THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT
 
 By ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 NOVELS 
 
 THE PRETTY LADY 
 
 THE UON'S shake 
 
 THESE TWAIN 
 
 CLAYHANGER 
 
 HILDA LESSWAYS 
 
 THE OLD WaVES' TALE 
 
 DENRY THE AUDACIOUS 
 
 THE OLD ADAM 
 
 HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND 
 
 THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 
 THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA 
 
 BUEIF.D ALIVE 
 
 A GREAT MAN 
 
 LEONORA 
 
 WHOM GOD HATH JOINED 
 
 A MAN FROM THE NORTH 
 
 ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 THE CITY OF PLEASURE 
 
 THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL 
 
 HUGO 
 
 THE GATES OF WRATH 
 
 POCKET PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 THE author's CRAFT 
 
 MARRIED LIFE 
 
 FRIENDSHIP AND HAPPINESS 
 
 HOW TO LI\^ ON 24 HOURS A DAY 
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 LITERARY TASTE 
 
 MENTAL EFFIC^ENCY 
 
 PLAYS 
 
 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 
 CUPID AND COMMONSENSE 
 WHAT THE PUBUC WANTS 
 POLITE FARCES 
 THE HONEYMOON 
 
 IN COLLABORATION WITH EDWARD KNOBLAUCH 
 MILESTONES 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS 
 paris nights 
 
 the truth about an author 
 lirkrtyI 
 
 OVER there: war SCENES 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 NEW YORK
 
 THE 
 
 ROLL CALL 
 
 BY 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE LION'S SHARE. " "THE OLD WIVES' 
 
 TALE," "CLAYHANGER," "HILDA LESSWAYS," 
 
 "THESE TWAIN," ETC.. ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1918, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANT 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1018 
 BY THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 3 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 • 
 
 PART ONE 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I The New Lodging 9 
 
 II Marguerite 30 
 
 III The Charwoman 66 
 
 IV The Luncheon 82 
 
 V The Tea 108 
 
 VI The Dinner 136 
 
 VII The Rupture 173 
 
 VIII Inspiration 210 
 
 IX Competition 242 
 
 PART TWO 
 
 X The Triumph 297 
 
 XI The Roll-Call 338 
 
 XII In the Machine ...... i., ,. . . 368 
 
 OJLJLkJOO 
 
 CKT/^r TO ft
 
 THE ROLL-CALL
 
 PART ONE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE NEW LODGING 
 
 In the pupils' room of the offices of Lucas & En- 
 wright, architects, Russell Square, Bloomsbury, George 
 Edwin Cannon, an articled pupil, leaned over a large 
 drawing-board and looked up at Mr. Enwright, the 
 head of the firm, who with cigarette and stick was 
 on his way out after what he called a good day's work. 
 It was past six o'clock on an evening in early July, 
 1901. To George's right was an open door leading to 
 the principals' room, and to his left another open door 
 leading to more rooms and to the staircase. The lofty 
 chambers were full of lassitude; but round about 
 George, who was working late, there floated the tonic 
 vapour of conscious virtue. Haim, the factotum, could 
 be seen and heard moving in his cubicle which guarded 
 the offices from the stairs. In the rooms shortly to 
 be deserted and locked up, and in the decline of the 
 day, the three men were drawn together like survivors. 
 
 " I gather you're going to change your abode," said 
 Mr. Enwright, having stopped. 
 
 " Did Mr. Orgrcave tell you then? " George asked. 
 
 " Well, he didn't exactly tell me ... " 
 
 John Orgreave was Mr. Enwright's junior partner; 
 and for nearly two years, since his advent in London 
 from the Five Towns, George had lived with Mr. and 
 
 9
 
 10 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 Mrs. Orgreave at Bedford Park. The Orgreaves, too, 
 sprang from the Five Towns. John's people and 
 George's people were closely entwined in the local an- 
 nals. 
 
 Pupil and principal glanced discreetly at one an- 
 other, exchanging in silence vague, malicious, unutter- 
 able critical verdicts upon both John Orgreave and his 
 wife. 
 
 " Well, I am ! " said George at length. 
 
 " Where are you going to? " 
 
 " Haven't settled a bit," said George. " I wish I 
 could live in Paris." 
 
 " Paris wouldn't be much good to you yet," Mr. En- 
 wright laughed benevolently. 
 
 " I suppose it wouldn't. Besides of course — " 
 
 George spoke in a tone of candid deferential accept- 
 ance, which flattered Mr. Enwright very much, for it 
 was the final proof of the prestige which the grizzled 
 and wrinkled and peculiar Fellow and Member of the 
 Council of the Royal Institute of British Architects 
 had acquired in the estimation of that extremely inde- 
 pendent, tossing sprig, George Edwin Cannon. Mr. 
 Enwright had recently been paying a visit to Paris, 
 and George had been sitting for the Intermediate Ex- 
 amination. " You can join me here for a few days 
 after the exam, if you care to," Mr. Enwright had sent 
 over. It was George's introduction to the continent, 
 and the circumstances of it were almost ideal. For a 
 week the deeply experienced connoisseur of all the arts 
 had had the fine, eager, responsive virgin mind in his 
 power. Day after day he had watched and guided it 
 amid entirely new sensations. Never had Mr. En- 
 wright enjoyed himself more purely, and at the close 
 he knew with satisfaction that he had put Paris in a 
 proper perspective for George and perhaps saved the
 
 THE NEW LODGING 11 
 
 youth from years of groping misapprehension. As for 
 George, all his preconceived notions about Paris had 
 been destroyed or shaken. In the quadrangles of the 
 Louvre, for example, Mr, Enwright, pointing to the 
 under part of the stone bench that foots so much of 
 the walls, had said: "Look at that curve." Nothing 
 else. No ecstasies about the sculptures of Jean Gou- 
 jon and Carpeaux, or about the marvellous harmony 
 of the East facade! But a flick of the cane towards 
 the half-hidden moulding! And George had felt with 
 a thrill what an exquisite curve and what an original 
 curve and what a modest curve that curve was. Sud- 
 denly and magically his eyes had been opened. Or it 
 might have been that a deceitful mist had rolled away 
 and the real Louvre been revealed in its esoteric and sole 
 authentic beauty. . . . 
 
 "Why don't you try Chelsea?" said Mr. Enwright 
 over his shoulder, proceeding towards the stairs. 
 
 " I was thinking of Chelsea." 
 
 " You were ! " Mr. Enwright halted again for an 
 instant. " It's the only place in London where the 
 structure of society is anything like Paris. Why, dash 
 it, in the King's Road, the grocers know each other's 
 business ! " Mr. Enwright made the last strange re- 
 mark to the outer door, and vanished. 
 
 " Funny cove ! " George commented tolerantly to Mr. 
 Haim, who passed through the room immediately after- 
 wards to his nightly task of collecting and inspecting 
 the scattered instruments on the principal's august 
 drawing-board. 
 
 But Mr. Haim, though possibly he smiled ever so 
 little, would not compromise himself by an endorsement 
 of the criticism of his employer. George was a mere 
 incident in the eternal career of Mr. Haim at Lucas 
 and Enwright's.
 
 12 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 When the factotum came back into the pupils' 
 room George stood up straight and smoothed his 
 trousers and gazed admiringly at his elegant bright 
 socks. 
 
 " Let me see," said George in a very friendly man- 
 ner, " you live somewhere in Chelsea, don't you? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Mr. Haim. 
 
 " Whereabouts, if it isn't a rude question? " 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Haim, confidentially and benig- 
 nantly, captivated by George's youthful charm, " it's 
 near the RedclifFe Arms." He mentioned the RedclifFe 
 Arms as he might have mentioned the Bank, Piccadilly 
 Circus, or Gibraltar. " Alexandra Grove. No. 8. 
 To tell you the truth, I own the house." 
 
 " The deuce you do ! " 
 
 " Yes. The leasehold, that is, of course. No free- 
 holds knocking about loose in that district ! " 
 
 George saw a new and unsuspected Mr. Haim. He 
 ■was impressed. And he was glad that he had never 
 broken the office tradition of treating Mr. Haim with a 
 respect not usually accorded to factotums. He saw 
 a property-owner, a tax-payer, and a human being be- 
 hind the spectacles of the shuffling, rather shabby, cere- 
 monious familiar that pervaded those rooms daily from 
 before ten till after six. He grew curious about a 
 living phenomenon that hitherto had never awakened 
 his curiosity. 
 
 "Were you really looking for accommodation?" 
 demanded Mr. Haim suavely. 
 
 George hesitated. " Yes." 
 
 " Perhaps I have something that might suit you." 
 
 Events, disguised as mere words, seemed to George to 
 be pushing him forward. 
 
 "I should like to have a look at it," he said. He 
 had to say it: there was no alternative.
 
 THE NEW LODGING 13 
 
 Mr. Haim raised a hand. " Any evening that hap- 
 pens to be convenient." 
 
 « What about to-night, then.? " 
 
 " Certain!}'," Mr. Haim agreed. For a moment 
 George apprehended that Mr. Haim was going to in- 
 vite him to dinner. But Mr. Haim was not going to in- 
 vite him to dinner. "About nine, shall we say.''" he 
 suggested with a courtliness softer even than usual. 
 
 Later George said that he would lock up the office 
 himself and leave the key with the housekeeper. 
 
 " You can't miss the place," said Mr. Haim on leav- 
 ing. " It's between the Workhouse and the RedclifFe." 
 
 At the corner dominated by the Queen's Elm, which 
 on the great route from Piccadilly Circus to Putney 
 was a public-house and halt second only in importance 
 to the Redcliffe Arms, night fell earlier than it ought 
 to have done, owing to a vast rain-cloud over Chelsea. 
 A few drops descended, but so warm and so gently that 
 they were not like real rain and sentimentalists could 
 not believe that they would wet. People, arriving mys- 
 teriously out of darkness, gathered sparsely on the 
 pavement, lingered a few moments, and were swal- 
 lowed by omnibuses that bore them obscurely away. 
 At intervals an individual got out of an omnibus and 
 adventured hurriedly forth and was lost in the gloom. 
 The omnibuses, all white, trotted on an inward curve to 
 the pavement, stopped while the conductor, with hand 
 raised to the bell-string, murmured apathetically the 
 names of streets and of public-houses, and then they 
 jerked off again on an outward curve to the impatient 
 double ting of the bell. To the east was a high defile 
 of hospitals and to the west the Workhouse tower 
 faintly imprinted itself on the sombre sky.
 
 14 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 The drops of rain grew very large and heavy, and 
 the travellers, instead of waiting on the kerb, with- 
 drew to the shelter of the wall of the Queen's Elm. 
 George was now among the group, precipitated like the 
 rest as it were out of the solution of London. George 
 was of the age which does not admit rain, or which be- 
 lieves that it is immune from the usual consequences of 
 exposure to rain. When advised, especially by women, 
 to defend himself against the treacheries of the weather, 
 he always protested confidentlj^ that he would " be all 
 right." Thus with a stick and a straw hat he would 
 affront terrible dangers. It was a species of valour, 
 which the event often justified. Indeed he generally 
 was all right. But to-night, afoot on the way from 
 South Kensington station in a region quite unfamiliar 
 to him, he was intimidated by the slapping menace 
 of the big drops. Reality faced him. His scared 
 thought ran : " Unless I do something at once I shall 
 get wet through." Impossible to appear drenched at 
 old Haim's ! So he had abandoned all his pretensions 
 to a magical invulnerability, and rushed under the eave 
 of the Queen's Elm to join the omnibus group. 
 
 He did not harmonise with the omnibus group, being 
 both too elegant and too high-spirited. His proper 
 role in the circumstances would have been to " jump 
 into a hansom " ; but there were no empty hansoms, 
 and moreover, for certain reasons of finance, he had 
 sworn off hansoms until a given date. He regarded 
 the situation as " rather a lark," and he somehow knew 
 that the group understood and appreciated and per- 
 haps resented his superior and tolerant attitude. An 
 omnibus rolled palely into the radiance of the Queen's 
 Elm lamp, the horses' flanks and the lofty driver's 
 apron gleaming with rain. He sprang towards the 
 vehicle ; the whole group sprang. " Full inside ! "
 
 THE NEW LODGING 15 
 
 snapped the conductor inexorabl3\ Ting, ting! It 
 was gone, glimmering with its enigmatic load into the 
 distance. George turned again to the wall, humili- 
 ated. It seemed wrong that the conductor should have 
 included him with the knot of common omnibus- 
 travellers and late workers. The conductor ought to 
 have differentiated. . . . He put out a hand. The rain 
 had capriciously ceased ! He departed gaily and tri- 
 umphantly. He was re-endowed with the magical in- 
 vulnerability. 
 
 The background of his mind was variegated. The 
 incidents of the tremendous motor-car race from Paris 
 to Berlin, which had finished nearly a week earlier, still 
 glowed on it. And the fact that King Edward VII 
 had driven in a car from Pall INIall to Windsor Castle 
 in sixty minutes was beautifully present. Then he 
 was slightly worried concerning the Mediterranean 
 Fleet. He knew nothing about it, but as a good citi- 
 zen he suspected in idle moments, like a number of other 
 good citizens, that all was not quite well with the Medi- 
 terranean Fleet. As for the war, he had only begun 
 to be interested in the war within the last six months, 
 and already he was sick of it. He knew that the Boers 
 had just wrecked a British military train, and his atti- 
 tude towards such methods of fighting was rather se- 
 vere and scornful ; he did not regard them as " war." 
 However, the apparent permanence of the war was 
 splendidly' compensated by the victory of the brothers 
 Doherty over the American lawn-tennis champions in 
 the Gentlemen's Doubles at Wimbledon. Who could 
 have expected the brothers to win after the defeat of 
 R. H. by ;Mr. Gore in the Singles .? George had most 
 painfully feared that the Americans would conquer, 
 and their overthrowing b}^ the thin brothers indicated 
 to George, who took himself for a serious student of
 
 16 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 affairs, that Britain was continuing to exist and that 
 the new national self-depreciative yearning for efficiency 
 might possibly be rather absurd after all. 
 
 In the midst of these and similar thoughts, and of in- 
 numerable minor thoughts about himself, in the very 
 centre of his mind and occupying nearly the whole of 
 it, was the vast thought, the obsession, of liis own poten- 
 tial power and its fulfilment. George's egotism was 
 terrific, and as right as any other natural phenomenon. 
 He had to get on. Much money was included in his 
 scheme, but simply as a bye-product. He had to be a 
 great architect, and — equally important — he had 
 to be publicly recognised as a great architect, and 
 recognition could not come without money. For him, 
 the entire created universe was the means to his end. 
 He would not use it unlawfully, but he would use it. 
 He was using it, as well as he yet knew how, and with an 
 independence that was as complete as it was unconscious. 
 In regard to matters upon which his instinct had not 
 suggested a course of action, George was always ready 
 enough to be taught; indeed his respect for an expert 
 was truly deferential. But when his instinct had begun 
 to operate he would consult nobody and consider no- 
 body, being deeply sure that infallible wisdom had been 
 granted to him. (Nor did experience seem to teach 
 him better.) Thus, in the affair of a London lodging, 
 though he was still two years from his majority and had 
 no resources save the purse of his stepfather, Edwin 
 Clayhanger, he had decided to leave the Orgreaves with- 
 out asking or even informing his parents. In his next 
 letter home he would no doubt inform them, casually, 
 of what he meant to do or actually had done, and if 
 objections followed he would honestly resent them. 
 
 A characteristic example of his independence had 
 happened when at the unripe age of seventeen he left
 
 THE NEW LODGING 17 
 
 the Five Towns for London. Upon his mother's mar- 
 riage to Edwin Clayhanger his own name had been in- 
 formally changed for him to Clayhanger. But a few 
 days before the day of departure he had announced 
 that, as Clayhanger was not his own name and that he 
 preferred his own name, he should henceforth be known 
 as " Cannon," his father's name. He did not invite 
 discussion. Mr. Clayhanger had thereupon said to him 
 privately and as one man of the world to another: 
 " But you aren't really entitled to the name Cannon, 
 sonny." " Why ?" " Because your father was what's 
 commonly known as a bigamist, and his marriage with 
 your mother was not legal. I thought I'd take this 
 opportunity of telling you. You needn't say anything 
 to your mother — unless of course you feel you must." 
 To which George had replied : " No, I won't. But if 
 Cannon was my father's name I think I'll have it all 
 the same." And he did have it. The bigamy of his 
 father did not apparently affect him. Upon further 
 enquiry he learnt that his father might be alive or might 
 be dead, but that if alive he was in America. 
 
 The few words from Mr. Enwright about Chelsea 
 had sufficed to turn Chelsea into Elysium, Paradise, al- 
 most into Paris. No other quarter of London was in- 
 habitable by a rising architect. As soon as Haim had 
 gone George had begun to look up Chelsea in the office 
 library, and as Mr. Enwright happened to be an active 
 Member of the Society for the Survey of the Memorials 
 of Greater London, the library served him well. In an 
 hour and a half he had absorbed something of the 
 historical topography of Chelsea. He knew that the 
 Fulham Road upon which he was now walking was a 
 boundary of Chelsea. He knew that the Queen's Elm 
 public-house had its name from the tradition that 
 Elizabeth had once sheltered from a shower beneath an
 
 18 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 elm tree which stood at that very corner. He knew 
 that Chelsea had been a " village of palaces," and what 
 was the function of the Thames in the magnificent life 
 of that village. The secret residence of Turner in 
 Chelsea, under the strange alias of Admiral Booth, 
 excited George's admiration ; he liked the idea of liidden 
 retreats and splendid fanciful pseudonyms. But the 
 master-figure of Chelsea for George was Sir Thomas 
 More. He could see Sir Thomas More walking in his 
 majestic garden by the river with the King's arm round 
 his neck, and Holbein close by, and respectful august 
 prelates and a nagging wife in the background. And 
 he could see Sir Thomas More taking his barge for the 
 last journey to the Tower, and Sir Thomas More's 
 daughter coming back in the same barge with her 
 father's head on board. Curious ! He envied Sir 
 Thomas More. 
 
 " Darned bad tower for a village of palaces ! " he 
 thought, not of the Tower of London, but of the tower 
 of the Workhouse which he was now approaching. He 
 thought he could design an incomparably better tower 
 than that. And he saw himself in the future, the archi- 
 tect of vast monuments, strolling in a grand garden of 
 his own at evening with other distinguished and witty 
 persons. 
 
 But there were high-sounding names in the history of 
 Chelsea besides those of More and Turner. Not names 
 of people! Cremorne and Ranelagh! Cremorne to 
 the west and Ranelagh to the east. The legend of these 
 vanished resorts of pleasure and vice stirred his long- 
 ings and his sense of romantic beauty, — especially 
 Ranelagh and its Rotunda. ( He wanted, when the time 
 came, to be finely vicious, as he wanted to be everything. 
 An architect could not be great without being every-
 
 THE NEW LODGING 19 
 
 thing.) He projected himself into the Rotunda, with 
 its sixt}' windows, its countless refreshment-boxes, its 
 huge paintings, and the orchestra in the middle, and the 
 expensive and naughty crowd walking round and round 
 and round on the matting, and the muffled footsteps and 
 the swish of trains on the matting, and the specious 
 smiles and whispers, and the blare of the band and the 
 smell of the lamps and candles. . . . Earl's Court was a 
 poor, tawdry, unsightly thing after that. 
 
 When he had passed under the Workhouse tower he 
 came to a side-street which, according to Haim's de- 
 scription of the neighbourhood, ought to have been 
 Alexandra Grove. The large lamp on the corner, how- 
 ever, gave no indication, nor could any sign be seen 
 in the darkness on the blind wall of either of the corner- 
 houses in Fulham Road. Doubtless in da3^time the 
 street had a visible label, but the borough authorities 
 evidently believed that night endowed the stranger with 
 powers of divination. George turned hesitant down 
 the mysterious gorge, which had two dim lamps of its 
 own, and which ended in a high wall, whereat could be 
 descried unattainable trees, — possibly the grove of 
 Alexandra. Silence and a charmed stillness held the 
 gorge, while in Fulham Road not a hundred yards away 
 omnibuses and an occasional hansom rattled along in 
 an ordinary world. George soon decided that he was 
 not in Alexandra Grove, on account of the size of the 
 houses. He could not conceive Mr. Haim owning one 
 of them. They stood lofty in the gloom, in pairs, se- 
 cluded from the pavement b}' a stucco garden-wall and 
 low bushes. They were double-fronted, and their doors 
 were at the summit of flights of blanched steps that 
 showed through the bars of iron gates. They had three 
 stories above a basement. Still, he looked for No. 8.
 
 20 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 But just as the street had no name, so the houses had 
 no numbers. No. 16 alone could be distinguished; it 
 had figures on its faintly illuminated fanlight. He 
 walked back, idly counting. 
 
 Then, amid the curtained and shuttered fa9ades, he 
 saw, across the road, a bright beam from a basement. 
 He crossed and peeped through a gate, and an interior 
 was suddenly revealed to him. Near the window of a 
 room sat a young woman bending over a table. A 
 gas-jet on a bracket in the wall, a few inches higher 
 than her head and a foot distant from it, threw a strong 
 radiance on her face and hair. The luminous living 
 picture, framed in blackness by the window, instantly 
 entranced him. All the splendid images of the past 
 faded and were confuted and invalidated and destroyed 
 by this intense reality so present and so near to him. 
 (Nevertheless, for a moment he thought of her as the 
 daughter of Sir Thomas More.) She was drawing. 
 She was drawing with her whole mind and heart. At 
 intervals, scarcely moving her head, she would glance 
 aside at a paper to her left on the table. . . . She 
 seemed to search it, to drag some secret out of it, and 
 then she would resume her drawing. She was neither 
 dark nor fair ; she was comely, perhaps beautiful ; she 
 had beautiful lips, and her nose, behind the nostrils, 
 joined the cheek in a lovely contour, like a tiny bulb. 
 Yes, she was superb. But what mastered him was less 
 her fresh physical charm than the rapt and extreme vi- 
 tality of her existing. . . . He knew from her gestures 
 and the tools on the table that she could be no amateur. 
 She was a professional. He thought : Chelsea ! 
 . . . Marvellous place, Chelsea ! He ought to have 
 found that out long ago. He imagined Chelsea full of 
 such pictures, — the only true home of beauty and 
 romance.
 
 THE NEW LODGING 21 
 
 Then the impact of a single idea startled his blood. 
 He went hot. He flushed. He had tingling sensations 
 all down his back, and in his legs and in his arms. It 
 was as though he had been caught in a dubious situa- 
 tion. Though he was utterly innocent, he felt as 
 though he had something to be ashamed of. The idea 
 was: she resembled old Haim, facially! Ridiculous 
 idea! But she did resemble old Haim, particularly in 
 the lobal termination of the nose. And in the lips, too. 
 And there was a vague general resemblance. Absurd! 
 It was a fancy. . . . He would not have cared for any- 
 body to be watching him then, to surprise him watching 
 her. He heard unmistakable footsteps on the pave- 
 ment. A policeman darkly approached. Policemen at 
 times can be very apposite. George moved his gaze and 
 looked with admirable casualness around. 
 
