted
roysteringly through the same evolutions, in pursuit of the same simple
ideals. The jocularity pivoted unendingly on the same twin centres of
alcohol and concupiscence. Gradually the latter grew to more and more
importance, and the piece became a high and candid homage to the impulse
by force of which alone one generation succeeds another. No beautiful
and graceful young girl on the stage blenched before the salacious
witticisms of the tireless comedian; on the contrary he remained the
darling of the stage. And as he was the darling of the stage, so was he
the darling of the audience.

And if no beautiful and graceful young girl blenched on the stage,
neither did the beautiful and graceful young girls in the audience
blench. You could see them sitting happily with their fathers and
mothers and cousins and uncles and aunts, savouring the spectacle from
dim stalls and boxes in the most perfect respectability. Laurencine
leaning her elbows on the ledge of the box, watched with eager, parted
lips, and never showed the slightest sign of uneasiness.

George was uneasy; he was distressed. The extraordinary juxtaposition of
respectability and a ribald sexual display startled but did not distress
him. If the whole audience was ready to stand it he certainly was. He
had no desire to protect people from themselves, nor to blush on behalf
of others--whoever they might be. Had anybody accused him of saintliness
he would have resented the charge, quite justifiably, and if the wit of
_The Gay Spark_ had been witty, he would have enjoyed it without a
qualm. What distressed him, what utterly desolated him, was the
grossness, the poorness, the cheapness, the dullness, and the
uninventive monotony of the interminable entertainment. He yawned, he
could not help yawning; he yawned his soul away. Lois must have heard
him yawning, but she did not move. He looked at her curiously,
pitifully, speculating how much of her luxury was due to Irene Wheeler,
and how little to 'Parisian' of _The Sunday Journal_--for he had been
inquiring about the fruits of journalism. The vision of his own office
and of the perspective drawing rose seductively and irresistibly in his
mind. He could not stay in the theatre; he felt that if he stayed he
would be in danger of dropping down dead, suffocated by tedium; and the
drawing must be finished; it would not wait; it was the most urgent
thing in the world. And not a syllable had any person in the box said to
him about his great task. Lois's forearm, braceleted, lay on the front
of the box. Unceremoniously he took her hand.

"Bye-bye."

"You aren't going?" Her whisper was incredulous.

"Must."

He gave her no chance to expostulate. With one movement he had seized
his hat and coat and slid from the box, just as the finale of the act
was imminent and the red-nosed comedian was measuring the gay spark for
new _lingerie_ with a giant property-cigar. He had not said good-bye to
Laurencine. He had not asked about their departure on the morrow. But he
was free.

In the foyer a couple--a woman in a rose plush _sortie de bal_, and a
blade--were mysteriously talking. The blade looked at him, smiled, and
left the lady.

"Hal_lo_, old fellow!" It was Buckingham Smith, who had been getting on
in the world.

They shook hands.

"You've left Chelsea, haven't you?"

"Yes," said George.

"So've I. Don't see much of the old gang nowadays. Heard anything of old
Princey lately?"

George replied that he had not. The colloquy was over in a moment.

"You must come and see my show--next week," Buck Smith called out after
the departing George.

"I will," cried George.

He walked quickly up to Russell Square, impatient to steep himself anew
in his work. All sense of fatigue had left him. Time seemed to be flying
past him, and he rushing towards an unknown fate. On the previous day he
had received an enheartening, challenging, sardonic letter from his
stepfather, who referred to politics and envisaged a new epoch for the
country. Edwin Clayhanger was a Radical of a type found only in the
Midlands and the North. For many years Clayhanger's party, to which he
was passionately faithful, had had no war-cry and no programme worthy of
its traditions. The increasing success of the campaign against
Protection, and certain signs that the introduction of Chinese labour
into South Africa could be effectively resisted, had excited the
middle-aged provincial--now an Alderman--and he had managed to
communicate fire to George. But in George, though he sturdily shared his
stepfather's views, the resulting righteous energy was diverted to
architectural creation.


III


The circumstances in which, about a month later, George lunched with the
Ingram family at their flat in the Rue d'Athènes, near the Gare St.
Lazare, Paris, had an appearance of the utmost simplicity and
ordinariness. He had been down to Staffordshire for a rest, and had
returned unrested. And then Mr. Enwright had suggested that it would do
him good to go to Paris, even to go alone. He went, with no plan, but
having made careful arrangements for the telegraphing to him of the
result of the competition, which was daily expected. By this time he was
very seriously convinced that there was no hope of him being among the
selected six or ten, and he preferred to get the news away from London
rather than in it; he felt that he could not face London on the day or
the morrow of a defeat which would of course render his youthful
audacity ridiculous.

He arrived in Paris on a Wednesday evening, and took a room in a _maison
meublée_ of the Rue de Sèze. Every inexperienced traveller in Paris has
a friend who knows a lodging in Paris which he alleges is better and
cheaper than any other lodging--and which is not. The house in the Rue
de Sèze was the economical paradise of Buckingham Smith, whom George had
encountered again at the Buckingham Smith exhibition. Buckingham Smith,
with over half his pictures bearing the red seal that indicates 'Sold,'
felt justified in posing to the younger George as a cosmopolitan
expert--especially as his opinions on modern French art were changing.
George spent three solitary and dejected days in Paris, affecting an
interest in museums and architecture and French opera, and committing
follies. Near the end of the third day, a Saturday, he suddenly sent a
threepenny express note to Lois Ingram. He would have telephoned had he
dared to use the French telephone. On Sunday morning, an aproned valet
having informed him that Monsieur was demanded at the telephone, he had
to use the telephone. Lois told him that he must come to lunch, and that
afterwards he would be escorted to the races. Dejection was instantly
transformed into a gay excitation. Proud of having spoken through a
French telephone, he began to conceive romantically the interior of a
Paris home--he had seen naught but a studio or so with Mr. Enwright--and
to thrill at the prospect of Sunday races. Not merely had he never seen
a horse-race on a Sunday--he had never seen a horse-race at all. He
perhaps was conscious of a genuine interest in Lois and her environment,
but what most satisfied and flattered him, after his loneliness, was the
bare fact of possessing social relations in Paris at all.

The Ingram home was up four flights of naked oaken stairs, fairly swept,
in a plain, flat-fronted house. The door of the home was opened by a
dark, untidy, dishevelled, uncapped, fat girl, with a full apron,
dazzling white and rectangularly creased, that had obviously just been
taken out of a drawer. Familiarly and amicably smiling, she led him into
a small, modest drawing-room where were Lois and her father and mother.
Lois was enigmatic and taciturn. Mr. and Mrs. Ingram were ingenuous,
loquacious, and at ease. Both of them had twinkling eyes. Mrs. Ingram
was rather stout and grey and small, and wore a quiet, inexpensive blue
dress, embroidered at the neck in the Morrisian manner, of no kind of
fashionableness. She spoke in a low voice, smiled to herself with a
benevolence that was not without a touch of the sardonic, and often
looked at the floor or at the ceiling. Mr. Ingram, very slim and neat,
was quite as small as his wife, and seemed smaller. He talked much and
rather amusingly, in a somewhat mincing tone, as it were apologetically,
truly anxious to please. He had an extremely fair complexion, and his
youthfulness was quite startling. His golden hair and perfect teeth
might have belonged to a boy. George leapt immediately into familiarity
with these two. But nobody could have less resembled his preconceived
image of 'Parisian' than Mr. Ingram. And he could not understand a bit
whence or how such a pair had produced their daughter Lois. Laurencine
was a far more comprehensible offspring for them.

The dining-room was even less spacious than the drawing-room, and as
unpretentious. The furniture everywhere was sparse, but there were one
or two rich knick-knacks, and an abundance of signed photographs. The
few pictures, too, were signed, and they drew attention. On the table
the napkins, save George's, were in rings, and each ring different from
the others. George's napkin had the air of a wealthy, stiff, shiny
relative of the rest. Evidently in that home the long art of making both
ends meet was daily practised. George grew light-hearted and happy,
despite the supreme preoccupation which only a telegram could allay. He
had keenly the sensation of being abroad. The multiplicity of doors, the
panelling of the doors, the narrow planking of the oaken floor, the
moulding of the cornices, the shape of the windows, the view of the
courtyard from the dining-room and of attics and chimney-cowls from the
drawing-room, the closed anthracite stoves in lieu of fires, the
crockery, the wine-bottle, the mustard, the grey salt, the
unconventional gestures and smiles and exclamations of the unkempt
maid--all these strange details enchanted him, and they all set off very
vividly the intense, nice, honest, reassuring Englishness of the host
and hostess.

It was not until after the others were seated for the meal that
Laurencine made her appearance. She was a magnificent and handsome
virgin, big-boned, physically a little awkward, candid. How exquisitely
and absurdly she flushed in shaking hands with George! With what a
delicious mock-furious setting of the teeth and tossing of the head she
frowned at her mother's reproaches for being late! This family knew the
meaning of intimacy but not of ceremony. Laurencine sat down at her
father's left; George was next to her on Mrs. Ingram's right. Lois had
the whole of the opposite side of the table.

"Does he know?" Laurencine asked; and turning to George: "Do you know?"

"Know what?"

"You'd better tell him, dad. You like talking, and he ought to know. I
shan't be able to eat if he doesn't. It would be so ridiculous sitting
here and pretending."

Mrs. Ingram looked upwards across the room at a corner of the ceiling,
and smiled faintly.

"You might," she said, "begin by asking Mr. Cannon if he particularly
wants to be burdened with the weight of your secrets, my dear child."

"Oh! I particularly do," said George.

"There's no secret about it--at least there won't be soon," said
Laurencine.

Lois spoke simultaneously:

"My dear mother, please call George George. If we call him George, you
can't possibly call him Mr. Cannon."

"I quite admit," Mrs. Ingram replied to her eldest, "I quite admit that
you and Laurencine are entitled to criticise my relations with my
husband, because he's your father. But I propose to carry on my affairs
with other men just according to my own ideas, and any interference will
be resented. I've had a bad night, owing to the garage again, and I
don't feel equal to calling George George. I've only known him about
twenty minutes. Moreover, I might be misunderstood, mightn't I, Mr.
Cannon?"

"You might," said George.

"Now, dad!" Laurencine admonished.

Mr. Ingram, addressing George, began:

"Laurencine suffers from a grave form of self-consciousness----"

"I don't, dad."

"It is a disease akin to conceit. Her sufferings are sometimes so acute
that she cannot sit up straight and is obliged to loll and curl her legs
round the legs of the chair. We are all very sorry for her. The only
treatment is brutal candour, as she herself advocates----"

Laurencine jumped up, towered over her father, and covered his mouth
with her hand.

"This simple hand," said Mr. Ingram, seizing it, "will soon bear a ring.
Laurencine is engaged to be married."

"I'm not, father." She sat down again.

"Well, you are not. But you will be, I presume, by post-time to-night. A
young man of the name of Lucas has written to Laurencine this morning in
a certain sense, and he has also written to me. Laurencine has seen my
letter, and I've seen hers. But my envelope contained only one letter.
Whether her envelope contained more than one, whether the epistle which
I saw is written in the style usually practised by the present age,
whether it was composed for the special purpose of being shown to me, I
do not know, and discretion and nice gentlemanly feeling forbid me to
inquire. However----"

At this point, Laurencine snatched her father's napkin off his knees and
put it on her own.

"However, my wife and I have met this Mr. Lucas, and as our opinion
about him is not wholly unfavourable, the matter was satisfactorily and
quickly arranged--even before I had had my bath; Laurencine and I will
spend the afternoon in writing suitable communications to Mr. Lucas. I
am ready to show her mine for a shilling, but I doubt if five pounds
would procure me a sight of hers. Yet she is only an amateur writer and
I'm a professional."

There was a little silence, and then George said awkwardly:

"I congratulate old Lucas."

"This news must have astonished you extremely," observed Mr. Ingram. "It
must have come as a complete surprise. In fact you are doubtless in the
condition known to charwomen as capable of being knocked down with a
feather."

"Oh! Quite!" George agreed.

Nevertheless, in spite of his light tone, he regretted the engagement.
He did not think Lucas was worthy of the splendid girl. He felt sorry
for her. At that moment she faced him bravely, and smiled. Her face had
a tremendous deep crimson flush. There was a woman somewhere in the
girl! Strange phenomenon! And another strange phenomenon: if Laurencine
had been self-conscious, George also was self-conscious; and he avoided
Lois's eyes! Why? He wondered whether the circumstances in which he had
come to Paris and entered the Ingram home were as simple and ordinary as
they superficially appeared.

"Laurencine," said her mother, "give your father back his serviette!"

"Mine's fallen."

"Never mind, my dear," said Mr. Ingram very benevolently, and he bent
down and retrieved Laurencine's napkin, which he kept. "And now," he
proceeded, "the serious operation being over and the patient out of
danger, shall we talk about something else for a few moments?"

"I should think so indeed!" Laurencine exclaimed, suddenly gay. "George,
when _shall_ you know about the competition?"

"Any minute, I might," said he.

They all talked sympathetically to George on the new subject.

After lunch, Lois disappeared. She came back resplendent for the races,
when coffee had long been finished in the drawing-room.

"Why aren't you ready, Laure?" she demanded.

"I'm not going, darling."

"Lois," Mr. Ingram exhorted, "don't forget the afternoon is to be spent
in literary composition."

"It isn't," Laurencine contradicted. "I may as well tell you I've
written all I mean to write in the way of letters for one day. But I
don't want to go, really, Lois darling."

"No. She wants to think," Mrs. Ingram explained.

Lois set her lips together, and then glimpsed herself in the large
mirror over the anthracite stove. She looked too rich and complicated
for that simple drawing-room.

A performance on a horn made itself heard in the street below.

"There he is!" said Laurencine.

She opened a window and ran out on to the balcony and leaned over; then
glanced within the room and nodded. George had assumed that Irene
Wheeler was the author and hostess of the race-party, and he was not
mistaken. Irene's automobile had been sent round to embark him and the
girls. Mrs. Ingram urged him to come again the next day, and he said
ardently that he would. Mrs. Ingram's 'affair' with him was progressing
rapidly.

"But I hope you'll call me George, then," he added.

"I may!" she said. "I may! I may go even further."

Lois and George descended the stairs in silence. He had not seen her,
nor written to her, since the night of the comedy when he had so
abruptly left the box. Once or twice at the Ingrams' he had fancied that
she might be vexed with him for that unceremonious departure. But she
was not. The frank sigh of relief which she gave on reaching the foot of
the interminable stairs, and her equally frank smile, had no reserve
whatever.

The chauffeur's welcoming grin seemed to indicate that he was much
attached to Miss Ingram. He touched his hat, bowed, and spoke to her at
some length in French. Lois frowned.

"It seems Miss Wheeler doesn't feel equal to going out this afternoon,"
she translated to George. "But she insists that we shall use the car all
the same."

"Is she ill?"

"She's lying down, trying to sleep."

"Well, then, I suppose we'd better use the car, hadn't we?"

Lois said seriously:

"If you don't object, I don't."


IV


At Longchamps the sun most candidly and lovingly blessed the elaborate
desecration of the English Sabbath. The delicately ornamented grand
stands, the flags, the swards, the terraces, the alleys, the booths, the
notice-boards, the vast dappled sea of hats and faces in the distant
cheaper parts of the Hippodrome, were laved in the descending, caressing
floods of voluptuous, warm sunshine. The air itself seemed luminous. The
enchantment of the sun was irresistible; it stunned apprehensions and
sad memories, obliterating for a moment all that was or might be unhappy
in the past or in the future. George yielded to it. He abandoned his
preoccupations about the unsatisfactoriness of using somebody else's car
in the absence of the owner, about Mr. and Mrs. Ingram's ignorance of
the fact that their daughter had gone off alone with him, about Lois's
perfect indifference to this fact, about the engagement of Laurencine to
a man not her equal in worth, about the strange, uncomfortable effect of
Laurencine's engagement upon his attitude towards Lois, and finally and
supremely about the competition. He gave himself up to the bright warmth
like an animal, and forgot. And he became part of the marvellous and
complicated splendour of the scene, took pride in it, took even credit
for it (Heaven knew why!), and gradually passed from insular
astonishment to a bland, calm acceptance of the miracles of sensuous
beatitude which civilization had to offer.

After all, he was born to such experiences; they were his right; and he
was equal to them. Nevertheless his conviction of the miraculous
fortunately was not impaired. What was impaired was his conviction of
his own culture. He was constantly thinking that he knew everything or
could imagine everything, and constantly undergoing the shock of
undeception; but the shock of the Longchamps Sunday was excessive. He
had quite failed to imagine the race-meeting; he had imagined an
organism brilliant, perhaps, but barbaric and without form and style; he
had imagined grotesque contrasts of squalor, rascality, and fashion; he
had imagined an affair predominantly equine and masculine. The reality
did not correspond; it transcended his imagination; it painfully
demonstrated his jejune crudity. The Hippodrome was as formalized and
stylistic as an Italian garden; the only contrasts were those of one
elegance with another; horses were not to be seen, except occasionally
in the distance when under their riders they shot past some dark
background a flitting blur of primary colours with a rumble of muffled
thunder; and women, not men, predominated.

On entering the Hippodrome George and Lois had met a group of
fashionably attired women, and he had thought: "There's a bunch of jolly
well-dressed ones." But as the reserved precincts opened out before him
he saw none but fashionably attired women. They were there not in
hundreds but in thousands. They sat in rows on the grand stands; they
jostled each other on the staircases; they thronged the alleys and
swards. The men were negligible beside them. And they were not only
fashionably and very fashionably attired--all their frocks and all their
hats and all their parasols and all their boots were new, glittering,
spick-and-span; were complex and expensive; not one feared the sun. The
conception of what those innumerable chromatic toilettes had cost in the
toil, stitch by stitch, of malodorous workrooms and in the fatigue of
pale, industrious creatures was really formidable. But it could not
detract from the scenic triumph. The scenic triumph dazzlingly justified
itself, and proved beyond any cavilling that earth was a grand,
intoxicating place, and Longchamps under the sun an unequalled paradise
of the senses.... Ah! These women were finished--finished to the least
detail of coiffure, sunshade-handle, hatpin, jewellery, handbag,
bootlace, glove, stocking, _lingerie_. Each was the product of many arts
in co-ordination. Each was of great price. And there were thousands of
them. They were as cheap as periwinkles. George thought: "This is
Paris."

He said aloud:

"Seems to be a fine lot of new clothes knocking about."

Evidently for Lois his tone was too impressed, not sufficiently casual.
She replied in her condescending manner, which he detested:

"My poor George, considering that this is the opening of the spring
season, and the place where all the new spring fashions are tried
out--what did you expect?"

The dolt had not known that he was assisting at a solemnity recognized
as such by experts throughout the clothed world. But Lois knew all those
things. She herself was trying out a new toilette, for which doubtless
Irene Wheeler was partly sponsor. She could hold her own on the terraces
with the rest. She was staggeringly different now from the daughter of
the simple home in the Rue d'Athènes.

The eyes of the splendid women aroused George's antipathy, because he
seemed to detect antipathy in them--not against himself but against the
male in him. These women, though by their glances they largely
mistrusted and despised each other, had the air of having combined
sexually against a whole sex. The situation was very contradictory. They
had beautified and ornamented themselves in order to attract a whole
sex, and yet they appeared to resent the necessity and instinct to
attract. They submitted with a secret repugnance to the mysterious and
supreme bond which kept the sexes inexorably together. And while
stooping to fascinate, while deliberately seeking attention, they still
had the assured mien of conquerors. Their eyes said that they knew they
were indispensable, that they had a transcendent role to play, that no
concealed baseness of the inimical sex was hidden from them, and that
they meant to exploit their position to the full. These Latin women
exhibited a logic, an elegance, and a frankness beyond the reach of the
Anglo-Saxon. Their eyes said not that they had been disillusioned, but
rather that they had never had illusions. They admitted the facts; they
admitted everything--economic dependence, chicane, the intention to
seize every advantage, ruthless egotism. They had no shame for a
depravity which they shared equally with the inescapable and cherished
enemy And it was the youngest who, beneath the languishing and the
softness and the invitation deceitful and irresistible, gazed outmost
triumphantly to the enemy: "You are the victims. We have tried our
strength and your infirmity." They were heroic. There was a feeling in
the bright air of melancholy and doom as the two hostile forces,
inseparable, inextricably involved together, surveyed the opponent in
the everlasting conflict. George felt its influence upon himself, upon
Lois, upon the whole scene. The eyes of the most feminine women in the
world, denying their smiles and their lure, had discovered to him
something which marked a definite change in his estimate of certain
ultimate earthly values.

Lois said:

"Perhaps a telegram is waiting for you at the hotel."

"Well, I can wait till I get back," he replied stoutly.

He thought, looking at her by his side:

"She is just like these Frenchwomen!" And for some reason he felt proud.

"You needn't," said Lois, "We can telephone from under the grand stand
if you like."

"But I don't know the number."

"We can get that out of the book, of course."

"I don't reckon I can use these French telephones."

"Oh! My poor boy, I'll telephone for you--unless you prefer not to risk
knowing the worst."

Yes, her tone was the tone of a strange woman. And it was she who
thirsted for the result of the competition.

Controlling himself, submissively he asked her to telephone for him, and
she agreed in a delightfully agreeable voice. She seemed to know the
entire geography of the Hippodrome. She secured a telephone-cabin in a
very business-like manner. As she entered the cabin she said to George:

"I'll ask them if a telegram has come, and if it has I'll ask them to
open it and read it to me, or spell it--of course it'll be in
English.... Eh?"

Through the half-open door of the cabin he watched her, and listened.
She rapidly turned over the foul and torn pages of the telephone-book
with her thumb. She spoke into the instrument very clearly, curtly, and
authoritatively. George could translate in his mind what she said--his
great resolve to learn French had carried him so far.

"On the part of Monsieur Cannon, one of your clients, Monsieur Cannon of
London. Has there arrived a telegram for him?"

She waited. The squalor of the public box increased the effect of her
young and proud stylishness and of her perfume. George waited, humbled
by her superior skill in the arts of life, and saying anxiously to
himself: "Perhaps in a moment I shall know the result," almost
trembling.

She hung up the instrument, and, with a glance at George, shook her
head.

"There isn't anything," she murmured.

He said:

"It's very queer, isn't it? However..."

As they emerged from the arcana of the grand stand, Lois was stopped by
a tall, rather handsome Jew, who, saluting her with what George esteemed
to be French exaggeration of gesture, nevertheless addressed her in a
confidential tone in English. George, having with British restraint
acknowledged the salute, stood aside, and gazed discreetly away from the
pair. He could not hear what was being said. After several minutes Lois
rejoined George, and they went back into the crowds and the sun. She did
not speak. She did not utter one word. Only, when the numbers went up
for a certain race, she remarked:

"This is the Prix du Cadran. It's the principal race of the afternoon."

And when that was over, amid cheering that ran about the field like fire
through dried bush, she added:

"I think I ought to go back now. I told the chauffeur to be here after
the Prix du Cadran. What time is it exactly?"

They sat side by side in the long, open car, facing the chauffeur's
creaseless back. After passing the Cascade, the car swerved into the
Allée de Longchamps which led in an absolutely straight line, two miles
long, to the Port Maillot and the city. Spring decorated the magnificent
wooded thoroughfare. The side-alleys, aisles of an interminable nave,
were sprinkled with revellers and lovers and the most respectable
families half hidden amid black branches and gleams of tender green.
Automobiles and carriages threaded the main alley at varying speeds. The
number of ancient horse-cabs gradually increased until, after the
intersection of the Allée de la Reine Marguerite, they thronged the vast
road. All the humble and shabby genteel people in Paris who could
possibly afford a cab seemed to have taken a cab. Nearly every cab was
overloaded. The sight of this vast pathetic effort of the disinherited
towards gaiety and distraction and the mood of spring, intensified the
vague sadness in George due to the race-crowd, Lois's silence, and the
lack of news about the competition.

At length Lois said, scowling--no doubt involuntarily:

"I think I'd better tell you now. Irene Wheeler's committed suicide.
Shot herself." She pressed her lips together and looked at the road.

George gave a startled exclamation. He could not for an instant credit
the astounding news.

"But how do you know? Who told you?"

"The man who spoke to me in the grand stand. He's correspondent of _The
London Courier_--friend of father's of course."

George protested:

"Then why on earth didn't you tell me before?... Shot herself! What
for?"

"I didn't tell you before because I couldn't."

All the violence of George's nature came to the surface as he said
brutally:

"Of course you could!"

"I tell you I couldn't!" she cried. "I knew the car wouldn't be there
for us until after the Prix du Cadran. And if I'd told you I couldn't
have borne to be walking about that place three-quarters of an hour. We
should have had to talk about it. I couldn't have borne that. And so you
needn't be cross, please."

But her voice did not break, nor her eyes shine.

"I was wondering whether I should tell the chauffeur at once, or let him
find it out."

"I should let him find it out," said George. "He doesn't know that you
know. Besides, it might upset his driving."

"Oh! I shouldn't mind about his driving," Lois murmured disdainfully.


V


When the uninformed chauffeur drove the car with a grand sweep under the
marquise of the ostentatious pale yellow block in the Avenue Hoche where
Irene Wheeler had had her flat, Mr. Ingram and a police-agent were
standing on the steps, but nobody else was near. Little Mr. Ingram came
forward anxiously, his eyes humid, and his face drawn with pain and
distress.

"We know," said Lois. "I met Mr. Cardow at Longchamps. He knew."

Mr. Ingram's pain and distress seemed to increase.

He said, after a moment:

"Alfred will drive you home, dear, at once. _Alfred, vous seriez gentil
de reconduire Mademoiselle à la rue d'Athènes."_ He had the air of
supplicating the amiable chauffeur. "Mr. Cannon, I particularly want a
few words with you."

"But, father, I must come in!" said Lois. "I must----"

"You will go home immediately. Please, please do not add to my
difficulties. I shall come home myself as quickly as possible. You can
do nothing here. The seals have been affixed."

Lois raised her chin in silence.

Then Mr. Ingram turned to the police-agent, spoke to him in French, and
pointed to the car persuasively; and the police-agent permissively
nodded. The chauffeur, with an affectation of detachment worthy of the
greatest days of valetry, drove off, leaving George behind. Mr. Ingram
descended the steps.

"I think, perhaps, we might go to a café," said he in a tone which
dispersed George's fear of a discussion as to the propriety of the
unchaperoned visit to the races.

They sat down on the _terrasse_ of a large café near the Place des
Ternes, a few hundred yards away from the Avenue Hoche. The café was
nearly empty, citizens being either in the Bois or on the main
boulevards. Mr. Ingram sadly ordered bocks. The waiter, flapping his
long apron, called out in a loud voice as he went within: "_Deux blonds,
deux._" George supplied cigarettes.

"Mr. Cannon," began Mr. Ingram, "it is advisable for me to tell you a
most marvellous and painful story. I have only just heard it. It has
overwhelmed me, but I must do my duty." He paused.

"Certainly," said George self-consciously, not knowing what to say. He
nearly blushed as, in an attempt to seem at ease, he gazed negligently
round at the rows of chairs and marble tables, and at the sparse traffic
of the somnolent Place.

Mr. Ingram proceeded.

