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?"