 " Officer, is this Alexandra Grove.? " (His stepfather 
 had taught him to address all policemen as " officer.") 
 
 " It is, sir." 
 
 " Oh ! Well, which is No. 8 ? There're no numbers." 
 
 " You couldn't be much nearer to it, sir," said the po- 
 liceman drily, and pointed to a large number, fairly vis- 
 ible, on the wide gate-post. George had not inspected 
 the gate-post. 
 
 " Oh ! Thanks ! " 
 
 He mounted the steps and in the thick gloom of the 
 portico fumbled for the bell and rang it. He was tre- 
 mendously excited and expectant and apprehensive and 
 puzzled. He heard rain flatly spitting in big drops on 
 the steps. He had not noticed till then that it had 
 begun again. The bell jangled below. The light in 
 the basement went out. He flushed anew. He thought, 
 trembling : " She's coming to the door herself ! "
 
 22 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 in 
 
 " It had occurred to me some time ago," said Mr. 
 Haim, " that if ever you should be wanting rooms I 
 might be able to suit you." 
 
 " Really ! " George murmured. After having been 
 shown into the room by the young woman, who had at 
 once disappeared, he was now recovering from the 
 nervousness of that agitating entry and resuming his 
 normal demeanour of an experienced and well-balanced 
 man of the world. He felt relieved that she had gone, 
 and yet he regretted her departure extremely, and 
 hoped against fear that she would soon return. 
 
 " Yes ! " said Mr. Haim, as it were triumphantly, like 
 one who had whispered to himself during long 3'ears : 
 " The hour will come." The hour had come. 
 
 Mr. Haim was surprising to George. The man 
 seemed much older in his own parlour than at the 
 office, — his hair thinner and greyer, and his face more 
 wrinkled. But the surprising part of him was that he 
 had a home and was master in it, and possessed interests 
 other than those of the firm of Lucas and Enwriffht. 
 George had never until that day conceived the man 
 apart from Russell Square. And here he was smoking 
 a cigarette in an easy chair and wearing red morocco 
 slippers, and being called " father " by a really stun- 
 ning creature in a thin white blouse and a blue skirt. 
 
 The young girl, opening the front-door, had said: 
 "Do you want to see father.''" And instantly the 
 words were out George had realised that she might have 
 said: " Did you want to see father? "... in the idiom 
 of the shop-girl or clerk, and that if she had said " did " 
 he would have been gravely disappointed and hurt. 
 But she had not. Of course she had not ! Of course 
 she was incapable of such a locution, and it was silly of
 
 THE NEW LODGING 2^ 
 
 him to have thought otherwise, even momentarily. She 
 was an artist. Entirely different from the blonde and 
 fluffy Mrs. John Orgreave — (and a good thing too, 
 for Mrs. John with her eternal womanishness had got 
 on his nerves) — Miss Haim was without doubt just 
 as much a lady, and probably a jolly sight more cul- 
 tured, in the true sense. Yet Miss Haim had not in the 
 least revealed herself to him in the hall as she indicated 
 the depository for his hat and stick and opened the door 
 of the sitting-room. She had barely smiled. Indeed 
 she had not smiled. She had not mentioned the weather. 
 On the other hand, she had not been prim or repellent. 
 She had revealed nothing of herself. Her one feat had 
 been to stimulate mightily his curiosity and his imag- 
 ination concerning her — rampant enough even before 
 he entered the house ! 
 
 The house — what he saw of it — suited her and set 
 her off. And, as she was different from Mrs. John, 
 so was the house different from the polished conven- 
 tional abode of Mrs. John at Bedford Park. To 
 George's taste it knocked Bedford Park to smithereens. 
 In the parlour, for instance : an oak chest, an oak settee, 
 an oak gate-table, one tapestried easy-chair, several 
 rush-bottomed chairs, a very small brass fender, a self- 
 coloured wall-paper of warm green, two or three old en- 
 gravings in maple-wood or tarnished gilt frames, sev- 
 eral small portraits in maple-wood frames, brass candle- 
 sticks on the mantelpiece and no clock, self-coloured 
 brown curtains across the windows (two windows oppo- 
 site each other at either end of the long room), sundry 
 rugs on the dark stained floor, and so on! Not too 
 much furniture, and not too much symmetry either. 
 An agreeable and original higgledy-piggledyness ! The 
 room was lighted by a fairly large oil-lamp, with a 
 paper shade hand-painted in a design of cupids — a
 
 24 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 delightful personal design, rough, sketchy, adorable! 
 She had certainly done it. 
 
 George sat on the oak-settle, fronting the old man 
 in the easy chair. It was a hard, smooth oak-settle; 
 it had no upholstering nor cushion ; but George liked it. 
 " May I smoke? " asked George. 
 
 " Please do. Please do," said Mr. Haim, who was 
 smoking a cigarette himself, with courteous hospitality. 
 However, it was a match and not a cigarette that he 
 offered to George, who opened his own dandiacal case. 
 
 " I stayed rather late at the office to-night," said 
 George, as he blew out those great clouds with which 
 young men demonstrate to the world that the cigar- 
 ette is actually lighted. And as Mr. Haim, who was 
 accustomed to the boasting of articled pupils, made no 
 comment, George proceeded, lolling on the settle and 
 showing his socks : " You know, I like Chelsea. I've 
 always had a fancy for it." He was just about to 
 continue cosmopolitanly : " It's the only part of Lon- 
 don that's like Paris. The people in the King's Road," 
 etc., when fortunately he remembered that Mr. Haim 
 must have overheard these remarks of Mr. Enwright, — 
 and ceased, rather awkwardly. Whereupon Mr. Haim 
 suggested that he should see the house, and George said 
 eagerly that he should like to see the house. 
 
 " We've got one bedroom more than we want," Mr. 
 Haim remarked as he led George to the hall. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " said George politely. 
 
 The hall had a small bracket-lamp, which Mr. Haim 
 unhooked, and then he opened a door opposite to the 
 door of the room which they had quitted. 
 
 " Now this is a bedroom," said he, holding the lamp 
 high. 
 
 George was startled. A ground-floor bedroom would 
 have been unthinkable at Bedford Park. Still, in a
 
 THE NEW LODGING 25 
 
 flat. . . . Moreover the idea had piquancy. The bed- 
 room was sparsely furnished. Instead of a wardrobe it 
 had a corner curtained off with cretonne. 
 
 " A good-sized room," said Mr. Haim. 
 
 " Very," said George. " Two windows, too, like the 
 drawing-room." 
 
 Then they went upstairs to the first-floor, and saw 
 two more bedrooms, each with two windows. One of 
 them was Miss Haim's ; there was a hat hung on the 
 looking-glass, and a table with a few books on it. They 
 did not go to the second floor. The staircase to the 
 second-floor was boarded up at the point where it turned. 
 
 " That's all there is," said Mr. Haim on the landing. 
 " The studio people have the second floor, but they 
 don't use my front-door." He spoke the last words 
 rather defiantly. 
 
 " I see," said George, untruthfully, for he was mysti- 
 fied. But the mystery did not trouble him. 
 
 There was no bathroom, and this did not trouble him 
 either, though at Bedford Park he could never have 
 seriously considered a house without a bathroom. 
 
 " You could have your choice of ground-floor or first- 
 floor," said Mr. Haim, confidentially, still on the land- 
 ing. He moved the lamp about and the shadows moved 
 accordingly on the stairs. 
 
 " Oh ! I don't mind in the least," George answered. 
 " Whichever would suit you best." 
 
 " We could give you breakfast, and use of sitting- 
 room," Mr. Haim proceeded in a low tone. " But no 
 other meals." 
 
 " That would be all right," said George cheerfully. 
 " I often dine in town. Like that I can get in a bit of 
 extra work at the office, you see." 
 
 " Except on Sundays," Mr. Haim corrected himself. 
 ■** You'd want your meals on Sundays, of course. But
 
 ae THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 I expect you're out a good deal, what with one thing 
 or another." 
 
 " Oh ! I am ! " George concurred. 
 
 The place was perfect, and he was determined to 
 establish himself in it. Notliing could baulk him. A 
 hitch would have desolated him completely. 
 
 " I ma}^ as well show you the basement, while I'm 
 about it," said Mr. Haim. 
 
 *' Do ! " said George ardently. 
 
 They descended. The host was very dignified, as 
 invariably at the office, and his accent never lapsed 
 from the absolute correctness of an educated Londoner. 
 His deportment gave distinction and safety even to the 
 precipitous and mean basement stairs, which were of 
 stone and worn as by the knees of pilgrims in a crypt. 
 All kinds of irregular pipes ran about along the ceiling 
 of the basement ; some were covered by ancient layers 
 of wall-paper and some were not ; some were painted 
 yellow and some were painted grey, and some were not 
 painted. Mr. Haim exhibited first the kitchen. 
 George saw a morsel of red amber behind black bars, a 
 white deal table and a black cat crouched on a corner 
 of the table, a chair and a tea-cloth drying over the 
 back thereof. He liked the scene; it reminded him of 
 the Five Towns, and showed reassuringly — if he needed 
 reassurance, which he did not — that all houses are 
 the same at heart. Then Mr. Haim, flashing a lamp- 
 ray on the coal-hole and the area-door as he turned, 
 crossed the stone passage into the other basement room. 
 
 " This is our second sitting-room," said Mr. Haim, 
 entering. 
 
 There she was, at work, rapt, exactly as George had 
 seen her from the outside. But now he saw the right 
 side of her face instead of the left. It was wonderful 
 to him that within the space of a few minutes he should
 
 THE NEW LODGING 27 
 
 have developed from an absolute stranger to her into 
 an acquaintance of the house, walking about in it, peer- 
 ing into its recesses, disturbing its secrets, which were 
 hers. But she remained as mysterious, as withdrawn 
 and intangible as ever. And then she shifted round 
 suddenly on the chair and her absorbed, intent face soft- 
 ened into a most beautiful simple smile — a smile of 
 welcome. An astonishing and celestial change ! . . . 
 She was not one of those queer girls, as perhaps she 
 might have been. She was a girl of natural impulses. 
 He smiled back, uplifted. 
 
 " My daughter designs book-bindings," said Mr. 
 Haim. " Happens to be very busy to-night on some- 
 thing urgent." 
 
 He advanced towards her, George following. 
 
 " Awfully good ! " George murmured enthusiastically, 
 and quite sincerely, though he was not at all in a con- 
 dition to judge the design. Strange, that he should 
 come to the basement of an ordinary stock-size house 
 in Alexandra Grove to see book-bindings in the making! 
 This was a design for a boy's book. He had possessed 
 many such books. But it had never occurred to him 
 that the gay bindings of them were each the result of 
 individual human thought and labour. He pulled at his 
 cigarette. 
 
 There was a sound of pushing and rattling outside. 
 
 " What's that.? " exclaimed Mr. Haim. 
 
 " It's the area-door. I bolted it. I daresay it's 
 Mrs. Lobley," said the girl indifferently. 
 
 Mr. Haim moved sharply. 
 
 "Why did you bolt it. Marguerite? No, I'll go 
 myself." He picked up the lamp, which he had put 
 down, and shuffled quickly out in his red morocco slip- 
 pers, closing the door. 
 
 Marguerite.'' Yes, it suited her; and it was among
 
 28 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 the most romantic of names. It completed the picture. 
 She now seemed to be listening and waiting, her atten- 
 tion on the unseen area-door. He felt shy and yet very 
 happy alone with her. Voices were distinctly heard. 
 Who was Mrs. Lobley.'^ Was Mr. Haim a little an- 
 noyed with his daughter, and was Marguerite exquisitely 
 defiant.'' Time hung. The situation was slightly awk- 
 ward, he thought. And it was obscure, alluring. . . , 
 He stood there, below the level of the street, shut in 
 with these beings unknown, provocative, and full of 
 half-divined implications. And all Chelsea was around 
 him and all London around Chelsea. 
 
 " Father won't be a moment," said the girl. " It's 
 only the charwoman." 
 
 " Oh ! That's quite all right," he answered effu- 
 sively, and turning to the design : " The outlining of 
 that lettering fairly beats me, you know." 
 
 " Not really ! . . . I get that from father, of course." 
 
 Mr. Haim was famous in the office as a letterer. 
 
 She sat idly glancing at her own design, her plump 
 small hands lying in the blue lap. George compared 
 her, unspeakably to her advantage, with the kind, 
 coarse young woman at the chophouse, whom he had 
 asked to telephone to the Orgreaves for him, and for 
 whom he had been conscious of a faint penchant. 
 
 " I can't colour it by gaslight," said Marguerite 
 Haim. " I shall have to do that in the morning." 
 
 He imagined her at work again early in the morning. 
 Within a week or so he might be living in this house 
 with this girl. He would be, — watching her life ! Se- 
 ducing prospect, scarcely credible ! He remembered 
 having heard when he first went to Lucas and En- 
 wright's that old Haim was a widower. 
 
 " Do excuse me," said Mr. Haim, urgently apologetic, 
 reappearing.
 
 THE NEW LODGING 29 
 
 A quarter of an hour later, George had left the house, 
 having accepted Mr. Haim's terms without the least 
 argument. In five days he was to be an inmate of No. 
 8 Alexandra Grove. The episode presented itself to 
 him as a vast romantic adventure, staggering and en- 
 chanting. His luck continued, for the rain-cloud was 
 spent. He got into an Earl's Court bus. The dimly 
 perceived travellers in it seemed all of them in a new 
 sense to be romantic and mysterious. ..." Yes," he 
 thought, " I did say good-night to her, but I didn't 
 shake hands."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MARGUERITE 
 
 More than two months later George came into the 
 office in Russell Square an hour or so after his usual 
 time. He had been to South Kensington Museum to 
 look up, for professional purposes, some scale drawings 
 of architectural detail which were required for a restau- 
 rant then rising in Piccadilly under the direction of 
 Lucas and Enwright. In his room Mr. Everard Lucas 
 was already seated. Mr. Lucas was another articled 
 pupil of the firm ; being a remote cousin of the late 
 senior partner, he had entered on special terms. Al- 
 though a year older than George he was less advanced, 
 for whereas George had passed the Intermediate, Mr. 
 Lucas had not. But in manly beauty, in stylishness, in 
 mature tact, and especially in persuasive charm, he 
 could beat George. 
 
 " Hello ! " Lucas greeted. " How do you feel ? 
 Fit?" 
 
 "Fit.?" said George enthusiastically. "I feel so 
 fit I could push in the side of a house." 
 
 " What did I tell you? " said Lucas. 
 
 George rubbed his hand all over Lucas's hair, and 
 Lucas thereupon seized George's other hand and twisted 
 his arm, and a struggle followed. In this way they 
 would often lovingly salute each other of a morning. 
 Lucas had infected George with the craze for physical 
 exercises as a remedy for all ills and indiscretions, in- 
 
 30
 
 MARGUERITE 31 
 
 eluding even late nights and excessive smoking. The 
 competition between them to excel in the quality of fit- 
 ness was acute, and sometimes led to strange challenges. 
 After a little discussion about springing from the toes 
 Lucas now accused George's toes of a lack of muscular- 
 ity, and upon George denying the charge, he asserted 
 that George could not hang from the mantelpiece by 
 his toes. They were both men of the world, capable of 
 great heights of dignity, figures in an important busi- 
 ness, aspirants to a supreme art and profession. They 
 were at that moment in a beautiful late-eighteenth 
 century house of a stately and renowned square, and in 
 a room whose proportions and ornament admittedly 
 might serve as an exemplar to the student ; and not the 
 least lovely feature of the room was the high carved 
 mantelpiece. The morning itself was historic, for it 
 was the very morning upon which. President McKinley 
 having expired, Theodore Roosevelt ascended to the 
 throne and inaugurated a new era. Nevertheless, such 
 was their peculiar time of life that George a minute 
 later was as a fact hanging by his toes from the mantel- 
 piece while Lucas urged him to keep the blood out of 
 his head. George had stood on his hands on a box and 
 ledged his toes on the mantelpiece and then raised his 
 hands, — and Lucas had softly pushed the box away. 
 George's watch was dangling against his flushed cheek. 
 
 " Put that box back, you cuckoo ! " George exploded 
 chokingly. 
 
 Then the door opened and Mr. Enwright appeared. 
 Simultaneously some shillings slipped out of George's 
 pocket and rolled about the floor. The hour was Mr. 
 Enwright's customary hour of arrival, but he had no 
 fair excuse for passing through that room instead of 
 proceeding along the corridor direct to the principals' 
 room. His aspect, as he gazed at George's hair and at
 
 32 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 the revealed sateen back of George's waistcoat, was 
 unusual. Mr. Enwright commonly entered the office 
 full of an intense and aggrieved consciousness of his 
 own existence, — of his insomnia, of the reaction upon 
 himself of some client's stupidity, of the necessity of 
 going out again in order to have his chin lacerated by 
 his favourite and hated Albanian barber. But now he 
 had actually forgotten himself. 
 
 *' What is this ? " he demanded. 
 
 Lucas having quickly restored the box, George sub- 
 sided dangerously thereon, and arose in a condition 
 much disarrayed and confused, and beheld Mr. En- 
 wright with shame. 
 
 "I — I was just looking to see if the trap of the 
 chimney was shut," said George. It was foolish in the 
 extreme, but it was the best he could do, and after all 
 it was a rather marvellous invention. Lucas sat down 
 and made no remark. 
 
 " You might respect the mantelpiece," said Mr. En- 
 wright, bitterly, and went into the principals' room, 
 where John Orgreave could be heard dictating letters. 
 
 George straightened his clothes and picked up his 
 money, and the two men of the world giggled nervously 
 at each other. 
 
 Mr. Halm next disturbed them. The shabby, re- 
 spectable old man smiled vaguely, with averted glance. 
 
 " I think he's heard the result," said he. 
 
 Both men knew that " he " was Mr. Enwright, and 
 that the " result " was the result of the open competi- 
 tion for the £150,000 Law Courts which a proud pro- 
 vincial city proposed to erect for itself. The whole 
 office had worked very hard on the drawings for that 
 competition throughout the summer, while cursing the 
 corporation whicli had chosen so unusual a date for 
 sending-in day. Even Lucas had worked. George's
 
 MARGUERITE 33 
 
 ideas for certain details, upon which he had been en- 
 gaged on the evening of his introduction to Mr. Haim's 
 household, had been accepted by Mr. Enwright. As for 
 Mr. Enwright, though the exigencies of his beard, and 
 his regular morning habit of inveighing against the pro- 
 fession at great length, and his inability to decide where 
 he should lunch, generally prevented him from beginning 
 the day until three o'clock in the afternoon, — Mr. En- 
 wright had given many highly concentrated hours of 
 creative energy to the design. And Mr. Haira had 
 adorned the sheets with the finest lettering. The design 
 was held to be very good. The principals knew the 
 identity of all the other chief competitors and their 
 powers, and they knew also the idiosyncrasies of the 
 Assessor; and their expert and impartial opinion was 
 that the Lucas and Enwright design ought to win and 
 would win. This view indeed was widespread in the 
 arcana of the architectural world. George had grad- 
 ually grown certain of victory. And yet at Mr. Haim's 
 words his hopes sank horribly away. 
 
 " Have we won? " he asked sharply. 
 
 " That I can't say, Mr. Cannon," answered Haim. 
 
 "Well, then, how do you know he's heard? Has he 
 told you?" 
 
 " No," said the factotum mysteriously. " But I 
 think he's heard." And upon this Mr. Haim slouched 
 off, quite calmly. Often he had assisted at the advent 
 of such vital news in the office — news obtained in ad- 
 vance by the principals through secret channels — and 
 often the news had been bad. But the firm's calamities 
 seemed never to affect the smoothness of Mr. Haim's 
 earthly passage. 
 
 The door into the principals' room opened, and Mr. 
 Enwright's head showed. The gloomy resenting eyes 
 fixed George for an instant.
 
 34 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " Well, you've lost that competition," said Mr. En- 
 wright, and he stepped into full view. His unseen 
 partner had ceased to dictate, and the shorthand-clerk 
 could be heard going out by the other door. 
 
 " No ! " said George, in a long, outraged murmur. 
 The news seemed incredible and quite disastrous, and 
 yet at the same time had he not in one unvisited corner 
 of his mind always foreknown it? Suddenly he was 
 distressed, discouraged, disillusioned about the whole 
 of life. He thought that Everard Lucas, screAving up 
 a compass, was strangely unmoved. But Mr. Enwright 
 ignored Lucas. 
 
 " Who's got it ? " George asked. 
 
 " Whinburn." 
 
 " That chap ! . . . Where are tvef " 
 
 " Nowhere." 
 
 "Not placed?" 
 
 " Not in it. Skelting's second. And Grant third. 
 I shouldn't have minded so much if Grant had got it. 
 There was something to be said for his scheme, I knew 
 zve shouldn't get it. I knew that perfectly well — not 
 with Corver assessing." 
 
 George wondered that his admired principal should 
 thus state the exact opposite of what he had so often 
 affirmed during the last few weeks. People were cer- 
 tainl}^ very queer, even the best of them. The percep- 
 tion of this fact added to his puzzled woe. 
 
 " But Whinburn's design is grotesque ! " he protested, 
 borrowing one of Mr. Enwright's adjectives. 
 
 " Of course it is." 
 
 " Then why does Sir Hugh Corver go and give him 
 the award? Surely he must know " 
 
 " Know ! " Mr. Enwright growled, destroying Sir 
 Hugh and his reputation and his pretensions with one 
 single monosyllable.
 
 MARGUERITE 35 
 
 " Then why did they make him assessor — that's what 
 I can't understand." 
 
 " It's quite simple," rasped Mr. Enwright. " They 
 made him assessor because he's got so much work to 
 do it takes him all his time to trot about from one job 
 to another on his blooming pony. They made him as- 
 sessor because his pony's a piebald pony. Couldn't 
 you think of that for yourself .-^ Or have you been stone 
 deaf in this office for two years? It stands to reason 
 that a man who's responsible for all the largest new eye- 
 gores in London would impress any corporation. Clever 
 chap, Corver ! Instead of wasting his time in travel 
 and study, he made a specialty of learning how to talk 
 to Committees. And he was always full of ideas lik?- 
 the piebald pony, ever since I knew him." 
 
 " It's that facade that did for us," broke in an- 
 other voice. John Orgreave stood behind Mr. En> 
 Wright. He spoke easily ; he was not ruffled by the 
 immense disappointment, though the mournful greatness 
 of the topic had drawn him irresistibly into the dis- 
 cussion. John Orgreave had grown rather fat and 
 coarse. At one period, in the Five Towns, he had been 
 George's hero. He was so no longer. George was 
 still fond of him, but he had torn him down from the 
 pedestal and established Mr. Enwright in his place. 
 George in his heart now somewhat patronised the placid 
 Orgreave, regarding him as an excellent person who 
 comprehended naught that was worth comprehending, 
 and as a husband who was the dupe of his wife. 
 