"When I first knew Irene Wheeler she was an art student here. So was I.
But I was already married, of course, and older than she. Exactly what
her age was I should not care to say. I can, however, say quite
truthfully that her appearance has scarcely altered in those nineteen
years. She always affirmed that her relatives, in Indianapolis, were
wealthy--or at least had money, but that they were very mean with her.
She lived in the simplest way. As for me, I had to give up art for
something less capricious, but capricious enough in all conscience. Miss
Wheeler went to America and was away for some time--a year or two. When
she came back to Paris she told us that she had made peace with her
people, and that her uncle, whom for present purposes I will call Mr. X,
a very celebrated railway magnate of Indianapolis, had adopted her. Her
new manner of life amply confirmed these statements."

"_Deux bocks_," cried the waiter, slapping down on the table two saucers
and two stout glass mugs filled with frothing golden liquid.

George, unaccustomed to the ritual of cafés, began at once to sip, but
Mr. Ingram, aware that the true boulevardier always ignores his bock for
several minutes, behaved accordingly.

"She was evidently extremely rich. I have had some experience, and I
estimate that she had the handling of at least half a million francs a
year. She seemed to be absolutely her own mistress. You have had an
opportunity of judging her style of existence. However, her attitude
towards ourselves was entirely unchanged. She remained intimate with my
wife, who, I may say, is an excellent judge of character, and she was
exceedingly kind to our girls, especially Lois--but Laurencine too--and
as they grew up she treated them like sisters. Now, Mr. Cannon, I shall
be perfectly frank with you. I shall not pretend that I was not rather
useful to Miss Wheeler--I mean in the Press. She had social ambitions.
And why not? One may condescend towards them, but do they not serve a
purpose in the structure of society? Very rich as she was, it was easy
for me to be useful to her. And at worst her pleasure in publicity was
quite innocent--indeed, it was so innocent as to be charming. Naïve,
shall we call it?"

Here Mr. Ingram smiled sadly, tasted his bock, and threw away the end of
a cigarette.

"Well," he resumed, "I am coming to the point. This is the point, which
I have learnt scarcely an hour ago--I was called up on the telephone
immediately after you and Lois had gone. This is the point. Mr. X was
not poor Irene's uncle, and he had not adopted her. But it was his money
that she was spending." Mr. Ingram gazed fixedly at George.

"I see," said George calmly, rising to the rôle of man of the world. "I
see." He had strange mixed sensations of pleasure, pride, and confusion.
"And you've just found this out?"

"I have just found it out from Mr. X himself, whom I met for the first
time to-day--in poor Irene's flat. I never assisted at such a scene.
Never! It positively unnerved me. Mr. X is a man of fifty-five,
fabulously wealthy, used to command, autocratic, famous in all the Stock
Exchanges of the world. When I tell you that he cried like a child ...
Oh! I never had such an experience. His infatuation for
Irene--indescribable! Indescribable! She had made her own terms with
him. He told me himself. Astounding terms, but for him it was those
terms or nothing. He accepted them--had to. She was to be quite free.
The most absolute discretion was to be observed. He came to Paris or
London every year, and sometimes she went to America. She utterly
refused to live in America."

"Why didn't she marry him?"

"He has a wife. I have no doubt in my own mind that one of his reasons
for accepting her extraordinary terms was to keep in close touch with
her at all costs in case his wife should die. Otherwise he might have
lost her altogether. He told me many things about poor Irene's family in
Indianapolis which I will not repeat. It was true that they had money,
as Irene said; but as for anything else ...! The real name was not
Wheeler."

"Has he been over, here long?"

"He landed at Cherbourg last night. Just arrived."

"And she killed herself at once."

"Whether the deed was done immediately before or immediately after his
arrival is not yet established. And I need hardly tell you that Mr. X
has already fixed up arrangements not to appear in the case at all. But
one thing is sure--she had made all the preparations for suicide, made
them with the greatest care. The girls saw her yesterday, and both Lois
and I spoke to her on the telephone this morning. Not a trace of
anything in her voice. I assume she had given a message for Lois to the
chauffeur."

"Yes," said George. "We never dreamed----"

"Of course not. Of course not."

"But why did she----"

"Another man, my dear sir! Another man! A young man named
Defourcambault, in the French Embassy in London."

"Oh, him!" George burst out. "I know him," he added fiercely.

"You do? Yes, I remember Laurencine saying.... Poor Irene, I fear, was
very deeply in love with him. She had written to Mr. X about
Defourcambault. He showed me the letter--most touching, really most
touching. His answer to it was to come to Europe at once. But poor
Irene's death had nothing to do with his coming. She did not know he was
coming. She shot herself as she lay in bed, and on the pillow was a
letter from this man Defourcambault--well, saying good-bye to her. I saw
the letter. Not a letter that I should wish to remember. Perhaps she had
told him something of her life. I much fear that Defourcambault will be
fetched from London, though I hope not. There would be no object.... No,
thank you. I will not smoke again. I only wanted to say this to you. All
Paris knows that my daughters were intimate with poor Irene. Now, if
anything comes out, if anything _should_ come out, if there's any
talk--you see my fear. I wish to assure you, Mr. Cannon, that I had not
the slightest suspicion, not the slightest. And yet we journalists
cannot exactly be called ingenuous! But I had not the slightest
suspicion, nor had my wife. You know the situation between Laurencine
and your friend Lucas. You and he are very intimate, I believe. May I
count on you to explain everything from my point of view to Mr. Lucas? I
could not bear that the least cloud should rest upon my little
Laurencine."

"You needn't trouble about Lucas," said George positively. "Lucas 'll be
all right. Still, I'll talk to him."

"Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I knew I could rely on you.
I've kept you a long time, but I'm sure you understand. I'm thinking
only of my girls. Not for anything would I have them know the truth
about the affair."

"But aren't they bound to know it?" George asked.

Mr. Ingram was wounded. "I hope not. I hope not," he said gravely. "It
is not right that young girls should know such things."

"But surely, sooner or later----"

"Ah! After they are married, conceivably. That would be quite
different," he admitted, with cheerfulness. "And now," he smiled, "I'm
afraid I've got to go and write the case up for London. I can catch the
mail, I think. If not, I must cable. But they hate me to cable when the
mail is possible. Can I drop you anywhere?"

Simultaneously he signalled to a taxi and knocked on the window for the
attendance of the waiter.

"Thanks. If you're going anywhere near the Place de l'Opéra," said
George.


VI


He was excited, rather than saddened, by the tragic event. He was indeed
very excited. And also he had a deep satisfaction, because it seemed to
him that he had at last been truly admitted into the great secret
fellowship of adult males. The initiation flattered his pride. He left
Mr. Ingram at the door of an English newspaper office in the Boulevard
des Italiens, and, after vainly asking for telegrams at the hotel,
walked away, aimlessly at first, along broad pavements encumbered with
the chairs and tables of vast, crowded cafés, and with bright Sunday
idlers and sinister street-vendors. But in a moment he had decided that
he must and ought to pay a call in the Rue d'Athènes. Mr. Ingram had
said nothing about his seeing Lois again, had not referred to Mrs.
Ingram's invitation to repeat his visit, might even vaguely object to an
immediate interview between him and Lois. Yet he could not, as a man of
the world, abandon Lois so unceremoniously. He owed something to Lois
and he owed something to himself. And he was a free adult. The call was
natural and necessary, and if Mr. Ingram did not like it he must, in the
Five Towns phrase, lump it. George set off to find the Rue d'Athènes
unguided. It was pleasurable to think that there was a private abode in
the city of cafés, hotels, and museums to which he had the social right
of entry.

The watching concierge of the house nodded to him politely as he began
to mount the stairs. The Ingrams' servant smiled upon him as upon an old
and familiarly respected friend.

"Mademoiselle Lois?" he said, with directness.

The slatternly, benevolent girl widened her mouth still further in a
smile still more cordial, and led him to the drawing-room. As she did so
she picked up a newspaper packet that lay on a table in the tiny hall,
and, without putting it on a salver, deposited it in front of Lois, who
was alone in the drawing-room. George wondered what Lois would have
thought of such an outrage upon established ritual had it happened to
her in the home of Irene Wheeler instead of in her own; and then the
imagined vision of Irene lying dead in the sumptuous home in the Avenue
Hoche seemed to render all established ritual absurd.

"So you've come!" exclaimed Lois harshly. "Mother's quite knocked over,
and Laurencine's looking after her. All the usual eau-de-Cologne
business. And I should say father's not much better. My poor parents!
What did dad want you for?"

The servant had closed the door. Lois had got up from her chair and was
walking about the room, pulling aside a curtain and looking out, tapping
the mantelpiece with her hand, tapping with her feet the base of the
stove, George had the sensation of being locked in a cage with a
mysterious, incalculable, and powerful animal. He was fascinated. He
thought: "I wanted to see her alone and I am seeing her alone!"

"Well?" she insisted. "What did dad want you for?"

"Oh! He told me a few things about Miss Wheeler."

"I suppose he told you about Jules, and I suppose he told you I wasn't
to know on any account! Poor old dad! Instead of feeling he's my father,
d'you know what I feel? I feel as if I was his mother. He's _so_ clever;
he's frightfully clever; but he was never meant for this world. He's
just a beautiful child. How in Heaven's name could he think that a girl
like me could be intimate with Irene, and not know about the things that
were in her mind? How could he? Why! I've talked for hours with Irene
about Jules! She'd much sooner talk with me even than with mother. She's
cried in front of me. But I never cried. I always told her she was
making a mistake about Jules. I detested the little worm. But she
couldn't see it. No, she couldn't. She'd have quarrelled with me if I'd
let her quarrel. However, I wouldn't let her. Fancy quarrelling--over a
man! She couldn't help being mad over Jules. I told her she
couldn't--that was why I bore with her. I always told her he was only
playing with her. The one thing that I didn't tell her was that she was
too old for him. She really believed she never got any older. When I say
too old for him, I mean for her sake, not for his. He didn't think she
was too old. He couldn't--with that complexion of hers. I never envied
her anything else except her complexion and her money. But he wouldn't
marry an American. His people wouldn't let him. He's got to marry into a
family like his own, and there're only about ten for him to choose from.
I know she wrote to him on Thursday. She must have had the answer this
morning. Of course she had a revolver. I've got one myself. She went to
bed and did it. She used to say to me that if ever she did it that was
how she would do it.... And father tells me not to add to his
difficulties! Don't you think it's comic?... But she never told me
everything. I knew that. I accused her of it. She admitted it.
However..."

Lois spoke in a low, regular murmur, experimentally aware that privacy
in a Paris flat is relative. There were four doors in the walls of the
drawing-room, and a bedroom on either side. At moments George could
scarcely catch her words. He had never heard her say so much at once,
for she was taciturn by habit, even awkward in conversation. She
glowered at him darkly. The idea flashed through his mind: "There can't
be another girl like her. She's unique." He almost trembled at the
revelation. He was afraid, and yet courageous, challenging, combative.
She had grandeur. It might be moral, or not; but it was grandeur.
And--(that touch about the complexion!)--she could remember her
freckles! She might, in her hard egotism, in the rushing impulses of her
appetites--she might be an enemy, an enemy to close with whom would be
terrible rapture, and the war of the sexes was a sublime war, infinitely
superior in emotions to tame peace. (And had she not been certified an
angel? Had he not himself seen the angel in her?) She dwarfed her father
and mother. The conception, especially, of Mr. Ingram at lunch,
deliciously playful and dominating, and now with the adroit wit crushed
out of him and only a naïve sentimentality left, was comic--as she had
ruthlessly characterized it. She alone towered formidably over the
devastated ruins of Irene's earthly splendour.

He said nothing.

She rang the bell by the mantelpiece. He heard it ring. No answer. She
rang again.

"_Arrivez donc, jeune fille!_" she exclaimed impatiently.

The servant came.

"_Apportez du thé, Séraphine._"

"_Oui, mademoiselle._"

Then Lois lounged towards the table and tore sharply the wrapper of the
newspaper. George was still standing.

"He's probably got something in about her this week--about her soirée
last Tuesday. We weren't invited. Of course he went."

George saw the name the _Sunday Journal_. The paper had come by the
afternoon mail, and had been delivered, according to weekly custom, by
messenger from Mr. Ingram's office. Lois's tone and attitude tore
fatally the whole factitious 'Parisian' tradition, as her hand had torn
the wrapper.

"See here," she said quietly, after a few seconds, and gave the
newspaper with her thumb indicating a paragraph.

He could hardly read the heading, because it unnerved him; nor the
opening lines. But he read this: "The following six architects have been
selected by the Assessors and will be immediately requested by the
Corporation to submit final designs for the town hall: Mr. Whinburn,
Mr.... Mr.... Mr. George E. Cannon ..."

"What did I always tell you?" she said.

And then she said:

"Your telegram must have been addressed wrong, or something."

He sat down. Once again he was afraid. He was afraid of winning in the
final competition. A vista of mayors, corporations, town clerks,
committees, contractors, clerks-of-works, frightened him. He was afraid
of his immaturity, of his inexperience. He could not carry out the
enterprise; he would reap only ignominy. His greatest desire had been
granted. He had expected, in the event, to be wildly happy. But he was
not happy.

"Well, I'm blowed!" he exclaimed.

Lois, who had resumed the paper, read out:

"In accordance with the conditions of the competition, each of the above
named will receive a honorarium of one hundred guineas."

She looked at him.

"You'll get that town hall to do," she said positively. "You're bound to
get it. You'll see."

Her incomprehensible but convincing faith passed mysteriously into him.
A holy dew relieved him. He began to feel happy.

Lois glanced again at the paper, which with arms outstretched she held
in front of her like a man, like the men at Pickering's. Suddenly it
fell rustling to the floor, and she burst into tears.

She murmured indistinctly: "The last thing she did was for my
pleasure--sending the car."

George jumped up, animated by an inexpressible tenderness for her. She
had weakened. He moved towards her. He did not consider what he was
doing; he had naught to say; but his instinctive arms were about to
clasp her. He was unimaginably disturbed. She straightened and stiffened
in a second.

"But of course you've not got it yet," she said harshly, with apparent
irrelevance.

Séraphine entered bouncingly with the tea. Lois regarded the tray, and
remarked the absence of the strainer.

"_Et la passoire_?" she demanded, with implacable sternness.

Séraphine gave a careless, apologetic gesture.


VII


It was late in September, when most people had returned to London after
the holidays. John Orgreave mounted to the upper floor of the house in
Russell Square where George had his office. Underneath George's name on
the door had been newly painted the word 'Inquiries,' and on another
door, opposite, the word 'Private.' John Orgreave knocked with
exaggerated noise at this second door and went into what was now
George's private room.

"I suppose one ought to knock," he said in his hearty voice.

"Hallo, Mr. Orgreave!" George exclaimed, jumping up.

"If the mountain doesn't come to Mahomet, Mahomet must come to the
mountain," said John Orgreave.

"Come in," said George.

He noticed, and ignored, the touch of sarcasm in John Orgreave's
attitude. He had noticed a similar phenomenon in the attitude of various
people within the last four days, since architectural circles and even
the world in general had begun to resound with the echoing news that the
competition for the northern town hall had been won by a youth not
twenty-three years of age. Mr. Enwright had been almost cross, asserting
that the victory was perhaps a fluke, as the design of another
competitor was in reality superior to George's. Mr. Enwright had also
said, in his crabbed way: "You'll soon cut me out"; and, George
protesting, had gone on: "Oh! Yes, you will. I've been through this sort
of thing before. I know what I'm talking about. You're no different from
the rest." Whereupon George, impatient and genuinely annoyed, had
retorted upon him quite curtly, and had remembered what many
persons had said about Mr. Enwright's wrong-headed jealous
sensitiveness--animadversions which he, as a worshipper of Mr. Enwright,
had been accustomed to rebut. Further, Lucas himself had not erred by
the extravagance of his enthusiasm for George's earth-shaking success.
For example, Lucas had said: "Don't go and get above yourself, old chap.
They may decide not to build it after all. You never know with these
corporations." A remark extremely undeserved, for George considered that
the modesty and simplicity of his own demeanour under the stress of an
inordinate triumph were rather notable. Still, he had his dignity to
maintain against the satiric, and his position was such that he could
afford to maintain it.

Anyhow, he preferred the sardonic bearing of his professional intimates
to the sycophancy of certain acquaintances and of eager snobs unknown to
him. Among sundry telegrams received was one composed regardless of cost
and signed 'Turnbull.' He could not discover who Turnbull might be until
John Orgreave had reminded him of the wigged, brown, conversational
gentleman whom he had met, on one occasion only, at Adela's. In addition
to telegrams he had had letters, some of which contained requests for
money (demanded even as a right by the unlucky from the lucky), and an
assortment of charity circulars, money-lenders' circulars, and
bucket-shop lures. His mother's great sprawling letter had pleased him
better than any save one. The exception was his stepfather's. Edwin
Clayhanger, duly passing on to the next generation the benevolent
Midland gibe which he had inherited, wrote:

"DEAR GEORGE,--It's better than a bat in the eye with a burnt
stick.--Yours affectionately, NUNKS"

As a boy George had at one period called his stepfather 'Nunks,' but he
had not used the appellation for years. He was touched now.

The newspapers had been hot after him, and he knew not how to defend
himself. His photograph was implored. He was waylaid by journalists
shabby and by journalists spruce, and the resulting interviews made him
squirm. He became a man of mark at Pickering's. Photographers entreated
him to sit free of charge. What irritated him in the whole vast affair
was the continual insistence upon his lack of years. Nobody seemed to be
interested in his design for the town hall; everybody had the air of
regarding him as a youthful prodigy, a performing animal. Personally he
did not consider that he was so very young. (Nevertheless he did
consider that he was a youthful prodigy. He could recall no architect in
history who had done what he had done at his age.) The town clerk who
travelled from the North to see him treated his age in a different
manner, the patronizing. He did not care for the town clerk. However,
the town clerk was atoned for by the chairman of the new town hall
sub-committee, a true human being named Soulter, with a terrific accent
and a taste for architecture, pictures, and music. Mr. Soulter, though
at least forty-five, treated George, without any appearance of effort,
as a coeval. George immediately liked him, and the mere existence of Mr.
Soulter had the effect of dissipating nearly all George's horrible
qualms and apprehensions about his own competence to face the
overwhelming job of erection. Mr. Soulter was most soothing in the
matter of specifications and contractors.

"So you've got into your new room," said John Orgreave.

Never before had he mounted to see George either in the new room or in
the old room. The simple fact of the presence there of one of the
partners in the historic firm below compensated for much teasing sarcasm
and half-veiled jealousy. It was a sign. It was a seal authenticating
renown.

"Yes."

"I only wanted to give you a message from Adela. The Ingram young woman
is staying with us----"

"Lois?" The name shot out of him unbidden.

"Yes. You're humbly supplicated to go to tea to-day. Four o'clock. Thank
God I've not forgotten it!"

George arrived fifty-five minutes late at Bedford Park. Throughout the
journey thither he kept repeating: "She said I should do it. And I've
done it! I've done it! I've done it!" The triumph was still so close
behind him that he was constantly realizing it afresh, and saying,
wonder-struck: "I've done it." And the miraculous phantasm of the town
hall, uplifted in solid stone, formed itself again and again in his
enchanted mind, against a background of tremendous new ambitions rising
endlessly one behind another like snowy alps.

"Is this what you call four o'clock?" twittered Adela, between cajolery
and protest, somewhat older and facially more artificial, but eternally
blonde; still holding her fair head on one side and sinuously waving the
palm.

"Sorry! Sorry! I was kept at the last moment by a journalist johnny."

"Oh! Of course!" said Adela, pooh-poohing with her lips. "Of course we
expect that story nowadays!"

"Well, it was a chap from the _Builder_, or I wouldn't have seen him.
Can't trifle with a trade paper, you know."

He thought:

"She's like the rest of them, as jealous as the devil."

Then Lois came into the room, hatted and gloved, in half-mourning. She
was pale, and appreciably thinner; she looked nervous, weak, and weary.
As he shook hands with her he felt very self-conscious, as though in
winning the competition and fulfilling her prophecy he had done
something dubious for which he ought to apologize. This was exceedingly
strange, but it was so. She had been ill after the death of Irene
Wheeler. Having left Paris for London on the day following the races, he
had written to her about nothing in particular, a letter which meant
everything but what it said--and had received an answer from Laurencine,
who announced that her sister was in bed, and likely to be in bed; and
that father and mother wished to be remembered to him. Then he wrote to
Laurencine. When the result of the final competition was published he
had written again to Lois. It seemed to him that he was bound to do so,
for had she not willed and decided his victory? No reply; but there had
scarcely been time for a reply.

"Did you get my letter?" he smiled.

"This afternoon," she said gravely. "It followed me here. Now I have to
go to Irene's flat. I should have been gone in another minute."

"She _will_ go alone," Adela put in anxiously.

"I shall be back for dinner," said Lois, and to the stupefaction of
George she moved towards the door.

But just as she opened the door she turned her head and, looking at
George with a frown, murmured:

"You can come with me if you like."

Adela burst out:

"He hasn't had any tea!"

"I'm not urging him to come, my dear. Good-bye."

Adela and George exchanged a glance, each signalling to the other that
perhaps this sick, strange girl ought to be humoured. He abandoned the
tea.... He was in the street with Lois. He was in the train with her.
Her ticket was in his pocket. He had explained to her why he was late,
and she had smiled, amiably but enigmatically. He thought: "She's no
right to go on like this. But what does it matter?" She said nothing
about the competition--not a word of congratulation. Indeed she hardly
spoke beyond telling him that she had to choose some object at the flat.
He was aware of the principal terms of Irene's will, which indeed had
caused the last flutter of excitement before oblivion so quickly
descended upon the notoriety of the social star. Irene's renown had
survived her complexion by only a few short weeks. The will was of a
rather romantic nature. Nobody familiar with the intimate circumstances
would have been surprised if Irene had divided her fortune between Lois
and Laurencine. The bulk of it, however, went back to Indianapolis. The
gross total fell far short of popular estimates. Lois and Laurencine
received five thousand pounds apiece, and in addition they were
requested to select each an object from Irene's belongings--Lois out of
the London flat, Laurencine out of the Paris flat. Lois had come to
London to choose, and she was staying with Adela, the sole chaperon
available. Since the death of Irene, Mrs. Ingram had been excessively
strict in the matter of chaperons.

They took a hansom at Victoria. Across the great square, whose leaves
were just yellowing, George saw the huge block of flats, and in one
story all the blinds were down. Lois marched first into the lift,
masterfully, as though she inhabited the block. She asked no one's
permission. Characteristically she had an order from the solicitors, and
the keys of the flat. She opened the door without any trouble. They were
inside, within the pale-sheeted interior. Scarcely a thing had yet been
moved, for, with the formalities of the judicatures of France, England,
and the State of Indiana to be complied with, events marched slowly
under the sticky manipulation of three different legal firms. Lois and
George walked cautiously across the dusty, dulled parquets into the vast
drawing-room. George doffed his hat.

"I'd better draw the blinds up," he suggested.

"No, no!" she sharply commanded. "I can see quite well. I don't want any
more light."

There was the piano upon which Laurencine had played! The embrasure of
the window! The corner in which Irene had sat spellbound by Jules
Defourcambault! The portraits of Irene, at least one of which would
perpetuate her name! The glazed cases full of her collections!... The
chief pieces of furniture and all the chairs were draped in the pale,
ghostly sheeting.

Suddenly Lois, rushing to the mantelpiece, cried:

"This is what I shall take."

It was a large photograph of Jules Defourcambault, bearing the words:
"_À Miss Irene Wheeler. Hommages respectueux de_ J.D.F."

"You won't!" he exclaimed, incredulous, shocked. He thought: "She is
mad!"

"Yes, I shall."

There were hundreds of beautiful objects in the place, and she chose a
banal photograph of a despicable creature whom she detested.

"Why don't you take one of _her_ portraits? Or even a fan. What on earth
do you want with a thing like that?" His voice was changing.

"I shall take it and keep it for ever. He was the cause of it all. This
photograph was everything to her once."

George revolted utterly, and said with cold, harsh displeasure:

"You're simply being morbid. There's no sense in it."

She dropped down into a chair, and the impress of her body dragged the
dust-sheet from its gilt arms, exposing them. She put her face in her
hands and sobbed.

"You're awfully cruel!" she murmured thickly.

The sobs continued, shaking her body. She was beautifully dressed. Her
shoes were adorable, and the semi-transparent hose over her fine ankles.
She made a most disturbing, an unbearable, figure of compassion. She
needed wisdom, protection, guidance, strength. Every bit of her seemed
to appeal for these qualities. But at the same time she dismayed. He
moved nearer to her. Yes, she had grandeur. All the costly and valuable
objects in the drawing-room she had rejected in favour of the
satisfaction of a morbid and terrible whim. Who could have foreseen it?
He moved still nearer. He stood over her. He seized her yielding wrists.
He lifted her veil. Tears were running down her cheeks from the yellow
eyes. She looked at him through her tears.

"You're frightfully cruel," she feebly repeated.

"And what if I am?" he said solemnly. Did she really think him hard, had
she always thought him hard--she, the hard one? How strange! Yet no
doubt he was hard.

His paramount idea was:

"She had faith in me." It was as if her faith had created the man he
was. She was passionately ambitious; so was he.

And when he kissed her wet mouth, and stroked with incredible delicacy
those streaming cheeks, he felt himself full of foreboding. But he was
proud and confident.

He took her back to Bedford Park. She carried the photograph, unwrapped;
but he ventured no comment. She went straight up to her room.

"_You_ must tell Mrs. Orgreave," she said on the stairs.

Adela made a strange remark:

"Oh! But we always intended you to marry Lois!"




PART II

CHAPTER I

THE TRIUMPH

I


George came into the conjugal bedroom. The hour was about three o'clock
in the afternoon. Lois lay on the sofa at the foot of the twin beds. It
was perhaps characteristic of her that she sincerely preferred the sofa
to her bed. Sometimes in the night, when she could not sleep, she would
get up and go sighing to the sofa, and, with nothing but a slippery
eiderdown to cover her, sleep perfectly till George arose in the
morning. Quite contentedly conventional in most matters of mere social
deportment, she often resisted purely physical conventions. A bed was
the recognized machine for slumber; hence she would instinctively choose
another machine. Also, the sofa was nearer to the ground. She liked to
be near the ground. She had welcomed with ardour the first beginnings of
the new fashion which now regularly permits ladies to sit on the
hearth-rug after a ceremonial dinner and prop their backs with cushions
or mantelpieces. Doubtless a trait of the 'cave-woman' that as a girl
she had called herself!

She was now stretched on the sofa in a luxurious and expensive ribboned
muslin negligée, untidy, pale, haggard, heavy, shapeless, the expectant
mother intensely conscious of her own body and determined to maintain
all the privileges of the exacting rôle which nature had for the third
time assigned to her. Little Laurencine, aged eight, and little Lois,
aged five, in their summer white, were fondling her, tumbling about her,
burying themselves in her; she reclined careless, benignant, and
acquiescent under their tiny assaults; it was at moments as though the
three were one being. When their father appeared in the doorway, she
warned them in an apparently awed tone that father was there, and that
nursey was waiting for them and that they must run off quietly. And she
kissed them with the enormous kiss of a giantess suddenly rendered
passionate by a vast uprush of elemental feeling. And they ran off,
smiling confidently at their father, giggling, chattering about
important affairs in their intolerable, shrieking voices. George could
never understand why Lois should attempt, as she constantly did, to
instil into them awe of their father; his attitude to the children made
it impossible that she should succeed. But she kept on trying. The
cave-woman again! George would say to himself: "All women are
cave-women."

"Have you come to pack?" she asked, with fatigued fretfulness, showing
no sign of surprise at his arrival.

"Oh no!" he answered, and implied that in his over-charged existence
packing would have to be done when it could, if at all. "I only came in
for one second to see if I could root out that straw hat I wore last
year."

"Do open the window," she implored grievously.

"It is open."

"Both sides?"

"Yes."

"Well, open it more."

"It's wide open."

"Both sides?"

"Yes."

"It's so stuffy in this room," she complained, expelling much breath.

It was stuffy in the room. The room was too full of the multitudinous
belongings and furniture of wife and husband. It was too small for its
uses. The pair, unduly thrown together, needed two rooms. But the house
could not yield them two rooms, though from the outside it had an air of
spaciousness. The space was employed in complying with custom, in
imitating the disposition of larger houses, and in persuading the tenant
that he was as good as his betters. There was a basement, because the
house belonged to the basement era, and because it is simpler to burrow
than to erect. On the ground floor were the hall--narrow, and the
dining-room--narrow. To have placed the dining-room elsewhere would have
been to double the number of stairs between it and the kitchen;
moreover, the situation of the dining-room in all such correct houses is
immutably fixed by the code Thus the handiest room in the house was
occupied during four hours of the twenty-four, and wasted during the
remaining twenty. Behind the dining-room was a very small room
appointed by the code to be George's 'den.' It would never have been
used at all had not George considered it his duty to use it
occasionally, and had not Lois at intervals taken a fancy to it because
it was not hers.

The whole of the first floor was occupied by the landing, the well of
the staircase, and the drawing-room, which last was inevitably shaped in
the resemblance of an L. The small back portion of it over George's den
was never utilized save by the grand piano and rare pianists. Still, the
code demanded that the drawing-room should have this strange appendage,
and that a grand piano should reside in it modestly, apologetically,
like a shame that cannot be entirely concealed. Nearly every house in
Elm Park Road, and every house in scores of miles of other correct
streets in the West End, had a drawing-room shaped in the semblance of
an L, and a grand piano in the hinterland thereof. The drawing-room,
like the dining-room, was occupied during about four hours of the
twenty-four, and wasted during the remaining twenty.

The two main floors of the house being in such manner accounted for, the
family and its dependents principally lived aloft on the second and
third floors. Eight souls slept up there nightly. A miracle of
compression!

George had had the house for ten years; he entered it as a bridegroom.
He had stayed in it for seven years because the landlord would only
confide it to him on lease, and at the end of the seven years he lacked
the initiative to leave it. An ugly house, utterly without architectural
merit! A strange house for an architect to inhabit! George, however, had
never liked it. Before his marriage he had discovered a magnificent
house in Fitzroy Square, a domestic masterpiece of the Adams period,
exquisitely designed without and within, huge rooms and many rooms,
lovely ceilings, a forged-iron stair-rail out of Paradise; a house
appreciably nearer to the centre than the one in Elm Park Road, and with
a lower rental. George would have taken the house, had not Lois pointed
out to him its fatal disadvantage, which had escaped him, namely, that
people simply did not live in Fitzroy Square. Instantly Lois entered
Fitzroy Square, George knew himself for a blind fool. Of course the
house was impossible. He was positively ashamed to show her the house.
She admitted that it was beautiful. So Elm Park Road was finally
selected, Elm Park Road being a street where people could, and in fact
did, live. It was astounding how Lois, with her small and fragmentary
knowledge of London, yet knew, precisely and infallibly, by instinct, by
the sound of the names of the thoroughfares, by magic diabolical or
celestial, what streets were inhabitable and what were not. And
something in George agreed with her.

He now rummaged among hat-boxes beneath the beds, pulled one out, and
discovered a straw hat in it.

"Will it do?" he questioned doubtfully.

"Let me look at it."

He approached her and gave her the hat, which she carefully examined,
frowning.

"Put it on," she said.

He put it on, and she gazed at him for what seemed to him an
unnecessarily long time. His thought was that she liked to hold him
under her gaze.

"Well?" he exclaimed impatiently.

"It's quite all right," she said. "What's the matter with it? It makes
you look about fourteen." He felt envy in her voice. Then she added:
"But surely you won't be able to wear that thing to-morrow?"

"Of course not. I only want it for this afternoon.... This sun."

"Oh!" she cried. "I do think it's a shame I can't go to the Opening!
It's just my luck."

He considered that she arraigned her luck much too often; he considered
that on the whole her luck was decidedly good. But he knew that she had
to be humoured. It was her right to be humoured.

"Yes," he said judicially and rather shortly. "I'm sorry too! But what
are you going to do about it? If you can't go, you can't. And you know
it's absolutely out of the question." As a fact he was glad that her
condition made such an excursion impossible for her. She would certainly
have been rather a ticklish handful for him at the Opening.

"But I should so have _enjoyed_ it!" she insisted, with emphasis.

There it was, the thirst for enjoyment, pleasure! The supreme,
unslakable thirst! She had always had it, and he had always hardened
himself against it--while often, nevertheless, accepting with secret
pleasure the satisfactions of her thirst. Thus, for example, in the
matter of dancing. She had shared to the full in the extraordinary craze
for dancing which had held the West End for several years. Owing to her
initiative they had belonged to two dancing clubs whose members met
weekly in the saloons of the great hotels. The majority of the members
were acutely tedious to George, but Lois was quite uncritical, save on
the main point; she divided the members into good dancers and bad
dancers. George was a pretty good dancer. He liked dancing. Membership
of these clubs involved expense, it interfered with his sleep, it made
his early mornings more like defeats than triumphs, it prevented him
from duly reading and sketching. But he liked dancing. While resenting
the compulsion to outrage his conscience, he enjoyed the sin. What
exasperated him was Lois's argument that that kind of thing "did him
good" professionally, and was indeed essential to the career of a rising
or risen young architect, and that also it was good for his health and
his mind. He wished that she would not so unconvincingly pretend that
self-indulgence was not what it was. These pretences, however, seemed to
be a necessity of her nature. She reasoned similarly about the dinners
and theatre-parties which they gave and attended. Next to dancing she
adored dinners and theatre-parties. She would sooner eat a bad dinner in
company anywhere than a good dinner quietly at home; she would far
sooner go to a bad play than to none at all; she was in fact never bored
in the theatre or in the music-hall. Never!

Once, by misfortune--as George privately deemed--he had got a small job
(erection of a dwelling-house at Hampstead) through a dinner. Lois had
never forgotten it, and she would adduce the trifle again and again as
evidence of the sanity of her ideas about social life. George really did
not care for designing houses; they were not worth the trouble; he
habitually thought in public edifices and the palaces of kings, nobles,
and plutocrats of taste. Moreover, his commission on the house would not
have kept his own household in being for a month--and yet the owner,
while obviously proud to be the patron of the celebrated prodigy George
Cannon, had the air of doing George Cannon a favour!

And so her ambition, rather than his, had driven them both ruthlessly
on. Both were overpressed, but George considerably more than Lois. Lois
was never, in ordinary times, really tired. Dinners, teas, even lunches,
restaurants, theatres, music-halls, other people's houses, clubs,
dancing, changing clothes, getting into autos and taxis and getting out
of autos and taxis, looking at watches, writing down engagements, going
to bed with a sigh at the lateness of the hour, waking up fatigued to
the complexities of the new day--she coped admirably with it all. She
regarded it as natural; she regarded it as inevitable and proper. She
enjoyed it. She wanted it, and that which she wanted she must have. Yet
her attitude to George was almost invariably one of deep solicitude for
him. She would look at him with eyes troubled and anxious for his
welfare. When they were driving to a dance which he had no desire to
attend, she would put her arm in his and squeeze his arm and murmur:
"Coco, I don't _like_ you working so hard." (Coco was her pet name for
him, a souvenir of Paris.)

He acknowledged that, having chosen her rôle, she played it well. She
made him comfortable. She was a good housekeeper, and a fair organizer
generally. She knew how to be well served. He thought that her manner
to servants was often inexcusable, but she "kept" her servants, and they
would "do anything" for her. Further, except that she could not shine in
conversation, she was a good hostess. She never made mistakes, never
became muddled, never forgot. Of course she had friends to whom he was
indifferent or perhaps slightly hostile, but she was entitled to her
friends, as he to his. And she was a good mother. Stranger still, though
she understood none of the arts and had no logical taste, she possessed
a gift of guessing or of divination which, in all affairs relating to
the home, was the practical equivalent of genuine taste. George had
first noticed this faculty in her when she put a thousand pounds of her
money to a thousand pounds of his stepfather's and they began to buy
furniture. The house was beautifully furnished, and she had done her
share. And in the alterations, additions, and replacements which for
several years she had the habit of springing upon him, she rarely
offended him. Still, he knew indubitably that she had not taste,--anyhow
in his sense of the term,--and would never, never acquire it. An
astonishing creature! He had not finished being astonished at her. In
some respects he had not even come to a decision about her. For
instance, he suspected that she had "no notion of money," but he could
not be sure. She did what she liked with her own income, which was about
two hundred a year; that is to say, she clothed herself out of it. Her
household accounts were unknown to him; he had once essayed to
comprehend them, but had drawn back affrighted.

"Well," she said plaintively. "Now you're here, I think you might sit a
bit with me. It's most awfully lonely for me."

"I can't possibly," he said, with calm. "I have to rush off to the club
to see Davids about that business."

She ignored his inescapable duties! It was nothing to her that he had a
hundred affairs to arrange before his night-journey to the north. She
wanted him to sit with her. Therefore she thought that he ought to sit
with her, and she would be conscious of a grievance if he did not.
'Lonely!' Because the children were going out for an hour or so!
Besides, even if it was lonely, facts were facts, and destiny was
destiny and had to be borne.

"What business?"

"You know."

"Oh! That!... Well, can't you go after tea?"

Incurable!

"Here, lass!" he said, with a laugh. "If I stop arguing here I shall
miss him."

He bent down, and prepared his lips to kiss her. He smiled superiorly,
indulgently. He was the stronger. She defeated him sometimes; she
gravely defeated him in the general arrangement and colour of their
joint existence; but he was the stronger. She had known it for over ten
years. They had had two tremendous, critical, highly dangerous battles.
He had won them both. Lois had wanted to be married in Paris. He had
been ready to agree until suddenly it occurred to him that French legal
formalities might necessitate an undue disclosure as to his parentage
and the bigamy of which his mother had been a victim. He refused
absolutely to be married in Paris. He said: "You're English and I'm
English, and the proper place for us to be married is England." There
were good counter-arguments, but he would not have them. Curiously, at
this very period, news came from his stepfather of his father's death in
America. He kept it to himself. Again, on the night itself of their
marriage, he had said to her: "_Now give me that revolver you've got_."
At her protesting refusal he had said: "My wife is not going about with
any revolver. Not if I know it!" He was playful but determined. He
startled her, for the altercation lasted two hours. On the other hand he
had never said a word about the photograph of Jules Defourcambault, and
had never seen it. Somewhere, in some mysterious fastness, the
mysterious woman kept it.

His lips were close to hers, and his eyes to her eyes. Most persons
called her eyes golden, but to him they were just yellow. They had an
infinitesimal cast, to which nobody ever referred. They were voluptuous
eyes. He examined her face. She was still young; but the fine impressive
imprint of existence was upon her features, and the insipid freshness
had departed. She blinked, acquiescent. Her eyes changed, melting. He
could almost see into her brain, and watch there the impulse of
repentance for an unreasonable caprice, and the intense resolve to think
in the future only of her husband's welfare. She was like that.... She
could be an angel.... He knew that he was hard. He guessed that he might
be inordinately hard He would bear people down. Why had he not been
touched by her helpless condition? She was indeed touching as she lay.
She wanted to keep him near her and she could not. She wanted acutely to
go to the north, and she was imprisoned. She would have to pass the
night alone, and the next night alone. Danger and great suffering lay in
front of her. And she was she; she was herself, with all her terrific
instincts. She could not alter herself. Did she not merit compassion?
Still, _he must go to his club_.

He kissed her tenderly. She half lifted her head, and kissed him exactly
as she kissed his children, like a giantess, and as though she was the
ark of wisdom from everlasting, and he a callow boy whose safety
depended upon her sagacious, loving direction.

From the top of the flight of stairs leading from the ground floor,
George, waiting till it was over, witnessed the departure of his family
for the afternoon promenade. A prodigious affair! The parlourmaid (a
delightful creature who was, unfortunately, soon to make an excellent
match above her station) amiably helped the nursemaid to get the
perambulator down the steps. The parlourmaid wore her immutable uniform,
and the nursemaid wore her immutable uniform. Various things had to be
packed into the perambulator, and then little Lois had to be packed into
it--not because she could not walk, but because it was not desirable for
her to arrive at the playground tired. Nursey's sunshade was
undiscoverable, and little Laurencine's little sunshade had to be
retrieved from underneath little Lois in the depths of the perambulator.
Nursey's book had fallen on the steps. Then the tiny but elaborate
perambulator of Laurencine's doll had to go down the steps, and the doll
had to be therein ensconced under Laurencine's own direction, and
Laurencine's sunshade had to be opened, and Laurencine had to prove to
the maids that she could hold the sunshade in one hand and push the
doll's perambulator with the other. Finally, the procession of human
beings and vehicles moved, munitioned, provisioned, like a caravan
setting forth into the desert, the parlourmaid amiably waving adieux.

George thought: "I support all that. It all depends on me. I have
brought it all into existence." And his reflections embraced Lois
upstairs, and the two colleagues of the parlourmaid in the kitchen, and
the endless apparatus of the house, and the people at his office and the
apparatus there, and the experiences that awaited him on the morrow, and
all his responsibilities, and all his apprehensions for the future. And
he was amazed and dismayed by the burden which almost unwittingly he
bore night and day. But he felt too that it was rather fine. He felt
that he was in the midst of life.

As he was cranking his car, which he had left unattended at the kerb,
Mrs. Buckingham Smith's magnificent car driven by her magnificent
chauffeur, swept in silence up to the door and sweetly stopped. George's
car was a very little one, and he was his own chauffeur, and had to walk
home from the garage when he had done with it. The contemplation of Buck
Smith's career showed George that there are degrees of success. Buck
Smith received a thousand pounds for a portrait (in the French manner of
painting)--and refused commissions at that. Buck Smith had a kind of
palace in Melbury Road. By the side of Buck Smith. George was a
struggling semi-failure. Mrs. Buck Smith, the lady whom George had first
glimpsed in the foyer of a theatre, was a superb Jewess whom Buck had
enticed from the stage. George did not like her because she was apt, in
ecstasy, to froth at the mouth, and for other reasons; but she was one
of his wife's most intimate friends. Lois, usually taciturn, would
chatter with Adah for hours.

"I thought I'd come and see Lois," said Mrs. Buck, effulgently smiling,
as George handed her out of the car. "How is the dear thing? You just
flying off?"

"You'll do her all the good in the world," George replied. "I can't
stop. I have to leave town to-night, and I'm full up."

"Oh yes! The Opening! How perfectly splendid!" Tiny bubbles showed
between her glorious lips. "What a shame it is poor Lois isn't able to
go!"

"Yes," said George. "But look here! Don't you go and tell her so. That's
quite the wrong tack."

"I see! I see!" said Mrs. Buck, gazing at him as one who was capable of
subtle comprehensions. "By the way," she added, as she turned to mount
the steps, "I ran across Everard Lucas at the Berkeley to-day. Lunching
there. I said I was coming here. He told me to tell you, if I saw you,
that old Mr. Haim or Home or some such name was dead. He said you'd be
interested."

"By Jove!" George ejaculated. "Is he? Haven't seen him for years and
years."


II


He got into his car and drove off at speed. Beneath his off-hand words
to Mrs. Buckingham Smith he was conscious of a quickly growing, tender
sympathy for Marguerite Haim. The hardness in him was dissolved almost
instantaneously. He saw Marguerite, who had been adamantine in the
difference which separated them, as the image of pliancy, sweetness,
altruism, and devotion; and he saw her lips and the rapt glance of her
eyes as beautiful as in the past. What a soft, soothing, assuaging
contrast with the difficult Lois, so imperious and egoistic! (An
unforgettable phrase of Lois's had inhabited his mind for over a decade:
"Fancy quarrelling over a man!") He had never met Marguerite since their
separation, and for years he had heard nothing whatever about her; he
did not under-estimate the ordeal of meeting her again. Yet he at once
decided that he must meet her again. He simply could not ignore her in
her bereavement and new loneliness. To write to her would be absurd; it
would be a cowardly evasion; moreover, he could not frame a letter. He
must prove to her and to himself that he had a sense of decent
kindliness which would rise above conventional trifles when occasion
demanded.

At the top of Elm Park Gardens, instead of turning east towards
Piccadilly he turned west in the direction of the Workhouse tower. And
thus he exposed the unreality of the grandiose pleas with which
professional men impose on their wives and on themselves. A few minutes
earlier his appointment at the club (not Pickering's, to which, however,
he still belonged, but a much greater institution, the Artists, in
Albemarle Street) had been an affair of extreme importance, upon which
might depend his future career, for did it not concern negotiations for
a London factory, which was to be revolutionary in design, and to cost
£150,000, and which, erected, would form a permanent advertisement of
the genius of George Cannon? Now he remembered that Sir Isaac Davids,
the patron of all the arts and the influencer of commissions, had said
that he would probably but not certainly be at the club that afternoon,
and he argued that in any event half an hour sooner or later would not
make or mar the business. Indeed, he went further, and persuaded himself
that between that moment and dinner he had nothing to do except sign a
few routine letters at the office. Still, it was just as well that Lois
should remain in delusion as to his being seriously pressed for time.

As he curved, slackening and accelerating, with the perfect assurance of
long habit, through the swift, intricate, towering motor traffic of
Fulham Road, it was inevitable that he should recall the days, eleven
years ago, when through a sedate traffic of trotting horses enlivened
with a few motors and motor-buses, he used to run down on his
motor-cycle to visit Marguerite. It was inevitable that he should think
upon what had happened to him in the meantime. His body felt, honestly,
no older. The shoulders had broadened, the moustache was fiercer, there
were semicircular furrows under the eyes; but he was as slim and agile
as ever, and did his morning exercises as regularly as he took his bath.
More, he was still, somehow, the youthful prodigy who had won the
biggest competition of modern years while almost an infant. He was still
known as such, regarded as such, greeted as such, referred to as such at
intervals in the Press. His fame in his own world seemed not to have
deteriorated. But disappointment had slowly, imperceptibly, eaten into
him. He was far off the sublime heights of Sir Hugh Corver, though he
met Sir Hugh apparently as an equal on the Council of the Royal Society
of British Architects. Work had not surged in upon him. He had not been
able to pick and choose among commissions. He had never won another
competition. Again and again his hopes had been horribly defeated in
these ghastly enterprises, of which two were still pending. He was a man
of one job. And a quarter of his professional life had slipped behind
him! His dreams were changed. Formerly he had dreamed in architectural
forms; now he dreamed in percentages. His one job had been enormous and
lucrative, but he had lived on it for a decade, and it was done. And
outside it he had earned probably less than twelve hundred pounds.

And if the job had been enormous, his responsibilities were likewise
enormous. Home expenses with an increasing family; establishment
expenses; a heavy insurance! Slavery to habits! The common story,
without the slightest originality in it. The idea recurred continually:
it was the fault of Lois, of that embodied, implacable instinct which
Lois was! And it was the fault of circumstance, of the structure of
society, of existence itself. And it was his fault too. And the whole of
the blame would be his if disaster came. Imagine those kids with the
perambulator and the doll's perambulator--imagine them in an earthquake!
He could see no future beyond, perhaps, eight months ahead. No, he could
not! Of course his stepfather was a sure resource. But he could not
conceive himself confessing failure to his stepfather or to anybody on
earth. Yet, if he did not very soon obtain more work, remunerative and
on a large scale ... if he did not ... However, he would obtain more
work. It was impossible that he should not obtain it. The matter with
Sir Isaac was as good as arranged. And the chances of winning at any
rate one of the two competitions were very favourable.... He dismissed
every apprehension. His health was too good to tolerate apprehensions
permanently. And he had a superstitious faith in his wife's
superstitious faith in him, and in his luck. The dark mood quickly
faded. It had been induced, not by the spectacle of his wife and family
and household seen somehow from a new angle, but by the recollection of
the past. Though he often went through dark moods, they were not moods
of financial pessimism; they seemed to be causeless, inexplicable, and
indescribable--abysses in which cerebration ceased.


III


She was just closing the side gate leading to the studio when he drove
up. He recognized her face over the top of the gate. At the first glance
it seemed to be absolutely unchanged--the same really beautiful lips,
the same nose, the same look in the eyes. Had a decade passed by her and
left no trace? He lost his nerve for an instant, and brought the car to
a standstill with less than his usual adroitness. She hesitated.

"I was coming to see you," he called out hastily, boyishly, not in the
least measuring his effects. He jumped from the car, and said in a
lower, more intimate tone: "I've only this minute heard about Mr. Haim.
I'm awfully sorry. I thought I'd come along at once."

"How nice of you!" she replied, quite simply and naturally, with a
smile. "Do come in."

The tension was eased.

She pulled at the gate, which creaked. He then saw plainly the whole of
her figure. She was dressed in black, and wore what the newspaper
advertisement called a 'matron's coat.' The decade had not passed by her
and left no trace. She had been appointed to a share in the mysterious
purpose. Her bust, too, was ampler; only her face, rather pale like the
face of Lois, was unaltered in its innocent contours. He felt that he
was blushing. He had no instinctive jealousy nor resentment; it did not
appear strange to him that this woman in the matron's coat was the girl
he had passionately kissed in that very house; and indeed the woman was
not the girl--the connexion between the woman and the girl had snapped.
Nevertheless, he was extremely self-conscious; but not she. And in his
astonishment he wondered at the secretiveness of London. His house and
hers were not more than half a mile apart, and yet in eleven years he
had never set eyes on her house. Nearly always, on leaving his house, he
would go up Elm Park Gardens and turn to the right. If he was not in the
car he would never turn to the left. Occasionally he had flown past the
end of the Grove in the car; not once, however, had he entered the
Grove. He lived in Chelsea and she lived in Chelsea, but not the same
Chelsea; his was not the Chelsea of the studios and the King's Road.
They had existed close together, side by side, for years and years--and
she had been hidden from him.

As they walked towards the studio door she told him that 'they' had
buried her father a week ago and that 'they' were living in the studio,
and had already arranged to let the lower part of the house. She had the
air of assuming that he was aware of the main happenings in her life,
only a little belated in the knowledge of her father's death. She was
quite cheerful. He pretended to himself to speculate as to the identity
of her husband. He would not ask: "And who is your husband?". All the
time he knew who her husband was: it could be no other than one man. She
opened the studio door with a latchkey. He was right. At a table Mr.
Prince was putting sheets of etching-paper to soak in a porcelain bath.

"Well! Well! Well!" exclaimed Mr. Prince warmly, not flustered, not a
bit embarrassed, and not too demonstrative. He came forward, delicately
drying the tips of his fingers on a rag, and shook hands. His hair was
almost white, his thin, benevolent face amazingly lined; his voice had a
constant little vibration. Yet George could not believe that he was an
old man.

"He only heard to-day about father, and he's called at once," said
Marguerite. "Isn't it just like him?"

The last phrase surprised and thrilled George. Did she mean it? Her
kind, calm, ingenuous face showed that obviously she meant it.

"It is," said Mr. Prince seriously. "Very good of you, old man."

After some talk about Mr. Haim, and about old times, and about changes,
during which Marguerite took off her matron's coat and Mr. Prince gently
hung it up for her, they all sat down near to one another and near the
unlighted stove. The studio seemed to be precisely as of old, except
that it was very clean. Marguerite, in a high-backed wicker-chair, began
slowly to remove her hat, which she perched behind her on the chair. Mr.
Prince produced a tin of Gold Flake cigarettes.

"And so you're living in the studio?" said George.

"We have the two rooms at the top of the house of course," answered Mr.
Prince, glancing at the staircase. "I don't know whether it's quite the
wisest thing, with all those stairs; you see how we're fixed"--he
glanced at Marguerite--"but we had a fine chance to let the house, and
in these days it's as well to be cautious."

Marguerite smiled happily and patted her husband's hand.

"Of course it's the wisest thing," she said.

"Why! What's the matter with these days?" George demanded. "How's the
work?"

"Oh!" said Mr. Prince, in a new tone. "I've one or two things that might
interest you."

He displayed some prints, and chatted of his labours. He was still
etching; he would die etching. This was the etcher of European renown.
He referred to the Vienna acquisition as though it was an affair of a
few weeks ago. He had disposed of an etching to Stockholm, and mentioned
that he had exhibited at the International Show in Rome. He said that
his things were attracting attention at a gallery in Bond Street. He
displayed catalogues and press-cuttings.

"These are jolly fine," said George enthusiastically, as he examined the
prints on his knee.

"I'm glad you like them," said Mr. Prince, pleased. "I think I've
improved."

But in spite of his European renown, Mr. Prince had remained practically
unknown. His name would not call forth the 'Oh yes!' of recognition from
the earnest frequenter of fashionable exhibitions who takes pride in his
familiarity with names. The etchings of Prince were not subscribed for
in advance. He could not rank with the stars--Cameron, Muirhead Bone,
Legros, Brangwyn. Probably he could command not more than two or three
guineas for a print. He had never been the subject of a profusely
laudatory illustrated article in the _Studio_. With his white hair he
was what in the mart is esteemed a failure. He knew it. Withal he had a
notable self-respect and a notable confidence. There was no timidity in
him, even if his cautiousness was excessive. He possessed sagacity and
he had used it. He knew where he was. He had something substantial up
his sleeve. There was no wistful appeal in his eye, as of a man who
hopes for the best and fears the worst. He could meet dealers with a
firm glance, for throughout life he had subjugated his desires to his
resources. His look was modest but independent; and Marguerite had the
same look.

"Hallo!" cried George. "I see you've got that here!" He pointed to Celia
Agg's portrait of herself as Bonnie Prince Charlie.

"Yes," said Marguerite. "She insisted on me taking it when she gave up
painting."

"Gave up painting?"

"Very good, isn't it?" said Mr. Prince gravely. "Pity she ever did give
up painting, I think," he added in a peculiar tone.

"Yes, it is," George agreed insincerely, for the painting now seemed to
him rather tenth-rate. "But what on earth did she stop painting for?"

Marguerite replied, with reserve:

"Oh! Didn't you know? She's quite gone in for this suffragette business.
No one ever sees her now. Not even her people."

"Been in prison," said Mr. Prince, sardonically disapproving, "I always
said she'd end in that kind of thing, didn't I, Margy?"

"You did, dear," said Marguerite, with wifely eagerness.