 " You couldn't have any other facade," iVIr. En- 
 wright turned on him, " unless you're absolutely going 
 to ignore the Market on the other side of the Square. 
 Whinburn's facade is an outrage — an outrage. Give 
 me a cigarette. I must run out and get shaved." 
 
 While Mr. Enwright was lighting the cigarette,
 
 Se THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 George reflected in desolation upon the slow evolving 
 of the firm's design for the Law Courts. Again and 
 again in the course of the work had he been struck into 
 a worshipping enthusiasm by the brilliance of Mr. 
 Enwright's invention and the happy beauty of his 
 ideas. For George there was only one architect in the 
 world; he was convinced that nobody could possibly 
 rival Mr, Enwright, and that no Law Courts ever had 
 been conceived equal to those Law Courts. And he him- 
 self had contributed something to the creation. He 
 had dreamed of the building erected and of being able 
 to stand in front of some detail of it and say to himself: 
 " That was my notion, that was." And now the build- 
 ing was destroyed before its birth. It would never 
 come into existence. It was wasted. And the pros- 
 pect for the firm of several years' remunerative and 
 satisfying labour had vanished. But the ridiculous, 
 canny Whinburn would be profitably occupied and his 
 grotesque building would actually arise, and people 
 would praise it, and it would survive for centuries — 
 at any rate for a century. 
 
 Mr. Enwright did not move. 
 
 " It's no use regi'etting the facade, Orgreave," he 
 said suddenly. " There's such a thing as self-respect." 
 
 " I don't see that self-respect's got much to do with 
 it," Orgreave replied lightly. 
 
 (" Of course you don't," George thought. " You're 
 a decent sort, but you don't see, and you never will see. 
 Even Lucas doesn't see. I alone see." And he felt 
 savage and defiant.) 
 
 " Better shove my self-respect away into this cup- 
 board, I suppose ! " said Mr. Enwright with the most 
 acrid cynicism, and he pulled open one door of a long, 
 low cupboard whose top formed a table for ])ortfolios, 
 dusty illustrated books and other accumulations.
 
 MARGUERITE 37 
 
 The gesture was dramatic, and none knew it better 
 than Mr. Enwright. The cupboard was the cupboard 
 which contained the skeleton. It was full of designs 
 rejected in public competitions. There they lay, piles 
 and piles of them, the earliest dating from the late sev- 
 enties. The cupboard was crammed with the futility 
 of Enwright's genius. It held monuments enough to 
 make illustrious a score of cities. Lucas and Enwright 
 was a successful firm. But, confining itself chiefly to 
 large public works, it could not escape from the com- 
 petition system ; and it had lost in far more competitions 
 than it had won. It was always, and always would be, 
 at the mercy of an Assessor. The chances had always 
 been and always would be against the acceptance of its 
 designs, because they had the fatal quality of originality 
 combined with modest adherence to the classical tradi- 
 tion. When they conquered, it was by sheer force. 
 George glanced at the skeleton, and he was afraid. 
 Something was very wrong with architecture. He 
 agreed with Mr. Enwright's tiresomely reiterated axiom 
 that it was the Cinderella of professions and the chosen 
 field of ghastly injustice. He had embraced architec- 
 ture; he had determined to follow exactly in the foot- 
 steps of Mr. Enwright ; he had sworn to succeed. But 
 could he succeed? Suppose he failed! Yes, his faith 
 faltered. He was intensely, miserably afraid. He was 
 the most serious man in Russell Square. Astounding 
 that only a few minutes ago he had hung triumphantly 
 by his feet from the mantelpiece ! 
 
 Mr. Enwright kicked-to the door of the cupboard. 
 
 " Look here," he said to his partner, " I shan't be 
 back just yet. I have to go and see Bentley. I'd 
 forgotten it." 
 
 Nobody was surprised at this remark. Whenever 
 Mr. Enwright was inconveniently set back he always
 
 38 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 went off to visit Bentley, the architect of the new Roman 
 CathoHc Cathedral at Westminster, on the plea of an 
 urgent appointment. 
 
 " You had a look at the Cathedral lately?" he de- 
 manded of George as he left. 
 
 " No, I haven't," said Gr€orge who, by reason of a 
 series of unaccountable omissions, and of the fulness of 
 his life as an architect and a man of the world, had 
 never seen the celebrated cathedral at all. 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Enwright sarcastically. " Better 
 take just a glance at it — some time — before they've 
 spoilt the thing with decorations. There's a whole lot 
 of 'em only waiting till Bentley's out of the way to 
 begin and ruin it." 
 
 Before the regular closing hour of the office the two 
 articled pupils had left and were walking side by side 
 through Bloomsbury. They skirted the oval garden of 
 Bedford Square which, lying off the main track to the 
 northern termini, and with nothing baser in it than a 
 consulate or so, took precedence in austerity and se- 
 lectness over Russell Square, which had consented to 
 receive a grand hotel or " modern caravanserai " and 
 a shorthand school. Indeed the aspect of Bedford 
 Square, where the great institution of the basement and 
 area still flourished in perfection, and wealthy menials 
 with traditional manners lived sensually in caves be- 
 neath the spacious calm salons of their employers and 
 dupes, — the aspect of Bedford Square gave the illusion 
 that evolution was not, and that Bloomsbury and the 
 whole impressive structure of British society could 
 never change. Still, from a more dubious Bloomsbury, 
 demure creatures with inviting, indiscreet eyes were 
 already traversing the prim flags of Bedford Square on
 
 MARGUERITE 39 
 
 their way to the evening's hard diplomacy. Mr. Lucas 
 made quiet remarks about their qualities, but George 
 did not respond. 
 
 " Look here, old man," said Lucas. " There's no use 
 in all this gloom. You might think Lucas and En- 
 wright had never put up a building in their lives. Just 
 as well to dwell now and then on what they have done 
 instead of on what they haven't done. We're fairly 
 busy, you know. Besides " 
 
 He spoke seriously, tactfully, with charm, and he had 
 a beautiful voice. 
 
 " Quite right ! Quite right ! " George willingly 
 agreed, swinging his stick and gazing straight ahead. 
 And he thought : " This chap has got his head screwed 
 on. He's miles wiser than I am, and he's really nice. 
 I could never be nice like that." 
 
 In a moment they were at the turbulent junction of 
 Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, where 
 crowds of Londoners, deeply unconscious of their own 
 vulgarity, and of the marvellous distinction of Bedford 
 Square, and of the moral obligation to harmonise socks 
 with neckties, were preoccupying themselves with om- 
 nibuses and routes, and constituting the spectacle of 
 London. The high-heeled demure creatures were lost 
 in this crowd, and Lucas and George were lost in it. 
 
 " Well," said Lucas, halting on the pavement. 
 
 You're going down to the cathedral." 
 
 It'll please the old cock," answered George, anxious 
 to disavow any higher motive. " You aren't coming? '* 
 
 Lucas shook his head. " I shall just go and snatch 
 a hasty." " Cup of tea " was the unuttered end of the 
 sentence. 
 
 "Puffin's?" 
 
 Lucas nodded. Puffin's was a cozy house of susten- 
 ance in a half-new street on the site of the razed slums 

 
 40 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 of St. Giles's. He would not frequent the orthodox 
 tea-houses, which were all alike and which had other 
 serious disadvantages. He adventured into the un- 
 usual, and could always demonstrate that what he found 
 was subtly superior to anything else. 
 
 "That affair still on.'*" George questioned. 
 
 " It's not off." 
 
 " She's a nice little thing — that I will say." 
 
 " It all depends," Lucas replied sternly. " I don't 
 mind telling you she wasn't so jolly nice on Tues- 
 day." 
 
 " Wasn't she.'' " George raised his eyebrows. 
 
 Lucas silently scowled, and his handsomeness van- 
 ished for an instant. 
 
 " However " he said. 
 
 As George walked alone down Charing Cross Road, 
 he thought : " That girl will have to look out," mean- 
 ing that in his opinion Lucas was not a man to be trifled 
 with. Lucas was a wise and an experienced man, and 
 knew the world. And what he did could not be other 
 than right. This notion comforted George, who had a 
 small affair of his own, which he had not vet even men- 
 tioned to Lucas. Delicacy as well as diffidence had 
 prevented him from doing so. It was a very different 
 affair from any of Lucas's, and he did not want Lucas 
 to misesteem it; neither did he want Lucas to be under 
 the temptation to regard him as a ninny. 
 
 Not the cathedral alone had induced George to leave 
 the office early. The dissembler had reflected that if 
 he called in at a certain conventional tea-shop near 
 Cambridge Circus at a certain hour he would probably 
 meet Marguerite Haim. He knew that she had an 
 ap])ointment with one of her customers, a firm of book- 
 binders, that afternoon, and that on similar occasions 
 she hud been to the tea-shop. In fact he had already
 
 MARGUERITE 41 
 
 once deliciously taken tea with her therein. To-day 
 he was disappointed, to the extent of the tea, for he met 
 her as she was coming out of the shop. Their greetings 
 were rather punctilious, but beneath the superficial 
 formalities shone proofs of intimacy. They had 
 had large opportunities to become intimate, and they 
 had become intimate. The immediate origin of and 
 excuse for the intimacy was a lampshade. George had 
 needed a lampshade for his room, and she had offered to 
 paint one. She submitted sketches. But George also 
 could paint a bit. Hence discussions, conferences, rival 
 designs, and lastly an agreement upon a composite de- 
 sign. Before long, the lampshade craze increasing in 
 virulence, they had between them re-lampshaded the 
 entire house. Then the charming mania expired; but 
 it had done its work. During the summer-holiday 
 George had written twice to Marguerite, and he had 
 thought pleasurably about her the whole time. He had 
 hoped that she would open the door for him upon his 
 return, and that when he saw her again he would at 
 length penetrate the baffling secret of her individuality. 
 She had opened the door for him, exquisitely, but the 
 secret had not yielded itself. It was astonishing to 
 George how that girl could combine the candours of 
 honest intimacy with a profound reserve. 
 
 " Were you going in there for tea? " she asked, look- 
 ing up at him gravely. 
 
 " No," he said. " I don't want any tea. I have to 
 wend my way to the Roman Catholic Cathedral, — you 
 know, the new one, near Victoria. I suppose you 
 wouldn't care to see it?" 
 
 " I should love to," she answered with ingenuous 
 eagerness. " I think it might do me good." 
 
 A strange phrase, he thought! What did she mean? 
 
 " Would 3^ou mind walking? " she suggested.
 
 42 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 « 
 
 Let me take that portfolio, then." 
 
 So they walked. She had her usual serious expres- 
 sion, as it were full of the consciousness of duty. It 
 made him think how reliable she would always be. She 
 held herself straight and independently, and her appear- 
 ance was very simple and very trim. He considered it 
 wrong that a girl with such beautiful lips should have to 
 consult callous bookbinders and accept whatever they 
 chose to say. To him she was like a lovely and valiant 
 martyr. The spectacle of her was touching. How- 
 ever, he could not have dared to hint at these sentiments. 
 He had to pretend that her exposure to the stresses of 
 the labour-market was quite natural and right. Al- 
 wa3's he was careful in his speech with her. When he 
 got to know people he was apt to be impatient and 
 ruthless ; for example, to John Orgreave and his wife, 
 and to his mother and stepfather, and sometimes even 
 to Everard Lucas. He would bear them down. But 
 he was restrained from such freedoms with Enwright, 
 and equally with Marguerite Haim. She did not intim- 
 idate him, but she put him under a spell. 
 
 Crossing Piccadilly Circus he had a glimpse of the 
 rising walls and the scaffolding of the new restaurant. 
 He pointed to the building, without a word. She 
 nodded and smiled. 
 
 In the Mall, where the red campanile of the cathedral 
 was first descried, George began to get excited. And he 
 perceived that Marguerite sympathetically responded 
 to his excitement. She had never even noticed the cam- 
 panile before, and the reason was that the cathedral 
 happened not to be on the route between Alexandra 
 Grove and her principal customers. Suddenly, out of 
 Victoria Street, they came up against the vast form 
 of the Byzantine cathedral. It was hemmed in by
 
 MARGUERITE 43 
 
 puny six-storey blocks of flats, as ancient cathedrals 
 also are hemmed in by the dwellings of townsfolk. But 
 here, instead of the houses having gathered about the 
 cathedral, the cathedral had excavated a place for itself 
 amid the houses. Tier above tier the expensively cur- 
 tained windows of dark drawing-rooms and bedrooms 
 inhabited by thousands of the well-to-do blinked up 
 at the colossal symbol that dwarfed them all. George 
 knew that he was late. If the watchman's gate was 
 shut for the night he would look a fool. But his con- 
 fidence in his magic power successfully to run risks 
 sustained him in a gallant and assured demeanour. The 
 gate in the hoarding that screened the west front was 
 open. With a large gesture he tipped the watchman 
 a shilling, and they passed in like princes. The transi- 
 tion to the calm and dusty interior was instantaneous 
 and almost overwhelming. Immense without, the ca- 
 thedral seemed still more immense within. On one side 
 of the nave was a steam-engine; on the other some sort 
 of a mill ; and everywhere lay in heaps the wild litter 
 of construction, among which moved here and there 
 little parties of aproned pigmies engaged silently and 
 industriously on sub-contracts ; the main army of la- 
 bourers had gone. The walls rose massively clear out 
 of the white-powdered confusion into arches and high 
 domes ; and the floor of the choir, and a loftier floor 
 beyond that, also rose clear. Perspectives ended in 
 shadow and were illimitable, while the afternoon light 
 through the stone grille of the western windows made 
 luminous spaces in the gloom. 
 
 The sensation of having the mysterious girl at his 
 elbow in that wonder-striking interior was magnificent. 
 
 He murmured, with pride: 
 
 " Do you know this place has the widest nave of any
 
 44 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 iathedral in the world? It's a much bigger cathedral 
 than St. Paul's. In fact I'm not sure if it isn't the 
 biggest in England." 
 
 " You know," he said again, " in the whole of the 
 nineteenth century only one cathedral was built in 
 England." 
 
 "Which was that?" 
 
 " Truro. . . . And you could put Truro inside this 
 and leave a margin all round. Mr. Enwright says this 
 is the last cathedral that ever will be built, outside 
 America." 
 
 They gazed, more and more aware of a solemn miracle. 
 
 " It's marvellous — marvellous ! " he breathed. 
 
 After a few moments, glancing at her, a strong im- 
 pulse to be confidential mastered him. He was obliged 
 to tell that girl. 
 
 " I say, we've lost that competition — for the Law 
 Courts." 
 
 He smiled, but the smile had no effect. 
 
 " Oh ! " She positively started. 
 
 He saw that her eyes had moistened, and he looked 
 quickly away, as though he had seen something that he 
 ought not to have seen. She cared ! She cared a great 
 deal! She was shocked by the misfortune to the firm, 
 by the injustice to transcendent merit! She knew 
 nothing whatever about any design in the competition. 
 But it was her religion that the Lucas and Enwright 
 design was the best, and by far the best. He had im- 
 planted the dogma and he felt that she was ready to die 
 for it. Mystery dropped away from her. Her soul 
 stood bare to him. He was so happy and so proud 
 that the intensity of his feeling dismayed him. But 
 he was enheartened too, and courage to surmount a 
 thousand failures welled up in him as from an unimag- 
 ined spring.
 
 MARGUERITE 45 
 
 it 
 
 I wonder who that is," she said quietly and ordi- 
 narily, as if a terrible event had not happened. 
 
 On the highest floor, at the other extremity of the 
 cathedral, in front of the apse, a figure had appeared in 
 a frockcoat and a silk hat. The figure stood solitary, 
 gazing around in the dying light. 
 
 " By Jove ! It's Bentley ! It's the architect ! " 
 George literally trembled. He literally gave a sob. 
 The vision of Bentley within his masterpiece, of Bentley 
 whom Enwright himself worshipped, was too much for 
 him. Renewed ambition rushed through him in elec- 
 tric currents. All was not wrong with the world of 
 architecture. Bentley had succeeded. Bentley, begin- 
 ning life as an artisan, had succeeded supremely. And 
 here he stood on the throne of his triumph. Genius 
 would not be denied. Beauty would conquer despite 
 everything. What completed the unbearable grandeur 
 of the scene was that Bentley had cancer of the tongue. 
 Bentley's friends knew it; the world of architecture 
 knew it; Bentley knew it. . . . "Shall I tell her?" 
 George thought. He looked at her; he looked at the 
 vessel which he had filled with emotion. He could not 
 speak. A highly sensitive decency, an abhorrence of 
 crudity, restrained him. " No," he decided, " I can't 
 tell her now. I'll tell her some other time." 
 
 m 
 
 With no clear plan as to his dinner he took her back 
 to Alexandra Grove. The dusk was far advanced. 
 Mounting the steps quickly, Marguerite rang the bell. 
 There was no answer. She pushed up the flap of the 
 letter-aperture and looked within. 
 
 " Have you got your latchkey? " she asked, turning 
 round on George. " Father's not come home, — his 
 hat's not hanging up. He promised me certain that he
 
 46 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 would be here at six thirty at the latest. Otherwise I 
 should have taken the big key." 
 
 She did not show resentment against her father; nor 
 was there impatience in her voice. But she seemed to 
 be firmly and impassively judging her father, as his 
 equal, possibly even as somewhat his superior. And 
 George admired the force of her individuality. It flat- 
 tered him that a being so independent and so strong 
 should have been so meltingly responsive to him in the 
 cathedral. 
 
 An adventurous idea occurred to him in a flash and 
 he impulsively adopted it. His latchkey was in his 
 pocket, but if the house door was once opened he would 
 lose her, — he would have to go forth and seek liis dinner 
 and she would remain in the house ; whereas, barred out 
 of the house, she would be bound to him, — they would 
 be thrust together into exquisite contingencies, into all 
 the deep potentialities of dark London. 
 
 " Dash it ! " he said, first fumbling in one waistcoat- 
 pocket, and then ledging the portfolio against a step 
 and fumbling in both waistcoat-pockets simultaneously. 
 " I must have left it in my other clothes." 
 
 It is doubtful whether his conscience troubled him. 
 But he had a very exciting sense of risk and of romance 
 and of rapture, as though he had done something won- 
 derful and irremediable. 
 
 " Ah ! Well ! " she murmured, instantly acquiescent, 
 and without the least hesitation descended the steps. 
 
 How many girls (he demanded) would or could have 
 made up their minds and faced the situation like that.'* 
 Her faculty of decision was simply masculine! He 
 looked at her in the twilight and she was inimitable, un- 
 paralleled. And yet b}' virtue of the wet glistening of 
 her eyes in the cathedral she had somehow become mys- 
 tically his ! He permitted himself the suspicion : " Per-
 
 MARGUERITE 47 
 
 haps she guesses that I'm only pretending about the 
 latchkey." The suspicion which made her an accessory 
 to his crime did not lower her in his eyes. On the con- 
 trary the enchanting naughtiness with which it invested 
 her only made her variety more intoxicant and her per- 
 fection more perfect. His regret was that the suspi- 
 cion was not a certainty. 
 
 Before a word could be said as to the next move, a 
 figure in a grey suit and silk hat, and both arms filled 
 with packages, passed in front of the gate and then 
 halted. 
 
 "Oh! It's Mr. Buckingham Smith!" exclaimed 
 Marguerite. " Mr. Buckingham Smith, we're locked 
 out till father comes." She completed the tale of the 
 mishap, to George's equal surprise and mortification. 
 
 Mr. Buckingham Smith, with Mr. Alfred Prince, was 
 tenant of the studio at the back of No. 8. He raised 
 liis hat as well as an occupied arm would allow. 
 
 " Come and wait in the studio, then," he suggested 
 bluntly. 
 
 "You know Mr. Cannon, don't you.?" said Mar- 
 guerite, embarrassed. 
 
 George and Mr. Buckingham Smith had in fact been 
 introduced to one another weeks earlier in the Grove by 
 Mr. Haim. Thereafter Mr. Buckingham Smith had, 
 as George imagined, saluted George with a kind of 
 jealous defiance and mistrust, and the acquaintance 
 had not progressed. Nor, by the way, had George's 
 dreams been realised of entering deeply into the artistic 
 life of Chelsea. Chelsea had been no more welcoming 
 than Mr. Buckingham Smith. But now Mr. Bucking- 
 ham Smith grew affable and neighbourly. Behind the 
 man's inevitable insistence that George should accom- 
 pany ]Miss Haim into the studio was a genuine eager 
 hospitality.
 
 48 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 The studio was lofty and large, occupying most of 
 the garden space of No. 8. Crimson rep curtains, 
 hung on a thick, blackened, brass rod, divided it into 
 two unequal parts. By the wall nearest the house a 
 staircase ran up to a door high in the gable, which door 
 communicated by a covered bridge with the second floor 
 of No. 8, where the artists had bedrooms. The arrange- 
 ment was a characteristic example of the manner in 
 which building was added to building in London con- 
 trary to the intention of the original laying-out, and 
 George in his expert capacity wondered how the plans 
 had been kept within the b^'e-laws of the borough, and 
 by what chicane the consent of the ground-landlord had 
 been obtained. 
 
 Mr. Alfred Prince, whom also George knew slightly, 
 was trimming a huge oil-lamp which depended by a wire 
 from the scarcely visible apex of the room. ^\Tien at 
 length the natural perversity of the lamp had been 
 mastered and the metal shade replaced, George got a 
 general view of the immense and complex disorder of 
 the studio. It was obviously very dirty — even in the 
 lamplight the dust could be seen in drifts on the moveless 
 folds of the curtains — it was a pigstye ; but it was 
 romantic with shadowed spaces, and gleams of copper 
 and of the pale arms of the etching-press, and glimpses 
 of pictures ; and the fellow desired a studio of his own ! 
 He was glad, now, that Mr. Buckingham Smith had 
 invited them in. He had wanted to keep Marguerite 
 Haim to himself; but it was worth while to visit the 
 studio, and it was especially worth while to watch her 
 under the illumination of the lamp. 
 
 " Lucky we have a clean table-cloth," said Mr. Buck- 
 ingham Smith, opening his packages and setting a table. 
 " Brawn, Miss Haim ! And beer. Miss Haim ! That
 
 MARGUERITE 49 
 
 is to say, Pilsener. From the only place in Chelsea 
 where you can get it." 
 
 And his packages really did contain brawn and beer 
 (four bottles of the Pilsener) ; also bread and a slice of 
 butter. The visitors learnt that they had happened on 
 a feast, a feast which Mr. Buckingham Smith had con- 
 ceived and ordained, a feast to celebrate the triumph of 
 Mr. Alfred Prince. An etching by Mr. Prince had 
 been bought by Vienna. Mr. Buckingham Smith did 
 not say that the etching had been bought by any par- 
 ticular gallery in Vienna. He said " by Vienna," giv- 
 ing the idea that all Vienna, every man, woman and 
 child in that distant and enlightened city where etchings 
 were truly understood, had combined for the possession 
 of a work by Mr. Prince. Mr. Buckingham Smith 
 opined that soon every gallery in Europe would be 
 purchasing examples of Alfred Prince. He snatched 
 from a side-table and showed the identical authentic 
 letter from Vienna to Mr. Alfred Prince, with its official 
 heading, foreign calligraphy, and stilted English. The 
 letter was very complimentary. 
 