These two respected not only themselves but each other. The ensuing
conversation showed that Mr. Prince was somewhat disgusted with the
mundane movement, and that Marguerite was his disciple. They were more
and more leaving the world alone; their self-sufficiency was increasing
with the narrow regularity of their habits. They seldom went out; and
when they did, they came home the more deeply convinced that all was not
well with the world, and that they belonged to the small remnant of the
wise and the sane. George was in two minds about them, or rather about
Mr. Prince. He secretly condescended to him, but on the other hand he
envied him. The man was benevolent; he spent his life in the creation of
beauty; and he was secure. Surely an ideal existence! Yes, George wished
that he could say as much for himself. Marguerite, completely deprived
of ambition, would never have led any man into insecurity. He had
realized already that afternoon that there were different degrees of
success; he now realized that there were different kinds of success.

"Well!" he rose suddenly. "I must be off. I'm very busy."

"I suppose you are," said Mr. Prince. Untrue to assert that his glance
was never wistful! It was ever so slightly wistful then.

George comprehended that Mr. Prince admired him and looked up to him
after all.

"My town hall is being opened to-morrow."

"So I saw," said Mr. Prince. "I congratulate you."

They knew a good deal about him--where he lived, the statistics of his
family, and so on. He picked up his hat.

"I can't tell you how I appreciate your coming," said Marguerite, gazing
straight into his eyes.

"Rather!" said Mr. Prince.

They were profoundly flattered by the visit of this Bird-of-paradise.
But they did not urge him to stay longer.

As he was leaving, the door already open, George noticed a half-finished
book-cover design on a table.

"So you're still doing these binding designs!" He stopped to examine.

Husband and wife, always more interested in their own affairs than in
other people's, responded willingly to his curiosity. George praised,
and his praise was greatly esteemed. Mr. Prince talked about the changes
in trade bindings, which were all for the worse. The bright spot was
that Marguerite's price for a design had risen to twenty-five shillings.
This improvement was evidently a source of genuine satisfaction to them.
To George it seemed pathetic that a rise, after vicissitudes, of four
shillings in fourteen years should be capable of causing them so much
joy. He and they lived in absolutely different worlds.

"This is the last I shall let her do for a long time," observed Mr.
Prince. "I shouldn't have let her do this one, but the doctor, who's a
friend of ours, said there wouldn't be any harm, and of course it's
always advisable to break a connexion as little as possible. You never
know...."

George smiled, returning their flattery.

"You aren't going to tell me that that matters to _you_!"

Mr. Prince fixed George with his eye.

"When the European War starts in earnest I think most of us will need
all we've been able to get together."

"What European War?" asked George, with a touch of disdain. "You don't
mean to say that this Sarajevo business will lead to a European War!"

"No, I don't," said Mr. Prince very firmly. "Germany's diplomatists are
much too clever for that. They're clever enough to find a better excuse.
But they will find it, and soon."

George saw that Mr. Prince, having opened up a subject which apparently
was dear to him, had to be handled with discretion. He guessed at once,
from the certainty and the emotion of Mr. Prince's phrases, that Mr.
Prince must have talked a lot about a European War. So he mildly
replied:

"Do you really think so?"

"Do I think so? My dear fellow, you have only to look at the facts.
Austria undoubtedly annexed Bosnia at Germany's instigation. Look at
what led to Algeciras. Look at Agadir. Look at the increase in the
German army last July. And look at the special levy. The thing's as
clear as day." Mr. Prince now seemed to be a little angry with George,
who had moved into the doorway.

"I'll tell you what I think," said George, with the assurance with which
as a rule he announced his opinions. "We're Germany's only serious
rival. It's us she's up against. She can only fight us on the sea. If
she fought us now on the sea she'd be wiped out. That's admitted. In ten
years, if she keeps on building, she might have a chance. But not now!
Not yet! And she knows it." George did not mention that he had borrowed
the whole weighty argument from his stepfather; but he spoke with
finality, and was rather startled when Mr. Prince blew the whole weighty
argument into the air with one scornful, pitying exhalation.

Mr. Prince said: "Nothing in it! Nothing in it! It's our alliances that
will be the ruin of us. We shall be dragged into war. If Germany chooses
to fight on land everybody will have to fight on land. When she gets to
Paris, what are we going to do about it? We shall be dragged into war.
It's the damnable alliances that Sir Edward Grey has let us in for." Mr.
Prince fixed George afresh. "That man ought to be shot. What do we want
with alliances?... Have you heard Lord Roberts?"

George admitted weakly, and as if ashamed, that he had not.

"Well, you should."

"Oh yes," Marguerite ingenuously put in. "Alfred's been very strong on
the European War ever since he heard Lord Roberts speak at Chelsea Town
Hall."

George then understood the situation. Mr. Prince, through the hazard of
a visit to Chelsea Town Hall, had become obsessed by a single idea, an
idea which his natural apprehensions had well nourished. A common
phenomenon! George had met before the man obsessed by one idea, with his
crude reasoning, his impatience, and his flashing eye. As for himself he
did not pretend to be an expert in politics; he had no time for
politics; but he was interested in them, and held strong views about
them; and among his strongest views was the view that the crudity of the
average imperialist was noxious, and a source of real danger. 'That man
ought to be shot.' Imagine such a remark! He felt that he must soothe
Mr. Prince as he would soothe a child. And he did so, with all the tact
acquired at municipal committee meetings in the north.

His, last impression, on departure, was that Mr. Prince was an excellent
and most lovable fellow, despite his obsession. "Glad to see you at any
time," said Mr. Prince, with genuine cordiality, critically and somewhat
inimically assessing the car, which he referred to as 'she.' Marguerite
had remained in the studio. She was wonderful. She admired her husband
too simply, and she was too content, but she had marvellous qualities of
naturalness, common sense in demeanour, realism, and placidity. Thanks
to her remarkable instinct for taking things for granted, the interview
had been totally immune from constraint. It was difficult, and she had
made it seem easy. No fuss, no false sentiment! And she looked very
nice, very interesting, quite attractive, in her mourning and in her
expectancy. A fine couple. Unassuming of course, narrow,
opinionated--(he surmised that the last days of the late Mr. Haim had
been disciplined)--but no fools either, and fundamentally decent. While
condescending to them, he somehow envied them. But he knew what the
opinion of Lois about them would be!


IV


After a period of shallow sleep he woke up in the morning factitiously
refreshed as the train was rumbling slowly over the high-level bridge.
The sun blinked full in his eyes when he looked out through the
trellis-work of the bridge. Far below, the river was tinged with the
pale blue of the sky. Big ships lay in the river as if they had never
moved and never could move; a steamer in process of painting, with her
sides lifted above the water, gleamed in irregular patches of brilliant
scarlet. A lively tug passed down-stream, proud of her early rising;
and, smaller even than the tug, a smack, running close-hauled, bowed to
the puffs of the light breeze. Farther away the lofty chimneys sent
their scarves of smoke into the air, and the vast skeletons of incipient
vessels could be descried through webs of staging. The translucent
freshness of the calm scene was miraculous; it divinely intoxicated the
soul, and left no squalor and no ugliness anywhere.

Then, as the line curved, came the view of the city beneath its delicate
canopy of mist. The city was built on escarpments, on ridges, on hills,
and sagged here and there into great hollows. The serrated silhouette of
it wrote romance upon the sky, and the contours of the naked earth
beyond lost themselves grandly in the mystery of the north. The jutting
custom-house was a fine piece of architecture. From the eighteen-forties
it challenged grimly the modern architect. On his hasty first visit to
the city George had noticed little save that custom-house. He had seen a
slatternly provincial town, large and picturesque certainly, but with
small sense of form or dignity. He had decided that his town hall would
stand quite unique in the town. But soon the city had imposed itself
upon him and taught him the rudiments of humility. It contained an
immense quantity of interesting architecture of various periods, which
could not be appreciated at a glance. It was a hoary place. It went back
to the Romans and further. Its fragmentary walls had survived through
seven centuries, its cathedral through six, its chief churches through
five. It had the most perfect Norman keep within two hundred miles. It
had ancient halls, mansions, towers, markets, and jail. And to these the
Victorian-Edwardian age had added museums, law courts, theatres; such
astonishing modernities as swimming-baths, power-houses, joint-stock
banks, lending libraries, and art schools; and whole monumental streets
and squares from the designs of a native architect without whose
respectable name no history of British architecture could be called
complete. George's town hall was the largest building in the city; but
it did not dominate the city nor dwarf it; the city easily digested it.
Arriving in the city by train the traveller, if he knew where to look,
could just distinguish a bit of the town hall tower, amid masses of
granite and brick: which glimpse symbolized the relation between the
city and the town hall and had its due effect on the Midland conceit of
George.

But what impressed George more than the stout, physical aspects of the
city was the sense of its huge, adventurous, corporate life, continuous
from century to century. It had known terrible battles, obstinate
sieges, famines, cholera, a general conflagration, and, in the twentieth
century, strikes that possibly were worse than pestilence. It had
fiercely survived them all. It was a city passionate and highly
vitalized. George had soon begun to be familiar with its organic
existence from the inside. The amazing delays in the construction of the
town hall were characteristic of the city, originating as they did not
from sloth or indecision but from the obduracy of the human will. At the
start a sensational municipal election had put the whole project on the
shelf for two years, and George had received a compensatory one per cent
on the estimated cost according to contract, and had abandoned his hope.
But the pertinacity of Mr. Soulter, first Councillor, then Alderman,
then Mayor, the true father of the town hall, had been victorious in the
end. Next there had been an infinity of trouble with owners of adjacent
properties and with the foundations. Next the local contractor, who had
got the work through a ruthless and ingenious conspiracy of associates
on the Council, had gone bankrupt. Next came the gigantic building
strike, in which conflicting volitions fought each other for many months
to the devastation of an entire group of trades. Finally was the
inflexible resolution of Mr. Soulter that the town hall should not be
opened and used until it was finished in every part and every detail of
furniture and decoration.

George, by his frequent sojourns in the city, and his official connexion
with the authorities, had several opportunities to observe the cabals,
the chicane, and the personal animosities and friendships which
functioned in secret at the very heart of the city's life. He knew the
idiosyncrasies of councillors and aldermen in committee; he had learnt
more about mankind in the committee-rooms of the old town hall than he
could have learnt in ten thousand London clubs. He could divide the city
council infallibly into wire-pullers, axe-grinders, vain nincompoops,
honest mediocrities, and the handful who combined honesty with sagacity
and sagacity with strength. At beefy luncheon-tables, and in gorgeous,
stuffy bars tapestried with Lincrusta-Walton, he had listened to the
innumerable tales of the town, in which greed, crookedness, ambition,
rectitude, hatred, and sexual love were extraordinarily mixed--the last
being by far the smallest ingredient. He liked the town; he revelled in
it. It seemed to him splendid in its ineradicable, ever-changing,
changeless humanity. And as the train bored its way through the granite
bowels of the city, he thought pleasurably upon all these matters. And
with them in his mind there gradually mingled the images of Lois and
Marguerite. He cared not what their virtues were or what their faults
were. He enjoyed reflecting upon them, picturing them with their
contrasted attributes, following them into the future as they developed
blindly under the unperceived sway of the paramount instincts which had
impelled and would always impel them towards their ultimate destiny. He
thought upon himself, and about himself he was very sturdily cheerful,
because he had had a most satisfactory interview with Sir Isaac on the
previous afternoon.

A few minutes later he walked behind a portmanteau-bearing night-porter
into the wide-corridored, sleeping hotel, whose dust glittered in the
straight shafts of early sunlight. He stopped at the big slate under the
staircase and wrote in chalk opposite the number 187: "Not to be called
till 12 o'clock, under pain of death." And the porter, a friend of some
years' standing, laughed. On the second floor that same porter dropped
the baggage on the linoleum and rattled the key in the lock with a high
disregard of sleepers. In the bedroom the porter undid the straps of the
portmanteau, and then:

"Anything else, sir?"

"That's all, John."

And as he turned to leave, John stopped and remarked in a tone of
concern:

"Sorry to say Alderman Soulter's ill in bed, sir. Won't be able to come
to the Opening. It's him as'll be madder than anybody, ill or not."

George was shocked, and almost frightened. In his opinion the true
intelligence of the city was embodied in Mr. Soulter. Mr. Soulter had
been a father to him, had understood his aims and fought for them again
and again. Without Mr. Soulter he felt defenceless before the ordeal of
the Opening, and he wished that he might fly back to London instantly.
Nevertheless the contact of the cool, clean sheets was exquisite, and he
went to sleep at once, just as he was realizing the extremity of his
fatigue.

He did not have his sleep out. Despite the menace of death, a courageous
creature heavily knocked at his door at ten o'clock and entered. It was
a page-boy with a telegram. George opened the envelope resentfully.

"No answer."

The telegram read:

"Am told we have got it.--PONTING"

Ponting was George's assistant. The news referred to a competition for
an enormous barracks in India--one of the two competitions pending. It
had come sooner than expected. Was it true? George was aware that
Ponting had useful acquaintanceship with a clerk in the India Office.

He thought, trying not to believe:

"Of course Ponting will swallow anything."

But he made no attempt to sleep again. He was too elated.


V


Through a strange circumstance George arrived late for the Opening lunch
in the lower hall, but he was late in grave company. He had been
wandering aimlessly and quite alone about the great interiors of the
town hall when he caught sight of Mr. Phirrips, the contractor, with the
bishop and the most famous sporting peer of the north, a man who for
some mystical reason was idolized by the masses of the city.
Unfortunately Mr. Phirrips also caught sight of George. "Bishop, here is
Mr. Cannon, our architect. He will be able to explain perhaps better--"
And in an instant Mr. Phirrips had executed one of those feats of
prestidigitation for which he was renowned in contracting circles, left
George with the bishop, and gone off with his highly prized quarry, the
sporting peer. George, despite much worldliness, had never before had
speech with a bishop. However, the bishop played his part in a
soothingly conventional way, manipulated his apron and his calves with
senile dignity, stood still and gazed ardently at ceilings and vistas,
and said at intervals, explosively and hoarsely: "Ha! Very, interesting!
Very interesting! Very fine! Very fine! Noble!" He also put intelligent
questions to the youthful architect, such as: "How many bricks have been
used in this building?" He was very leisurely, as though the whole of
eternity was his.

"I'm afraid we may be late for the luncheon," George ventured.

The bishop looked at him blandly, leaning forward, and replied, after
holding his mouth open for a moment:

"They will not begin without us. I say grace." His antique eye twinkled.

After this George liked him, and understood that he was really a bishop.

In the immense hubbub of the lower hall the bishop was seized upon by
officials, and conducted to a chair a few places to the right of His
Worship the Mayor. Though there was considerable disorder and confusion
(doubtless owing to the absence of Alderman Soulter, who had held all
the strings in his hand) everybody agreed that the luncheon scene in the
lower hall was magnificent. The Mayor, in his high chair and in his
heavy chain and glittering robe, ruled in the centre of the principal
table, from which lesser tables ran at right angles. The Aldermen and
Councillors, also chained and robed, well sustained the brilliance of
the Mayor, and the ceremonial officials of the city surpassed both Mayor
and Council in grandeur. Sundry peers and M.P.'s and illustrious
capitalists enhanced the array of renown, and the bishop was rivalled by
priestly dignitaries scarcely less grandiose than himself. And then
there were the women. The women had been let in. During ten years of
familiarity with the city's life George had hardly spoken to a woman,
except Mr. Soulter's Scotch half-sister. The men lived a life of their
own, which often extended to the evenings, and very many of them when
mentioning women employed a peculiar tone. But now the women were
disclosed in bulk, and the display startled George. He suddenly saw all
the city fathers and their sons in a new light.

The bishop had his appointed chair, with a fine feminine hat on either
side of him, but George could not find that any particular chair had
been appointed to himself. Eventually he saw an empty chair in the
middle of a row of men at the right-hand transverse table, and he took
it. He had expected, as the sole artistic creator of the town hall whose
completion the gathering celebrated, to be the object of a great deal of
curiosity at the luncheon. But in this expectation he was deceived. If
any curiosity concerning him existed, it was admirably concealed. The
authorities, however, had not entirely forgotten him, for the Town Clerk
that morning had told him that he must reply to the toast of his health.
He had protested against the shortness of the notice, whereupon the
Town Clerk had said casually that a few words would suffice--anything,
in fact, and had hastened off. George was now getting nervous. He was
afraid of hearing his own voice in that long, low interior which he had
made. He had no desire to eat. He felt tired. Still, his case was less
acute than it would have been had the august personage originally hoped
for attended the luncheon. The august personage had not attended on
account of an objection, apropos of an extreme passage in an election
campaign speech, to the occupant of the mayoral chair (who had thus
failed to be transformed into a Lord Mayor). The whole city had then,
though the Mayor was not over-popular, rallied to its representative,
and the Council had determined that the inauguration should be a purely
municipal affair, a family party, proving to the august and to the world
that the city was self-sufficing. The episode was characteristic.

George heard a concert of laughter, which echoed across the room. At the
end of the main table Mr. Phirrips had become a centre of gaiety. Mr.
Phirrips, whom George and the clerk-of-the-works had had severe and
constant difficulty in keeping reasonably near the narrow path of
rectitude, was a merry, sharp, smart, middle-aged man with a skin that
always looked as if he had just made use of an irritant soap. He was one
of the largest contractors in England, and his name on the hoarding of
any building in course of erection seemed to give distinction to that
building. He was very rich, and popular in municipal circles, and
especially with certain councillors, including a labour councillor.
George wondered whether Mr. Phirrips would make a speech. No toast-list
was visible in George's vicinity.

To George the meal seemed to pass with astounding celerity. The old
bishop said grace in six words. The Toast-master bawled for silence. The
health of all classes of society who could rely upon good doctors was
proposed and heartily drunk--princes, prelates, legislators, warriors,
judges--but the catalogue was cut short before any eccentric person
could propose the health of the one-roomed poor, of whom the city was
excessively prolific. And then the Mayor addressed himself to the great
business of the town hall. George listened with throat dry; by way of
precaution he had drunk nothing during the meal; and at each toast he
had merely raised the glass to his lips and infinitesimally sipped; the
coffee was bad and cold and left a taste in his mouth; but everything
that he had eaten left a taste in his mouth. The Mayor began:
"My lords, ladies, and gentlemen,--During the building of
this--er--er--_structure_...." All his speech was in that manner and
that key. Nevertheless he was an able and strong individual, and as an
old trade union leader could be fiercely eloquent with working-men. He
mentioned Alderman Soulter, and there was a tremendous cheer. He did not
mention Alderman Soulter again; a feud burned between these two. After
Alderman Soulter he mentioned finance. He said that that was not the
time to refer to finance, and then spoke of nothing else but finance
throughout the remainder of his speech, until he came to the
peroration--"success and prosperity to our new town hall, the grandest
civic monument which any city has erected to itself in this country
within living memory, aye, and beyond." The frantic applause atoned for
the lack of attention and the semi-audible chattering which had marred
the latter part of the interminable and sagacious harangue. George
thought: "Pardon me! The city has not erected this civic monument. I
have erected it." And he thought upon all the labour he had put into it,
and all the beauty and magnificence which he had evolved. Alderman
Soulter should have replied on behalf of the town hall committee, and
the Alderman who took his place apologized for his inability to fill the
role, and said little.

Then the Toast-master bawled incomprehensibly for the twentieth time,
and a councillor arose and in timid tones said:

"I rise to propose the toast of the architect and contractor."

George was so astounded that he caught scarcely anything of the speech.
It was incredible to him that he, the creative artist, who was solely
responsible for the architecture and decoration of the monument, in
whose unique mind it had existed long before the second brick had been
placed upon the first, should be bracketed in a toast with the tradesman
and middleman who had merely supervised the execution of his scheme
according to rules of thumb. He flushed. He wanted to walk out. But
nobody else appeared to be disturbed. George, who had never before
attended an inauguration, was simply not aware that the toast 'architect
and contractor' was the classic British toast, invariably drunk on such
occasions, and never criticised. He thought: "What a country!" and
remembered hundreds of Mr. Enwright's remarks.... Phrases of the orator
wandered into his ear. "The competition system.... We went to Sir Hugh
Corver, the head of the architectural profession [loud applause] and Sir
Hugh Corver assured us that the design of Mr. George Cannon was the
best. [Hear, hear! Hear, hear!]... Mr. Phirrip, head of the famous firm
of Phirrips Limited [loud applause] ... fortunate, after our misfortune
with the original contractor to obtain such a leading light.... Cannot
sufficiently thank these two--er _officials_ for the intellect, energy,
and patience they have put into their work."

As the speech was concluding, a tactless man sitting next to George,
with whom he had progressed very slowly in acquaintance during the
lunch, leaned towards him and murmured in a confidential tone:

"Did I tell you both naval yards up here have just had orders to work
day and night? Yes. Fact."

George's mind ran back to Mr. Prince, and Mr. Prince's prophecy of war.
Was there something in it after all? The thought passed in an instant,
but the last vestiges of his equanimity had gone. Hearing his name he
jumped up in a mist inhabited by inimical phantoms, and, amid feeble
acclamations here and there, said he knew not what in a voice now
absurdly loud and now absurdly soft, and sat down, amid more feeble
acclamations, feeling an angry fool. It was the most hideous experience.
He lit a cigarette, his first that day.

When Mr. Phirrips rose, the warm clapping was expectant of good things.

"When I was a little boy I remember my father telling me that this town
hall had been started. I never expected to live to see it finished--"

Delighted guffaws, uproarious laughter, explosions of mirth, interrupted
this witty reference to the delays in construction. The speaker smiled
at ease. His eyes glinted. He knew his audience, held it consummately,
and went on.

In the afternoon there was a conversazione, or reception, for the
lunchers and also for the outer fringe of the city's solid
respectability. The whole of the town hall from basement to roof was
open to view, and citizens of all ages wandered in it everywhere,
admiring it, quizzing it, and feeling proudly that it was theirs. George
too wandered about, feeling that it was his. He was slowly recovering
from the humiliation of the lunch. Much of the building pleased him
greatly; at the excellence of some effects and details he marvelled; the
entry into the large hall from the grand staircase was dramatic, just as
he had had intended it should be; the organ was being played, and word
went round that the acoustic (or acoostic) properties of the auditorium
were perfect, and unrivalled by any auditorium in the kingdom. On the
other hand, the crudity of certain other effects and details irritated
the creator, helping him to perceive how much he had learnt in ten
years; in ten years, for example, his ideas about mouldings had been
quite transformed. What chiefly satisfied him was the demonstration,
everywhere, that he had mastered his deep natural impatience of minutiae
--that instinct which often so violently resented the exacting
irksomeness of trifles in the realization of a splendid idea. At
intervals he met an acquaintance and talked, but nobody at all appeared
to comprehend that he alone was the creator of the mighty pile, and that
all the individuals present might be divided artistically into two
classes--himself in one class, the entire remainder in the other. And
nobody appeared to be inconvenienced by the sense of the height of his
achievement or of the splendour of his triumph that day. It is true that
the north hates to seem impressed, and will descend to any duplicity in
order not to seem impressed.

The Town Clerk's clerk came importantly up to him and asked:

"How many reserved seats would you like for the concert?"

A grand ballad concert, at which the most sentimental of contraltos,
helped by other first-class throats, was to minister wholesale to the
insatiable secret sentimentality of the north, had been arranged for the
evening.

"One will be enough," said George.

"Are you alone?" asked the Town Clerk's clerk.

George took the ticket. None of the city fathers or their fashionable
sons had even invited him to dinner. He went forth and had tea alone,
while reading in an evening paper about the Austro-Serbian situation, in
the tea-rooms attached to a cinema-palace. The gorgeous rooms, throbbing
to two-steps and fox-trots, were crammed with customers; but the
waitresses behaved competently. Thence he drove out in a taxi to the
residence of Alderman Soulter. He could see neither the Alderman nor
Miss Soulter; he learnt that the condition of the patient was
reassuring, and that the patient had a very good constitution. Back at
the hotel, he had to wait for dinner. In due course he ate the customary
desolating table-d'hote dinner which is served simultaneously in the
vast, odorous dining-rooms, all furnished alike, of scores and scores of
grand hotels throughout the provinces. Having filled his cigar-case, he
set out once more into the beautiful summer evening. In broad Side Gate
were massed the chief resorts of amusement. The façade of the Empire
music-hall glowed with great rubies and emeralds and amethysts and
topazes in the fading light. Its lure was more powerful than the lure of
the ballad concert. Ignoring his quasi-official duty to the greatest of
sentimental contraltos, he pushed into the splendid foyer of the Empire.
One solitary stall, half a crown, was left for the second house; he
bought it, eager in transgression; he felt that the ballad concert would
have sent him mad.

The auditorium of the Empire was far larger than the auditorium of the
town hall, and it was covered with gold. The curving rows of
plush-covered easy chairs extended backwards until faces became
indistinguishable points in the smoke-misted gloom. Every seat was
occupied; the ballad concert had made no impression upon the music-hall.
The same stars that he could see in London appeared on the gigantic
stage in the same songs and monologues; and as in London the
indispensable revue was performed, but with a grosser and more direct
licentiousness than the West End would have permitted. And all proceeded
with inexorable exactitude according to time-table. And in scores and
scores of similar Empires, Hippodromes, Alhambras, and Pavilions
throughout the provinces, similar entertainments were proceeding with
the same exactitude--another example of the huge standardization of
life. George laughed with the best at the inventive drollery of the
knock-about comedians--Britain's sole genuine contribution to the art of
the modern stage. But there were items in the Empire programme that were
as awful in their tedium as anything at the ballad concert could
be--moments when George could not bear to look over the footlights. And
these items were applauded in ecstasy by the enchanted audience. He
thought of the stupidity, the insensibility, the sheer ignorance of the
exalted lunchers; and he compared them with these qualities in the
Empire audience, and asked himself sardonically whether all artists had
lived in vain. But the atmosphere of the Empire was comfortable,
reassuring, inspiring. The men had their pipes, cigarettes, and women;
the women had the men, the luxury, the glitter, the publicity. They had
attained, they were happy. The frightful curse of the provinces, ennui,
had been conjured away by the beneficent and sublime institution
invented, organized, and controlled by three great trusts.

George stayed till the end of the show. The emptying of the theatre was
like a battle, like the flight of millions from a conflagration. All
humanity seemed to be crowded into the corridors and staircases. Jostled
and disordered, he emerged into the broad street, along which huge,
lighted trams slowly thundered. He walked a little, starting a fresh
cigar. The multitude had resumed its calm. A few noisy men laughed and
swore obscene oaths; and girls, either in couples or with men, trudged,
demure and unshocked, past the roysterers, as though they had neither
ears to hear nor eyes to see. In a few minutes the processions were
dissipated, dissolved into the vastness of the city, and the pavements
nearly deserted. George strolled on towards the Square. The town hall
stood up against the velvet pallor of the starry summer night, massive,
lovely, supreme, deserted. He had conceived it in an office in Russell
Square when he was a boy. And there it was, the mightiest monument of
the city which had endured through centuries of astounding corporate
adventure. He was overwhelmed, and he was inexpressibly triumphant.
Throughout the day he had had no recognition; and as regards the future,
few, while ignorantly admiring the monument, would give a thought to the
artist. Books were eternally signed, and pictures, and sculpture. But
the architect was forgotten. What did it matter? If the creators of
Gothic cathedrals had to accept oblivion, he might. The tower should be
his signature. And no artist could imprint his influence so powerfully
and so mysteriously upon the unconscious city as he was doing. And the
planet was whirling the whole city round like an atom in the icy spaces
between the stars. And perhaps Lois was lying expectant, discontented,
upon the sofa, thinking rebelliously. He was filled with the realization
of universality.

At the hotel another telegram awaited him.

"Good old Ponting!" he exclaimed, after reading it. The message ran:

"We have won it.--PONTING"

He said:

"Why 'we,' Ponting? You didn't win it. I won it."

He said:

"Sir Hugh Corver is not going to be the head of the architectural
profession. I am." He felt the assurance of that in his bones.




CHAPTER II

THE ROLL-CALL

I


The telephone rang in the principal's room of George's office in Museum
Street. He raised his head from the drawing-board with the false gesture
of fatigued impatience which, as a business man, he had long since
acquired, and took the instrument. As a fact he was not really busy; he
was only pretending to be busy; and he rather enjoyed the summons of the
telephone, with its eternal promise of some romantic new turn of
existence. Nevertheless, though he was quite alone, he had to affect
that the telephone was his bane.

"Can Sir Isaac Davids speak to you, sir, from the Artists Club?"

"Put him on."

Immediately came the thick, rich voice of Sir Isaac, with its
implications of cynicism and triumphant disdain--attenuated and weakened
in the telephone, suggesting an object seen through the wrong end of a
telescope.

"Is that you, Cannon?"

"It is," said George shortly. Without yet knowing it, he had already
begun to hate Sir Isaac. His criticism of Sir Isaac was that the man was
too damnably sure of himself. And not all Sir Isaac's obvious power,
and influence, and vast potential usefulness to a young architect,
could prevent George from occasionally, as he put it, 'standing up to
the fellow.'

"Well, you'd better come along here, if you can. I want to see you,"
said the unruffled voice of Sir Isaac.

"Now?"

"Yes."

"All right."

As George replaced the instrument, he murmured:

"I know what that means. It's all off." And after a moment: "I knew
jolly well it would be."

He glanced round the very orderly room, to which, by judicious
furnishing, he had given a severe distinction at no great cost. On the
walls were a few interesting things, including a couple of his own
perspectives. A neo-impressionist oil-sketch over the mantelpiece, with
blue trees and red fields and a girl whose face was a featureless blob,
imperiously monopolized the attention of the beholder, warning him,
whoever he might be, that the inescapable revolutionary future was now
at hand. The room and everything in it, that entity upon which George
had spent so much trouble, and of which he had been so proud, seemed
futile, pointless, utterly unprofitable.

The winning of the Indian limited competition, coupled with the firm
rumour that Sir Isaac Davids had singled him out for patronage, had
brilliantly renewed George's reputation and the jealousy which proved
its reality. The professional journals had been full of him, and
everybody assured everybody that his ultimate, complete permanent
success had never been in doubt. The fact that the barracks would be the
largest barracks in India indicated to the superstitious, and to George
himself, that destiny intended him always to break records. After the
largest town hall, the largest barracks; and it was said that Sir
Isaac's factory was to be the largest factory! But the outbreak of war
had overthrown all reputations, save the military and the political.
Every value was changed according to a fresh standard, as in a
shipwreck. For a week George had felt an actual physical weight in the
stomach. This weight was his own selfish woe, but it was also the woe of
the entire friendly world. Every architect knew and said that the
profession of architecture would be ruined for years. Then the India
Office woke George up. The attitude of the India Office was overbearing.
It implied that it had been marvellously original and virtuous in
submitting the affair of its barracks to even a limited competition,
when it might just as easily have awarded the job to any architect whom
it happened to know, or whom its wife, cousin, or aunt happened to know,
or whose wife, cousin, or aunt happened to know the India Office--and
further, that George ought therefore to be deeply grateful. It said that
in view of the war the barracks must be erected with the utmost
possible, or rather with quite impossible, dispatch, and that George
would probably have to go to India at once. Simultaneously it daily
modified George's accepted plans for the structure, exactly as though it
was a professional architect and George an amateur, and it involved him
in a seemly but intense altercation between itself and the subordinate
bureaucracy of a Presidency. It kept George employed. In due course
people discovered that business must proceed as usual, and even the
architectural profession, despite its traditional pessimism, had hopes
of municipalities and other bodies which were to inaugurate public works
in order to diminish unemployment.

Nevertheless George had extreme difficulty in applying himself
efficiently to urgent tasks. He kept thinking: "It's come! It's come!"
He could not get over the fact that it had come--the European War which
had obsessed men's minds for so many years past. He saved the face of
his own theory as to the immediate impossibility of a great war, by
positively asserting that Germany would never have fought had she
foreseen that Britain would fight. He prophesied (to himself) Germany's
victory, German domination of Europe, and, as the grand central
phenomenon, mysterious ruin for George Edwin Cannon. But the next
instant he would be convinced that Germany would be smashed, and
quickly. Germany, he reckoned superiorly, in 'taking on England' had
'bitten off more than she could chew.'

He knew almost naught of the progress of the fighting. He had obtained
an expensive map of Western Europe and some flagged pins, and had hung
the map up in his hall and had stuck the pins into it with exactitude.
He had moved the pins daily, until little Laurencine one morning, aloft
on a chair, decided to change all the positions of the opposing armies.
Laurencine established German army corps in Marseilles, the
Knockmillydown Mountains, and Torquay, while sending the French to
Elsinore and Aberdeen. There was trouble in the house. Laurencine
suffered, and was given to understand that war was a serious matter.
Still, George soon afterwards had ceased to manipulate the pins; they
seemed to be incapable of arousing his imagination; he could not be
bothered with them; he could not make the effort necessary to acquire a
scientific conception of the western campaign--not to mention the
eastern, as to which his ignorance was nearly perfect.

Yet he read much about the war. Some of the recounted episodes deeply
and ineffaceably impressed him. For example, an American newspaper
correspondent had written a dramatic description of the German army
marching, marching steadily along a great Belgian high road--a
procession without beginning and without end--and of the procession
being halted for his benefit, and of a German officer therein who struck
a soldier several times in the face angrily with his cane, while the man
stood stiffly at attention. George had an ardent desire to spend a few
minutes alone with that officer; he could not get the soldier's bruised
cheek out of his memory.

Again, he was moved and even dismayed by the recitals of the entry of
the German army into Brussels and of its breaking into the goose-step as
it reached the Grande Place, though he regarded the goose-step as too
ridiculous and contemptible for words. Then the French defence of
Dinant, and the Belgian defence of Liége, failure as it was, and the
obstinate resistance at Namur, inspired him; and the engagements between
Belgians and Uhlans, in which the clumsy Uhlans were always scattered,
destroyed for him the dread significance of the term 'Uhlan.'

He simply did not comprehend that all these events were negligible
trifles, that no American correspondent had seen the hundredth part of
the enemy forces, that the troops which marched through Brussels were a
tiny, theatrical side-show, a circus, that the attack on Liége had been
mismanaged, that the great battle at Dinant was a mere skirmish in the
new scale of war, and the engagements with Uhlans mere scuffles, and
that behind the screen of these infinitesimal phenomena _the German
army_, unimagined in its hugeness, horror, and might, was creeping like
a fatal and monstrous caterpillar surely towards France.

A similar screen hid from him the realities of England. He saw bunting
and recruits, and the crowds outside consulates. But he had no idea of
the ceaseless flight of innumerable crammed trains day and night
southwards, of the gathering together of Atlantic liners and excursion
steamers from all the coasts into an unprecedented Armada, of the
sighting of the vanguard of that Armada by an incredulous Boulogne, of
the landing of British regiments and guns and aeroplanes in the midst of
a Boulogne wonderstruck and delirious, and of the thrill which thereupon
ecstatically shivered through France. He knew only that 'the
Expeditionary Force had landed in safety.'

He could not believe that a British Army could face successfully the
legendary Prussians with their Great General Staff, and yet he had a
mystic and entirely illogical belief in the invincibility of the British
Army. He had read somewhere that the German forces amounted in all to
the equivalent of over three hundred divisions; he had been reliably
told that the British forces in France amounted to three divisions and
some cavalry. It was most absurd; but his mysticism survived the
absurdity, so richly was it nourished by news from the strange,
inartistic colonies, where architecture was not understood. Revelation
came to George that the British Empire, which he had always suspected to
be an invention of those intolerable persons the Imperialists, was after
all something more than a crude pink smear across the map of the world.

Withal he was acutely dejected as he left his office to go to the club.


II


Sir Isaac was sitting quite alone in the large smoking-room of the
Artists in Albemarle Street--a beautiful apartment terribly disfigured
by its pictures, which had been procured from fashionable members in the
fashionable taste of twenty years earlier, and were crying aloud for
some one brave enough to put them out of their misery. No interpretation
of the word 'artist' could by any ingenuity be stretched to include Sir
Isaac. Nevertheless he belonged to the club, and so did a number of
other men in like case. The difference between Sir Isaac and the rest
was that Sir Isaac did actually buy pictures, though seldom from
fashionable painters.

He was a personage of about forty-five years, with a rather prominent
belly, but not otherwise stout; a dark man; plenty of stiff black hair
(except for one small central bald patch); a rank moustache, and a
clean-shaven chin apparently woaded in the manner of the ancient
Britons; elegantly and yet severely dressed--braided morning-coat,
striped trousers, small, skin-fitting boots, a black flowered-silk
necktie. As soon as you drew near him you became aware of his
respiratory processes; you were bound to notice continually that without
ceasing he carried on the elemental business of existence. Hair sprouted
from his nose, and the nose was enormous; it led at a pronounced slope
to his high forehead, which went on upwards at exactly the same angle
and was lost in his hair. If the chin had weakly receded, as it often
does in this type, Sir Isaac would have had a face like a spear-head,
like a ram of which the sharp point was the top of his nose; but Sir
Isaac's chin was square, and the wall of it perpendicular.

His expression was usually inquisitive, dissatisfied, and
disdainful--the effect being produced by a slight lifting of the back of
the nostrils and a slight tipping forward of the whole head. His tone,
however, often by its bluff good-humour, contradicted the expression. He
had in an extreme degree the appearance of a Jew, and he had the names
of a Jew; and most people said he was a Jew. But he himself seriously
denied it. He asserted that he came of a Welsh Nonconformist family,
addicted to christening its infants out of the Bible, and could prove
his descent for generations--not that he minded being taken for a Jew
(he would add), was indeed rather flattered thereby, but he simply was
not a Jew. At any rate he was Welsh. A journalist had described him in a
phrase: "All the time he's talking to you in English you feel he's
thinking something different in Welsh." He was an exceedingly rich
industrial, and had made his money by organization; he seemed always to
have leisure.

"Here," he curtly advised George, producing a magnificent Partaga,
similar to the one he was himself smoking, "you'd better have this."

He cut the cigar carefully with a club tool, and pushed the match-stand
across the table with a brusque gesture. George would not thank him for
the cigar.

"You're on that Indian barracks, aren't you?"

"Yes. They're in a Hades of a hurry."

"Well, my factory is in much more of a hurry."

George was startled. He had heard nothing of the factory for a month,
and had assumed that the war had scotched the enterprise.

He said:

"Then the war won't stop you?"

Sir Isaac shook his head slowly, with an arrogant smile. It then
occurred to George that this man differed strangely from all other
men--because the sinister spell of the war had been powerless over him
alone. All other men bore the war in their faces and in their gestures,
but this man did not.

"I'm going to make munitions now--explosives. I'm going to have the
biggest explosives factory in the world. However, the modifications in
the general plan won't be serious. I want to talk to you about that."

"Have you got contracts, then, already?"

"No. Both the War Office and the Admiralty have told me they have all
the explosives they want," he sneered. "But I've made a few inquiries,
and I think that by the time my factory's up they'll be wanting more
explosives than they can get. In fact I wish I could build half a dozen
factories. Dare say I shall."

"Then you think we're in for a long war?"

"Not specially that. If it's a long war you English will win. If it's a
short war the Germans will win, and it will be the end of France as a
great power. That's all."

"Won't it be the end of your factory too?"

"Noh!" exclaimed Sir Isaac, with careless compassion in his deep, viscid
voice. "If it's a short war, there'll be another war. You English will
never leave it alone. So that whatever happens, if I take up explosives,
I can't go wrong. It's velvet."

"It seems to me we shall bust up the whole world if we aren't careful,
soon."

Sir Isaac smiled more compassion.

"Not at all," he said easily. "Not at all. Things are always arranged in
the end--more or less satisfactorily, of course. It's up to the
individual to look out for himself."

George said:

"I was thinking of going into the Army."

The statement was not strictly untrue, but he had never formulated it,
and he had never thought consecutively of such a project, which did
indeed appear too wild and unpractical for serious consideration.

"This recruiting's been upsetting you."

George's vague patriotism seemed to curdle at these half-dozen scornful
words.

"Do you think I oughtn't to go into the Army, Sir Isaac?"

"My dear boy, any----can go into the Army. And if you go into the Army
you'll lose your special qualities. I see you as the best factory
designer we have, architecturally. You've only just started, but you
have it in you. And your barracks is pretty good. Of course, if you
choose to indulge in sentimentality you can deprive the country of an
architect in a million and make it a present of a mediocre soldier--for
you haven't got the mind of a soldier. But if you do that, mark my
words--you'll only do it to satisfy the egotism that you call your
heart, you'll only do it in order to feel comfortable; just as a woman
gives a penny to a beggar and thinks it's charity when it's nothing of
the sort. There are fellows that go and enlist because they hear a band
play."

"Yes," George concurred. He hated to feel himself confronted by a mind
more realistic than his own, but he was realistic enough to admit the
fact. What Sir Isaac said was unanswerable, and it appealed very
strongly to George. He cast away his sentimentality, ashamed of it. And
at the same time he felt greatly relieved in other ways.

"You'd better put this Indian barracks on one side as much as you can,
or employ some one to help you. I shall want all your energies."

"But I shall probably have to go to India. The thing's very urgent."

Sir Isaac scorned him in a profound gaze. The smoke from their two
magnificent cigars mingled in a canopy above them.

"Not it!" said Sir Isaac. "What's more, it's not wanted at all. They
think it is, because they're absolutely incapable of thought. They know
the word 'war' and they know the word 'barracks.' They put them together
and imagine it's logic. They say: 'We were going to build a barracks,
and now we're at war. Therefore we must hurry up with the barracks.'
That's how they reason, and the official mind will never get beyond it.
_Why_ do they want the barracks? If they want the barracks, what's the
meaning of what they call 'the response of the Indian Empire'? Are they
going to send troops to India or take them away from India? They're
going to take them away, of course. Mutiny of India's silent millions?
Rubbish! Not because a mutiny would contradict the far-famed 'response
of the Indian Empire,' but because India's silent millions haven't got a
rifle amongst them. You needn't tell me they've given you forty reasons
for getting on with that barracks. I know their reasons. All of 'em put
together only mean that in a dull, dim Oxford-and-Cambridge way they see
a connexion between the word 'war' and the word 'barracks.'"

George laughed, and then, after a few seconds, Sir Isaac gave a short,
rough laugh.

"But if they insist on me going to India--" George began, and paused.

Sir Isaac grew meditative.

"I say, speaking of voyages," he murmured in a tone almost dreamy. "If
you have any loose money, put it into ships, and keep it there. You'll
double it, you'll treble it.... Any ships. No matter what ships."

"Well, I haven't got any loose money," said George curtly. "And what I
want to know is, if they insist on me going to India, what am I to do?"

"Tell them you can't go. Tell 'em your professional engagements won't
permit it. They'll lick your boots, and ask humbly if you can suggest
any suitable person to represent you. I shall want all your energies,
and my factory will be worth more to this country in the war than all
the barracks under heaven. Now just bend your eye to these."

He took some papers from his tail-pocket. The discussion grew technical.


III


George sailed down Piccadilly westwards on the top of a motor-bus. The
August afternoon was superb. Piccadilly showed more than its usual
splendour of traffic, for the class to whom the sacred word 'England'
signified personal dominion and a vast apparatus of personal luxury
either had not gone away for its holiday or had returned therefrom in a
hurry. The newspaper placards spoke of great feats of arms by the
Allies. Through the leafage of Hyde Park could be seen uncountable smart
troops manoeuvring in bodies. On the top of the motor-bus a student of
war was explaining to an ignorant friend that the active adhesion of
Japan, just announced, meant the beginning of the end for Germany. From
Japan he went to Namur, seeing that Namur was the 'chief bastion' of the
defensive line, and that hence the Germans would not be 'allowed' to
take it. Almost every motor-bus carried a fine specimen of this type of
philosopher, to whom the whole travelling company listened while
pretending not to listen. George despised him for his manner, but agreed
with some of his reasoning.

George was thinking chiefly about Sir Isaac. Impressive person, Sir
Isaac, even if hateful! It was remarkable how the fellow seemed always
to have leisure. Organization, of course! Indubitably the fellow's
arguments could not be gainsaid. The firing-line was not the only or
even the most important part of the national war machine. To suppose
otherwise was to share the crude errors of the childlike populace and
its Press. Men were useless without guns, guns without shot, shot
without explosives; and explosives could not be produced without a
factory. The populace would never understand the close interdependence
of various activities; it would never see beyond the recruiting station;
it was meet only for pity. Sir Isaac had uttered a very wise saying:
"Things are always arranged in the end ... It's up to the individual to
look out for himself." Sir Isaac was freed from the thrall of
mob-sentimentality. He was a super-man. And he was converting George
into a super-man. George might have gone back to the office, but he was
going home instead, because he could think creatively just as well
outside the office as inside--so why should he accept the convention of
the ordinary professional man. (Sir Isaac assuredly did not.) He had
telephoned to the office. A single consideration appealed to him: How
could he now best serve his country? Beyond question he could now serve
his country best as an architect. If his duty marched with his
advantage, what matter? It was up to the individual to look out for
himself. And he, George, with already an immense reputation, would
steadily enhance his reputation, which in the end would surpass all
others in the profession. The war could not really touch him--no more
than it could touch Sir Isaac; by good fortune, and by virtue of the
impartiality of his intelligence, he was above the war.... Yes, Sir
Isaac, disliked and unwillingly but deeply respected, had cleared his
ideas for him.

In Elm Park Gardens he met the white-clad son of a Tory M.P. who lived
in that dignified street.

"The very man! Come and make a fourth, will you, Cannon?" asked the
youth, dandiacal in flannels, persuasively and flatteringly.

George demanded with firmness:

"Who are the other two?"

"Miss Horton and Gladys What's-her-name."

Why shouldn't he play at tennis? It was necessary to keep fit.

"All right. But not for long, you know."

"That's all right. Hurry up and get into your things."

"Ten minutes."

And in little more than ten minutes he was swinging a racket on the
private sward that separates Elm Park Gardens East from Elm Park Gardens
West, and is common to the residents of both. He had not encountered
Lois at home, and had not thought it necessary to seek her out. He and
she were often invited to play tennis in Elm Park Gardens.

The grass was beautifully kept. At a little distance two gardeners were
at work, and a revolving sprinkler whirled sprays of glinting water in a
wide circle. The back windows of the two streets disclosed not the
slightest untidiness nor deshabille; rising irregularly in tier over
tier to the high roof-line, they were all open, and all neatly
curtained, and many of them had gorgeous sun-blinds. The sound of one
or two pianos emerged faintly on the warm, still afternoon. Miss Horton
and the slim Gladys were dressed in white, with short skirts, at once
elegant and athletic. Miss Horton, very tall and strong, with clear
eyes, and a complexion damaged by undue exposure to healthy fresh air,
was a fine player of many years' experience, now at the decline of her
powers. She played seriously, every stroke conscientious and calculated,
and she gave polite, good-humoured hints to the youth, her partner.
George and Gladys were together. Gladys, eighteen, was a delightful
girl, the raw material of a very sound player; she held herself well,
and knew by instinct what style was. A white belt defined her waist in
the most enchanting fashion. George appreciated her, as a specimen of
the newest generation of English girls. There were thousands of them in
London alone, an endless supply, with none of the namby-pambiness and
the sloppiness and the blowziness of their forerunners. Walking in
Piccadilly or Bond Street or the Park, you might nowadays fancy yourself
in Paris ... Why indeed should he not be playing tennis at that hour?
The month was August. The apparatus of pleasure was there. Used or
unused, it would still be there. It could not be destroyed simply
because the times were grave. And there was his health; he would work
better after the exercise. What purpose could there be in mournful
inactivity? Yet continuously, as he ran about the court, and smiled at
Gladys, and called out the score, and exclaimed upon his failures in
precision, the strange, physical weight oppressed his stomach. He
supposed that nearly everybody carried that physical weight. But did Sir
Isaac? Did the delicious Gladys? The youth on the other side of the net
was in the highest spirits because in a few days he would be entering
Sandhurst.

A butler appeared from the French window of the ground floor of the
M.P.'s house, walked down the curving path screened by a pergola, and
came near the court with a small white paper in his solemn hand. At a
suitable moment he gave the paper to the young master, who glanced at it
and stuffed it into his pocket; the butler departed. A few minutes later
the players changed courts. While the girls chatted apart, the youth
leaped over the net, and, drawing the paper from his pocket, showed it
furtively to George. It bore the words:

"Namur has fallen."

The M.P.'s household received special news by telephone from a friend at
the War Office.

The youth raised his eyebrows, and with a side-glance seemed to say that
there could be no object in telling the women immediately. The next
instant the game was resumed with full ardour.

George missed his strokes. Like thousands of other people, untaught by
the episode of Liége, he had counted upon Namur. Namur, the bastion, the
shoulder of the newly forming line, if not impregnable, was expected to
hold out for many days. And it had tumbled like a tin church, and with
it the brave edifice of his confidence. He saw the Germans inevitably in
Paris, blowing up Paris quarter by quarter, arrondissement by
arrondissement, imposing peace, dictating peace, forcing upon Europe
unspeakable humiliations. He saw Great Britain compelled to bow; and he
saw worse than that. And the German officer, having struck across the
face with his cane the soldier standing at attention, would go back to
Germany in triumph more arrogant than ever, to ogle adoring virgins and
push cowed and fatuous citizens off the pavement into the gutter. The
solid houses of Elm Park Gardens, with their rich sun-blinds, the
perfect sward, the white-frocked girls, the respectful gardeners, the
red motor-buses flitting past behind the screen of bushes in the
distance, even the butler in his majestic and invulnerable
self-conceit--the whole systematized scene of correctness and tradition
trembled as if perceived through the quivering of hot air. Gladys,
reliant on the male and feeling that the male could no longer be relied
on, went 'off her game,' with apologies; the experience of Miss Horton
asserted itself, and the hard-fought set was lost by George and his
partner. He reminded the company that he had only come for a short time,
and left in a mood of bitter blackness.


IV


In front of his own house George saw a tradesman's coupé of the
superior, discreet sort, with a smart horse (the same being more
'distinctive' than motor-traction), a driver liveried in black, and the
initials of the firm in a restrained monogram on the doors. He thought:
"She's blueing money again. Of course it's her own, but--" He was
extremely sardonic. In the drawing-room he found not only Lois but
Laurencine and an attentive, respectful, bright-faced figure rather
stylishly dressed in black. This last was fastening a tea-gown on the
back of pale Lois, who stood up with a fatigued, brave air. Laurencine
sat critically observant on the end of a sofa. The furniture of the room
was heaped with tea-gowns, and other garments not very dissimilar,
producing a rich and exciting effect. All three women quickened to
George's entry.

"Oh! George!" said Lois querulously. "Are you going to play tennis? I
wish I could! I'm so glad you came in; we'd no idea you were in the
house, had we, Laurencine? Laurencine's giving me a tea-gown. Which of
them do you prefer? It's no good me having one you don't like."

He had been unjust to her, then.

"It's really her birthday present," said Laurencine, "only a bit late.
Oh! Dear! Darling, do sit down, you're standing too long."

Both Laurencine and the young woman in black regarded Lois with soft
compassion, and she sat down. Laurencine too was a mother. But she had
retained her girlhood. She was a splendid, powerful, erect creature,
handsome, with a frank, benevolent, sane face, at the height of her
physical perfection. George had a great fondness for her. Years earlier
he had wondered how it was that he had not fallen in love with her
instead of with Lois. But he knew the reason now. She lacked force of
individuality. She was an adorer by instinct. She adored Lois; Lois
could do no wrong. More strange, she adored her husband. Ingenuous
simpleton! Yet wise! Another thing was that her mind was too pure.
Instead of understanding, it rejected. It was a mind absolutely
impregnable to certain phenomena. And this girl still enjoyed musical
comedies and their successors in vogue, the revues!

"The Germans have taken Namur," George announced.

The news impressed. Even the young woman in black permitted herself by a
facial gesture to show that she was interested in the war as well as in
tea-gowns, and apart from its effect on tea-gowns.

"Oh! Dear!" murmured Laurencine.

"Is it serious?" Lois demanded.

"You bet it is!" George replied.

"But what's Sir John French doing, then? I say, Laurencine, I think I
shall have that pale blue one, after all, if you don't mind." The black
young woman went across to the piano and brought the pale blue one.
"George, don't you think so?"

The gown was deferentially held out for his inspection.

"Well, I can't judge if I don't see it on, can I?" he said, yielding
superciliously to their mood. Women were incurable. Namur had fallen,
but the room was full of finery, and the finery claimed attention. And
if Paris had fallen, it would have been the same. So he told himself.
Nevertheless the spectacle of the heaped finery and its absorbed
priestess was very agreeable. Lois rose. Laurencine and the priestess
helped her to remove the white gown she wore, and to put on the blue
one. The presence of the male somewhat disturbed the priestess, but the
male had signified a wish and the wish was flattering and had to be
fulfilled. George, cynically, enjoyed her constraint. He might at least
have looked out of the window, but he would not.

"Yes, that's fine," he decided carelessly, when the operation was done.
He did not care a pin which tea-gown Lois had.

"I knew you'd like it better," said Lois eagerly. The other two, in
words or by demeanour, applauded his august choice.

The affair was over. The priestess began to collect her scattered stock
into a light trunk. Behind her back, Lois took hold of Laurencine and
kissed her fondly. Laurencine smiled, and persuaded Lois into a chair.

"You will of course keep that on, madam?" the priestess suggested.

"Oh yes, darling, you must rest, really!" said Laurencine earnestly.

"Thank you, madam."

In three minutes the priestess, bearing easily the trunk by a strap, had
gone, bowing. Lois's old tea-gown, flung across the head of the sofa,
alone remained to brighten the furniture.

The drawing-room door opened again immediately, and a military officer
entered. Laurencine sprang up with a little girlish scream and ran to
him.

"Oh! Dearest! Have you got them already? You never told me you would
have! How lovely you look!"

Blushing with pleasure and pride, she kissed him. It was Everard Lucas.
Laurencine had come to Elm Park Road that afternoon with the first news
that Everard, through a major known to his late mother, had been offered
a commission in a Territorial line regiment. George, who saw Lucas but
seldom, had not the slightest idea of this enormous family event, and
he was astounded; he had not been so taken back by anything perhaps for
years. Lucas was rounder and his face somewhat coarser than in the past;
but the uniform had created a new Lucas. It was beautifully made and he
wore it well; it suited him; he had the fine military air of a regular;
he showed no awkwardness, only a simple vanity.