 In George's estimation Mr. Prince did not look the 
 part of an etcher of continental renown. He was a 
 small, pale man, with a small brown beard, very shabby, 
 and he was full of small nervous gestures. He had the 
 innocently red nose which pertains to indigestion. His 
 trousers bagged horribly at the knees, and he wore 
 indescribable slippers. He said little, in an extremely 
 quiet, weak voice. His eyes, however, were lively and 
 attractive. He was old, probably at least thirty-five. 
 Mr. Buckingham Smith made a marked contrast to him. 
 Tall, with newish clothes, a powerful voice and decisive 
 gestures, Mr. Buckingham Smith dominated, though 
 he was younger than his friend. He tried to please.
 
 50 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 and he mingled the grand seigneurial style with the 
 abrupt. It was he who played both the parlourmaid 
 and the host. He forced Marguerite to have some 
 brawn, serving her with a vast portion ; but he could 
 not force her to take Pilsener. 
 
 *' Now, Mr. Cannon," he said, pouring beer into a 
 glass with an up-and-down motion of the bottle so as to 
 put a sparkling head on the beer. 
 
 " No, thank you," said George decidedly. " I won't 
 have beer." 
 
 Mr. Buckingham Smith gazed at him challengingly 
 out of his black eyes. " Oh ! But you've got to," he 
 said. It was as if he had said : " I am generous. I love 
 to be hospitable, but I am not going to have my hospital- 
 ity thwarted and you needn't think it." 
 
 George accepted the beer and joined in the toasting 
 of Mr. Alfred Prince's health, 
 
 " Old chap ! " Mr. Bucking-ham Smith greeted his 
 chum, and then to George and Marguerite, informingly 
 find seriously : " One of the best." 
 
 It was during the snack that Mr. Buckingham Smith 
 began to display the etchings of Mr. Alfred Prince, 
 massed in a portfolio. He extolled them with his mouth 
 half full of brawn, or between two gulps of Pilsener. 
 They impressed George deeply, — they were so rich and 
 dark and austere. 
 
 " Old Princey boy's one of the finest etchers in Eu- 
 rope to-day, if you ask me," said Mr. Buckingham 
 Smith ofF-handedly, and with the air of stating the ob- 
 vious. And George thought that Mr. Prince was. The 
 etchings were not signed " Alfred Prince," but just 
 " Prince," which was quietly imposing. Everybody 
 agreed that Vienna had chosen the best one. 
 
 " It's a dry-point, isn't it.? " Marguerite asked, peer- 
 ing into it. George started. This single remark con-
 
 MARGUERITE 51 
 
 vinced him that she knew all about etching, whereas he 
 himself knew nothing. He did not even know exactly 
 what a dry-point was. 
 
 " Mostly," said Mr. Prince. *' You can only get 
 that peculiar quality of line in dry-point." 
 
 George perceived that etching was an entrancing 
 subject, and he determined to learn something about it, 
 — everything about it. 
 
 Then came the turn of Mr. Buckingham Smith's 
 paintings. These were not signed " Smith " as the etch- 
 ings were signed " Prince." By no means ! They were 
 signed " Buckingham Smith." George much admired 
 them, though less than he admired the etchings. They 
 were very striking and ingenious, in particular the 
 portraits and the still life subjects. He had to admit 
 that these fellows to whom he had scarcely given a 
 thought, these fellows who existed darkly behind the 
 house, were prodigiously accomplished. 
 
 " Of course," said Mr. Buckingham Smith, negli- 
 gently, " you can't get any idea of them by this light, — 
 though," he added, wamingly, " it's the finest artificial 
 light going. Better than all your electricity." 
 
 There was a pause, and Mr. Prince sighed and said : 
 
 " I was thinking of going up to the Promenades to- 
 night, but Buck won't go." 
 
 Georffe took fire at once. " The Glazounov ballet 
 music ? " 
 
 "Glazounov?" repeated Mr. Prince uncertainly. 
 " No. I rather wanted to hear the new Elgar." 
 
 George was disappointed, for he had derived from 
 Mr. Enwright positive opinions about the relative im- 
 portance of Elgar and Glazounov. 
 
 "Go often?" he asked. 
 
 " No," said Mr. Prince. " I haven't been this sea- 
 son yet, but I'm always meaning to." He smiled apol-
 
 52 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 ogetically. " And I thought to-night " Despite 
 
 appearances, he was not indifferent after all to his great 
 Viennese triumph ; he had had some mild notion of his 
 own of celebrating the affair. 
 
 " I suppose this is what etchings are printed with," 
 said George to Mr. Buckingham Smith, for the sake 
 of conversation, and he moved towards the press. The 
 reception given to the wonderful name of Glazounov 
 in that studio was more than a disappointment for 
 George; he felt obscurely that it amounted to a snub. 
 
 Mr. Buckingham Smith instantly became the urbane 
 and alert showman. He explained how the pressure 
 was regulated. He pulled the capstan-like arms of the 
 motive wheel and the blanketed steel bed slid smoothly 
 under the glittering cylinder. Although George had 
 often been in his stepfather's printing establishment, he 
 now felt for the first time the fascination of manual 
 work, of artisanship, in art, and he regretted that the 
 architect had no such labour. He could indistinctly 
 hear Mr. Prince talking to Marguerite. 
 
 " This is a monotype," said Mr. Buckingham Smith, 
 picking up a dusty print off the window-sill. " I do 
 one occasionally." 
 
 " Did you do this.'' " asked George, who had no idea 
 what a monotype was and dared not enquire. 
 
 " Yes. They're rather amusing to do. You just 
 use a match or your finger or anything." 
 
 "It's jolly good," said George. *'D'you know, it 
 reminds me a bit of Cezanne." 
 
 Of course it was in Paris that he had heard of the 
 great original, the martyr and saviour of modern paint- 
 ing. Equally of course it was Mr. Enwright who had 
 inducted him into the esoteric cult of Cezanne, and 
 magically made him see marvels in what at the first 
 view had struck him as a wilful and clumsy absurdity.
 
 MARGUERITE 53 
 
 « 
 
 Oh? " murmured Buck, stiffening. 
 
 "What do you think of Cezanne? " 
 
 " Rule it out ! " said Buck, with a warning cantanker- 
 ous inflection, firmly and almost brutally reproving this 
 conversational delinquency of George's. " Rule it out, 
 young man ! We don't want any of that sort of moun- 
 tebanking in England. We know what it's worth." 
 
 George was cowed. More, his faith in Cezanne was 
 shaken. He smiled sheepishly and was angry with 
 himself. Then he heard Mr. Prince saying calmly and 
 easily to Miss Haim, — the little old man could not in 
 fact be so nervous as he seemed: 
 
 " I suppose you wouldn't come with me to the Prom? " 
 
 George was staggered and indignant. It was incon- 
 ceivable, monstrous, that those two should be on such 
 terms as would warrant Mr. Prince's astounding pro- 
 posal. He felt that he simply could not endure them 
 marching off together for the evening. Her accept- 
 ance of the proposal would be an outrage. He trem- 
 bled. However, she declined, and he was lifted from 
 the rack. 
 
 " I must really go," she said. " Father's sure to be 
 home by now." 
 
 " May I? " demanded Mr. Buckingham Smith, stoop- 
 ing over Marguerite's portfolio of designs, and glanc- 
 ing round at her for permission to open it. Already 
 his hand was on the tape. 
 
 " On no account ! " she cried. " No ! No ! . . . 
 Mr. Cannon, please take it from him ! " She was seri- 
 ous. 
 
 "Oh! All right! All right!" Mr. Buckingham 
 Smith rose to the erect good-humouredly. 
 
 After a decent interval George took the portfolio 
 under his arm. Marguerite was giving thanks for hos- 
 pitality. They left. George was singularly uplifted
 
 54 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 by the fact that she never concealed from him those 
 designs upon which Mr. Buckingham Smith had not 
 been allowed gaze. And certain contretemps and dis- 
 appointments notwithstanding, he was impressed by the 
 entity of the studio. It had made a desirable picture 
 in his mind: the romantic paraphernalia, the etcliings, 
 the canvases, the lights and shadows, the informality, 
 the warm odours of the lamp and of the Pilsener, the 
 dazzling white of the tablecloth, the quick, positive 
 tones of Buckingham Smith, who had always to be 
 convincing not only others but himself that he was a 
 strong man whose views were unassailable, the eyes of 
 Buckingham Smith like black holes in his handsome 
 face, the stylish gestures and coarse petulance of 
 Buckingham Smith, the shy assurance of little old 
 Prince. He envied the pair. Their existence had a 
 cloistral quality which appealed to something in him. 
 They were continually in the studio, morning, after- 
 noon, evening. They were independent. They had 
 not to go forth to catch omnibuses and trains, to sit 
 in offices, to utilise the services of clerks, to take orders, 
 to consider the idiosyncrasies of superiors. They were 
 self-contained, they were consecrated, and they were 
 free. No open competitions for them ! No struggles 
 with committees and with contractors ! And no waiting 
 for the realisation of an idea ! They sat down and 
 worked and the idea came at once to life, complete, with- 
 out the necessity of other human co-operation ! They 
 did not sit in front of a painting or etching and say, as 
 architects had too often to say in front of their designs : 
 " That is wasted ! That will never come into being." 
 Architecture might be the art of arts, and indeed it was, 
 but there were terrible drawbacks to it. . . . 
 
 And next he was outside in the dark with Marguerite
 
 MARGUERITE 55 
 
 Haim, and new, intensified sensations thrilled him. She 
 was verj marvellous in the dark. 
 
 Mr. Haim had not returned. 
 
 *' Well ! " she muttered, and then dreamily : " WTiat 
 a funny little man Mr. Prince is, isn't he? " She spoke 
 condescendingly. 
 
 " Anyhow," said George, who had been respecting 
 Mr. Alfred Prince. " Anyhow I'm glad you didn't go 
 to the concert with him.'* 
 
 " Why ? " she asked, with apparent simplicity. " I 
 adore the Proms. Don't you? " 
 
 " Let's go, then," he suggested. " We shan't be 
 very late, and what else is there for you to do? " 
 
 Plis audacity frightened him. There she stood with 
 him in the porch, silent, reflective. She would never 
 go. For sundry practical and other reasons she would 
 refuse. She must refuse. 
 
 " I'll go," she said, as if announcing a well-meditated 
 decision. He could scarcely believe it. This could not 
 be London that he was in. 
 
 They deposited the portfolio under the mat in the 
 porch. 
 
 IV 
 
 When they got into the haU the band was sending 
 forth a tremendous volume of brilliant exliilarating 
 sound. A vast melody seemed to ride on waves of brass. 
 The conductor was very excited, and his dark locks 
 shook with the violence of his gestures as he urged 
 onward the fingers and arms of the executants flying 
 madly through the maze of the music to a climax. 
 There were flags ; there was a bank of flowers ; there 
 was a fountain : there were the huge crimson-domed 
 lamps that poured down their radiance; and there was
 
 56 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 the packed crowd of straw-hatted and floral-hatted erect 
 fibres gazing with upturned intent faces at the im- 
 mense orchestral machine. Then came a final crash, 
 and for an instant the thin silvery tinkle of the foun- 
 tain supervened in an enchanted hush ; and then terrific 
 applause, with yells and thuds above and below the 
 hand-clapping, filled and inflamed the whole interior. 
 The conductor, recovering from a collapse, turned 
 round and bowed low with his hand on his shirt-front ; 
 his hair fell over his forehead ; he straightened himself 
 and threw the hair back again, and so he kept on, time 
 after time casting those plumes to and fro. At last, 
 sated with homage, he thought of justice, and pointed 
 to the band and smiled with an unconvincing air of 
 humility, as if saying : " I am naught. Here are the 
 true heroes." And on the end of his stick he lifted to 
 their feet eighty men, whose rising drew invigorated 
 shouts. Enthusiasm reigned ; triumph was accom- 
 plished. Even when the applause had expired, enthu- 
 siasm still reigned ; and every person present had the 
 illusion of a share in the triumph. It was a great 
 night at the Promenades. 
 
 George and Marguerite looked at each other happily. 
 They both were inspired by the feeling that life was a 
 grand tiling, and that they had reached, suddenly, one 
 of the summits of existence. George, observing the ex- 
 citement in her eyes, thought how wonderful it was that 
 she too should be excited. 
 
 " What was that piece? " she asked. 
 
 " I don't quite know," he said. " There don't ap- 
 pear to be any programmes about." He wished he 
 had been able to identify the piece, but he was too 
 content to be ashamed of his ignorance. Moreover his 
 ignorance was hers also, and he liked that. 
 
 The music resumed. He listened, ready to put him-
 
 MARGUERITE 67 
 
 self into the mood of admiration if it was the Glazounov 
 item. Was it Glazounov? He could not be certain. 
 It sounded fine. Surely it sounded Russian. Then he 
 had a glimpse of a programme held by a man standing 
 near and he peered at it. " No. 4. Elgar — Sea- 
 Pictures." No. 5 was the Glazounov. 
 
 " It's only the Elgar," he said, with careless con- 
 descension, perceiving at once, by the mere virtue of a 
 label, that the music was not fine and not Russian. He 
 really loved music, but he happened to be at that age, 
 from which some people never emerge, at which the 
 judgment depends almost completely on extraneous sug- 
 gestion. 
 
 " Oh ! " murmured Marguerite indifferently, respond- 
 ing to his tone. 
 
 " Glazounov's next," he said. 
 
 " I suppose we couldn't sit down," she suggested. 
 
 Yet it was she who had preferred the Promenade to 
 the Grand Circle or the Balcony. 
 
 " We'll find something," he said, with his usual assur- 
 ance. And in the corridor that surrounded the hemi- 
 cycle they climbed up on to a narrow ledge in the wall 
 and sat side by side in perfect luxury, not dreaming 
 that they were doing anything unusual or undignified. 
 As a fact, they were not. Other couples were perched 
 on other ledges, and still others on the cold steam-pipes. 
 A girl with a big face and heavy red lips sat alone, 
 lounging, her head aslant. She had an open copy of 
 " Home Notes " in one hand. Elgar had sent the 
 simple creature into an ecstasy, and she never stirred ; 
 probably she did not know any one named Enwright. 
 Promenaders promenaded in and out of the corridor, 
 and up and down the corridor, and nobody troubled to 
 glance twice either at the heavy-lipped, solitary girl, 
 or at the ledged couples.
 
 58 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 Through an arched doorway could be seen the orches- 
 tra and half the auditorium. 
 
 " This is the best seat in the hall," George observed 
 proudly. Marguerite smiled at him. 
 
 When the Sea Pictures were finished she gave a sigh 
 of appreciation, having forgotten, it seemed, that per- 
 sons wno had come to admire Glazounov ought not to 
 relish Elgar. And George too, reflecting upon the sen- 
 sations produced within him by Elgar, was ready to 
 admit that, though Elgar could of course not be classed 
 with the foreigner, there might be something to be said 
 for him after all. 
 
 " This is just what I needed," she murmured. 
 
 "Oh?" 
 
 " I was very depressed this afternoon," she said. 
 
 " Were you ? " He had not noticed it. 
 
 " Yes. They've cut down my price from a pound to 
 seventeen and six." " They " were the employing book- 
 binders, and the price was the fixed price for a design 
 — side and back. 
 
 He was shocked, and he felt guilty. How was it that 
 he had noticed nothing in her demeanour.'* He had 
 been full of the misfortune of his firm, and she had made 
 the misfortune her own, keeping silence about the grind- 
 ing harshness of bookbinders. He was an insensible 
 egotist, and girls were wondrous. At any rate this girl 
 was wondrous. He had an intense desire to atone for 
 his insensibility and his egotism by protecting her, spoil- 
 ing her, soothing her into forgetfulness of her trouble. 
 . . . Ah ! He understood now what she meant when 
 she had replied to his suggestion as to visiting the cathe- 
 dral: " It might do me good." 
 
 " Plow rotten ! " he exclaimed, expressing his sym- 
 pathy by means of disgust. " Couldn't you tell them 
 to go to the dickens.'' "
 
 MARGUERITE 69 
 
 (( 
 
 You have to take what they'll give," she answered. 
 " Especially when they begin to talk about bad trade 
 and that sort of thing." 
 
 " Well, it's absolutely rotten ! " 
 
 It was not the arbitrary reduction of her earnings 
 that he resented, but the fact of her victimhood. Scan- 
 dalous, infamous, that this rare and delicate creature 
 should be defenceless against commercial brutes ! 
 
 The Glazounov ballet music, " The Seasons," started. 
 Knowing himself justified, he surrendered himself to it, 
 to its exoticism, to its Russianism, to its wilful and 
 disconcerting beaut}'. And there was no composer like 
 Glazounov. Beneath the sensory- spell of the music, his 
 memory wandered about through the whole of his life. 
 He recalled days in his mother's boarding-house at 
 Brighton ; musical evenings at which John Orgreave was 
 present, at his stepfather's house in the Five Towns ; 
 and in all kinds of scenes at the later home at Ladde- 
 redge Hall, scenes in which his mother again predomi- 
 nated, becoming young again and learning sports and 
 horsewomanship as a girl might have learnt them, . . . 
 And they were all beautiful beneath the music. The 
 music softened ; the fountain was heard ; the striking of 
 matches was heard. . . . Still, all was beautiful. Then 
 he touched Marguerite's hand as it rested a little behind 
 her on the ledge. The effect of contact was surprising. 
 With all his other thoughts he had not ceased to think 
 of the idea of shielding and enveloping her. But now 
 this idea utterly possessed him. The music grew louder, 
 and as it were under cover of the music he put his hand 
 round her hand. It was a venturesome act with such 
 a girl; he was afraid. . . . The hand lay acquiescent 
 within his ! He tightened the pressure. The hand lay 
 acquiescent ; it accepted. The flashing realisation of 
 her compliance overwhelmed him. He was holding the
 
 60 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 very symbol of wild purity, and there was no effort to 
 be free. None guessed. None could see. They two 
 had the astonishing, the ineffable secret between them. 
 He looked at her profile, taking precautions. No sign 
 of alarm or disturbance. Her rapt glance was fixed 
 steadily on the orchestra framed in the arched door- 
 way. . . . Incredible, the soft, warm delicacy of the 
 cotton glove ! 
 
 The applause at the end of the number awoke them. 
 He released her hand. She slipped neatly down from 
 the ledge. 
 
 " I think I ought to be going back home. . . . 
 Father . . ." she murmured. She met his eyes ; but his 
 embarrassed eyes would not meet hers. 
 
 " Certainly ! " he agreed quickly, though they had 
 been in the hall little more than half-an-hour. He 
 would have agreed to any suggestion from her. It 
 seemed to him that the least he could do at that moment 
 was to fulfil unquestioningly her slightest wish. Then 
 she looked away, and he saw that a deep blush gradually 
 spread over her lovely face. This was the supreme 
 impressive phenomenon. Before that blush he was 
 devotional. 
 
 They walked down Regent Street almost in silence, 
 enjoying simultaneously the silence and solitude of the 
 curving thoroughfare and the memory of the bright, 
 crowded, triumphant scene which they had left. At 
 Piccadilly Circus George enquired for the new open 
 motor-buses which had just begun to run between the 
 Circus and Putne}', passing the RedclifFe Arms. Al- 
 ready, within a 3'ear, the time was historically distant 
 when a policeman had refused to allow the automobile 
 of a member of Parliament to enter Palace Yard, on
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 61 
 
 the ground that there was no precedent for such a dese- 
 cration. The new motor-buses, however, did not run 
 at night. Human daring had limits, and it was re- 
 ported that at least one motor-driver, succumbing to 
 the awful nervous strain of guiding these fast expresses 
 through the traffic of the West End, had been taken 
 to the lunatic asylum. George called a hansom, of 
 which there were dozens idling about. Marguerite 
 seemed tacitly to object to this act as the germ of 
 extravagance; but it was the only classic thing to do, 
 and he did it. 
 
 The hansom rolled rapidly and smoothly along upon 
 that well-established novelty, india-rubber tires. Bits 
 of the jingling harness oscillated regularly from side 
 to side. At intervals the whip-thong dragged gently 
 across the horse's back, and the horse lifted and shook 
 its head. The shallow and narrow interior of the 
 hansom was constructed with exactitude to hold two. 
 Neither occupant could move in any direction, and 
 neither desired to move. The splendidly lighted ave- 
 nues, of which every detail could be discerned as by 
 day, flowed evenly past the vehicle. 
 
 " I've never been in a hansom before," said Mar- 
 guerite, timidly — because the situation was so dismay- 
 ing in its enchantment. 
 
 He, from the height of two years of hansom-using, 
 was touched, delighted, even impressed. The stagger- 
 ing fact increased her virginal charm and his protective- 
 ness. He thought upon the simplicity of her existence. 
 Of course she had never been in a hansom! Hansoms 
 were obviously outside her scheme. He said nothing, 
 but he sought for and found her hand beneath the apron. 
 She did not resist. He reflected: "Can she resist.'' 
 She cannot." Her hand was in a living swoon. Her 
 hand was his ; it was admittedly his. She could never
 
 62 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 deny it, now. He touched the button of the glove, and 
 undid it. Then, moving her passive hand, he brought 
 both his to it, and with infinitely delicate and considerate 
 gestures he slowly drew off the glove, and he held her 
 hand ungloved. She did not stir nor speak. Nothing 
 so marvellous as her exquisite and confiding stillness had 
 ever happened. . . . The hansom turned into Alexandra 
 Grove, and when it stopped he pushed the glove into 
 her hand, which closed on it. As they descended the 
 cabman, accustomed to peer down on loves pure and 
 impure, gave them a beneficent look. 
 
 " He's not come in," said Marguerite, glancing 
 through the flap of the front-door. She was exceed- 
 ingly self-conscious, but beneath her self-consciousness 
 could be noticed an indignant accusation against old 
 Haim. She had rung the bell and knocked. 
 
 " Are you sure? Can you see the hatstand? " 
 
 " I can see it enough for that." 
 
 " Look here," George suggested with false lightness, 
 " I expect I could get in through my window." His 
 room was on the ground-floor, and not much agility was 
 needed to clamber up to its ledge from the level of the 
 area. He might have searched his pockets again and 
 discovered his latchke}' ; but he would not. Sooner 
 than admit a deception he would have remained at the 
 door with her all night. 
 
 "Think you could?" 
 
 " Yes. I could slide the window-catch." 
 
 He jumped down the steps and showed her how he 
 could climb. In two minutes he was opening the front- 
 door to her from the inside. She moved towards him 
 in the gloom. 
 
 " Oh ! My portfolio ! " She stopped, and bent down 
 to the mat.
 