"Don't you feel as if you must kiss him, Lois darling?" said Laurencine.

"Oh! I certainly must!" Lois cried, forgetting her woes in the new
tea-gown and in the sudden ecstasy produced by the advent of an officer
into the family.

Lucas bent down and kissed his sister-in-law, while Laurencine beheld
the act with delight.

"The children must see you before you go," said Lois.

"Madam, they shall see their uncle," Lucas answered. At any rate his
agreeable voice had not coarsened. He turned to George: "What d'you
think of it, George?"

"My boy, I'm proud of you," said George. In his tennis-flannels he felt
like one who has arrived at an evening party in morning-dress. And
indeed he was proud of Lucas. Something profound and ingenuous in him
rose into his eyes and caused them to shine.

Lucas related his adventures with the tailor and other purveyors, and
explained that he had to 'join his regiment' the next day, but would be
able to remain in London for the present. George questioned him about
his business affairs.

"No difficulty about that whatever!" said Lucas lightly. "The old firm
will carry on as usual; Enwright and Orgreave will have to manage it
between them; and of course they wouldn't dream of trying to cut off the
spondulicks. Not that I should let that stop me if they did."

"Yes, it's all very well for _you_ to talk like that!" said Lois, with a
swift change of tone. "You've got partners to do your work for you, and
you've got money.... Have you written to mother, Laurencine?"

George objected to his wife making excuses. His gaze faltered.

"Of course, darling!" Laurencine answered eagerly, agreeing with her
sister's differentiation between George and Everard. "No, not yet. But
I'm going to to-night. Everard, we ought to be off."

"I've got a taxi outside," said Lucas.

"A taxi?" she repeated in a disappointed tone. And then, as an
afterthought: "Well, I have to call at Debenham's."

The fact was that Laurencine wanted to be seen walking with her military
officer in some well-frequented thoroughfare. They lived at Hampstead.

Lois rang the bell.

"Ask nurse to bring the children down, please--at once," she told the
parlourmaid.

"So this is the new tea-gown, if I mistake not!" observed Lucas in the
pause. "_Très chic_! I suppose Laurencine's told you all about the
chauffeur being run off with against his will by a passionate virgin.
_I_ couldn't start the car this morning myself."

"You never could start a car by yourself, my boy," said George. "What's
this about the passionate virgin?"


V


George woke up in the middle of the night. Lois slept calmly; he could
just hear her soft breathing. He thought of all the occupied bedrooms,
of the health of children, the incalculable quality in wives, the touchy
stupidity of nurses and servants. The mere human weight of the household
oppressed him terribly. And he thought of the adamant of landlords, the
shifty rapacity of tradesmen, the incompetence of clerks, the mere
pompous foolishness of Government departments, the arrogance of Jew
patrons, and the terrifying complexity of problems of architecture on a
large scale. He was the Atlas supporting a vast world a thousand times
more complex than any problem of architecture. He wondered how he did
it. But he did do it, alone; and he kept on doing it. Let him shirk the
burden, and not a world but an entire universe would crumble. If he told
Lois that he was going to leave her, she would collapse; she would do
dreadful things. He was indispensable not only at home but
professionally. All was upon his shoulders and upon nobody else's. He
was bound, he was a prisoner, he had no choice, he was performing his
highest duty, he was fulfilling the widest usefulness of which he was
capable ... Besides, supposing he did go insane and shirk the burden,
they would all say that he had been influenced by Lucas's uniform--the
mere sight of the uniform!--like a girl! He could not stand that,
because it would be true. Not that he would ever admit its truth! He
recalled Lucas's tact in refraining from any suggestion, even a jocular
suggestion, that he, George, ought also to be in uniform. Lucas was
always tactful. Be damned to his tact! And the too eager excuses made
by Lois in his behalf also grated on his susceptibility. He had no need
of excuses. The woman was taciturn by nature, and yet she was constantly
saying too much! And did any of the three of them--Lois, Laurencine, and
Lucas--really appreciate the war? They did not. They could not envisage
it. Lucas was wearing uniform solely in obedience to an instinct.

At this point the cycle of his reflections was completed, and began
again. He thought of all the occupied bedrooms.... Thus, in the dark,
warm night the contents of his mind revolved endlessly, with extreme
tedium and extreme distress, and each moment his mood became more
morbid.

An occasional sound of traffic penetrated into the room,--strangely
mournful, a reminder of the immense and ineffable melancholy of a city
which could not wholly lose itself in sleep. The window lightened. He
could descry his wife's portable clock on the night-table. A quarter to
four. Turning over savagely in bed, he muttered: "My night's done for.
And nearly five hours to breakfast. Good God!" The cycle resumed, and
was enlarged.

At intervals he imagined that he dozed; he did doze, if it is possible
while you are dozing to know that you doze. His personality separated
into two personalities, if not more. He was on a vast plain, and yet he
was not there, and the essential point of the scene was that he was not
there. Thousands and tens of thousands of men stood on this plain, which
had no visible boundaries. A roll-call was proceeding. A resounding and
mysterious voice called out names, and at each name a man stepped
briskly from the crowds and saluted and walked away. But there was no
visible person to receive the salute; the voice was bodiless. George
became increasingly apprehensive; he feared a disaster, yet he could not
believe that it would occur. It did occur. Before it arrived he knew
that it was arriving. The voice cried solemnly:

"George Edwin Cannon."

An awful stillness and silence followed, enveloping the entire infinite
plain. George trembled. He was there, but he was not there. Men looked
at each other, raising their eyebrows. The voice did not deign to repeat
the call. After a suitable pause, the voice cried solemnly:

"Everard Lucas."

And Lucas in his new uniform stepped gravely forward and saluted and
walked away.

"Was I asleep or awake?" George asked himself. He could not decide. At
any rate the scene impressed him. The bigness of the plain, the summons,
the silence, the utter absence of an expression of reproof or regret--of
any comment whatever.

At five o'clock he arose, and sat down in his dressing-gown at Lois's
very untidy and very small writing-desk, and wrote a letter on her
notepaper. The early morning was lovely; it was celestial.

"DEAR DAVIDS," the letter began.--That would annoy the fellow, who liked
the address respectful.--"Dear Davids, I have decided to join the Army,
and therefore cannot proceed further with your commission. However, the
general idea is complete. I advise you to get it carried out by Lucas &
Enwright. Enwright is the best architect in England. You may take this
from me. I'm his disciple. You might ring me up at the office this
afternoon.--Yours faithfully, GEORGE CANNON"

"P.S.--Assuming you go to Lucas & Enwright, I can either make some
arrangement with them as to sharing fees myself, or you can pay me an
agreed sum for the work I've done, and start afresh elsewhere. I shall
want all the money I can get hold of."

Yes, Sir Isaac would be very angry. George smiled. He was not
triumphant, but he was calm. In the full sanity of the morning, every
reason against his going into the Army had vanished. The material
objection was ridiculous--with Edwin Clayhanger at the back of him!
Moreover, some money would be coming in. The professional objection was
equally ridiculous. The design for the Indian barracks existed complete;
and middle-aged mediocrity could carry it out in a fashion, and Lucas &
Enwright could carry it out better than he could carry it out himself.
As for Davids, he had written. There was nothing else of importance in
his office. The other competition had not been won. If people said that
he had been influenced by Lucas's uniform, well, they must say it. They
would not say it for more than a few days. After a few days the one
interesting fact would be that he had joined. By such simple and curt
arguments did he annihilate the once overwhelming reasons against his
joining the Army.

But he did not trouble to marshal the reasons in favour of his joining
the Army. He had only one reason: he must! He quite ignored the larger
aspects of the war--the future of civilization, freedom versus slavery,
right versus wrong, even the responsibilities of citizenship and the
implications of patriotism. His decision was the product, not of
argument, but of feeling. However, he did not feel a bit virtuous. He
had to join the Army, and 'that was all there was to it.' A beastly
nuisance, this world-war! It was interfering with his private affairs;
it might put an end to his private affairs altogether; he hated
soldiering; he looked inimically at the military caste. An unspeakable
nuisance. But there the war was, and he was going to answer to his name.
He simply could not tolerate the dreadful silence and stillness on the
plain after his name had been called. "Pooh! Sheer sentimentality!" he
said to himself, thinking of the vision--half-dream, half-fancy. "Rotten
sentimentality!"

He asked:

"Damn it! Am I an Englishman or am I not?"

Like most Englishmen, he was much more an Englishman than he ever
suspected.

"What on earth are you doing, George?"

At the voice of his wife he gave a nervous jump, and then instantly
controlled himself and looked round. Her voice was soft, liquid, weak
with slumber. But, lying calmly on one side, her head half buried in the
pillow, and the bedclothes pushed back from her shoulders, she was
wideawake and gazed at him steadily.

"I'm just writing a letter," he answered gruffly.

"Now? What letter?"

"Here! You shall read it." He walked straight across the room in his gay
pyjamas only partly hidden by the splendid dressing-gown, and handed her
the letter. Moving nothing but her hand, she took the letter and held it
in front of her eyes. He sat down between the beds, on the edge of his
own bed, facing her.

"Whatever is it?"

"Read it. You've got it," he said, with impatience. He was trembling,
aware that the crisis had suddenly leapt at him.

"Oh!"

She had read the opening phrase; she had received the first shock. But
the tone of her exclamation gave no clue at all to her attitude. It
might mean anything--anything. She shut her eyes; then glanced at him,
terror-struck, appealing, wistful, implacable.

"Not at once?"

"Yes, at once."

"But surely you'll at least wait until after October."

He shook his head.

"But why can't you?"

"I can't."

"But there's no object--"

"I've got to do it."

"You're horribly cruel."

"Well, that's me!" He was sullen, and as hard as a diamond.

"George, I shall never be able to stand it. It's too much to expect.
It'll kill me."

"Not it! What's the use of talking like that? If I'd been in the
Territorials before the war, like lots of chaps, I should have been gone
long ago, and you'd have stood it all right. Don't you understand we're
at war? Do you imagine the war can wait for things like babies?"

She cried:

"It's no good your going on in that strain. You can't leave me alone
with all this house on my shoulders, and so that's flat."

"Who wants to leave you all alone in the house? You can go and stay at
Ladderedge, children and nurse and all." This scheme presented itself to
him as he spoke.

"Of course I can't! We can't go and plant ourselves on people like that.
Besides--"

"Can't you? You'll see!"

He caught her eye. Why was he being so brutal to her? What conceivable
purpose was served by this harshness? He perceived that his nerves were
overstrung. And in a swift rush of insight he saw the whole situation
from her point of view. She was exhausted by gestation; she lived in a
world distorted. Could she help her temperament? She was in the gravest
need of his support; and he was an ass, a blundering fool. His severity
melted within him, and secretly he became tender as only a man can be.

"You silly girl!" he said, slightly modifying his voice, taking care not
to disclose all at once the change in his mood.

"You silly girl! Can't you see they'll be so proud to have you they
won't be able to contain themselves? They'll turn the whole place
upside-down for you. I know them. They'll pretend it's nothing, but
mother won't sleep at night for thinking how to arrange things for the
best, and as for my cuckoo of an uncle, if you notice something funny
about your feet, it'll be the esteemed alderman licking your boots.
You'll have the time of your life. In fact they'll ruin your character
for you. There'll be no holding you afterwards."

She did not smile, but her eyes smiled. He had got the better of her. He
had been cleverer than she was. She was beaten.

"But we shall have no money."

"Read the letter, child. I'm not a fool."

"I know you're not a fool. No one knows that better than me."

He went on:

"And what's uncle's money for, if it comes to that?"

"But we can't spunge on them like that!"

"Spunge be dashed! What's money for? It's no good till it's spent. If he
can't spend it on us, who can he spend it on? He always makes out he's
fiendishly hard, but he's the most generous idiot ever born."

"Yes, you're awfully like him."

"I'm not."

He was suddenly alive to the marvellous charm of the intimacy of the
scene with his wife, in the early summer dawn, in the silent, enchanted
house of sleepers, in the disorder of the heaped bedroom. They were
alone together, shameless in front of one another, and nobody knew or
saw, or could ever know or see. Their relations were unique, the
resultant of long custom, of friction, of misunderstanding, of
affection, of incomprehensible instincts, of destiny itself. He thought:
"I have lived for this sensation, and it is worth living for."

Without the slightest movement, she invited him with her strange eyes,
and as she did so she was as mysterious as ever she had been. He bent
down responsively. She put her hot, clammy hands on his shoulders, and
kept his head at a little distance and looked through his eyes into his
soul. The letter had dropped to the floor.

"I knew you would!" she murmured, and then snatched him to her, and
kissed him, and kept her mouth on his.

"You didn't," he said, as soon as she loosed him. "I didn't know
myself."

But he privately admitted that perhaps she did know. She had every
fault, but she was intelligent. Constantly he was faced with that fact.
She did not understand the significance of the war; she lacked
imagination; but her understanding was sometimes terrible. She was
devious; but she had a religion. He was her religion. She would cast the
god underfoot--and then in a passion of repentance restore it ardently
to the sacred niche.

She said:

"I couldn't have borne it if Everard had gone and you hadn't. But of
course you meant to go all the time."

That was how she saved his amour-propre.

"I always knew you were a genius--"

"Oh! Chuck it, kid!"

"But you're more, somehow. This business--"

"You don't mean joining the Army?"

"Yes."

"What rot! There's nothing in it. Fellows are doing it everywhere."

She smiled superiorly, and then inquired:

"How do you join? What are you going to do? Shall you ask Everard?"

"Well--" he hesitated. He had no desire to consult Lucas.

"Why don't you see Colonel Rannion?" she Suggested.

"Jove! That's a scheme. Never thought of him!"

Her satisfaction at the answer was childlike, and he was filled with
delight that it should be so. They launched themselves into an
interminable discussion about every possible arrangement of everything.
But in a pause of it he destroyed its tremendous importance by remarking
casually:

"No hurry, of course. I bet you I shall be kept knocking about here for
months."




CHAPTER III

IN THE MACHINE

I


Colonel Rannion was brother of the wife of the man for whom George had
built the house at Hampstead. George had met him several times at the
dinners and other reunions to which a sympathetic architect is often
invited in the dwelling that he has created. Colonel Rannion had greatly
liked his sister's house, had accordingly shown much esteem for George,
and had even spoken of ordering a house for himself.

Just as breakfast was being served, George had the idea of ringing up
the Hampstead people for the Colonel's address, which he obtained at
once. The Colonel was staying at the Berkeley Hotel. The next moment he
got the Berkeley, and the Colonel in person. The Colonel remembered him
instantly. George said he wanted to see him. What about? Well, a
commission. The Colonel said he had to leave the hotel in twenty-five
minutes. "I can be with you in less than a quarter of an hour," said
George--or rather, not George, but some subconscious instinct within
him, acting independently of him. The children, with nurse, were in the
dining-room, waiting to breakfast with father. They were washed, they
were dressed; the dining-room had been cleaned; the pleasant smell of
breakfast-cooking wandered through the rooms; since the early talk
between George and Lois in the silent, sleeping house the house had
gradually come to life; it was now in full being--even to the girl
scrubbing the front steps--except that Lois was asleep. Exhausted after
the strange and crucial scene, she had dozed off, and had never moved
throughout George's dressing.

Now he rushed into the dining-room--"I have to go, nurse. Fardy can't
have his breakfast with you!"--and rushed out. A minute previously he
had felt a serious need of food after the long, sleepless morning. The
need vanished. He scurried up Elm Park Gardens like a boy in the warm,
fresh air, and stopped a taxi. He was extremely excited. None but Lois
knew the great secret. He had kept it to himself. He might have burst
into the kitchen--for he was very apt to be informal--and said: "Well,
cook, I'm going into the Army!" What a household sensation the news
would cause, and what an office sensation! His action would affect the
lives of all manner of people. And the house, at present alive and
organic, would soon be dead. He was afraid. What he was doing was
tremendous. Was it madness? He had a feeling of unreality.

At the entrance to the Berkeley Hotel lay a large automobile, with a
spurred and highly polished military chauffeur. At the door of Colonel
Rannion's room was stationed a spurred and highly polished, erect
orderly--formidable contrast to the flaccid waiters who slouched palely
in the corridors. The orderly went into the room and saluted with a
click. George followed, as into a dentist's surgery. It was a small,
elegant, private sitting-room resembling a boudoir. In the midst of
delicately tinted cushions and flower-vases stood Colonel Rannion,
grey-haired, blue-eyed, very straight, very tall, very slim--the
slimness accentuated by a close-fitted uniform which began with red tabs
and ended in light leggings and gleaming spurs. He conformed absolutely
to the traditional physical type of soldier, and the sight of him gave
pleasure.

"Good morning. Cannon. Glad to see you." He seemed to put a secret
meaning into the last words.

He shook hands as he spoke, firmly, decisively, efficiently.

"I hope I'm not troubling you too much," George began.

"Troubling me! Sit down. You want a commission. The Army wants to give
commissions to men like you. I think you would make a good officer."

"Of course I'm absolutely ignorant of the Army. Absolutely."

"Yes. What a pity that is! If you'd only been a pre-war Territorial you
might have done three weeks' urgent work for your country by this time."
The remark was a polite reproof.

"I might," admitted George, to whom the notion of working for his
country had never before occurred.

"Do you think you'd like the Artillery?" Colonel Rannion questioned
sharply. His tone was increasing in sharpness.

With an equal sharpness George answered unhesitatingly: "Yes, I
should."

"Can you ride?"

"I can _ride_. In holidays and so on I get on my mother's horses."

"Have you hunted?"

"Never."

"H'm!... Well, I know my friend Colonel Hullocher, who commands the
Second Brigade of--er--my Division, is short of an officer. Would you
care for that?"

"Certainly."

Without saying anything else Colonel Rannion took up the telephone. In
less than half a minute George heard him saying: "Colonel Hullocher....
Ask him to be good enough to come to the telephone at once.... That you,
Hullocher?"

George actually trembled. He no longer felt that heavy weight on his
stomach, but he felt 'all gone.' He saw himself lying wounded near a
huge gun on a battlefield.

Colonel Rannion was continuing into the telephone:

"I can recommend a friend of mine to you for a commission. George
Cannon--C-a-n-n-o-n--the architect. I don't know whether you know of
him.... Oh! About thirty.... No, but I think he'd suit you.... Who
recommends him? _I_ do.... Like to see him, I suppose, first?... No, no
necessity to see him. I'll tell him.... Yes, I shall see you in the
course of the day." The conversation then apparently deviated to other
subjects, and drew to a close.... "Good-bye. Thanks.... Oh! I say. Shall
he get his kit?... Cannon.... Yes, he'd better. Yes, that's understood
of course. Good-bye."

"That will be quite all right," said Colonel Rannion to George. "Colonel
Hullocher thinks you may as well see to your kit at once, provided of
course you pass the doctor and you are ready to work for nothing until
your commission comes along."

"Oh! Naturally!" George agreed, in a dream. He was saying to himself,
frightened, astounded, staggered, and yet uplifted: "_Get my kit! Get my
kit!_ But it's scarcely a minute since I decided to go into the Army."

"I may get your commission ante-dated. I haven't all the papers here,
but give me an address where I can find you at once, and you shall have
them this afternoon. I'll get the Colonel to send them to the
Territorial Association to-morrow, and probably in about a month you'll
be in the _Gazette_. I don't know when Colonel Hullocher will want you
to report for duty, but I shall see him to-day. You'll get a telegram
when you're needed. Now I must go. Which way are you going?"

"I'm going home for my breakfast," said George, writing down his two
addresses.

Colonel Rannion said:

"I'm off to Wimbledon. I can drop you in Fulham Road if you like."

In the automobile George received a few useful hints, but owing to the
speed of the vehicle the time was far too short for any extensive
instruction. The car drew up. For an instant Colonel Rannion became
freely cordial. "He must rather have cottoned to me, or he wouldn't have
done what he has," thought George, proud to be seen in converse with a
staff-officer, waving a hand in adieu. And he thought: "Perhaps next
time I see him I shall be saluting him!"

The children and nurse were still at breakfast. Nothing had changed in
the house during his absence. But the whole house was changed. It was a
house unconvincing, incredible, which might vanish at any moment. He
himself was incredible. What had happened was incredible. The screeching
voices of the children were not real voices, and the children were
apparitions. The newspaper was illegible. Its messages for the most part
had no meaning, and such as bore a meaning seemed to be utterly
unimportant. The first reality, for George was food. He discovered that
he could not eat the food--could not swallow; the nausea was acute. He
drank a little coffee, and then went upstairs to see his wife. Outside
the bedroom door he stood hesitant. A desolating sadness of
disappointment suddenly surged over him. He had destroyed his ambitions,
he had transformed all his life, by a single unreflecting and
irretrievable impulse. What he had done was terrific, and yet he had
done it as though it were naught ... The mood passed as suddenly as it
had come, and left him matter-of-fact, grim, as it were swimming
strongly on and with the mighty current which had caught him. He went
into the bedroom on the current. Lois was awake.

"I've seen Colonel Rannion."

"You haven't, George!"

"Yes, I have. I've just come back."

"Well?"

He replied with his damnable affected casualness: "I'm in the Army.
Royal Field Artillery. And so that's that."

"But where's your uniform?"

"I knew you'd say that. I'm in mufti, you see."


II


He promptly received his papers and returned them. His medical
examination was quite satisfactory. Then there was no further sign from
the Army. The Army might have completely forgotten him; his enrolment in
the Army might have been an illusion. Every day and every hour he
expected a telegram of command. It was in anticipation of the telegram,
curt and inexorable, that he kept harrying his tradesmen. To be caught
unprepared by the telegram would be a disaster. But the tradesmen had
lessons to teach him, and by the time the kit was approximately
completed he had learnt the lessons. Whether the transaction concerned
his tunic, breeches, spurs, leggings, cane, sword, socks, shirts, cap,
camp field-kit, or any of the numerous other articles without which an
officer might not respectably enter the British Army, the chief lesson
was the same, namely, that the tradesmen were bearing the brunt of the
war. Those who had enrolled and made spectacular sacrifices of homes and
careers and limbs and lives were enjoying a glorious game amid the
laudations of an ecstatic populace, but the real work was being done in
the shops and in the workrooms. The mere aspect of tradesmen was enough
to restore the lost modesty of officers. Useless to argue with the
tradesmen, to expostulate, to vituperate. The facts were in their
favour; the sublime law of supply and demand was in their favour. If the
suddenly unloosed military ardour had not been kept down it might have
submerged the Island. The tradesmen kept it down, and the Island was
saved by them from militarization. Majors and colonels and even generals
had to flatter and cajole tradesmen. As for lieutenants, they cringed.
And all officers were obliged to be grateful for the opportunity to
acquire goods at prices fifty per cent higher than would have been
charged to civilians. Within a few days George, who had need of every
obtainable sovereign for family purposes, had disbursed some forty
pounds out of his own pocket in order to exercise the privilege of
defending, at the risk of ruin and death, the ideals of his country.

At the end of the week what, as a civilian, he would have described as
his first 'suit' had not been delivered, and he spent Saturday afternoon
and Sunday in most uncomfortable apprehension of the telegraph-boy and
in studying an artillery manual now known to hundreds of thousands as
'F.A.T.' On the Monday morning he collected such portions of his kit as
had to be worn with the 'suit' (leggings, boots, spurs, cap, shirt,
collar, etc.), and took them in a taxi to the tailor's, intending to
change there and emerge a soldier. The clothes were not ready, but the
tailor, intimidated by real violence, promised them for three o'clock.
At three o'clock they were still not ready, for buttons had to be
altered on the breeches; another hour was needed.

George went to call at Lucas & Enwright's. That office seemed to
function as usual, for Everard Lucas alone had left it for the
profession of arms. The factotum in the cubicle was a young man of the
finest military age, and there were two other good ones in the clerks'
room, including a clerk just transferred from George's own office. And
George thought of his own office, already shut up, and his glance was
sardonic. Mr. Enwright sat alone in the principals' room, John Orgreave
being abroad in London in pursuit of George's two landlords--the
landlord of his house and the landlord of his office--neither of whom
had yet been brought to see that George's caprice for a military career
entitled him in the slightest degree to slip out of contracts
remunerative to the sacred caste of landlords. Lucas & Enwright had
behaved handsomely to George, having taken everything over, assumed all
responsibilities, and allotted to George more than a fair share of
percentages. And John Orgreave, who in his rough provincial way was an
admirable negotiator, had voluntarily busied himself with the affair of
the resilition of George's leases.

"Not gone, then?" Mr. Enwright greeted him. "Well, you'd better be
going, or I shan't get my chance of being Vice-President."

"What do you mean?"

"Orgreave was at a committee at the Institute this morning. It seems you
might have been the next Vice, in spite of your tender years, if you'd
stayed. You're becoming the rage, you know."

"Am I?" said George, startled.

He hungered for further details of this great and highly disturbing
matter, but Enwright, jealous by nature and excusably jealous by reason
of the fact that despite his immense artistic reputation he had never
succeeded in being even Vice-President of the Institute, would say no
more. Indeed he took a malicious pleasure in saying no more.

The ageing man, more hypochondriacal, thinner, and more wrinkled than
ever, was full to the brim of one subject--India. Somebody at the India
Office had flattered him by showing a knowledge of his work. The India
Office had very graciously agreed to the transfer of the barracks
enterprise to Lucas & Enwright, and now Mr. Enwright was for going to
India himself. He had never been there. Indian scenery, Indian manners,
Indian architecture boiled in his brain. The menace of German raiders
would not prevent him from going to India. He had already revisited the
photographs of Indian buildings at South Kensington Museum. Moreover, he
had persuaded himself that the erection of the barracks formed an urgent
and vital part of British war activity.

At the same time he was convinced that the war would soon end, and in
favour of Germany. He assumed, as being beyond doubt, that a German army
would occupy Paris, and when George, with a wave of the hand, pushed the
enemy back and magically rendered Paris impregnable, he nearly lost his
temper. This embittered Englishman would not hear a word against the
miraculous efficiency of the Germans, whom he admired as much as he
hated them. The German military reputation could not have been safer in
Potsdam than it was in Russell Square. George, impatient of his master
and inspirer, rose to depart, whereupon Mr. Enwright began to talk at
large about the terrible derangement of his daily life caused by the
sudden disappearance of his favourite barber, deemed now to have been a
spy. "But the only barber who ever really understood my chin," said Mr.
Enwright. George went, shaking hands perfunctorily. Mr. Enwright was too
preoccupied to wish him luck.

The clothes were ready at the tailor's, and they passed the tests.
George stood up disguised as a second-lieutenant in the R.F.A., booted,
spurred, gloved, nicely managing a cane. He examined himself in the
great mirror and was well pleased with his military appearance. In
particular, his dark moustache fitted the role excellently.

"Now you'll send the overcoat and all my civilian things down this
afternoon, without fail," he said. "I'll let you have an address for the
other suit."

And he walked manfully out of the shop. Before he could find himself, a
superb serjeant-major strode up, saluted in the highest and strictest
perfection, and passed. The encounter was unfortunate. George, taken
aback, muddled his share of the rite. Further, the self-consciousness of
the potential Vice-President of the Royal Institute of British
Architects was so extreme in uniform that it could scarcely have been
more extreme had he been thrust by destiny into Oxford Street naked. He
returned to the shop and said:

"I think I'll take everything home myself, to make sure. You might get
me a taxi."

He crept into his own house furtively with his parcels, like a criminal,
though he well knew that the servants would be ready to worship him as a
new god. The children were evidently out. Lois was not in the
drawing-room. He ran to the bedroom. She lay on the sofa.

"Here I am!" he announced, posing bravely for her inspection.

She did not move for a few seconds. Her eyes were hard-set. Then she
gave a tremendous shattering sob, and burst into wild tears. George
stooped to pick up a telegram which was lying on the floor. It read:

"You are to report to Adjutant Headquarters Second First West Midland
R.F.A. Wimbledon to-morrow Tuesday before noon."

The Army had not forgotten him. Throughout the week his name upon
various forms had been under the eye of authority, and at last the order
had gone forth.


III


The next morning, after a disturbed night, Lois was taken ill. George
telephoned for the doctor, and as soon as he had seen the patient the
doctor telephoned for the nurse, and as soon as the doctor had
telephoned for the nurse George telephoned for Laurencine. What with
George's uniform and approaching departure, and the premature seizure of
Lois, the household had, in an exceedingly short time, reached a state
of intense excitement and inefficiency. Nurse was with Lois; the
children were with cook in the kitchen; the other two servants were
noisily and vaguely active on the stairs and the landings. The breakfast
had been very badly cooked; the newspapers, with a detailed description
of the retreat from Mons, were not glanced at. George was expecting a
letter from his mother concerning the arrangements for the visit of Lois
and the children to Ladderedge, already decided upon, and no letter had
come.

At half-past ten he sent the parlourmaid to get a taxi. Having inspected
his luggage in the hall, he went to the telephone again and ascertained
that Laurencine had actually started from home. Almost at the same
moment a taxi stopped in front of the house. "She's been jolly quick,"
thought George, meaning the parlourmaid; but going to the window he saw
that his stepfather and his mother were in the taxi. He did not rush out
to them. He did not move. The comfortable sense of the perfect
reliability and benevolence of his 'people' filled and warmed him. They
had not written again; they had just come themselves.

He affectionately and critically watched them as they got out of the
taxi. Alderman Edwin Clayhanger, undeniably stout, with grey hair and
beard, was passing from middle-age into the shadow of the sixties. He
dressed well, but the flat crown of his felt hat, and the artificial,
exaggerated squareness of the broad shoulders, gave him a provincial
appearance. His gesture as he paid the driver was absolutely
characteristic--a mixture of the dignified and the boyish, the
impressive and the timid. He had descended from the vehicle with
precautions, but Mrs. Clayhanger jumped down lightly, though she was
about as old and as grey as her husband. Her costume was not successful;
she did not understand and never had understood how to dress herself.
But she had kept her figure; she was as slim as a girl, and as restless.

George ran to the door, which the feverish parlourmaid had neglected to
shut. His mother, mounting the steps, was struck full in the face by the
apparition of her son in uniform. The Alderman, behind her, cried
mockingly to cover his emotion: "Hal_lo_! Hal_lo_!"

"When did you come up?" asked George quietly, taking his mother's hand
and kissing her. She slid past him into the house. Her eyes were moist.

"Last night," the Alderman answered. "Last train. Your mother's idea.
All of a sudden. Thought you might be leaving."

"Well, I am," said George. "I have to report at Headquarters at
Wimbledon by twelve o'clock. It's rather a good thing you've come. Lois
is ill. Oh! Here's _my_ taxi." The parlourmaid had driven up.

"Ill!" exclaimed Mrs. Clayhanger.

"Yes. I've sent for the doctor, and he's sent for the nurse. I'm
expecting the nurse every minute."

"You don't mean to say--" Mrs. Clayhanger began.

George nodded.

"She _must_ have had a shock. I knew what it would be for her. It's all
very well, but--" Mrs. Clayhanger again left a sentence unfinished.

"I've sent for Laurencine too," said George. "She also may be here any
minute."

"Oh!" said the old lady tartly. "I can stay as long as you like, you
know. Lois and I get on splendidly."

It was true. They had had one enormous quarrel, which had mysteriously
ended by both of them denying superiorly to all males that any quarrel
had ever occurred.

"Well, come into the dining-room."

"I think I'll go up and see Lois at once," said Mrs. Clayhanger.

"The doctor's there."

"What if he is?"

The Alderman put in:

"Now look here, missis. Don't startle her."

Mrs. Clayhanger exhaled impatient scorn and went upstairs.

"This your stuff?" the Alderman questioned, pointing with his stick to
the kit-bag and strange packages on the hall floor.

"Yes," said George, and to the parlourmaid: "You can put it all in the
taxi, May. Come along in, uncle."

"Don't hurry me, boy. Don't hurry me."

"Where are you staying?"

"Russell ... Bit awkward, this about Lois!"

They were now within the dining-room.

"Yes." In the presence and under the influence of his people George at
once ceased to be an expansive Londoner, and reverted to the character
of the Five Towns.

"I suppose she'll be all _right_?"

"Doctor seems to think so."

"Yes. They generally are." The Alderman sighed pleasantly and dropped
rather heavily into a chair.

"Have a cigarette?"

"No!" The Alderman refused regretfully. "I've got a new rule now. I
don't smoke till after dinner."

There was a pause.

"I'm glad we came."

"So'm I."

"You needn't worry about anything. Your mother and I will see to
everything. I'll go up and have a talk with Johnnie about the leases."

"Thanks."

"What about money?"

"I'll write you. No hurry."

"What sort of a woman is Laurencine? I've scarcely set eyes on her."

"She's fine."

"She is?"

"Yes."

"Will she hit it off with your mother?"

"Trust her."

"Well, then, I think I'll have one o' them cigarettes."

They smoked in taciturnity, nervous but relieved. They had said what
they had to say to each other. After a time George remarked:

"I heard last night there was a chance of me being Vice-President of the
Institute this year if I hadn't gone into the Army."

Mr. Clayhanger raised his eyebrows.

"That'll keep all right for later."

"Yes."

Mrs. Clayhanger hurried into the dining-room. She had removed her hat
and gloves.

"Lois wants to see you."

"I was just coming up. I've got to go now." He glanced at his watch.

"Go where?" It was like Mrs. Clayhanger to ask a question to which she
knew the answer. Her ardent eyes, set a little too close together in the
thin, lined, nervous face, burned upon him challengingly.

"I told you! I have to report at Headquarters before noon."

"But you don't mean to say you're going to leave your wife like this!
She's very ill."

"I'm bound to leave her."

"But you can't leave her."

The Alderman said:

"The boy's quite right. If he's got to report he's got to report."

"And supposing she was dying?"

"Now, missis, we needn't suppose that. She isn't."

"It would be just the same if she was," Mrs. Clayhanger retorted
bitterly. "I don't know what men are coming to. But I know this--all
husbands are selfish. They probably don't know it, but they are."

She wept angrily.

"Don't you understand I'm in the machine now, mater?" said George
resentfully as he left the room.

In the bedroom Lois lay on her back, pale, perspiring, moaning. He
kissed her, glanced at the doctor for instructions, and departed. Lois
was not in a condition to talk, and the doctor wished her not to speak.
Then George went to the kitchen and took leave of the children, and
incidentally of the servants. The nurse was arriving as he re-entered
the dining-room; he had seized his cap in the hall and put it on.

"Better give me an address," said the Alderman.

"You might wire during the day," George said, scribbling on a loose leaf
from his pocket-book, which he had to search for in unfamiliar pockets.

"The idea had occurred to me," the Alderman smiled.

"Au revoir, mater."

"But you've got plenty of time!" she protested.

"I know," said he. "I'm not going to be late. I haven't the slightest
notion where Headquarters are, and supposing the taxi had a break-down!"

He divined from the way in which she kissed him good-bye that she was
excessively proud of him.

"Mater," he said, "I see you're still a girl."

As he was leaving, Mr. Clayhanger halted him.

"You said something in your last letter about storing the furniture,
didn't you? Have ye made any inquiries?"

"No. But I've told Orgreave. You might look into that, because--well,
you'll see."

From the hall he glanced into the dining-room and up the stairs. The
furniture that filled the house had been new ten years earlier; it had
been anybody's furniture. The passage of ten years, marvellously swift,
had given character to the furniture, charged it with associations,
scarred it with the history of a family--his family, individualized it,
humanized it. It was no longer anybody's furniture. With a pang he
pictured it numbered and crowded into a warehouse, forlorn, thick with
dust, tragic, exiled from men and women.

He drove off, waving. His stepfather waved from the door, his mother
waved from the dining-room; the cook had taken the children into the
drawing-room, where they shook their short, chubby arms at him, smiling.
On the second floor the back of the large rectangular mirror on the
dressing-table presented a flat and wooden negative to his anxious
curiosity.

In the neighbourhood of Wimbledon the taxi-driver ascertained his
destination at the first inquiry from a strolling soldier. It was the
Blue Lion public-house. The taxi skirted the Common, parts of which were
covered with horse-lines and tents. Farther on, in vague suburban
streets, the taxi stopped at a corner building with a blatant, curved
gilt sign and a very big lamp. A sentry did something with his rifle as
George got out, and another soldier obligingly took the luggage. A
clumsy painted board stuck on a pole at the entrance to a side-passage
indicated that George had indeed arrived at his Headquarters. He was
directed to a small, frowzy apartment, which apparently had once been
the land-lord's sitting-room. Two officers, Colonel Hullocher and his
Adjutant, both with ribbons, were seated close together at a littered
deal table, behind a telephone whose cord, instead of descending
modestly to the floor, went up in sight of all men to the ceiling. In a
corner a soldier, the Colonel's confidential clerk, was writing at
another table. Everything was dirty and untidy. Neither of the officers
looked at George. The Adjutant was excitedly reading to the Colonel and
the Colonel was excitedly listening and muttering. The clerk too was in
a state of excitement. George advanced towards the table, and saluted
and stood at attention. The Adjutant continued to read and the Colonel
to murmur, but the Adjutant did manage to give a momentary surreptitious
glance at George. After some time the Colonel, who was a short, stout,
bald, restless man, interrupted the reading, and, still without having
looked at George, growled impatiently to the Adjutant:

"Who's this fellow?"

The Adjutant replied smoothly:

"Mr. Cannon, sir."

The Colonel said:

"He's got a devilish odd way of saluting. I must go now." And jumped up
and went cyclonically as far as the door. At the door he paused and
looked George full in the face, glaring.

"You came to me with a special recommendation?" he demanded loudly.

"Colonel Rannion kindly recommended me, sir."

"General Rannion, sir. Haven't you seen this morning's _Times_? You
should read your Gazette."

"Yes, sir."

"You're the celebrated architect?"

"I'm an architect, sir."

"I wish you would condescend to answer, yes or no, sir. That's the
second time. I say--you're the celebrated architect?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, remember this. When you come into the Army what you were before
you came into the Army has not the slightest importance."

"Yes, sir."

Colonel Hullocher glared in silence for a moment, and was gone. The
clerk slipped out after him.

The Adjutant rose:

"Now, Cannon, we're all very busy."

And shook hands.


IV


The same afternoon, indeed within about two hours of his entrance into
the Army, George found himself driving back from Wimbledon to London in
a motor-bus.

Colonel Hullocher had vanished out of his world, and he had been sent to
another and still more frowzy public-house which was the Headquarters of
No. 2 Battery of the Second Brigade. He was allotted to No. 2 Battery,
subject to the approval of Major Craim, the commanding officer. Major
Craim was young and fair and benevolent, and at once approvingly
welcomed George, who thereupon became the junior subaltern of the
Battery. The other half-dozen officers, to whom he was introduced one by
one as they came in, seemed amiable and very well-mannered, if unduly
excited. When, immediately before lunch, the Major was called away to
lunch with Colonel Hullocher, the excitement of the mess seemed to boil
over. The enormous fact was that the whole Division--yeomanry, infantry,
and artillery--had been ordered to trek southward the next morning. The
Division was not ready to trek; in particular the Second Brigade of its
artillery, and quite specially Battery No. 2 of the Second Brigade, was
not ready to trek. Nevertheless it would trek. It might even trek to
France. Southward was Franceward, and there were those who joyously
believed that this First Line Territorial Division was destined to lead
the Territorial Army in France.

All the officers had a schoolboyish demeanour; all of them called one
another by diminutives ending in 'y'; all of them were pretty young.
But George soon divided them into two distinct groups--those who worried
about the smooth working of the great trek, and those who did not. Among
the former was Captain Resmith, the second in command, a dark man with a
positive, strong voice, somewhat similar to George in appearance.
Captain Resmith took George very seriously, and promised to initiate him
personally into as many technical mysteries as could be compressed into
one afternoon. Then a Major Tumulty, middle-aged and pale, came
hurriedly into the stuffy room and said without any prologue:

"Now I must have one of you chaps this afternoon. Otherwise I promise
you you won't get all the things you want."

Silence fell on the mess.

"The C.O. isn't here, sir," said Captain Resmith.

"I can't help that. I'm not going alone."

"Cannon, you'd better go with Major Tumulty. Major, this is Mr. Cannon,
our latest addition."

George only knew about Major Tumulty that he was Major Tumulty and that
he did not belong to No. 2 Battery. So far as George was concerned he
was a major in the air. After drinking a glass of port with the mess,
Major Tumulty suddenly remembered that he was in a hurry, and took
George off and put him into a scarlet London-General motor-bus that was
throbbing at the door of the public-house, with an ordinary civilian
driver at the steering-wheel and a soldier on the step. George felt like
a parcel; he had no choice of movement, no responsibility, no knowledge.
The mentality of a parcel was not disagreeable to him. But at times,
vaguely uneasy, he would start out of it, and ask himself: "What is
wrong?" And then the vision of a distant, half-forgotten street called
Elm Park Road would rise in his mind and he would remember: "My wife is
very ill, and everything is upset at home."

The motor-bus travelled a few yards and stopped; and out of yet another
office a soldier carried, staggering, a heavy bag with a brass lock, and
dropped it on the floor of the bus between the Major and George; and the
bus, after a good imitation by the soldier-conductor of a professional
double ting on the bell, went away afresh.

"That's money," said the Major, in his mild, veiled voice, pointing to
the bag.

Little by little George learnt that the Major had 'won' the bus 'out of'
the War Office, and had been using it daily for several days for the
purpose of buying and collecting urgent stores and equipment. The bus
had become celebrated within the Division in an astoundingly short time,
and on this, the last day preceding the trek, the various units had
burdened the good-natured Major with a multitude of commissions.

"I try to keep accounts," said the Major. "But I know I've made a loss
every day. I've been in the T.F. ever since there was one, and it has
always cost me money. Now, I shall put you in charge of this little
book."

The little book was a penny account-book, with pages lettered in pencil
A, B, C, D, etc., and items scribbled on each page.

"The letters show the batteries," the Major explained. "I've got a key
to the batteries somewhere in my pocket. And here's what I call my grand
list." He produced a roll of foolscap. "I like everything orderly. It
saves so much trouble, doesn't it? I mean in the end. Now, as I buy
things I shall strike them off here, and I want you to strike them off
in your book and put down the price from the bill. I always insist on a
receipted bill. It saves so much trouble in the end. I meant to bring a
file or a clip for the bills, but I forgot. You understand, don't you?"

George answered solemnly and sharply:

"Yes, sir."

The Major weakly cried:

"Hall!"

"Yessir!" The soldier-conductor came to attention.

"Did you tell him to go to Harrods first?"

"Yessir!"

"I think we might go and sit on the top," said the Major. "It's a nice
afternoon."

So the two officers went and sat on the top of the motor-bus. The Major
gossiped with soothing tranquillity. He said that he was a pianoforte
manufacturer; his father, from whom he had inherited, had traded under a
German name because people preferred German pianos to English; he now
regretted this piece of astuteness on the part of his father; he was
trying to sell his business--he had had enough of it.

"Hi! You!" he called, standing up quite unexpectedly and leaning over
the front of the bus to hail the driver. "Hi! You!" But the driver did
not hear, and the bus drove forward like fate. The Major, who had
hitherto seemed to be exempt from the general perturbation of Wimbledon
troops, suddenly showed excitement. "We must stop this bus somehow! Why
the devil doesn't he stop? I've forgotten the rope-shop."

"I'll stop it, sir," said George, maintaining an admirable presence of
mind in the crisis, and he rose and pushed down the knob of the
signal-rod at the back of the bus. The bus did actually stop.

"Ah!" murmured the Major, calmed.

The soldier raced upstairs.

"Hall!"

"Yessir."

"Do you know a rope and string shop near the Granville Theatre of
Varieties at Walham Green?"

"No, sir."

"Well, there is one. Tell him to stop at the Granville."

"Yessir."

The Major resumed his bland conversation. At Putney they saw the first
contents-bill of the afternoon papers.

"How do you think things are going, sir?" George asked.

"It's very difficult to say," answered the Major. "This Mons business is
serious."

"Yes, sir."

The discovery of the rope-shop involved a policeman's aid. When the rope
had been purchased and new silver brought forth from the bag, and the
receipt made out, and the item struck off and the amount entered, and
the bus had started again, George perceived that he would soon be
passing the end of Elm Park Gardens. Dared he ask the Major to deflect
the bus into Elm Park Road so that he might obtain news of Lois? He
dared not. The scheme, simple and feasible enough, was nevertheless
unthinkable. The bus, with 'Liverpool Street' inscribed on its forehead,
rolled its straight inevitable course along Fulham Road, pursued by the
disappointed glances of gesturing wayfarers who wanted it to take them
to Liverpool Street.

After about two hours of fine confused shopping the Major stopped his
bus at a Tube station in the north of London.

"I mustn't forget my pens," said he. "I have to spend three-quarters of
my time mewed up in the office, and I don't grumble; but I'm very
particular about nibs, and if I don't have my own I cannot work. It's
useless to expect it."

Then to the soldier:

"Hall! You go down to Partridge & Cooper's, at the corner of Chancery
Lane and Fleet Street, and buy a sixpenny box of their 'No. 6 Velvet'
pen-nibs. You understand: 'No. 6 Velvet.'"

"Yessir. With the bus, sir?"

"With the bus. Here's sixpence." He took a coin out of the bag, locked
it, and gave the key to George. "And keep an eye on this bag, my boy.
You will then come back and wait for us--let me see--outside Piccadilly
Tube Station in Jermyn Street."

"Yessir."

The Major and George entered the North London station and proceeded to
the lift.

"Tickets!" demanded the lift-man.

The Major halted and gazed at him.

"On service!" said the Major, with resentment and disdain. "A fortnight
ago you civilians were raising your hats to us. Now you ask us for
tickets! Haven't you grasped yet that there's a war on? Don't you think
you'd look better in khaki?" He showed excitement, as at every personal
encounter.

The lift-man bowed his head, inarticulately muttering, and the officers
passed into the lift, having created a certain amount of interest among
the other passengers. The Major was tranquillized in a moment. They came
to the surface again at Piccadilly Circus, where at the lift a similar
scene occurred.

"Do you know anything about pyjamas?" said the Major.

"Well, sir--"

"I never wear them myself. I'm rather old-fashioned. But I have to buy
three pairs--suits for Colonel Hullocher--at Swan & Edgar's. Oh! Bother
it! Have you any money? I forgot to take some out of the bag."

The Major purchased the pyjamas with George's money, and his attitude
towards the shopman during the transaction was defiant, indicating to
the shopman that, though personally he, the Major, never wore pyjamas,
he was an expert in pyjamas and not to be gulled. George took the
resulting parcel and the receipted bill, and they walked across to
Jermyn Street, where surely the bus, with the sixpenny box of pens, was
waiting for them. It was perfectly magical. As the vehicle swung with
them into the Circus the Major exclaimed:

"We're getting on very well. What do you say to some tea?"

"Certainly, sir."

The bus, having stopped by order at the second tea-house on the left in
Piccadilly, was immediately assaulted, without success, by several
would-be passengers. A policeman, outraged by the spectacle of a bus
stationary at a spot where buses are absolutely forbidden to be
stationary, hurried forward in fury. But the Major, instantly excited,
was ready for him.

"This motor-bus is a military vehicle on service, and I'll thank you to
mind your own business. If you've any complaints to make, you'd better
make them to Lord Kitchener."

The policeman touched his hat.

"They have music here," said the Major mildly, entering the tea-house.
"I always like music. Makes things so much jollier, doesn't it?"

During tea the Major inquired about George's individual circumstances,
and George said that he was an architect.

"Student of bricks and mortar, eh?" said the Major benevolently. "How
long have you been in the Army?"

"Rather less than half a day, sir."

The Major, raising his eyebrows, was very interested and kind.
Perceiving that he had virgin material under his hands, he began to
shape the material, and talked much about the niceties of the etiquette
of saluting. George listened, yet at intervals his attention would
wander, and he would be in Elm Park Road. But the illusion of home was
very faint. His wife and family seemed to be slipping away from him.
"How is it," he thought, "that I am not more upset about Lois than I
am?" The various professional and family matters which in his haste he
had left unsettled were diminishing hourly in their apparent importance.
He came back to the tea-house with a start, hearing the Major praise his
business capacity as displayed during the afternoon. The friendly aspect
of the thin, pallid face inspired him with a sort of emotional audacity,
and in ten words he suddenly informed the Major of his domestic
situation.

"H'm!" said the Major. "I'm a bachelor myself."

There was a pause.

"I'll give you a tip," said the Major, resuming the interrupted topic.
"War is a business. The more business capacity you have, the more likely
you are to succeed. I'm a business man myself."

On leaving the tea-house they discovered the military vehicle surrounded
by an enchanted multitude who were staring through its windows at the
merchandise--blankets, pans, kettles, saddles, ropes, parcels, stoves,
baskets, and box of nibs--within, while the policeman strove in vain to
keep both the road and the pavement clear. George preceded the Major,
pushing aside with haughty military impatience the civilians so
reluctant to move. He felt as though he had been in the Army for years.
No longer did his uniform cause him the slightest self-consciousness.

At Wimbledon in the dusk the bus was met by several military wagons each
from a different unit, and each anxious to obtain goods. This piece of
organization rather impressed George.

"Well, my boy," said the Major, "you'd better go and report yourself.
You've been a great help to me."

George saluted according to the Major's own doctrine, and departed. At
Battery Headquarters he met Captain Resmith.

"How did you get on with Auntie?" asked Resmith in his loud, firm voice.

George winked.

Resmith gave a scarcely perceptible smile.

"Look here," he said. "I'm just going round the horse-lines. If you'll
come with me I'll show you a thing or two, and we can choose a mount for
you. Then after dinner if you like I'll take you through the orders for
to-morrow. By the way, there's a telegram for you."

The telegram read:

"Girl. Everything fairly satisfactory. Don't worry too much. Laurencine
sleeps here.--NUNKS"

The telegram was entirely characteristic of his stepfather--curt, exact,
realistic, kind.

He thought:

"Three girls, by Jove!"


V


The early sun, carrying into autumn the tradition of a magnificent
summer, shone on the artillery camps. The four guns of the No. 2 Battery
of the Second Brigade were ranged side by side in the vast vague space
in front of the officers' hutments. Each gun had six horses in three
pairs, and a rider for each pair. On the guns and the gun-teams
everything glittered that could glitter--leather, metal, coats of
horses, faces of men. Captain Resmith rode round, examining harness and
equipment with a microscope that he called his eye. George rode round
after him. Sometimes Captain Resmith spoke to a N.C.O., sometimes even
to a man, but for the most part the men stared straight in front of them
into eternity. Major Craim trotted up. Captain Resmith approached the
Major and saluted, saying in his best military voice:

"The Battery is all correct and ready to move off, sir."

The Major in his drawing-room voice replied:

"Thank you, Captain Resmith."

Silence reigned in No. 2 Battery, except for the faint jingling
restlessness of the horses.

Then Colonel Hullocher and his Adjutant pranced into sight. The Adjutant
saluted the Major and made an inquiry. The Major saluted, and all three
chatted a little.

George, who had accompanied Captain Resmith into the background,
murmured to him, as cautiously as a convict talking at exercise:

"He's got his knife into me."

"Who?"

"The Colonel."

"Don't you know why?"

"No. I was specially recommended to him."

"Well, that's one reason, isn't it? But there was a difficulty between
him and the Major as to when you should come. The old man got the better
of him--always does. But he's a good officer."

"Who?"

"Hullocher. Shut up."

These two had reached familiarity with the swiftness characteristic of
martial life.

During the brief colloquy Resmith had sat very upright on his horse, the
chin slightly lifted, the head quite still, even the lips scarcely
moving to articulate. Colonel Hullocher seemed now to be approaching. It
was a false alarm. The Colonel and his Adjutant pranced off. After a
long time, and at a considerable distance, could just be heard the voice
of the Colonel ordering the Brigade to move. But No. 2 Battery did not
stir for another long period. Suddenly, amid a devolution of orders, No.
2 Battery moved. The Major, attended by his trumpeter, and followed by
the Battery staff of range-takers, director-men, telephonists, and the
serjeant-major, inaugurated a sinuous procession into the uneven,
rutted track leading to the side-road. Then the guns one by one wheeled
to the right, the horses' hoofs stamping into the damp ground as they
turned, and became part of the procession. Then the quartermaster and
other N.C.O.'s and men joined; and last were Captain Resmith, attended
by _his_ trumpeter, and George. Resmith looked over his shoulder at the
Third Battery which surged behind. There were nearly two hundred men and
over a hundred and fifty horses and many vehicles in the Battery. The
Major was far out of sight, and the tail of the column was equally out
of sight in the rear, for the total length of Major Craim's cavalcade
exceeded a mile; and of the Brigade three miles, and two other similar
Brigades somewhere in the region of Wimbledon were participating in the
grand Divisional trek.

Captain Resmith cantered ahead to a bend in the track, and anxiously
watched a gun-team take the sharp curve, which was also a sharp slope.
The impression of superb, dangerous physical power was tremendous. The
distended nostrils of horses, the gliding of their muscles under the
glossy skin, the muffled thud of their hoofs in the loose soil, the
grimacing of the men as they used spur and thong, the fierce straining
of straps and chains, the creaking, the grinding, and finally the
swaying of the 90-millimetre gun, coddled and polished, as it swung
helplessly forward, stern first, and its long nose describing an arc in
the air behind--these things marvellously quickened the blood.

"Good men!" said Captain Resmith, enthusiastic. "It's great, isn't it?
You know, there's nothing so fine as a battery--nothing in the whole
world."

George heartily agreed with him.

"This is the best Battery in the Division," said Resmith religiously.

And George was religiously convinced that it was.

He was astoundingly happy. He thought, amazed, that he had never been so
happy, or at any rate so uplifted, in all his life. He simply could not
comprehend his state of bliss, which had begun that morning at 6.30 when
the grey-headed, simple-minded servant allotted to him had wakened him,
according to instructions, with a mug of tea. Perhaps it was the far,
thin sound of bugles that produced the rapturous effect, or the fresh
air blowing in through the broken pane of the hut, or the slanting
sunlight, or the feeling that he had no responsibility and nothing to do
but blindly obey orders.