 MARGUERITE 63 
 
 Then she busily lighted the little hall-lamp, with his 
 matches, and hurried down, taking the matches, to the 
 kitchen. After a few moments George followed her; 
 he was obliged to follow her. She had removed her 
 coat ; it lay on the sole chair. The hat and blouse which 
 she wore seemed very vivid in the kitchen, — vestiges 
 of past glorious episodes in concert-halls and hansoms. 
 She had lighted the kitchen-lamp and was standing 
 apparently idle. The alarm-clock on the black mantel- 
 piece ticked noisily. The cat sat indifferently on the 
 corner of the clean bare table. George hesitated in the 
 doorway. He was extremely excited because the tre- 
 mendous fact of what he had done and what she had 
 permitted, with all the implications, had to be explicitly 
 acknowledged between them. Of course it had to be 
 acknowledged ! They were both fully aware of the 
 thing, she as well as he, but spoken words must authen- 
 ticate its existence as only spoken words could. 
 
 She said, beginning sternly and finishing with a pe- 
 culiar smile: 
 
 " I do think this business of father and Mrs. Lobley 
 is going rather far." 
 
 And George had a sudden new sense of the purely 
 feminine adroitness of women. In those words she had 
 clearly conceded that their relations were utterly 
 changed. Never before had she made even the slightest, 
 most distant reference to the monstrous household ac- 
 tuality, unadmitted and yet patent, of the wooing of 
 Mrs. Lobley the charwoman by her father, the widower 
 of her mother. If Mr. Haim stayed away from home 
 of an evening Mrs. Lobley was the siren who deflected 
 him from the straight domestic path. She knew it ; 
 George surmised it ; the whole street had its suspicions. 
 But hitherto Marguerite had given no sign. She now
 
 64 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 created George the confidant of her resentment. And 
 her smile was not an earnest of some indulgence for 
 her father, — her smile was for George alone. 
 
 He went boldly up to her, put his arms around her 
 and kissed her. She did not kiss. But she allowed 
 herself to be kissed, and she let her body loose in his 
 embrace. She looked at him with her eyes nearly upon 
 his, and her eyes glittered with a mysterious burning; 
 he knew that she was content. That she should be con- 
 tent, that it should please her to let him have the un- 
 imaginable experience of holding that thrilled and thrill- 
 ing body close to his, seemed to him to be a marvellous 
 piece of sheer luck and overwhelming good-fortune. 
 She was so sensuous and yet so serious. Her gaze stim- 
 ulated not only love but conscience. In him ambition 
 was superlatively vigorous. Nevertheless he felt then 
 as though he had never really known ambition till that 
 moment. He thought of the new century and of a new 
 life. He perceived the childishness and folly of his 
 favourite idea that an artist ought to pass through a 
 phase of Don Juanism. He knew that the task of 
 satisfying the lofty and exacting and unique girl would 
 be immense, and that he could fulfil it, but on the one 
 condition that it monopolised his powers. Thus he was 
 both modest and proud, anxious and divinely elated. 
 His mind was the scene of innumerable impulses and 
 sensations over which floated the banner of the male who 
 has won an impassioned allegiance. 
 
 " Don't let's tell any one yet," she murmured. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " I mean for a long time," she insisted. 
 
 " No, we won't," he agreed, and added scornfully : 
 " They'd only say we're too young." 
 
 The notion of secrecy was an enchanting notion. 
 
 She cut magic cake and poured out magic milk. And
 
 MARGUERITE 66 
 
 they ate and drank together, for they were hungry. 
 And at this point the cat began to show an interest 
 in their doings. 
 
 And after they were both in their beds, but not after 
 they were asleep, Mr. Haim by the clicking of a latch- 
 key in a lock, reminded them of something which they 
 had practically forgotten — his disordered existence.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CHARWOMAN 
 
 George entered Alexandra Grove very early the next 
 evening, having dined inadequately and swiftly so that 
 he might reach the neighbourhood of Marguerite at the 
 first moment justifiable. He would have omitted dinner 
 and trusted to Marguerite's kitchen, only that, in view 
 of the secrecy resolved upon, appearances had to be 
 preserved. The secrecy in itself was delicious, but even 
 the short experiences of the morning had shown both of 
 them how extremely difficult it would be for two people 
 who were everything to each other to behave as though 
 they were nothing to each other. George hoped, how- 
 ever, that Mr. Haim would again be absent, and he 
 was anticipating exquisite hours. 
 
 At the precise instant when he put his latchkey in 
 the door the door was pulled away from him by a hand 
 within, and he saw a woman of about thirty five, plump 
 but not stout, in a blue sateen dress, bonneted but not 
 gloved. She had pleasant, commonplace features and 
 brown hair. Several seconds elapsed before George rec- 
 ognised in her Mrs. Lobley the charwoman of No. S, and 
 when he did so he was a little surprised at her present- 
 ableness. He had met her very seldom in the house. 
 He was always late for breakfast and his breakfast was 
 always waiting for him. On Sundays he was generally 
 out. If he did catch sight of her, she was invariably 
 
 in a rough apron and as a rule on her knees. Their 
 
 6S
 
 THE CHARWOMAN ' 67 
 
 acquaintance had scarcely progressed far enough for 
 him to call her " Mrs. Lob " with any confidence. He 
 had never seen her at night, though upon occasion he 
 had heard her below in the basement, and for him she 
 was associated with mysterious nocturnal goings and 
 comings by the basement door. That she should be 
 using the front-door was as startling as that she should 
 be so nobly attired in blue sateen. 
 
 "Good evening — Mr. Cannon," she said, in her 
 timid voice, too thin for her body. He noticed that she 
 was perturbed. Hitherto she had always addressed 
 him as " sir." 
 
 " Excuse me," she said, and with an apologetic air 
 she slipped past him and departed out of the house. 
 
 Mr. Haim was visible just within the doorway of the 
 sitting-room, and behind him the table with the tea- 
 things still on it. George had felt considerably self- 
 conscious in Mr. Haim's presence at the office; and he 
 was so preoccupied by his own secret mighty alFair that 
 his first suspicion connected the strange apparition of 
 a new Mrs. Lobley and the peculiar look on Mr. Haim's 
 face with some disagreeable premature and dramatic 
 explosion of the secret mighty affair. His thoughts, 
 though absurd, ran thus because they could not run in 
 any other way. 
 
 Ah, Mr. Cannon ! " said Mr. Haim queerly. 
 
 You're in early to-night." 
 
 " A bit earlier," George admitted with caution. 
 " Have to read, you know." He was using the word 
 " read " in the examination sense. 
 
 " If you could spare me a minute," smiled Mr. Haim. 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Have a cigarette," said Mr. Haim, as soon as 
 George had deposited his hat and come into the room. 
 This quite unprecedented offer reassured George, who 
 
 «
 
 68 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 in spite of reason had continued to fear that the land- 
 lord had something on his mind about his daughter and 
 his lodger. Mr. Haim presented his well-known worn 
 cigarette case, and then with precise and calm gestures 
 carefully shut the door. 
 
 " The fact is," said he, " I wanted to tell you some- 
 thing. I told ]Mr. Enwright this afternoon, as I 
 thought was proper, and it seems to me that you are the 
 next person who ought to be informed." 
 
 "Oh, yes.?" 
 
 " I am going to be married." 
 
 " The deuce you are! " 
 
 The light words had scarceh' escaped from young 
 George before he perceived that his tone was a mistakej 
 and that Mr. Haim was in a state of considerable emo- 
 tion, which would have to be treated very carefully. 
 And George too now suddenly partook of the emotion. 
 He felt himself to be astonished and even shaken by 
 Mr. Haim's news. The atmosphere of the interview 
 changed in an instant. 
 
 Mr. Haim moved silently on slippered feet to the 
 mantelpiece, out of the circle of lamplight, and dropped 
 some ash into the empty fire-place. 
 
 " I congratulate you," said George. 
 
 " Thank you ! " said Mr. Haim brightly, seizing 
 gratefully on the fustian phrase, eager to hall-mark it 
 as genuine and put it among his treasures. Without 
 doubt he was flattered. " Yes," he proceeded, as 
 it were reflectively, " I have asked Mrs. Lobley to be 
 my wife, and she has done me the honour to consent." 
 He had the air of having invented the words specially 
 to indicate that Mrs. Lobley was descending from a 
 throne in order to espouse him. It could not have 
 occurred to him that they had ever been used before 
 and that the formula was classic. He smiled again,
 
 THE CHARWOMAN 69 
 
 and went on : " Of course I've known and admired 
 Mrs. Lobley for a long time. What we should have 
 done without her valuable help in this house I don't 
 like to think. I really don't." 
 
 " * Her help in this house,' " thought the ruthless 
 George, beliind cigarette smoke. " W\\y doesn't he 
 say right out she's the charwoman? If I was marry- 
 ing a charwoman, I should say I was marrying a char- 
 woman." And then he had a misgiving: " Should I? 
 I wonder whether I should." And he remembered that 
 ultimately the charwoman was going to be his own 
 mother-in-law. He was aware of a serious qualm. 
 
 " Mrs. Lobley has had an uphill fight since her first 
 husband's death," said Mr. Haim. *' He was an insur- 
 ance agent — the Prudential. She's come out of it 
 splendidly. She's always kept up her little home, 
 though it was only two rooms, and she'll only leave it 
 because I can offer her a better one. I have always 
 admired her, and I'm sure the more you know her the 
 more you'll like her. She's a woman in a thousand, 
 Mr. Cannon." 
 
 " I expect she is," George agreed feebly. He could 
 not think of anything to say. 
 
 "And I'm thankful I can offer her a better home. 
 I don't mind telling you now that at one time I began 
 to fear I shouldn't have a home. I've had my ambitions, 
 Mr. Cannon. I was meant for a quantity surveyor. I 
 was one — you may say. But it was not to be. I 
 came down in the world, but I kept my head above 
 water. And then in the end, with a little money I had, 
 I bought this house. £575. It needed some negotia- 
 tion. Ground rent £10 per annum, and seventy years 
 to run. You see, all along I had had the idea of build- 
 ing a studio in the garden. I was one of the first to 
 see the commercial possibilities of studios in Chelsea.
 
 70 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 But of course I know Chelsea. I made the drawings 
 for the studio myself. Mr. Enwright kindly suggested 
 a few improvements. With all my experience I was in 
 a position to get it put up as cheaply as possible. 
 You'd be surprised at the number of people in the build- 
 ing line anxious to oblige me. It cost under £300. I 
 had to borrow most of it. But I've paid it off. What's 
 the consequence.'' The consequence is that the rent of 
 the studio and the top rooms brings me in over eight 
 per cent, on all I spent on the house and the studio 
 together. And I'm living rent free myself." 
 " Jolly good ! " 
 
 " Yes. ... If I'd had capital, Mr. Cannon, I could 
 have made thousands out of studios. Thousands. I 
 fancy I've the gift. But I've never had the capital. 
 And that's all there is to it." He smacked his lips, 
 and leaned back against the mantelpiece. " You may 
 tell me I've realised my ambitions. Not all of them, 
 Mr. Cannon. Not all of them. If I'd had money I 
 should have had leisure, and I should have improved 
 myself. Reading, I mean. Study. Literature. Mu- 
 sic. Painting. History of architecture. All that sort 
 of thing. I've got the taste for it. I know I've got 
 the taste for it. But what could I do.? I gave it up. 
 You'll never know how lucky you are, Mr. Cannon. I 
 ^ave it up. However — I've nothing to be ashamed 
 V)f. At any rate I hope not." 
 
 George nodded appreciatively. He was touched. 
 He was even impressed. He admitted the naivete of 
 the ageing man, his vanity, his sentimentality. But he 
 Baw himself to be in the presence of an achievement. 
 And though the crown of Mr. Haim's achievement was 
 to marry a charwoman, still the achievement impressed. 
 And the shabby man with the lined, common face was 
 looking back at the whole of his life, — there was some-
 
 THE CHARWOMAN 71 
 
 thing positively formidable in that alone. He was at 
 the end; George was at the beginning, and George felt 
 callow and deferential. The sensation of callowness 
 at once heightened his resolve to succeed. All George's 
 sensations seemed mysteriously to transfonn themselves 
 into food for tliis great resolve. 
 
 "And what does Miss Haim say to all this?" he 
 asked, rather timidly and wildly. It was a venture- 
 some remark ; it might well have been called an imperti- 
 nence; but the image of Marguerite was involved in 
 the workings of his mind, and it would not be denied 
 expression. 
 
 Mr. Haim lifted his back from the mantelpiece, 
 sharply. Then he hesitated, moving forward a little. 
 
 " Mr. Cannon," he said. " It's curious you should 
 ask that." His voice trembled, and at the vibration 
 George was suddenly apprehensive. Mr. Haim had 
 soon recovered from his original emotion, but now he 
 seemed to be in danger of losing control of himself. 
 
 George nervously cleared his throat and apologised : 
 
 " I didn't mean " 
 
 " I'd better tell you," Mr. Haim interrupted him, 
 rather loudly. " We've just had a terrible scene with 
 my daughter, a terrible scene ! " He seldom referred 
 to Marguerite by her Christian name. " Mr. Cannon, 
 I had hoped to get through my life without a scandal, 
 and especially an open scandal. But it seems as if I 
 shouldn't, — if I know my daughter ! It was not my 
 intention to say anything. Far from it. Outsiders 
 ought not to be troubled. ... I — I like you, Mr. Can- 
 non. She left us a few minutes ago. And as she didn't 
 put her hat on she must be either at the studio or at 
 Agg's » 
 
 " She went out of the house? " George questioned 
 awkwardly.
 
 72 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 Mr. Haim nodded, and then without warning he 
 dropped Hke an inert lump on to a chair and let liis 
 head fall on to his hand. 
 
 George was frightened as well as mystified. The 
 spectacle of the old man — at one moment boasting in- 
 genuously of his career, and at the next almost hysteri- 
 cal with woe — roused his pity in a very disconcerting 
 manner, and from his sight the Lucas and Enwright 
 factotum vanished utterly, and was supplanted by a 
 tragic human being. But he had no idea how to handle 
 the unexampled situation with dignity ; he realised pain- 
 fully his own lack of experience, and his overmastering 
 impulse was to get away while it was still possible to 
 get away. Moreover, he desired intensely to see and 
 hear Marguerite. 
 
 " Perhaps I'd better find out where she is," he ab- 
 surdly suggested, and slipped from the room feeling 
 like a criminal reprieved. 
 
 The old man did not stir. 
 
 " Can I come in .'' " said George, hatless, pushing 
 open the door of the studio, which was ajar. 
 
 There were people in the bright and rather chilly 
 studio, and none of them moved until the figure arriving 
 out of the darkness was identified. Mr. Prince, who in 
 the far corner was apparently cleaning or adjusting 
 his press, then came forward with a quiet, shy, urbane 
 welcome. Marguerite herself stood nearly under the 
 central lamp, talking to Agg, who was seated. The 
 somewhat celebrated Agg immediately rose and said in 
 her rather deep voice to Marguerite; 
 
 " I must go." 
 
 Agg was the eldest daughter of the Agg family, a 
 broad-minded and turbulent tribe who acknowledged the
 
 THE CHARWOMAN 7S 
 
 nominal headsliip of a hard-working and successful bar- 
 rister. She was a painter, and lived and slept in semi- 
 independence in a studio of her own in Manresa Road, 
 but maintained close and constant relations with the 
 rest of the tribe. In shape and proportions fairly tall 
 and fairly thin, she counted in shops among the stock- 
 sizes ; but otherwise she was entitled to call herself 
 unusilal. She kept her hair about as short as the hair 
 of a boy who has postponed going to the barber's for 
 a month after the proper time, and she incompletely 
 covered the hair with the smallest possible hat. Her 
 coat was long and straight and her skirt short. Her 
 boots were high, reaching well up the calf, but they had 
 high heels and were laced in some hundreds of holes. 
 She carried a cane in a neatly gloved hand. She was 
 twenty seven. In style Marguerite and Agg made a 
 great contrast with one another. Each was fully aware 
 of the contrast, and liked it. 
 
 " Good evening, Mr. Cannon," said Agg firmly, not 
 shaking hands. 
 
 George had met her once in the way of small-talk at» 
 her father's house. Having yet to learn the important 
 truth that it takes all sorts to make a world, he did not 
 like her and wondered why she existed. He could un- 
 derstand Agg being fond of Marguerite, but he could 
 not understand Marguerite being fond of Agg; and the 
 friendship between these two, now that he actually for 
 the first time saw it in being, irked him. 
 
 "Is anything the matter? . . . Have you seen 
 father? " asked Marguerite in a serious calm tone, turn- 
 ing to him. Like George she had run into the studio 
 without putting on any street attire. 
 
 George perceived that there was no secret in the 
 studio as to the crisis in the Haim family. Clearly the 
 topic had been under discussion. Prince as well as Agg
 
 74. THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 was privy to it. He did not quite like that. He was 
 vaguely jealous of both Prince and Agg. Indeed he 
 was startled to find that Marguerite could confide such 
 a matter to Prince, — at any rate without consulting 
 himself. While not definitely formulating the claim in 
 his own mind, he had somehow expected of Marguerite 
 that until she met him she would have existed absolutely 
 sole, without any sentimental connections of any sort, in 
 abeyance, waiting for his miraculous advent. He was 
 glad that Mr. Buckingham Smith was not of the con- 
 clave ; he felt that he could not have tolerated Mr. Buck- 
 ingham Smith. 
 
 " Yes, I've seen him," George answered. 
 
 " Did he tell you.? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Mr. Prince, after a little hovering, retired to his 
 press, and a wheel was heard to creak. 
 
 "What did he tell you?" 
 
 " He told me about — the marriage. . . . And I 
 gathered there'd been a bit of a scene." 
 
 " Nothing else.'' " 
 
 " No." 
 
 Agg then interjected, fixing her blue eyes on George: 
 
 " Marguerite is coming to live with me in my studio." 
 
 " Oh ! " George could not suppress his pained in- 
 quietude at this decision having been made without his 
 knowledge. Both girls misapprehended his feeling. 
 
 "That's it, is it?" 
 
 "Well," said Agg. "What can Mr. Haim expect? 
 Here Marguerite's been paying this woman two shill- 
 ings a day and her food, and letting her take a parcel 
 home at nights. And then all of a sudden she comes 
 dressed up for tea and sits down, and Mr. Haim says 
 she's his future wife. What does he expect? Does he
 
 THE CHARWOMAN 75 
 
 expect Marguerite to kiss her and call her mamma? 
 The situation's impossible." 
 
 " But you can't stop people from falling in love, 
 Agg, you know. It's not a crime," said Mr. Prince in 
 his weak voice surprisingly from the press. 
 
 " I know it's not a crime," said Agg sharply. " And 
 nobody wants to stop people from falling in love. If 
 Mr. Haim chooses to go mad about a charwoman, when 
 his wife, and such a wife, 's been dead barely three years, 
 that's his concern. It's true the lady isn't much more 
 than half his age, and that the whole business would be 
 screamingly funny if it wasn't disgusting; but still he's 
 a free agent. And Marguerite's a free agent too, I 
 hope. Of course he's thunderstruck to discover that 
 Marguerite is a free agent. He would be ! " 
 
 " He certainly is in a state," said George, with an 
 uneasy short laugh. 
 
 Agg continued: 
 
 "And why is he in a state.'* Because Marguerite 
 says she shall leave the house? Not a bit. Only be- 
 cause of what he thinks is the scandal of her leaving. 
 Mr. Haim is a respectable man. He's simply all re- 
 spectability. Respectability's his god, — Father, Son, 
 and Holy Ghost. Always has been. He'd sacrifice 
 everything to respectability, — except the lovely I^ob- 
 ley. It's not respectable in a respectable family for a 
 girl to leave home on account of her stepmother. And 
 so he's in a state, if you please ! ... If he wanted to 
 carry on with Mrs. Lobley, let him carry on with her. 
 But no ! That's not respectable. He's just got to 
 marry her ! " Agg sneered. 
 
 George was startled, perhaps excusably, at the mon- 
 strous doctrine implied in Agg's remarks. He had 
 thought himself a man of the world, experienced, un-
 
 76 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 shockable. But he blenched, and all his presence of 
 mind was needed to preserve a casual, cool demeanour. 
 The worst of the trial was Marguerite's tranquil ac- 
 ceptance of the attitude of her friend. She glanced at 
 Agg in silent, admiring approval. He surmised that 
 until that moment he had been perfectly ignorant of 
 what girls really were. 
 
 " I see," said George courageously. And then, 
 strangely, he began to admire too. And he pulled him- 
 self together. 
 
 " I think I shall leave to-morrow," Marguerite an- 
 nounced. " Morning. It will be much better. She 
 can look after him. I don't see that I owe any 
 duty. . . ." 
 
 " Yes, you do, dear," Agg corrected her impressively. 
 " You owe a duty to your mother — to her memory. 
 That's the duty you owe. I'll come round for you 
 to-morrow myself in a four-wheeler — let me see, about 
 eleven." 
 
 George hated the sound of the word " duty." 
 
 " Thank you, dear," Marguerite murmured, and the 
 girls shook hands ; they did not kiss. 
 
 " By-bye, Princey." 
 
 " By-bye, Agg." 
 
 " Good-night, Mr. Cannon." 
 
 Agg departed, slightly banging the door. 
 
 ** I think I'll go back home now," said Marguerite, 
 in a sweet, firm tone. " Had they gone out.'' " 
 
 "Who? Your father and what's-her-name? She's 
 gone, but he hasn't. If you don't want to meet him 
 to-night again, hadn't you better " 
 
 " Oh ! If she's gone, he'll be gone too by this time. 
 Trust him!" 
 
 Mr. Prince approached them, urging Marguerite
 
 THE CHARWOMAN 77 
 
 soothingly to stay as long as she liked. She shook 
 her head, and pressed his hand affectionately. 
 
 in 
 
 When George and Marguerite re-entered No. 8 by the 
 front-door, Mr. Haim was still sitting overcome at the 
 tea-table. They both had sight of him through the 
 open door of the parlour. Marguerite was obviously 
 disturbed to see him there, but she went straight into the 
 room. George moved into the darkness of his own 
 room. He heard the voices of the other two. 
 
 " Then you mean to go.^* " Haim asked accusingly. 
 
 Marguerite answered in a calm, good-humoured, sweet 
 tone : 
 
 *' Of course, if you mean to marry Mrs. Lobley." 
 
 " Marry Mrs. Lobley ! Of course I shall marry 
 her ! " Haim's voice rose. " What right have you to 
 settle where I shall marry and where I shan't ? " 
 
 " I've fixed everything up with Celia Agg," said Mar- 
 guerite very quieth^ 
 
 " You've soon arranged it ! " 
 
 No reply from Marguerite. The old man spoke 
 again : 
 
 " You've no right. . . . It'll be an open scandal." 
 
 Then a silence. George now thought impatiently 
 that a great fuss was being made about a trifle, and 
 that a matter much more important deserved attention. 
 His ear caught a violent movement. The old man came 
 out of the parlour, and, instead of taking his hat and 
 rushing off to find the enchantress, he walked slowly 
 and heavily upstairs, preceded by his immense shadow 
 thrown from the hall-lamp. He disappeared round the 
 corner of the stairs. George, under the influence of the 
 apparition, was forced to modify his view that all the
 
 78 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 fuss was over a trifle. He tiptoed into the parlour. 
 Marguerite was standing at the table. As soon as 
 George came in she began to gather the tea-things 
 together on the tray. 
 