He had gone to sleep as depressed as he was tired. A sense of futility
had got the better of him. The excursion of the afternoon had certainly
been ridiculous in a high degree. He had hoped for a more useful
evening. Captain Resmith had indeed taken him to the horse-lines, and he
had tried a mount which was very suitable, and Captain Resmith had said
that he possessed a naturally good seat and hands, and had given him a
few sagacious tips. It was plain to him that Resmith had the Major's
orders to take him in tutelage and make an officer of him. But the
satisfactoriness of the evening had suddenly ceased. Scarcely had
Resmith begun to expound the orders, and George to read the thrilling
words, 'Second Lieutenant G.E. Cannon to ride with Captain Resmith,'
when the mess had impulsively decided to celebrate the last night in
camp by a dinner at the hotel near the station, and George, fit for
nothing more important, had been detailed to run off and arrange for the
rich repast. The bulk of the mess was late to arrive, and George spent
the time in writing a descriptive and falsely gay letter on slips of
yellow Army paper to Lois. The dinner, with its facile laughter and
equally facile cynicism, had bored him; for he had joined the Army in
order to save an Empire and a world from being enslaved. He had lain
down in his truckle-bed and listened to the last echoing sounds in the
too-resonant corridor of the hutments, and thought of the wisdom of Sir
Isaac Davids, and of the peril to his wife, and of the peril to the
earth, and of his own irremediable bondage to the military machine. He,
with all his consciousness of power, had been put to school again;
deprived of the right to answer back, to argue, even to think. If one
set in authority said that black was white, his most sacred duty was to
concur and believe. And there was no escape....

And then, no sooner had he gone to sleep than it was bright day, and the
faint, clear call of bugles had pierced the clouds of his depression and
they had vanished! Every moment of the early morning had been exquisite.
Although he had not been across a horse for months, he rode comfortably,
and the animal was reliable. Resmith in fact had had to warn him against
fatiguing himself. But he knew that he was incapable of fatigue. The
day's trek was naught--fifteen miles or less--to Epsom Downs, at a
walk!... Lois? He had expected a letter from 'Nunks' or his mother, but
there was no letter, and no news was good news, at any rate with 'Nunks'
in charge of communications. Lois could not fail to be all right. He
recalled the wise generalization of 'Nunks' on that point ... Breakfast
was a paradisiacal meal. He had never 'fancied' a meal so much. And
Resmith had greatly enheartened him by saying sternly: "You've got
exactly the right tone with the men. Don't you go trying to alter it."
The general excitement was intense, and the solemn synchronizing of
watches increased it further. An orderly brought a newspaper, and nobody
would do more than disdainfully glance at it. The usual daily stuff
about the war!... Whereas Epsom Downs glittered in the imagination like
a Canaan. And it lay southward. Probably they were not going to France,
but probably they would have the honour of defending the coast against
invasion. George desired to master gunnery instantly, and Resmith
soothed him with the assurance that he would soon be sent away on a
gunnery course, which would give him beans. And in the meantime George
might whet his teeth on the detailed arrangements for feeding and
camping the Battery on Epsom Downs. This organization gave George pause,
especially when he remembered that the Battery was a very trifling item
in the Division, and when Resmith casually informed him that a Division
on the trek occupied fifteen miles of road. He began to perceive the
difference between the Army and a circus, and to figure the Staff as
something other than a club of haughty, aristocratic idlers in red hats.
And when the Battery was fairly under way in the side-road, with another
Battery in front and another Battery behind, and more Artillery Brigades
and uncounted Infantry Brigades and a screen of Yeomanry all invisibly
marching over the map in the direction of Epsom, and bound to reach a
certain lettered square on the map at a certain minute--when this
dynamic situation presented itself to the tentacles of his grasping
mind, he really did feel that there could be no game equal to war.

The Battery 'rode easy,' the men were smoking, talking, and singing in
snatches, when suddenly all sounds were silenced. Captain Resmith, who
had been summoned to the Major, reined in his horse, and George did
likewise, and the Battery passed by them on the left. The Major's voice
was heard:

"No. 2 Battery. Eyes--_right_!"

George asked:

"What's this?"

"C.R.A.'s ahead," murmured Resmith.

Then another officer cried:

"Right section. Eyes--_right_."

And then an N.C.O. bawled:

"A sub-section. Eyes--_right_."

Then only did George, from the rear, see the drivers, with a
simultaneous gesture, twist their heads very sharply to the right, raise
their whips, and fling the thongs over the withers of the hand-horses,
while the section-officer saluted.

Another N.C.O. bawled:

"B sub-section. Eyes--_right_."

And the same action followed.

Then another officer cried:

"Left section. Eyes--_right_."

So the rite proceeded.

Resmith and George had now gone back to their proper places. George
could see the drivers of the last gun gathering up the whip thongs into
their hands preparatory to the salute. C sub-section received the
command.

And then, not many yards ahead, the voice of an N.C.O.:

"D sub-section. Eyes--_right_."

Heads turned; whips were raised and flung outwards; horses swerved
slightly.

"Get ready," muttered Resmith to George.

The figure of the C.R.A., Brigadier-General Rannion, motionless on a
charger, came into view. George's heart was beating high. Resmith and he
saluted. The General gazed hard at him and never moved. They passed
ahead.

The officer commanding the Third Battery had already called:

"Battery. _Eyes--right."_

The marvellous ceremonial slipped rearwards. George was aware of tears
in his eyes. He was aware of the sentiment of worship. He felt that he
would have done anything, accomplished any deed, died, at the bidding of
the motionless figure on the charger. It was most curious.

There was a terrific crash of wood far behind. Resmith chuckled.

"One of those G.S. wagons has knocked down the Automobile Club
'Cross-Roads' sign," he said. "Good thing it wasn't a lamp-post! You
see, with their eyes right, they can't look where they're going, and the
whip touches up the horses, and before you can say knife they're into
something. Jolly glad it's only the Am. Col. Jones will hear of this."
He chuckled again. Jones was the Captain commanding the Ammunition
Column.

The order ran down the line:

"Eyes--_front_."

Soon afterwards they came to some policemen, and two girls in very gay
frocks with bicycles, and the cross-roads. The Battery swung into the
great high road whose sign-post said, 'To Ewell and Epsom.' Another unit
had been halted to let the Artillery pass into its definitive place in
the vast trek. It was about this time that George began to notice the
dust. Rain had fallen before dawn and made the roads perfect; but now
either all the moisture had evaporated in the blazing sun, or the
Battery had reached a zone where rain had not fallen. At first the dust
rose only in a shallow sea to the height of fetlocks; but gradually it
ascended and made clouds, and deposited a layer on the face and on the
tongue and in the throat. And the surface itself of the road,
exasperated by innumerable hoofs and wheels, seemed to be in a kind of
crawling fermentation. The smell of humanity and horses was strong. The
men were less inclined to sing.

"Left!" yelled a voice.

And another:

"_Left_!"

And still another, very close on the second one:

"LEFT!"

"Keep your distances there!" Resmith shouted violently.

A horn sounded, and the next moment a motor-car, apparently full of
red-hats, rushed past the Battery, overtaking it, in a blinding storm of
dust. It was gone, like a ghost.

"That's the Almighty himself," Resmith explained, with unconscious awe
and devotion in his powerful voice. "Gramstone, Major-General."

George, profoundly impressed (he knew not why), noticed in his brain a
tiny embryo of a thought that it might be agreeable to ride in a car.

A hand went up, and the Battery stopped. It was the first halt.

"Look at your watch," said Resmith, smiling.

"Ten to, exactly."

"That's right. We have ten minutes in each hour."

All dismounted, examined horses for galls, and looked at their shoes,
took pulls at water-bottles, lit cigarettes, expectorated, coughed,
flicked at flies with handkerchiefs. The two chromatic girls cycled past
slowly, laughing. A stretcher-party also went past, and shortly
afterwards returned with the stretcher laden.


VI


It was after the long halt at midday that the weather changed. The
horses, martyrized by insects, had been elaborately watered and fed with
immense labour; officers and men had eaten rations and dust from their
haversacks, and for the most part emptied their water-bottles; and the
march had been resumed in a temper captious and somewhat exacerbated.

"Get your horse away; he's kicking mine!" said Captain Resmith
impatiently to George, reflecting the general mood. And George, who was
beginning to experience fatigue in the region of the knees, visited on
his horse the resentment he felt at Resmith's tone.

At precisely that moment some drops of rain fell. Nobody could believe
at first that the drops were raindrops for the whole landscape was
quivering in hot sunshine. However, an examination of the firmament
showed a cloud perpendicularly overhead; the drops multiplied; the cloud
slowly obscured the sun. An almost audible sigh of relief passed down
the line. Everybody was freshened and elated. Some men with an instinct
for the apposite started to sing:

"Shall we gather at the river?"

And nearly the whole Battery joined in the tune. The rain persevered,
thickening. The sun accepted defeat. The sky lost all its blue. Orders
were given as to clothing. George had the sensation that something was
lacking to him, and found that it was an umbrella. On the outskirts of
Ewell the Battery was splashing through puddles of water; the coats of
horses and of men had darkened; guns, poles, and caps carried chaplets
of raindrops; and all those stern riders, so proud and scornful, with
chins hidden in high, upturned collars, and long garments disposed
majestically over their legs and the flanks of the horses, nevertheless
knew in secret that the conquering rain had got down the backs of their
necks, and into their boots and into their very knees but they were
still nobly maintaining the illusion of impermeability against it. The
Battery, riding now stiffly 'eyes front,' was halted unexpectedly in
Ewell, filling the whole of the village, to the village's extreme
content. Many minutes elapsed. Rumour floated down that something, was
wrong in front. Captain Resmith had much inspectorial cantering to do,
and George faithfully followed him for some time. At one end of the
village a woman was selling fruit and ginger-beer to the soldiers at
siege prices; at the other, men and women out of the little gardened
houses were eagerly distributing hot tea and hot coffee free of charge.
The two girls from the crossroads entered the village, pushing their
bicycles, one of which had apparently lost a pedal. They wore
mackintoshes, and were still laughing.

At length George said:

"If you don't mind I'll stick where I am for a bit."

"Tired, eh?" Resmith asked callously.

"Well! I shall be if I keep on."

"Dismount, my canny boy. Didn't I tell you what would happen to you? At
your age--"

"Why! How old d'you think I am?"

"Well, my canny boy, you'll never see thirty again, I suppose."

"No, I shan't. Nor you either."

Captain Resmith said:

"I'm twenty-four."

George was thunder-struck. The fellow was a boy, and George had been
treating him as an equal! But then the fellow was also George's superior
officer, and immeasurably his superior in physique. Do what he would,
harden himself as he might, George at thirty-three could never hope to
rival the sinews of the boy of twenty-four, who incidentally could
instruct him on every conceivable military subject. George, standing by
his sodden horse, felt humiliated and annoyed as Resmith cantered off to
speak to the officer commanding the Ammunition Column. But on the trek
there was no outlet for such a sentiment as annoyance. He was Resmith's
junior and Resmith's inferior, and must behave, and expect to be behaved
to, as such.

"Never mind!" he said to himself. His determination to learn the art and
craft of war was almost savage in ferocity.

When the Battery at length departed from Ewell the rain had completed
its victory but at the same time had lost much of its prestige. The
riders, abandoning illusion, admitting frankly that they were wet to the
skin, knowing that all their clothing was soaked, and satisfied that
they could not be wetter than they were if the bottom fell out of the
sky, simply derided the rain and plodded forward. Groups of them even
disdained the weather in lusty song. But not George. George was
exhausted. He was ready to fall off his horse. The sensation of fatigue
about the knees and in the small of his back was absolute torture.
Resmith told him to ride without stirrups and dangle his legs. The
relief was real, but only temporary. And the Battery moved on at the
horribly monotonous, tiring walk. Epsom was incredibly distant. George
gave up hope of Epsom; and he was right to do so, for Epsom never came.
The Battery had taken a secondary road to the left which climbed slowly
to the Downs. At the top of this road, under the railway bridge, just
before fields ceased to be enclosed, stood the two girls. Their bicycles
leaned against the brick wall. They had taken off their mackintoshes,
and it was plain from their clinging coloured garments that they too
were utterly drenched. They laughed no more. Over the open Downs the
wind was sweeping the rain in front of it; and the wind was the night
wind, for the sky had begun to darken into dusk. The Battery debouched
into a main road which seemed full of promise, but left it again within
a couple of hundred yards, and was once more on the menacing, high,
naked Downs, with a wide and desolate view of unfeatured plains to the
north. The bugles sounded sharply in the wet air, and the Battery, now
apparently alone in the world, came to a halt. George dropped off his
horse. A multiplicity of orders followed. Amorphous confusion was
produced out of a straight line. This was the bivouacking ground. And
there was nothing--nothing but the track by which they had arrived, and
the Downs, and a distant blur to the west in the shape of the Epsom
Grand Stand, and the heavy, ceaseless rain, and the threat of the
fast-descending night. According to the theory of the Divisional Staff a
dump furnished by the Army Service Corps ought to have existed at a spot
corresponding to the final letter in the words 'Burgh Heath' on the map,
but the information quickly became general that no such dump did in
practice exist. To George the situation was merely incredible. He knew
that for himself there was only one reasonable course of conduct. He
ought to have a boiling bath, go to bed with his dressing-gown over his
pyjamas, and take a full basin of hot bread-and-milk adulterated by the
addition of brandy--and sleep. Horses and men surged perilously around
him. The anarchical disorder, however, must have been less acute than he
imagined, for a soldier appeared and took away his horse; he let the
reins slip from his dazed hand. The track had been transformed into a
morass of viscous mud.


VII


It was night. The heavy rain drove out of the dark void from every
direction at once, and baptized the chilled faces of men as though it
had been discharged from the hundred-holed rose of a full watering-can.
The right and the left sections of the Battery were disposed on either
side of the track. Fires were burning. Horse-lines had been laid down,
and by the light of flickering flames the dim forms of tethered animals
could be seen with their noses to the ground pessimistically pretending
to munch what green turf had survived in the mud. Lanterns moved
mysteriously to and fro. In the distance to the west more illuminations
showed that another unit had camped along the track. The quartermaster
of No. 2, had produced meagre tinned meats and biscuits from his
emergency stores, and had made a certain quantity of tea in dixies; he
had even found a half-feed of oats for the horses; so that both horses
and men were somewhat appeased. But the officers had had nothing, and
the Army Service Corps detachment was still undiscoverable.

George sat on an empty box at the edge of the track, submissive to the
rain. Resmith had sent him to overlook men cutting straight branches in
a wood on Park Downs, and then he had overlooked them as, with the said
branches and with waterproofs laced together in pairs, they had erected
sleeping shelters for the officers under the imperfect shelter of the
sole tree within the precincts of the camp. From these purely ornamental
occupations he had returned in a condition approximating to collapse,
without desire and without hope. The invincible cheerfulness of unseen
men chanting music-hall songs in the drenched night made no impression
on him, nor the terrible staccato curtness of a N.C.O. mounting guard.
Volition had gone out of him; his heart was as empty as his stomach.

Then a group of officers approached, with a mounted officer in the
middle of them, and a lantern swinging. The group was not proceeding in
any particular direction, but following the restless motions of the
uneasy horse. George, suddenly startled, recognized the voice of the
rider; it was Colonel Hullocher's voice. The Brigade-Commander had come
in person to investigate the melancholy inexcusable case of No. 2
Battery, and he was cursing all men and all things, and especially the
Divisional Staff. It appeared that the Staff was responsible for the
hitch of organization. During the day the Staff had altered its
arrangements for No. 2 Battery of the Second Brigade, and had sent an
incomplete message to the Army Service Corps Headquarters. The A.S.C.
had waited in vain for the completion of the message, and had then, at
dark, dispatched a convoy with provender for No. 2 with instructions to
find No. 2. This convoy had not merely not found No. 2--it had lost
itself, vanished in the dark universe of rain. But let not No. 2 imagine
that No. 2 was blameless! No. 2 ought to have found the convoy. By some
means, human or divine, by the exercise of second sight or the vision of
cats or the scent of hounds, it ought to have found the convoy, and
there was no excuse for it not having done so. Such was the expressed
opinion of Colonel Hullocher, and a recital by Major Craim of the
measures taken by him did nothing to shake that opinion.

"How exactly do you stand now?" the Colonel fiercely demanded.

"The men and the horses will manage fairly well with what they've had,
sir," said the Major; and he incautiously added: "But my officers
haven't had anything at all."

The Colonel seized the opening with fury.

"What the devil do I care for your officers? It's your horses and your
men that I'm thinking about. It's to-morrow morning that I'm thinking
about. I--"

The horse, revolving, cut short his harangue.

"Keep that d--d lantern out of his eyes!" cried the Colonel.

George jumped up, and as he did so the water swished in his boots, and a
stream poured off his cap. The horse was being fatally attracted towards
him. The beam of the lantern fell on him, illuminating before his face
the long slants of rain.

"Ha! Who's this?" the Colonel demanded, steadying the horse.

George smartly saluted, forgetting his fatigue.

"You, is it? And what are _you_ supposed to be doing? Look here--"
Colonel Hullocher stopped in full career of invective, remembering
military etiquette. "Major, I suggest you send Mr. Cannon with some men
to find the convoy." The Major having eagerly concurred, the Colonel
went on: "Take a few men and search every road and track between here
and Kingswood Station--systematically. Kingswood's the rail-head, and
somewhere between here and there that convoy is bound to be.
Systematically, mind! It's not a technical job. All that's wanted is
common sense and thoroughness."

The Colonel's gaze was ruthlessly challenging. George met it stiffly. He
knew that the roads, if not the tracks, had already been searched. He
knew that he was being victimized by a chance impulse of the Colonel's.
But he ignored all that. He was coldly angry and resentful. Utterly
forgetting his fatigue, he inimically surveyed the Colonel's squat,
shining figure in the cavalry coat, a pyramid of which the apex was a
round head surmounted by a dripping cap.

"Yes, sir," he snapped.

By rights the tyrant ought to have rolled off his horse dead. But
Colonel Hullocher was not thus vulnerable. He could give glance for
glance with perhaps any human being on earth, and indeed thought little
more of subalterns than of rabbits.

He finished, after a pause:

"You will be good enough, Major, to let this officer report to me
personally when he has found the convoy."

"Certainly, sir."

The horse bounded away, scattering the group.

Rather less than half an hour later George had five men (including his
own servant and Resmith's) and six lanterns round a cask, on the top of
which was his map. There were six possible variations of route to
Kingswood Station, and he explained them all, allotting one to each man
and keeping one for himself. He could detect the men exchanging looks,
but what the looks signified he could not tell. He gave instructions
that everybody should go forward until either discovering the convoy or
reaching Kingswood. He said with a positive air of conviction that by
this means the convoy could not fail to be discovered. The men received
the statement with strict agnosticism; they could not see things with
the eye of faith, fortified though they were with tea and tinned meats.
An offered reward of ten shillings to the man who should hit on the
convoy did not appreciably inspirit them. George himself was of course
not a bit convinced by his own argument, and had not the slightest
expectation that the convoy would be found. The map, which the breeze
lifted and upon which the rain drummed, seemed to be entirely
unconnected with the actual facts of the earth's surface. The party
mounted tired, unwilling horses and filed off. Some soldiers in the
darkness, watching the string of lanterns, gave a half-ironical
'Hurrah.' One by one, as the tracks bifurcated, George dispatched his
men, with renewed insistent advice, and at last he and his horse were
alone on the Downs.

His clothes were exceedingly heavy with all the moisture they had
imbibed. Repose had mitigated his fatigue, but every slow, slouching
step of the horse intensified it again--and at a tremendous rate. Still,
he did not care, having mastered the great truth that he would either
fall off the horse in exhaustion or arrive at Kingswood--and which of
the alternatives happened did not appear to him to matter seriously. The
whole affair was fantastic; it was unreal, in addition to being silly.
But, real or unreal, he would finish it. If he was a phantom and
Kingswood a mirage, the phantom would reach the mirage or sink senseless
into astral mud. He had Colonel Hullocher in mind, and, quite
illogically, he envisaged the Colonel as a reality. Often he had heard
of the ways of the Army, and had scarcely credited the tales told and
printed. Well, he now credited them. Was it conceivable that that madman
of a Colonel had packed him, George, off on such a wild and idiotic
errand in the middle of the night, merely out of caprice? Were such
doings--

He faintly heard voices through the rain, and the horse started at this
sign of life from the black, unknown world beyond the circle of
lantern-light. George was both frightened and puzzled. He thought of
ghosts and haunted moors. Then he noticed a penumbra round about the
form of what might be a small hillock to the left of the track. He
quitted the track, and cautiously edged his horse forward, having
commendably obscured the lantern beneath his overcoat. The farther side
of the hillock had been tunnelled to a depth of perhaps three feet; a
lantern suspended somehow in the roof showed the spade which had done
the work; it also showed, within the cavity, the two girls who had
accompanied the Brigade from Wimbledon, together with two soldiers. The
soldiers were rankers, but one of the girls talked with perfect
correctness in a very refined voice; the other was silently eating. Both
were obviously tired to the limit of endurance, and very dirty and
draggled. The gay colours of their smart frocks had, however, survived
the hardships of the day. George was absolutely amazed by the spectacle.
The vagaries of autocratic Colonels were nothing when compared to this
extravagance of human nature, this glimpse of the subterranean life of
regiments, this triumphant and forlorn love-folly in the midst of the
inclement, pitiless night. And he was touched, too. The glimmer of the
lantern on the green and yellow of the short skirts half disclosed under
the mackintoshes was at once pathetic and exciting. The girl who had
been eating gave a terrible scream; she had caught sight of the figure
on horseback. The horse shied violently and stood still. George
persuaded him back into the track and rode on, guessing that already he
had become a genuine phantom for the self-absorbed group awakened out of
its ecstasy by the mysterious vision of a nightrider.

Half a mile farther on he saw the red end of a cigarette swimming on the
sea of darkness; his lantern had expired, and he had not yet tried to
relight it.

"Hi there!" he cried. "Who are you?"

The cigarette approached him, in a wavy movement, and a man's figure was
vaguely discerned.

"A.S.C. convoy, sir."

"Where are you supposed to be going to?"

"No. 2 Battery, Second Brigade, sir. Can't find it, sir. And we've got
off the road. The G.S. wagon fell into a hole and broke an axle, sir."

"And what do you think you're doing?"

"Waiting for daylight, sir."

The man's youthful voice was quite cheerful.

"D'you know what time it is?"

"No, sir."

"How many other vehicles have you got?"

"Three altogether, sir. Six horses."

"Well, I'm from No. 2 Battery, and I'm looking for you. You've
unharnessed, I suppose."

"Oh yes, sir, and fed."

"Well, you'd better harness up your other two carts like lightning and
come along with me. Show me the way. We'll see about the G.S. wagon
later on."

"It's about a hundred yards from here, sir."

For the second time that evening George forgot fatigue. Exultation,
though carefully hidden, warmed and thrilled every part of his body.
Tying his horse behind one of the vehicles, he rode comfortably on hard
packages till within sight of the Battery camp, when he took saddle
again and went off alone to find a celebrated inn near the Epsom Grand
Stand, where Colonel Hullocher and other grandees had billeted
themselves. The Colonel was busy with his Adjutant, but apparently quite
ready to eat George.

"Ah! You, is it? Found that convoy?"

George answered in a tone to imply that only one answer was conceivable:

"Yes, sir."

"Brought it back?"

"Part of it, sir."

He explained the circumstances.

The Colonel coughed, and said:

"Have a whisky-and-soda before you go?"

George reflected for an instant. The Colonel seemingly had a core of
decency, but George said in his heart: "I've not done with you yet, my
fat friend." And aloud, grimly.

"Thank you very much, sir. But I shall ask you to excuse me."

Both the Colonel and the Adjutant were pardonably shaken by this
unparalleled response.

The Colonel barked:

"Why? Teetotaller?"

"No, sir. But I've eaten nothing since lunch, and a glass of whisky
might make me drunk."

Colonel Hullocher might have offered George some food to accompany the
whisky, but he did not. He had already done a marvel; a miracle was not
to be expected. He looked at George and George looked at him.

"No doubt you're right. Good night."

"Good night, sir." George saluted and marched off.


VIII


He prepared to turn in. The process was the simplest in the world. He
had only to wrap a pair of blankets round his soaked clothes, and,
holding them in place with one hand, creep under the shelter. There were
four shelters. The Major had a small one, nearest the trunk of the tree,
and the others were double shelters, to hold two officers apiece. He
glanced about. The invisible camp was silent and still, save for a
couple of lieutenants who were walking to and fro like young ducks in
the heavy rain. Faint fires here and there in the distance showed how
the troops were spread over the Downs. Heaven and earth were equally
mysterious and inscrutable. He inserted himself cautiously into the
aperture of the shelter, where Resmith already lay asleep, and, having
pushed back his cap, arranged his right arm for a pillow. The clammy
ground had been covered with dry horse-litter. As soon as he was settled
the noise of the rain ceaselessly pattering on the waterproof became
important. He could feel the chill of the wind on his feet, which, with
Resmith's, projected beyond the shelter. The conditions were certainly
astounding. Yet, despite extreme fatigue, he was not depressed. On the
contrary he was well satisfied. He had accomplished something. He had
been challenged, and had accepted the challenge, and had won. The
demeanour of the mess when he got back to the camp clearly indicated
that he had acquired prestige. He was the man who had organized an
exhaustive search for the convoy and had found the convoy in the pitchy
blackness. He was the man who had saved the unit from an undeserved
shame. The mess had greeted him with warm food. Perhaps he had been
lucky--the hazard of a lighted cigarette in the darkness! Yes, but luck
was in everything. The credit was his, and men duly gave it to him, and
he took it. He thought almost kindly of Colonel Hullocher, against whom
he had measured himself. The result of the match was a draw, but he had
provided the efficient bully with matter for reflection. After all,
Hullocher was right. When you were moving a Division, jobs had to be
done, possible or impossible; human beings had to be driven; the
supernatural had to be achieved. And it had been! That which in the
morning existed at Wimbledon now existed on the Downs. There it lay,
safe and chiefly asleep, in defiance of the weather and of accidents and
miscarriage! And the next day it would go on.

The vast ambitions of the civilian had sunk away. He thought, exalted as
though by a wonderful discovery:

"_There is something in this Army business_!"

He ardently desired to pursue it further. He ardently desired sleep and
renewal so that he might rise afresh and pursue it further. What he had
done and been through was naught, less than naught. To worry about
physical discomforts was babyish. Inviting vistas of knowledge,
technical attainment, experience, and endurance stretched before him,
illuminating the night. His mind dwelt on France, on Mons, on the idea
of terror and cataclysm. And it had room too for his wife and children.
He had had no news of them for over twenty-four hours; and he had broken
his resolve to write to Lois every day; he had been compelled to break
it. But in the morning, somehow, he would send a telegram and he would
get one.

"If it's true the French Government has left Paris--"

The nocturnal young ducks were passing the shelter.

"And who says it's true? Who told you, I should like to know?"

"The Major has heard it."

"Rats! I lay you a fiver the Allies are in Berlin before Christmas."










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