 " I say! " whispered George. 
 
 Marguerite's bent tranquil face had a pleasant look 
 as she handled the crockery. 
 
 " I shall get him a nice breakfast to-morrow," she 
 said, also in a whisper. " And as soon as he's gone to 
 the office I shall pack. It won't take me long, really." 
 
 " But won't Mrs. Lobley be here? " 
 
 " What if she is? I've nothing against Mrs. Lobley, 
 Nor as far as that goes against poor father either — ^ 
 you see what I mean." 
 
 *' He told me you'd had a terrible scene. That's 
 what he said — a terrible scene." 
 
 " It depends what you call a scene," she said smoothly. 
 "I was rather upset just at first — who wouldn't be? 
 — but . . ." She stopped, listening, with a glance at 
 the ceiling. There was not the slightest sound over- 
 head. " I wonder what he's doing? " 
 
 She picked up the tray. 
 
 " I'll carry that," said George. 
 
 " No ! It's all right. I'm used to it. You might 
 bring me the table-cloth. But you won't drop the 
 crumbs out of it, will 3'ou? " 
 
 He followed her with the bunched-up table-cloth 
 down the dangerous basement steps into the kitchen. 
 She passed straight into the little scullery, where the 
 tray with its contents was habitually left for the atten- 
 tion of Mrs. Lobley the next morning. When she 
 turned again, he halted her as it were at the entrance 
 from the scullery with a question. 
 
 "Shall you be all right?" 
 
 " With Agg? "
 
 THE CHARWOMAN 79 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " How do you mean — ' all right ' ? " 
 
 " Well, for money and so on." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " She spoke lightly and surely, with a 
 faint confident smile. 
 
 " I was thinking as they'd cut down your prices " 
 
 " I shall have heaps. Agg and I — why, we can live 
 splendidly for next to nothing. You'll see." 
 
 He was rebuffed. He felt jealous ; of both Agg and 
 Prince, but especially of Prince. It still seemed out- 
 rageous to him that Prince should have been taken into 
 her confidence. Prince had known of the affair before 
 himself. He was more than jealous ; he had a greater 
 grievance. jMarguerite appeared to have forgotten all 
 about love, all about the mighty event of their betrothal. 
 She appeared to have put it away, as casually as she 
 had put away the tray. Yet ought not the event to 
 count supreme over everything else, — over no matter 
 what.'' He was desolate and unhappy. 
 
 " Did you tell Agg? " he asked. 
 
 "What about.?" 
 
 " Our being engaged — and so on." 
 
 She started towards him. 
 
 " Dearest ! " she protested, — not in the least irri- 
 tated or querulous, but kindly, affectionately. " With- 
 out asking you first ! Didn't we agree we wouldn't say 
 anything to anybody ? But we shall have to think about 
 telling Agg." 
 
 He met her and suddenly seized her. They kissed, 
 and she shut her eyes. He was ecstatically happ}'. 
 
 " Oh! " she murmured in his embrace. " I'm so glad 
 I've got you." 
 
 And she opened her eyes and tears fell from them. 
 She cried quietly, without excitement and without shame. 
 She cried with absolute naturalness. Her tears filled
 
 80 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 him with profound delight. And in the exquisite sub- 
 terranean intimacy of the kitchen, he saw with his eyes 
 and felt with his arms how beautiful she was. Her 
 face, seen close, was incredibl}" soft and touching. Her 
 nose was the most wonderful nose ever witnessed. He 
 gloated upon her perfection. For, literall}', to him, she 
 was perfect. With what dignity- and with what a sense 
 of justice she had behaved, in the studio, in the par- 
 lour, and here! He was gloriously reassured as he 
 realised how in their joint future he would be able to 
 rely upon her fairness, her conscientiousness, her mere 
 pleasantness which nothing could disturb. Through- 
 out the ordeal of the evening she had not once been 
 ruffled. She had not said an unkind word, nor given an 
 unkind gesture, nor exhibited the least trace of resent- 
 ment. Then, she had taste, and she was talented. But 
 perhaps the greatest quality of all was her adorable 
 beauty and charm. And yet no ! The final attraction 
 was that she trusted him, depended on him, cried in his 
 embrace. . . . He loosed her with reluctance, and she 
 deliciously wiped her eyes on his handkerchief, and he 
 took her a^jain. 
 
 " I suppose 7 must leave here too, now," he said. 
 
 " Oh, George ! " she exclaimed. " You mustn't ! 
 Whv should vou? I don't want you to." 
 
 "Don't you? Whv?" 
 
 "Oh! i don't! Truly. You'll be just as well 
 looked after as if I was here. I do hope you'll stay." 
 
 That settled it. And Manrcsa Road was not far off. 
 
 She sat on the table and leaned against him, a long 
 time. Then she said she must go upstairs to her room, 
 — she had so much to do. He could not forbid, be- 
 cause she was irresistible. She extinguished the kitchen- 
 lamp, and side by side they groped up the stairs to the
 
 THE CHARWOMAN 81 
 
 first-floor. The cat nonchalantly passed them in the 
 hall. 
 
 " Put the lights out here, will you, when you go to 
 bed? " she whispered. He felt flattered. 
 
 She offered her face. . . . The lovely thing slipped 
 away upstairs with unimaginable, ravishing grace. She 
 vanished. There was silence. After a moment George 
 could hear the clock ticking in the kitchen below. He 
 stood motionless, amid the dizzying memories of her 
 glance, hev gestures, the softness of her body. What 
 had happened to him was past belief. He completely 
 forgot the existence of the old man in love.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE LUNCHEON 
 Z 
 
 George, having had breakfast in bed, opened his 
 door for the second time that morning, and duly found 
 on the mat the can of hot-water (covered with a bit of 
 old blanket) and the can of cold water which comprised 
 the material for his bath. There was no sound in the 
 house. The new spouse might be upstairs or she might 
 be downstairs, — he could not tell ; but the cans proved 
 that she was immanent and regardful ; indeed she never 
 forgot anything. And George's second state at No. 8 
 was physically even better than his first. In the transi- 
 tion through autumn from summer to winter, a transi- 
 tion which according to the experience of tens of thou- 
 sands of London lodgers is capable of turning compara- 
 tive comfort into absolute discomfort, ]\Irs. Haim had 
 behaved with benevolence and ingenuity. For example, 
 the bedroom fire, laid overnight, was now burning up 
 well from the mere touch of the lodger's own match. 
 Such things are apt to count, and they counted with 
 George. 
 
 As for Mr. Haim, George knew that he was still in 
 
 bed, because since his marriage Mr. Haim had made a 
 
 practice of staying in bed on Sunday mornings. The 
 
 scheme was his wife's ; she regarded it as his duty to 
 
 himself to exercise this grand male privilege of staying 
 
 in bed; to do so gave him majestj^ magnificence, and 
 
 was a sign of authority. A copy of The Referee, 
 
 82
 
 THE LUNCHEON 83 
 
 fresh as fruit new-dropped from the bough, lay in the 
 hall at the front-door. Mr. Plaim had read Jlie 
 Referee since The Referee was. He began his peru- 
 sal with tlie feature known as " Mustard and Cress," 
 which not only amused him greatly, but convinced 
 him that his own ideas on affairs were really very 
 sagacious. His chief and most serious admiration, 
 however, was kept for " Our Hand-Book." " It's my 
 Bible," he had once remarked. " And I'm not ashamed 
 to say it. And there are scores and scores of men 
 who'd say the same." Church bells could not be heard 
 at No. 8. The Referee lying in the hall was the 
 gracious sign of Sabbath morning. Presently Mrs. 
 Haim would carry it upstairs, respectfully. For her 
 it was simply and unanalysably The Referee. She 
 did not dream of looking into it. Mr. Haim did not 
 expect her to look into it. Her mission was to solace 
 and to charm, his alone to supply the intellectual basis 
 upon which their existence reposed. George's nose 
 caught the ascending beautiful odour of bacon ; he 
 picked up his cans and disappeared. 
 
 When he was dressed, he brought forward the grind- 
 stone to the fire, and conscientiously put his nose to it, 
 without even lighting a cigarette. It had been agreed 
 between himself and Marguerite that there should be 
 no more cigarettes until after lunch. It had also been 
 agreed that he should put his nose to the grindstone 
 that Sunday morning, and that she should do the same 
 away in Manresa Road. George's grindstone hap- 
 pened to be Miers and Crosskey's " The Soil in Relation 
 to Health." He was preparing for his Final Examina- 
 tion. In addition to the vast imperial subject of De- 
 sign, the Final comprised four other subjects, — Con- 
 struction, Hygiene, Properties and Uses of Building 
 Materials, and Ordinary Practice of Architecture.
 
 84. THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 George was now busy with one branch of the second of 
 these subjects. Perhaps he was not following pre- 
 cisely' the order of tactics prescribed by the most wily 
 tacticians, for as usual he had his own ideas and they 
 were arbitrary ; but he was veritably and visibly en- 
 gaged in the slow, exciting process of becoming a 
 great architect. And he knew and felt that he was. 
 And the disordered bed, and the untransparent bath- 
 water, and the soap-tin by the side of the bath, and the 
 breakfast traj' on a chair, were as much a part of the 
 inspiring spectacle as himself tense and especially dan- 
 diacal in the midst. 
 
 Nevertheless appearances deceived. On a table were 
 the thirteen folio and quarto glorious illustrated vol- 
 umes of Ongania's " Basilica di San Marco," which Mr. 
 Enwright had obtained for him on loan, and which had 
 come down to No. 8 in a big box by Carter Paterson 
 van. And while George sat quite still with his eyes and 
 ' his volition centred fiercely on Miers and Crosskey, his 
 brain would keep making excursions across the room to 
 the Church of St. Mark at Venice. He brought it back 
 again and again with a jerk, but he could not retain it in 
 place. The minutes passed; the quarters passed, until 
 an hour and a half had gone. Then he closed Miers 
 and Crosskey. He had sworn to study Miers and Cross- 
 key for an hour and a half. He had fought hard to do 
 so, and nobody could say that he had not done so. He 
 was aware, however, that the fight had not been wholly 
 successful ; he had not won it ; on the other hand neither 
 had he lost it. Honour was saved, and he could still 
 sincerely assert that in regard to the Final Examination 
 he had got time fiercely by the forelock. He rose and 
 strolled over to the " Basilica di San Marco," and 
 opened one or two of those formidable and enchanting 
 volumes. Then he produced a cigarette, and struck a
 
 THE LUNCHEON 85 
 
 match, and he was about to liglit the cigarette when 
 squinting down at it he suddenly wondered : " Now 
 how the deuce did that cigarette come into my mouth? " 
 He replaced the cigarette in his case, and in a moment 
 he had left the house. 
 
 He was invited to Mrs. John Orgreave's new abode at 
 Bedford Park for lunch. In the early part of the year 
 Mrs. John had inherited money — again, and the result 
 had been an increase in the spaciousness of her existence. 
 George had not expected to see the new house, for he 
 had determined to have nothing more to do with Mrs. 
 John. He was, it is to be feared, rather touchy. He 
 and Mrs. John had not openly quarrelled, but in their 
 hearts they had quarrelled. George had for some time 
 objected to her attitude towards him as a boarder. 
 She would hint that, as she assuredly had no need of 
 boarders, she was conferring a favour on him by board- 
 ing him. It was of course true, but George considered 
 that her references to the fact were offensive. He did 
 not understand and make allowances for Adela. More- 
 over, he thought that a woman who had been through 
 the Divorce Court ought to be modest in demeanour 
 towards people who had not been through the Divorce 
 Court. Further, Adela resented his frequent lateness 
 for meals. And she had said, with an uncompromising 
 glance : " I hope you'll turn over a new leaf when we 
 get into the new house." And he had replied, with an 
 uncompromising glance: "Perhaps / shan't get into 
 the new house." Nothing else. But that ended it. 
 After that both felt that mutual detestation had set in. 
 John Orgreave was not implicated in the discreet rup- 
 ture. Possibly he knew of it ; possibly he didn't ; he 
 was not one to look for trouble, and he accepted the 
 theory that it was part of George's vital scheme to 
 inhabit Chelsea. And then Adela, all fluffiness and win-
 
 86 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 someness, had called, in the previous week, at Russell 
 Square and behaved like a woman whose sole aim in 
 life is to please and cosset men of genius. " I shall be 
 dreadful!}' hurt if you don't come to one of my Sunday 
 lunches, George ! " she had said. And also : " We 
 7niss you, you know," and had put her head on one 
 side. 
 
 Marguerite had thoroughly approved his acceptance 
 of the invitation. She thought that he " ought " to 
 accept. He had promised, as she had an urgent de- 
 sign to finish, not to arrive at the studio before 8 p. m. 
 and he had received a note from her that morning to 
 insist on the hour. 
 
 n 
 
 The roads were covered with a very even, very thin 
 coating of nmd ; it was as though a corps of highly 
 skilled house-painters had laid on the mud, and just 
 vanished. The pavements had a kind of yellowish- 
 brown varnish. Each of the few trees that could be 
 seen — and there were a few — carried about six sur- 
 viving leaves. The sky was of a blue-black with golden 
 rents and gleams that travelled steadily eastwards. 
 Except the man with newspapers at the corner of Alex- 
 andra Grove, scarcely a sign of life showed along the 
 vistas of Fulham Road; but the clock over the jeweller's 
 was alive and bearing the usual false witness. From 
 the upper open galleries of the Workhouse one or two 
 old men and old women in uniform looked down indiffer- 
 ently upon the free world which they had left for ever. 
 Then an omnibus appeared faintly, advancing from the 
 beautiful grey distance of the straight and endless 
 street. George crossed the road on his way towards 
 Redcliffe Gardens and Earl's Court. He was very 
 smart, indeed smarter than ever, having produced in
 
 THE LUNCHEON 87 
 
 himself quite naturally and easily a fair imitation of 
 the elegant figures which, upon his visits to the restau- 
 rant-building in Pircadill}', he had observed airing them- 
 selves round about Bond Street. His hair was smooth 
 like polished marble ; his hat and stick were at the right 
 angle ; his overcoat was new and it indicated the local- 
 ity of his waist ; the spots of colour in his attire com- 
 plied with the operative decrees. His young face had 
 in it nothing that obviously separated him from the 
 average youth of his clothes. Nobody would have said 
 of him, at a glance, that he might be a particularly 
 serious individual. And most people would have at 
 once classed him as a callow pleasure-seeking person in 
 the act of seeking pleasure. 
 
 Nevertheless he was at that moment particularly se- 
 rious, and his seriousness was growing. His secret 
 engagement had affected him, in part directly, and in 
 part by the intensification of ambitious endeavour 
 which had resulted ^rom contact with that fount of 
 seriousness, Marguerite. Although still entirely de- 
 pendent — even to cigarette money — upon the benevo- 
 lence of a couple of old individuals a hundred and fifty 
 miles off, he reckoned that he was advancing in the 
 world. The Intermediate Examination was past, and 
 already he felt that he had come to grips with the Final 
 and would emerge victorious. He felt too that his 
 general knowledge and the force and variety of his 
 ideas were increasing. At times, when he and ^lar- 
 guerite talked, he was convinced that both of them had 
 achieved absolute knowledge, and that their criticisms 
 of the world were and would always be unanswerable. 
 After the Final, he hoped, his uncle would buy him a 
 share in the Lucas and Enwright practice. In due 
 season, his engagement would be revealed, and all would 
 be immensely impressed by his self-restraint and his
 
 88 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 good taste, and the marriage would occur, and he would 
 be a London architect, an established man — at the 
 mature age of, say, twenty two. 
 
 No cloud would have obscured the inward radiance 
 caused by the lovely image of Marguerite and by his 
 confidence in himself, had it not been ^or those criticisms 
 of the world. He had moods of being rather gravely 
 concerned as to the world, and as to London. He was 
 recovering from the first great attack of London. He 
 saw faults in London. He was capable of being dis- 
 turbed hy, for example, the ugliness and the inefficiency 
 of London. He even thought that something ought to 
 be done about it. Upon this Sunday morning, fresh 
 from visions of Venice, and rendered a little complacent 
 bj"^ the grim execution of the morning's programme of 
 work, he was positively pained by the aspect of Red- 
 cHffe Gardens. The Redcliffe Arms public-house, 
 locked and dead, which was the daily paradise of hun- 
 dreds of human beings, and had given balm and illusion 
 to whole generations, seemed simply horrible to him in 
 its Sunday morning coma. The large and stuffy un- 
 sightliness of it could not be borne. (However, the 
 glimpse of a barmaid at an upper window interested him 
 pleasantly for a moment.) And the Redcliffe Arms was 
 the true gate to the stucco and areas of Redcliffe Gar- 
 dens. He looked down into the areas and saw therein 
 the furtive existence of squalor behind barred windows. 
 All the obscene apparatus of London life was there. 
 And as he raised his eyes to the drawing-room and 
 bedroom storeys he found no relief. His eyes could dis- 
 cover nothing that was not mean, ugly, frowsy, and 
 unimaginative. He pictured the heavy, gloomy, lethar- 
 gic life within. The slatternly servants pottering about 
 the bases of the sooty buildings sickened and saddened 
 him. A solitary Earl's Court omnibus that lumbered
 
 THE LUNCHEON 89 
 
 past with its sinister, sparse cargo seemed to be a 
 spectacle absolutely tragic, — he did not know why. 
 V The few wayfarers were obviously prim and smug. No 
 joy, no elegance anywhere! Only, at intervals, a 
 feeling that mysterious and repulsive wealth was hiding 
 itself like an ogre in the eternal twilight of fastnesses 
 beyond the stuccoed walls and the grimy curtains. . . . 
 The city worked six days in order to be precisely this 
 on the seventh. Truly it was very similar to the Five 
 Towns, and in essentials not a bit better. A sociologi- 
 cal discovery which startled him ! He wanted to de- 
 stroy RedclifFe Gardens, and to design it afresh and re- 
 build it under the inspiration of St. Mark's and of the 
 principles of hygiene as taught for the Final Exam- 
 ination. He had grandiose ideas for a new design. As 
 for Redcliffe Square, he could do marvels with its spaces. 
 
 He arrived too soon at Earl's Court station, having 
 forgotten that the Underground Railway had a treaty 
 with the Church of England and all the Nonconformist 
 churches not to run trains while the city, represented 
 by possibly two per cent of its numbers, was at divine 
 worship. He walked to and fro along the platforms in 
 the vast echoing cavern peopled with wandering lost 
 souls, and at last a train came in from the void, and it 
 had the air of a miracle, because nobody had believed 
 that any train ever would come in. And at last the 
 Turnham Green train came in, and George got into a 
 smoking compartment, and Mr. Enwright was in the 
 compartment. 
 
 Mr. Enwright also was going to the Orgreave lunch- 
 eon. He was in what the office called " one of his 
 moods." The other occupants of the compartment 
 had a stiff and self-conscious air: some apparently were 
 proud of being abroad on Sunday morning; some ap- 
 parentlv were ashamed. Mr. Enwright's demeanour
 
 90 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 was as free and natural as that of a child. His lined 
 and drawn face showed worry and self-absorption in 
 the frankest manner. He began at once to explain how 
 badly he had slept ; indeed he asserted that he had not 
 slept at all ; and he complained with extreme acerbity 
 of the renewal of his catarrh. " Constant secretion. 
 Constant secretion," was the phrase he used to describe 
 the chief symptom. Then by a forced transition he 
 turned to the profession of architecture, and re-stated 
 his celebrated theory that it was the Cinderella of 
 professions. The firm had quite recently obtained a 
 very important job in a manufacturing quarter of 
 London, without having to compete for it ; but Mr. En- 
 wright's great leading ideas never fluctuated with the 
 fluctuation of facts. If the multiplicity of his lucra- 
 tive jobs had been such as to compel him to run round 
 from one to another on a piebald pony in the style of 
 Sir Hugh Corver, his view of the profession would not 
 have altered. He spoke with terrible sarcasm apropos 
 of a rumour current in architectural circles that a 
 provincial city intended soon to invite competitive de- 
 signs for a building of really enormous proportions, 
 and took oath that in no case should his firm enter for 
 the competition. In short, his condition was markedly 
 pessimistic. 
 
 George loved him, and was bound to humour him ; and 
 in order to respond sympathetica!!}^ to Enwright's 
 pessimism he attempted to describe his sensations con- 
 cerning the London Sunday, and in particular the 
 Sunday morning aspect of Earl's Court streets. He 
 animadverted with virulence, and brought forward his 
 new startling discovery that London was in truth as 
 provincial as the provinces. 
 
 " Well, I don't think it is," said Enwright, instantly 
 becoming a judicial truth-seeker.
 
 THE LUNCHEON 91 
 
 "Why don't you?" 
 
 " Simply because it's bigger, — so much bigger. 
 That's the principal difference, and you'll never get 
 over it. You must appreciate size. An elephant is 
 a noble animal, but it wouldn't be if it was only as 
 big as a fly. London's an elephant, and forget it 
 not." 
 
 " It's frightfully ugly, most of it, anyhow, and espe- 
 cially on Sunday morning," George persisted. 
 
 "Is it? I wonder whether it is, now. The archi- 
 tecture's ugly. But what's architecture? Architec- 
 ture isn't everything. If you can go up and down 
 London and see nothing but architecture, you'll never 
 be an A.l architect." He spoke in a low, kindlj^, and 
 reasonable tone. " I like London on Sunday mornings. 
 In fact it's marvellous. You say it's untidy and all 
 that . . . Slatternly, and so on. Well, so it ought 
 to be when it gets up late. Jolly bad sign if it wasn't. 
 And that's part of it ! Why, dash it, look at a bed- 
 room when you trail about getting up ! Look how you 
 leave it! The existence of a big city while it's waking 
 up — lethargy business — a sort of shamelessness — 
 it's like a great animal! I think it's marvellous, and 
 I always have thought so." 
 
 George would not openly agree, but his mind was 
 illuminated with a new light, and in his mind he agreed, 
 very admiringly. 
 
 The train stopped ; people got out ; and the two were 
 alone in the compartment. 
 
 " I thought all was over between you and Adela," 
 said Mr. Enwright, confidentially and quizzically. 
 
 George blushed a little. " Oh, no I " 
 
 " I don't know what I'm going to her lunch for, I'm 
 sure. I suppose I have to go." 
 
 I have, too," said George.
 
 92 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 (( 
 
 Well, she won't do you any good, you know. I 
 was glad when you left there." 
 
 George looked worldly. " Rum sort, isn't she? " 
 
 " I'll tell you what she is, now. You remember 
 ' Aida ' at the Paris Opera. The procession in the sec- 
 ond act where you lost your head and said it was the 
 finest music ever written. And those girls in white, 
 waving palms in front of the hero — what's-his-name. 
 There are some women who are born to do that and 
 nothing else. Thin lips. Fixed idiotic smile. They 
 don't think a bit about what they're doing. They're 
 thinking about themselves all the time. They simply 
 don't care a damn about the hero, or about the audience 
 or anything, and they scarcely pretend to. Arrogance 
 isn't the word. It's something more terrific — it's stu- 
 pendous ! . . . Mrs. John's like that. I thought of it 
 as I was coming along here." 
 
 "Is she?" said George negligently. "Perhaps she 
 is. I never thought of her like that." 
 
 Turnham Green Station was announced. 
 
 in 
 
 Despite the fresh pinky horrors of its external 
 architecture, and despite his own desire and firm inten- 
 tion to the contrary, George was very deeply impressed 
 bv the new Orgreave home. It was far larger than the 
 previous house. The entrance was spacious, and the 
 drawing-room, with a great fire at either end, immense. 
 He had never been in an interior so splendid. He tried 
 to be offliand in his attitude towards it, but did not fully 
 succeed. The taste shown in the decoration and fur- 
 niture was almost unexceptionable. White walls ; Hep- 
 pclwhite; chintz — black, crackling chintz strewn with 
 tens of thousands of giant roses. On the walls were a 
 few lithographs, — John's contribution to the general
 
 THE LUNCHEON 98 
 
 effect, John having of late years begun to take himself 
 seriously as a collector of lithographs. 
 
 One third of the room was divided from the rest by an 
 arched and fretted screen of red lacquer, and within 
 this open cage stood Mrs. John, surveying winsomely 
 the expanse of little tables, little chairs, big chairs, huge 
 chairs, sofas, rugs, flower-vases, and knickknacks. 
 She had an advantage over most blondes nearing the 
 forties in that she had not stoutened. She was in fact 
 thin as well as short ; but her face was too thin. Still, 
 it dimpled, and she held her head knowingly on one side, 
 and her bright hair was wonderfully done up. Dressed 
 richly as she was, and assisted by the rejuvenating 
 magic of jewels, she produced, in the shadow of the 
 screen, a notable effect of youthful vivacity, which only 
 the insult of close inspection could destroy. With 
 sinuous gestures she waved Mr. Enwright's metaphorical 
 palm before the approaching George. Her smile flat- 
 tered him ; her frail, clinging hand flattered him. He 
 had known her in her harsh morning moods ; he had seen 
 that persuasive manufactured mask vanish for whole 
 minutes, to reveal a petty egotism, giving way regardless 
 of appearances to rage ; he clearly observed now the 
 hard, preoccupied eyes. Nevertheless, the charm which 
 she exercised was undeniable. Her husband was perma- 
 nently under its spell. 
 
 There he stood, near her, big, coarsening, good- 
 natured, content, proud of her. He mixed a cocktail 
 and he threw a match into the fire, in exactly the old 
 Five Towns manner, which he would never lose. But 
 as for her, she had thrown off all trace of the Five 
 Towns ; she had learnt London, deliberately, thoroughly. 
 And even George, with the unmerciful, ruthless judg- 
 ment of his years, was obliged to admit that she pos- 
 sessed a genuine pertinacity and had marvellously ac-
 
 94, THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 complished an ambition. She had held John Orgreave 
 for considerably over a decade; she had had the tre- 
 mendous courage to leave the heavy provincial manu- 
 facturer, her first husband ; she had passed through the 
 Divorce Court as a respondent without blenching; she 
 had slowly darned her reputation with such skill that 
 you could scarcely put your finger on the place where 
 the hole had been ; and lo ! she was reigning in Bedford 
 Park and had all she wanted — except youth. Nor 
 did she in the least show the resigned disillusioned air 
 of women who have but recently lost their youth. 
 She bore herself just as though she still had no fear of 
 strong lights, and as though she was still the dazzling, 
 dashing blonde of whom John in his earliest twenties 
 used to say with ingenuous enthusiasm that she was 
 " ripping," — the ripping Mrs. Chris Hamson. An 
 epical creature! 
 
 niis domestic organism created by Mrs. John in- 
 spired George, and instantly he was rapt away in 
 dreams of his own future. He said to himself again, 
 and more forcibly, that he had a natural taste for lux- 
 ury and expensivencss, and that he would have the one 
 and practise the other. He invented gorgeous interiors 
 which would be his and in which he would be paramount 
 and at ease. He positively yearned for them. He was 
 impatient to get back home and resume the long labours 
 that would lead him to them. Every grand adjunct 
 of life must be his, and he could not wait. Absurd to 
 apprehend that Marguerite would not rise to his dreams ! 
 Of course she would ! She would fit herself perfectly 
 into them, completing them. She would understand 
 all the artistic aspects of them, because she was an 
 artist; and in addition she would be mistress, wife, host- 
 ess, command impeccable servants, receiving friends with 
 beauty and unsurpassable sweet dignity, wearing costly
 
 THE LUNCHEON 95 
 
 frocks and jewels as though she had never worn any- 
 thing else. She had the calm power, she had the indi- 
 viduality, to fulfil all his desires for her. She would be 
 the authentic queen of which Mrs. John was merely the 
 imitation. He wanted intensely to talk to her about 
 the future. . . . And then he had the seductive idea of 
 making presentable his bed-sitting-room at Mr. Haini's. 
 He saw the room instantaneously transformed ; he at 
 once invented each necessary dodge for absolutely hiding 
 during the day the inconvenient fact that it had to 
 serve as a bedroom at night ; he refurnished it ; he found 
 the money to refurnish it. And just as he was impa- 
 tient to get back home in order to work, so he was im- 
 patient to get back home in order to transform his cham- 
 ber into the ideal. Delay irked him painfully. And 
 yet he was extremely happy in the excitement of the 
 dreams that ached to be fulfilled. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Enwright," said Mrs. John in an accent 
 to draw honey out of a boulder, " you haven't told 
 me what you think of it." 
 
 Enwright was wandering about by himself. 
 
 " He's coming on with his lithographs," he replied, 
 as if after a decision. " One or two of these are ra- 
 ther interesting." 
 
 "Oh! I don't mean the lithographs. You know 
 those are all Jack's affair. I mean — well, the room. 
 Now do pay me a compliment." 
 
 The other guests listened. 
 
 Enwright gave a little self-conscious smile, charac- 
 teristic of him in these dilemmas, half kind and half 
 malicious. 
 
 " You must have taken a great deal of trouble over 
 it," he said, with bright amiability, and then relapsing 
 from the effort: " It's all very nice and harmless." 
 Oh! Mr. Enwright! Is that all?" she pouted, 
 
 a
 
 96 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 though still waving the palm. " And you so fond of 
 the eighteenth century, too ! " 
 
 " But I heard a rumour at the beginning of this year 
 that we're living in the twentieth," said Eiiwright. 
 
 " And I thought I should please you ! " sighed Adela. 
 " What ought I to have done? " 
 
 " Well, you might have asked me to design you some 
 furniture. Nobody ever has asked me yet." He 
 rubbed his eye-glasses and blinked. 
 
 " Oh ! You geniuses. . . . Janet, darling ! " 
 
 Mrs. John moved forward to meet Miss Orgreave, 
 John's appreciably elder sister, spinster, who lived with 
 another brother, Charles, a doctor at Ealing. Janet 
 was a prim, emaciated creature, very straight and digni- 
 fied, whose glance always seemed to hesitate between 
 benevolence and fastidiousness. Janet and Charles had 
 consented to forget the episode of the Divorce Court. 
 Marion, however, the eldest Orgreave sister, mother of a 
 family of daughters, had never received the divorcee. 
 On the other hand the divorcee, obeying her own code, 
 had obstinately ignored the wife of Jim Orgreave, a 
 younger brother who, according to the universal opin- 
 ion, had married disgracefully. 
 
 When the sisters-in-law had embraced, with that un- 
 convincing fulsomeness which is apt to result from a 
 charitable act of oblivion, Janet turned lovingly to 
 George and asked after his mother. She was his 
 mother's most intimate friend. In the past he had 
 called her Auntie, and was accustomed to kiss her and 
 be kissed. Indeed he feared that she might want to kiss 
 him now, but he was spared. As with negligence of 
 tone he answered her fond enquiries, he was busy re- 
 considering his scheme for the bed-sitting-room, — for 
 it had actually been an eighteenth century scheme, and 
 inspired by the notions of Mrs. John !
 
 THE LUNCHEON 97 
 
 At the lunch-table George found that the party con- 
 sisted of ten persons, of whom one, seated next to him- 
 self, was a youngish, somewhat plump woman who had 
 arrived at the last moment. Ho had not been intro- 
 duced to her, nor to the four other strangers, for it 
 had latel}' reached Bedford Park that introductions 
 were no longer the correct prelude to a meal. A host- 
 ess who wished to be modern should throw her guests in 
 ignorance together and leave them to acquire knowledge 
 by their own initiative. This device added to the 
 piquancy of a gathering. Moreover, there was always 
 a theory that each individual was well known, and that 
 therefore to introduce was subtly to insult. On Mrs. 
 John's right was a beautifully braided gentleman of 
 forty or so in brown, with brown necktie and hair to 
 match, and the hair was so perfect and ended so 
 abruptly that George at first took it for a wig: but 
 soon afterwards he decided that he had been unkind. 
 IMr. Enwright was opposite to this brown gentle- 
 man. 
 
 Mrs. John began by hoping that the brown gentleman 
 had been to church. 
 
 " I'm afraid I haven't," he replied, with gentle regret 
 in his voice. 
 
 And in the course of the conversation he was fre- 
 quently afraid. Nevertheless his attitude was by no 
 means a fearful attitude; on the contrary it was very 
 confident. He would grasp the edge of the table with 
 his hands, and narrate at length, smiHng amiably, and 
 looking from side to side regularly like a public speaker. 
 He narrated in detail the difficulties which he had in ob- 
 taining the right sort of cutlets rightly cooked at his 
 club, and added: "But of course there's only one club 
 in London that would be satisfactory in all this — shall 
 I s&y? — finesse, and I'm afraid I don't belong to it."
 
 98 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " What club's that ? " John Orgreave sent the en- 
 quiry down the table. 
 
 " The Orleans." 
 
 *' Oh, yes, the Orleans ! I suppose that is the best." 
 
 And everybody seemed glad and proud that every- 
 body had known of the culinary supremacy of the 
 Orleans, 
 
 " I'm afraid you'll all think I'm horribly greedy,'* 
 said the brown gentleman apologetically. And then 
 at once, having noticed that Mr. Enwright was gazing 
 up at the great sham oak rafters that were glued on to 
 the white ceiling, he started upon this new architectural 
 picturesqueness which was to London and the begin- 
 ning of the twentieth century what the enamelled milk- 
 ing-stool had been to the provinces and the end of the 
 nineteenth century, — namely, a reminder that even in 
 an industrial age romance should still survive in the 
 hearts of men. The brown gentleman remarked that 
 with due deference to " you professional gentlemen," 
 he was afraid he liked the sham rafters, because they 
 reminded him of the good old times and all that sort of 
 thing. 
 
 He was not only a conscientious conversationalist, but 
 he originated talk in others, and listened to them with 
 his best attention. And he invariably stepped into 
 gaps with praiseworthy tact and skill. Thus the chat 
 meandered easily from subject to subject, — the Auto- 
 mobile Club's tour from London to Southsea, the latest 
 hotel, Richtcr, the war (which the brown gentleman 
 treated with tired respect, as some venerable survival 
 that had forgotten to die), the abnormally early fogs, 
 and the abnormally violent and destructive gales. An 
 argument arose as to whether these startling weather 
 phenomena were or were not a hint to mankind from
 
 THE LUNXHEON 99 
 
 some undefined Higher Power that a new century had 
 in truth begun and that mankind had better mind what 
 it was about. Mrs. John favoured the notion ; and so 
 did Miss Orgreave, whereas John Orgreave coarsely 
 laughed at it. The brown gentleman held the scales 
 admirably ; he was chivalrously sympathetic to the two 
 ladies, and yet he respected John's materialism. He 
 did, however, venture to point out the contradictions in 
 the character of " our host," who was really very re- 
 sponsive to music and art, but who seemed curiously 
 to ignore certain other influences, — etc., etc. 
 
 " How true that is ! " murmured Mrs. John. 
 
 The brown gentleman modestly enjoyed his triumph. 
 With only three people had he failed, — Mr. Enwright, 
 George, and the youngish woman next to George. 
 
 "And how's Paris, Miss Ingram.'^" he pointedly 
 asked the last. 
 
 George was surprised. He had certainly taken her 
 for a married woman, and one of his generalisations 
 about life was that he did not like young married 
 women ; hence he had not liked her. He now regarded 
 her with fresh interest. She blushed a little, and looked 
 very young indeed. 
 
 " Oh ! Paris is all right ! " she answered shortly. 
 
 The brown gentleman, after a long, musing smile, dis- 
 creetly abandoned the opening; but George, enquiring 
 in a low voice if she lived in Paris, began a private talk 
 with Miss Ingram, who did live in Paris. He had his 
 doubts about her entire agreeableness, but at any rate 
 they got on to a natural, brusque footing, which con- 
 trasted with the somewhat ceremonious manner of the 
 general conversation. She exceeded George in brusque- 
 ness, and tended to patronise him as a youngster. He 
 noticed that she had yellow eyes.
 
 100 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " A\Tiat do you think of his wig? " she demanded in an 
 astonishing whisper, when the meal was over and chairs 
 were being vacated. 
 
 " Is it a wig? " George exclaimed ingenuously. 
 
 " Oh, you boys ! " she protested, with superiority. 
 " Of course it's a wig." 
 
 " But how do you know it's a wig? " George insisted 
 stoutly. 
 
 " ' Is it a wig ' ! " she scorned him. 
 
 " Well, I'm not up in wigs," said George. " Who 
 is he, anyhow? " 
 
 " I forget his name. I've only met him once, here at 
 tea. I think he's a tea-merchant. He seemed to re- 
 member me all right." 
 
 " A tea-merchant ! I wonder why Mrs. John put him 
 on her right, then, and Mr. Enwright on her left." 
 George resented the precedence. 
 
 " Is Mr. Enwright really very great, then ? " 
 
 '' Great ! You bet he is ... I was in Paris with 
 him in the summer. Whereabouts do you live in 
 Paris?" 
 
 She improved, especially at the point where she said 
 that Mr. Enwright's face was one of the most wonder- 
 ful faces that she had ever seen. Evidently she knew 
 Paris as well as George knew London. Apparently she 
 had always lived there. But their interchanges con- 
 cerning Paris, on a sofa in the drawing-room, were 
 stopped by a general departure. Mr. Enwright began 
 it. The tea-merchant instantly supported th^ move- 
 ment. Miss Ingram herself rose. The affair was at 
 an end. Nothing interesting had been said in the 
 general talk, and little that was sincere. No topic had 
 been explored, no argument taken to a finish. No wit 
 worth mentioning had glinted. But evcr^'body had 
 behaved very well, and had demonstrated that he or she
 
 THE LUNCHEON 101 
 
 was familiar with the usages of society and with aspects 
 of existence with which it was proper to be familiar. 
 And everybody — even Mr. Enwright — thanked Mrs. 
 John most heartily for her quite delightful luncheon ; 
 Mrs. John insisted warmly on her own pleasure and her 
 appreciation of her guests' extreme good nature in 
 troubling to come; and she was beyond question joy- 
 ously triumphant. And George, relieved, thought, as 
 he tried to rival the rest in gratitude to Mrs. John : 
 
 "What was it all about? What did they all come 
 for.'* I came because she made me. But why did the 
 others come? " 
 
 The lunch had passed like a mild nightmare, and he 
 felt as though, with the inconsequence of dream-people, 
 these people had gone away without having accom- 
 plished some essential act which had been the object of 
 their gathering. 
 
 When George came out of the front-door, he beheld 
 Miss Ingram on the kerb, in the act of getting into a 
 very rich fur-coat. A chauffeur, in a very rich livery, 
 was deferentially helping her. Behind them stretched 
 a long, open motor-car. This car, existing as it did 
 at a time when the public acutely felt that automobiles 
 splashed respectable foot-farers with arrogant mud and 
 rendered unbearable the lives of the humble in village 
 streets, was of the immodest kind described, abusively, 
 as " powerful and luxurious." The car of course drew 
 attention, because it had yet occurred to but few of 
 anybody's friends that they might themselves possess 
 even a modest car, much less an immodest one. George 
 had not hitherto personally known a single motor-car 
 owner. 
 
 But what struck him even more than the car was the 
 fur-coat, and the haughty and fastidious manner in
 
 102 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 which Miss Ingram accepted it from the chauffeur, and 
 the disdainful, accustomed way in which she wore it, — as 
 though it were a cheap rag — when once it was on her 
 back. In her gestures he glimpsed a new world. He 
 had been secretly scorning the affair of the luncheon and 
 all that it implied, and he had been secretly scorning 
 himself for his pitiful lack of brilliancy at the luncheon. 
 These two somewhat contradictory sentiments were 
 suddenly shrivelled in the fire of his ambition which 
 had flared up anew at contact with a spark. And the 
 spark was the sight of the girl's costly fur-coat. He 
 must have a costly fur-coat, and a girl in it, and the 
 girl must treat the fur-coat like a cheap rag. Other- 
 wise he would die a disappointed man. 
 
 " Hello ! " called Miss Ingram. 
 
 " Hello ! » 
 
 She had climbed into the car, and turned her head 
 to look at him. He saw that she was younger even 
 than he had thought. She seemed quite mature when 
 she was still, but when she moved she had the lithe mo- 
 tions of immaturity. As a boy, he now infallibly rec- 
 ognised a girl. 
 
 " Which way are you going? " 
 
 " Well — Chelsea more or less." 
 
 " I'll give you a lift." 
 
 He ought to have said: " Are you sure I shan't be 
 taking you out of your way-f* " But he said merely: 
 " Oh ! Thanks awfully ! " 
 
 The chauffeur held the door for him, and then ar- 
 ranged a fur-rug over the knees of the boy and the girl. 
 To be in the car gave George intense pleasure, especially 
 when the contrivance thrilled into life and began to 
 travel. He was thankful that his clothes were as smart 
 as they ought to be. She could not think ill of his 
 clothes — no matter who her friends were.
 
 THE LUNCHEON 103 
 
 " This is a great car," he said. " Had it long? " 
 
 " Oh ! It's not mine," answered Miss Ingram. " It's 
 Miss Wheeler's." 
 
 "Who's Miss Wheeler, if I may ask.'"' 
 
 " Miss Wheeler ! She's a friend of mine. She lives 
 in Paris. But she has a flat in London too. I came 
 over with her. We brought the car with us. She 
 was to have come to the Orgreaves' to-day, but she 
 had a headache. So I took the car, — and her 
 furs as well. They fit me, you see. ... I say, what's 
 your Christian name. I hate surnames, don't 
 you?" 
 
 " George. What's yours? " 
 
 "Mine's Lois." 
 
 " What? How do you spell it? " 
 
 She spelt it, adding, " Of course." He thought it 
 was somehow a very romantic name. He decidedly liked 
 the name. He was by no means sure, however, that he 
 liked the girl. He liked her appearance, though she 
 was freckled ; she was unquestionably stj-lish ; she had 
 ascendency ; she imposed herself ; she sat as though the 
 world was the instrument of her individuality. Never- 
 theless he doubted if she was kind, and he knew that 
 she was patronising. Further, she was not a conversa- 
 tionalist. At the luncheon she had not been at ease; 
 but here in the car she was at ease absolutely, yet she 
 remained taciturn. 
 
 " D'you drive? " he enquired. 
 
 " Yes," she said. " Look here, would you like to 
 sit in front? And I'll drive." 
 
 " Good ! " he agreed vigorously. But he had a qualm 
 about the safety of being driven by a girl. 
 
 She abruptly stopped the car, and the chauffeur 
 swerved to the pavement. 
 
 " I'm going to drive, Cuthbert," she said.
 
 104 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " Yes, miss," said the chauffeur willingly. " It's a 
 bit side-slippy, miss." 
 
 She gave no answer to this remark, but got out of 
 the car with a preoccupied, frowning air, as if she was 
 being obliged to take a responsible post, which she could 
 fill better than anybody else, rather against her inclina- 
 tion. A few persons paused to watch. She carefully 
 ignored them ; so did George. 
 
 As soon as she had seized the wheel, released the 
 brake and started the car, she began to talk, looking 
 negligently about her. George thought : " She's only 
 showing off." Still, the car travelled beautifully, and 
 there was a curious illusion that she must have the credit 
 for that. She explained the function of handles, 
 pedals, and switches, and George deemed it proper to 
 indicate that he was not without some elementary 
 knowledge of the subject. He leaned far back, as Lois 
 leaned, and as the chauffeur had leaned, enjoying the 
 brass fittings, the indicators, and all the signs of high 
 mechanical elaboration. 
 
 He noticed that Lois sounded her horn constantly, 
 and often upon no visible provocation. But once, as 
 she approached cross-roads at unslackened speed, she 
 seemed to forget to sound it and then sounded it too late. 
 Nothing untoward happened ; Sunda}^ traffic was thin, 
 and she sailed through the danger zone with grand 
 intrepidity. 
 
 " I say, George," she remarked, looking now straight 
 in front of her. (" She's a bit of a caution," he re- 
 flected happily.) " Have you got anything special on 
 this afternoon ? " 
 
 " Nothing what you may call deadly special," he an- 
 swered. He wanted to call her " Lois," but his volition 
 failed at the critical moment. 
 
 " Well, then, won't you come and have tea with Miss
 
 THE LUNCHEON 105 
 
 Wheeler and me? There'll only be just a few people, 
 and you must be introduced to Miss Wheeler." 
 
 " Oh ! I don't think I'd better." He was timid. 
 
 " Why not? " She pouted. 
 
 " All right, then. Thanks. I should like to." 
 
 " By the way, what's your surname? " 
 
 (" She is a caution," he reflected.) 
 
 " I wasn't quite sure," she said, when he had told her. 
 
 He was rather taken aback, but he reassured himself. 
 No doubt girls of her environment did behave as she 
 behaved. After all, why not ? 
 
 They entered Hammersmith. It was a grand and 
 inspiring sensation to swing through Hammersmith 
 thus aristocratically, repudiating the dowdy Sunday 
 crowd that stared in ingenuous curiosity. And there 
 was a wonderful quality in the spectacle of the great, 
 formidable car being actuated and controlled by the 
 little gloved hands and delicately shod feet of this frail, 
 pampered, wilful girl. 
 
 In overtaking a cab that kept nearly to the middle 
 of the road, Lois hesitated in direction, appeared to 
 defy the rule, and then corrected her impulse. 
 
 " It's rather confusing," she observed with a laugh. 
 " You see in France you keep to the right and overtake 
 things on their left." 
 
 " Yes. But this is London," said George drily. 
 
 Half a minute later, just beyond the node of Ham- 
 mersmith, where bright hats and frocks were set off 
 against the dark shuttered fronts of shops, Lois at 
 quite a good speed inserted the car between a tramcar 
 and an omnibus, meeting the tram and overtaking the 
 omnibus. The tram went by like thunder, all its glass 
 and iron rattling and shaking; the noise deafened, and 
 the wind blew hard like a squall. There appeared to be 
 scarcely an inch of space on either side of the car.
 
 106 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 George's heart stopped. For one horrible second he 
 expected a tremendous smash. The car emerged safe. 
 He saw the omnibus-driver gazing down at them with 
 reproof. After the roar of the tram died he heard the 
 trotting of the onmibus-horses and Lois' nervous giggle. 
 She tried, and did not fail, to be jaunty ; but she had had 
 a shock, and the proof was that by mere inadvertence 
 she nearly charged the posts of the next street-refuge. 
 George switched off the current. She herself had shown 
 him how to do it. She now saw him do it. The engine 
 stopped, and Lois, remembering in a flash that her 
 dignity was at stake, raised her hand and drew up 
 fairly neatly at the pavement. 
 
 "What's the matter?" she demanded imperiously. 
 
 " Are you going to drive this thing all the way into 
 London, Lois? " he demanded in turn. 
 
 They looked at each other. The chauffeur got do\\Ti. 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 *' Not with me in it, anyhow," 
 
 She sneered. " Oh ! You boys ! You've got no 
 pluck." 
 
 " Perhaps not," he returned viciously. " Neither 
 have you got any sense of danger. Girls like you never 
 have. I've noticed that before." Even his mother 
 with horses had no sense of danger. 
 
 " You're very rude," she replied. " And it was very 
 rude of you to stop the car." 
 
 " I daresay. But you shouldn't have told me you 
 could drive." 
 
 He was now angry. And she not less so. He de- 
 scended, and slammed the door. 
 
 " Thanks so much," he said, raised his hat, and 
 walked away. She spoke, but he did not catch what 
 she said. He was saying to himself: " Pkick, indeed ! " 
 (He did not like her accusation.) " Pluck, indeed ! Of
 
 THE LUNCHEON 107 
 
 all the damned cheek! . . . We might all have been 
 killed — or worse. The least she could have done was 
 to apologise. But no ! Pluck indeed ! Women ought- 
 n't to be allowed to drive. It's too infernally silly for 
 words." 
 
 He glanced backward. The chauffeur had started 
 the car again, and was getting in by Lois' side. Doubt- 
 less he was a fatalist by profession. She drove off. 
 
 " Yes ! " thought George. " And you'd drive home 
 yourself now even if you knew for certain you'd have 
 an accident. You're just that stupid kind.'* 
 
 The car looked superb as it drew away, and she re- 
 clined in the driver's seat with a superb effrontery. 
 George was envious ; he was pierced by envy. He hated 
 that other people, and especially girls, should command 
 luxuries which he could not possess. He hated that 
 violently. " You wait ! " he said to himself. " You 
 wait ! I'll have as good a car as that, and a finer girl 
 than you in it. And she won't want to drive either. 
 You wait." He was more excited than he knew by the 
 episode.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE TEA 
 I 
 
 " Tea is ready, Mr. Cannon," said Mr. Haim in his 
 most courteous style, coming softly into George's room. 
 And George looked up at the old man's wrinkled face, 
 and down at his crimson slippers, with the benevolent 
 air of a bookworm permitting himself to be drawn away 
 from an ideal world into the actual. Glasses on the end 
 of George's nose would have set oflf the tableau, but 
 George had outgrown the spectacles which had disfig- 
 ured his boyhood. As a fact, since his return that 
 afternoon from Mrs. John's, he had, to the detriment 
 of modesty and the fostering of conceit, accomplished 
 some further study for the Final, although most of the 
 time had been spent in dreaming of women and luxury. 
 
 " All right," said he. " I'll come." 
 
 " I don't think that lamp's been very well trimmed 
 to-day," said Mr. Haim apologetically, sniffing. 
 
 "Does it smell.?" 
 
 *' Well, I do notice a slight odour." 
 
 *' I'll open the window," said George heartily. He 
 rose, pulled the curtains, and opened the front French 
 window with a large gesture. The wild, raw, damp air 
 of Sunday night rushed in from the nocturnal Grove, 
 and instantly extinguished the lamp. 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed Mr. Haim, rather nervously. 
 
 " Saved me the trouble," said George. 
 
 As he emerged after Mr. Haim from the dark room, he 
 
 108
 
 THE TEA 109 
 
 was thinking that it was ridiculous not to have electric- 
 ity, and that he must try to come to some arrangement 
 with Mr. Haim for the installation of electricity. 
 Fancy oil lamps in the middle of London in the twen- 
 tieth century ! Shocks were waiting in George's mind 
 for Mr. Haim. He intended, if he could, to get the 
 room on the first-floor, empty since the departure of 
 Marguerite, and to use it for a bedroom, while keeping 
 the ground-floor room exclusively for work and society. 
 His project would involve shocks also for Mr. Edwin 
 Clayhanger in the Five Towns, who would be called 
 upon to pay ; but George had an airy confidence in the 
 ability of his stepfather to meet such shocks in a satis- 
 factory manner. 
 
 To George's surprise, Mr. Alfred Prince was in the 
 
 sitting-room. Shabby and creased as usual, he looked 
 
 far more like a clerk in some establishment where clerks 
 
 were not morally compelled to imitate dandies than like 
 
 an etcher of European renown. But, also as usual, he 
 
 was quietly at ease and conversational ; and George at 
 
 once divined that Mr. Prince had been invited with the 
 
 object of relieving the social situation created by the 
 
 presence of the brilliant young lodger at tea. This tea 
 
 was the first meal to be taken by George with Mr. and 
 
 Mrs, Haim, for he was almost never at home on Sunday 
 
 afternoons and he was not expected to be at home. The 
 
 table showed, as Mr. Haim's nervousness had shown, 
 
 that the importance of the occasion had been realised. 
 
 It was an obviously elaborate table. The repast was 
 
 ready in every detail ; the tea-pot was under the cosy ; 
 
 the cover was over the hot crumpets ; Mrs. Haim alone 
 
 lacked. 
 
 " Where's missus? " asked George lightly, Mr. Haim 
 had not come into the room. 
 
 " I don't know," said Mr. Prince. " She brought the
 
 110 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 tea in a minute ago. You been working this after- 
 noon ? " 
 
 At that moment Mr. Haim entered. He said : 
 " Mrs. Haim isn't feeling very well. She's upstairs. 
 She says she's sure she'll be all right in a little while. 
 In the meantime she prefers us to go on with our tea." 
 Mr. Prince and Mr. Haim looked at each other, and 
 George looked at Mr. Haim. The older men showed 
 apprehension. The strange idea of unconquerable des- 
 tiny crossed George's mind — destiny clashing ruth- 
 lessly with ambition and desire. The three males sat 
 down in obedience to the wish of the woman who had 
 hidden herself in the room above. All of them were 
 dominated by the thought of her. They did not want 
 to sit down and eat and drink, and they were obliged 
 ' ) so by the invisible volitional force of which Mr. 
 Haim was the unwilling channel. Mr. Haim, highly 
 self-conscious, began to pour out the tea. Mr. Prince, 
 now also highly self-conscious, suggested that he should 
 make himself useful by distributing the crumpets while 
 they were hot. George, highly self-conscious, accepted 
 a crumpet. JNIr. Prince chatted ; George responded in a 
 brave worldly fashion ; Mr. Haim said " Yes," " Ye-es," 
 very absently. 
 
 And then Mrs. Haim appeared smiling in the door- 
 way. 
 
 " Ah ! " breathed everybody, assuaged. " Ah ! " 
 Mr. Haim moved from in front of the tea-tray to the 
 next scat. Mrs. Haim was perhaps somewhat pale, but 
 she gave a sincere positive assurance that she was per- 
 fectly well again. Reassurance spread throughout the 
 company. Forebodings vanished; hearts lightened; 
 gladness reigned; the excellence of crumpets became ap- 
 parent. And all this swift wonderful change was 
 brought about by the simple entry of the woman. But
 
 THE TEA 111 
 
 beneath the genuine relief and satisfaction of the men 
 there stirred vaguely the thought of the mysteriousness 
 of women, of the entire female sex. Mrs. Haim, char- 
 woman, was just as mysterious as any other woman. As 
 for George, despite the exhilaration which he could feel 
 rising in him effortless and unsought, he was preoccupied 
 by more than women's mysteriousness ; the conception of 
 destiny lingered and faintly troubled him. It was as 
 though he had been walking on a clear path through a 
 vast and empty and safe forest, and the eyes of a tiger 
 had gleamed for an instant in the bush and gone. Not a 
 real tiger ! And if a real tiger, then a tiger that would 
 never recur, and the only tiger in the forest! . . . Yet 
 the entire forest was transformed. 
 
 Mrs. Haim was wearing the blue sateen. It was a 
 dress unsuited to her because it emphasised her large 
 bulk ; but it was her best dress ; it shone and glittered ; 
 it imposed. Her duty was to wear it on that Sunday 
 afternoon. She was shy, without being self-conscious. 
 To preside over a society consisting of young bloods, 
 etchers of European renown, and pillars of the archi- 
 tectural profession was an ordeal for her. She did not 
 pretend that it was not an ordeal. She did not pretend 
 that the occasion was not extraordinary. She was 
 quite natural in her calm confusion. She was not even 
 proud, being perhaps utterly incapable of social pride. 
 Her husband was proud for her. He looked at her 
 earnestly, wistfully. He could not disguise his anxiety 
 for her success. Was she equal to the role? She was. 
 Of course she was. He had never doubted that she 
 would be (he said to himself). His pride increased, 
 scarcely escaped being fatuous. 
 
 " I must congratulate you on the new front-doormat, 
 Mrs. Haim," said Mr. Prince, with notable conversa- 
 tional tact. " I felt it at once in the dark."
 
 112 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 ]Mrs. Halm smiled. 
 
 ** I do like a good doormat," she said. *' It saves so 
 much work, I always think. I told Mr. Haim I thought 
 we needed a new one, and bless me if he didn't take me 
 straight out to buy one." 
 
 The new doormat expressed Mrs. Haim's sole and 
 characteristic criticism of the organism into which she 
 had so unassumingly entered. Secure in the adoration 
 of Mr. Haim, she might safely have turned the place 
 upside down and proved to the Grove that she could act 
 the mistress with the best of them ; but she changed 
 nothing except the doormat. The kitchen and scullery 
 had already been hers before the eye of Mr. Haim had 
 fallen upon her ; she was accustomed to them and had 
 largely fashioned their arrangements. Her own furni- 
 ture, such of it as was retained, had been put into the 
 spare bedroom and the kitchen, and was hardly notice- 
 able there. The dramatic thing for her to do would 
 have been to engage another charwoman. But Mrs. 
 Haim was not dramatic ; she was accommodating. She 
 fitted herself in. The answer to people who asked what 
 Mr. Haim could see in her, was that what Mr. Haim 
 first saw was her mere way of existing, and that in the 
 same way she loved. At her tea-table, as elsewhere, 
 she exhibited no special quality ; she said little ; she cer- 
 tainly did not shine. Nevertheless the three men were 
 quite happy and at ease, because her way of existing 
 soothed and re-inspired them. George especially got 
 gay; and he narrated the automobile adventure of the 
 afternoon with amusing gusto. He was thereby a sort 
 of hero, and he liked that. He was bound by his posi- 
 tion in the world and by his clothes and his style to 
 pretend to some extent that the adventure was much 
 less extraordinary to him than it seemed to them. The 
 others made no pretence. They were open-mouthed.
 
 THE TEA 113 
 
 Their attitude admitted frankly that above them was a 
 world to which they could not climb, that they were 
 not familiar with it and knew nothing about it. They 
 admired George; they put it to his credit that he was 
 acquainted with these lofty matters and moved care- 
 lessly and f reel}' among them ; and George too some- 
 how thought that credit was due to him and that his 
 superiority was genuine. 
 
 " And do you mean to say she'd never met you be- 
 fore? " exclaimed Mr. Haim. 
 
 *' Never in this world ! " 
 
 Mr. Prince remarked calmly : 
 
 " You must have had a very considerable effect on 
 her, then." His eyes twinkled. 
 
 George flushed slightly. The idea had already pre- 
 sented itself to him with great force. " Oh ! No ! " 
 He negligently pooh-poohed it. 
 
 " Well, does she go about asking every man she 
 meets what his Christian name is .'' " 
 
 " I expect she just does." 
 
 There was silence for a moment. Mrs. Haim refilled 
 a cup. 
 
 " Something will have to be done soon about these 
 motor-cars," observed Mr. Haim at length, senten- 
 tiously, in the vein of " Mustard and Cress." " That's 
 very evident." 
 
 " They cost so much," said Mr. Prince. " Why ! 
 They cost as much as a house, some of them." 
 
 " More ! " said George. 
 
 " Nay, nay ! " Mr, Haim protested. The point 
 had come at which his Imagination halted. 
 
 " Anyhow, you had a lucky escape," said Mr. 
 Prince. " You might have been lamed for life — or 
 anything." 
 
 George laughed.
 
 114 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " I am always lucky," said he. He thought : " I 
 wonder whether I am! " He was afraid. 
 
 Mrs. Haim was half way towards the door before 
 any of the men noticed what she was about. She had 
 risen silently and quickly ; she could manoeuvre that 
 stout frame of hers with surprising facility. There was 
 a strange, silly look on her face as she disappeared, and 
 the face was extremely pale. Mr. Haim showed alarm, 
 and Mr. Prince concern. Mr. Haim's hands clasped 
 the arms of his chair ; he bent forward hesitatingly. 
 
 "What ?» 
 
 Then was heard the noise of a heavy subsidence, ap- 
 parently on the stairs. George was out of the room 
 first, but the other two were instantly upon him. ]\Irs. 
 Haim had fallen at the turn of the stairs; her body 
 was distributed along the little half-landing there. 
 
 " My God ! She's fainted ! " muttered Mr. Haim. 
 
 " We'd better get her into the bedroom," said Mr. 
 Prince, with awe. 
 
 The trouble had come back, but in a far more acute 
 form. The prostrate and unconscious form, all crooked 
 and heaped in the shadow, intimidated the three men, 
 convicting them of helplessness and lack of ready wit. 
 George stood aside and let the elder pair pass him. Mr. 
 Haim hurried up the stairs, bent over his wife, and 
 seized her under the arms. Mr. Prince took her by the 
 legs. They could not lift her. They were both thin 
 little men quite unaccustomed to physical exertion. 
 Mrs. Haim lay like a giantess immovably recumbent 
 between their puny, straining figures. 
 
 " Here, let me try," said George eagerly, springing 
 towards the group. 
 
 With natural reluctance Mr. Halm gave way to 
 him. George stooped and braced himself to the effort^
 
 THE TEA 115 
 
 His face was close to the blanched, blind face of Mrs. 
 Haim. He thought she looked very young, aston- 
 ishingly young in comparison with either Haim or 
 Prince. Her complexion was damaged but not de- 
 stroyed. Little fluffy portions of her hair seemed ab- 
 solutely girlish. Her body was full of nice curves, 
 which struck George as most enigmatically pathetic. 
 But indeed the whole of her was pathetic, very touching, 
 very precious and fragile. Even her large, shiny, 
 shapeless boots and the coarse sateen stuflT of her dress 
 affected him. A lump embarrassed his throat. He 
 suddenly understood the feelings of Mr. Haim towards 
 her. She was inexpressibly romantic. . . . He lifted 
 her torso easily ; and pride filled him because he could 
 do easily what others could not do at all. Her arms 
 trailed limp. Mr. Haim and Mr. Prince jointly raised 
 her lower limbs. George staggered backwards up the 
 remainder of the stairs. As they steered the burden 
 into a bedroom, where a candle was burning, Mrs. Haim 
 opened her eyes and, gazing vacantly at the ceiling, 
 murmured in a weak, tired voice : 
 
 " Fm all right. It's nothing. Please put me down.'* 
 
 " Yes, yes, my love ! " said Mr. Haim, agitated. 
 
 They deposited her on the bed. She sighed; then 
 smiled. A slight flush showed on her cheek under the 
 light of the candle which Mr. Prince was holding aloft. 
 Mysterious creature, with the mysterious forces of life 
 flowing and ebbing incomprehensibly within her! To 
 George she was marvellous, she was beautiful, as she 
 lay defenceless and silently appealing. 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Cannon. Thank you very much," 
 said Mr. Haim, turning to the strong man. 
 
 It was a dismissal. George modestly departed from 
 the bedroom, which was no place for him. After a few
 
 116 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 minutes Mr. Prince also descended. They stood to- 
 gether at the foot of the stairs in the draught from the 
 open window of George's room. 
 
 "Hadn't I better go for a doctor.''" George sug- 
 gested. 
 
 •' That's what I said," replied Mr. Prince. " But she 
 "won't have one." 
 
 « But " 
 
 " Well, she won't." 
 
 The accommodating, acquiescent dame, with scarcely 
 strength to speak, was defeating all three of them on 
 that one point. 
 
 " ^Tiat is it ? " asked George confidentially. 
 
 " Oh ! I don't suppose it's anything really." 
 
 n 
 
 That George should collect the tea-things together 
 on the tray and brush and fold the cloth, and carry the 
 loaded tray downstairs into the scullery was sufficiently 
 strange. But it was very much more strange that he 
 should have actually had the idea of washing up the 
 tea-things himself. In his time, in the domestic crises 
 of Bursley, he had boyishly helped ladies to wash up, 
 and he reckoned that he knew all about the operation. 
 There he stood, between the kitchen and the scullery, 
 elegantly attired, with an enquiring eye upon the kettle 
 of warm water on the stove, debating whether he should 
 make the decisive gesture of emptying the kettle into the 
 large tin receptacle that lay on the slopstone. Such 
 was the miraculous effect on him of Mrs. Haim's sim- 
 plicity, lier weakness, and her predicament. Mrs. Haim 
 was a different woman for him now that he had carried 
 her upstairs and laid her all limp and girlish on the 
 solemn conju/ral bed ! He felt quite sure that old Haim 
 was incapable of washing up. He assuredly did not
 
 THE TEA 117 
 
 want to be caught in the act of washing up, but he did 
 want to be able to say in his elaborately nonchalant 
 manner, answering a question about the disappearance 
 of the tea-things : " I thought I might as well wash up 
 while I was about it." And he did want Mrs. Haim to 
 be put in a flutter by the news that Mr. George Cannon 
 had washed up for her. The affair would positively 
 cause a sensation. 
 
 He was about to begin, taking the risks of premature 
 discovery, when he heard a noise above. It was Mr. 
 Haim at last descending the stairs to the ground-floor. 
 George started. He had been alone in the lower parts 
 of the house for a period which seemed long. (Mr. 
 Prince had gone to the studio, promising to return la- 
 ter.) The bedroom containing Mr. and Mrs. Haim had 
 become for him the abode of mystery. The entity of the 
 enchanted house had laid hold of his imagination. He 
 had thought of Marguerite as she used to per\'ade the 
 house, and of his approaching interview with her at the 
 Manresa Road studio. He had thought very benevo- 
 lently of Marguerite and also of Mr. and Mrs. Haim. 
 He had involved them all three, in his mind, in a net of 
 peace and goodwill. He saw the family quarrel as 
 something inevitable, touching, absurd, — the work of 
 a maleficent destinv which he might somehow undo and 
 exorcise by the magic act of washing up, to be followed 
 by other acts of a more diplomatic and ingenious na- 
 ture. And now the dull, distant symptoms of Mr. Haim 
 on the stairs suddenly halted him at the very outset of 
 his benignant machinations. He listened. If the peace 
 of the world had depended upon his washing up he could 
 not have permitted himself to be actually seen in the 
 role of kitchen-girl by Mr. Haim, — so extreme was his 
 lack of logic and right reason. There was a silence, 
 a protracted silence, and then Mr. Haim unmistakably
 
 118 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 came down the basement stairs, and George thanked 
 God that he had not allowed his impulse to wash up 
 run away with his discretion to the ruin of his dignity. 
 
 Mr. Haim, hesitating in the kitchen doorway, peered 
 5n front of hira as if at a loss. George had shifted the 
 kitchen lamp from its accustomed place. 
 
 " I'm here," said George, moving slightly in the dim 
 light. " I thought I might as well make myself useful 
 and clear the table for you. How is she going on? " 
 He spoke cheerfully, even gaily, and he expected Mr. 
 Haim to be courteously appreciative — perhaps en- 
 thusiastic in gratitude. 
 
 " Mrs. Haim is quite recovered, thank you. It was 
 only a passing indisposition," said Mr. Halm, using one 
 of his ridiculously stilted phrases. His tone was 
 strange ; it was very strange. 
 
 " Good ! " exclaimed George, with a gaiety that was 
 now forced, a bravado of gaiety. 
 
 He thought : 
 
 " The old chump evidently doesn't like me interfering. 
 Silly old pompous ass ! " Nevertheless his attitude 
 towards the huffy landlord, if scornful, was good- 
 humoured and indulgent. 
 
 Then he noticed that Mr. Haim held in his hand a 
 half sheet of notepaper which disturbingly seemed 
 familiar. 
 
 "What is the meaning of this, Mr. Cannon?" Mr. 
 Haim demanded, advancing towards the brightness of 
 the lamp and extending the paper. He was excessively 
 excited. Excitement always intensified his age. 
 
 The offered document was the letter which George had 
 that morning received from Marguerite. The missive 
 was short, a mere note, but its terms could leave no 
 doubt as to the relations between the writer and the 
 recipient. Moreover it ended with a hieroglyphic sign.
 
 THE TEA 119 
 
 several times repeated, whose significance is notorious 
 throughout the civilised world. 
 
 " Where did jou get that ? " muttered George, with a 
 defensive menace half-formed in his voice. He faltered. 
 His mood had not yet become definitive. 
 
 Mr. Haim answered : 
 
 " I have just picked it up in the hall, sir. The wind 
 must have blown it off the table in jour room, and the 
 door was left open. I presume that I have the right to 
 read papers I find lying about in my own house." 
 
 George was dashed. On returning home from Mrs. 
 John's luncheon he had changed his suit for another one 
 almost equally smart, but of Angola and therefore 
 more comfortable. He liked to change. Pie had taken 
 the letter out of a side-pocket of the jacket and put it 
 with his watch, raonej^, and other kit on the table while 
 he changed, and he had placed everything back into the 
 proper pockets, everything except the letter. Careless- 
 ness ! A moment of negligence had brought about the 
 irremediable. The lovely secret was violated. The 
 whole of his future life and of Marguerite's future life 
 seemed to have been undermined and contaminated by 
 that single act of omission. Marguerite wrote seldom 
 to him because of the risks. But precautions had been 
 arranged for the occasions when she had need to write, 
 and she possessed a small stock of envelopes addressed 
 by himself, so that Mr. Haim might never by chance, 
 picking up an envelope from the hall-floor, see George's 
 name in his daughter's hand. And now Mr. Haim had 
 picked up an actual letter from the hall-floor. And the 
 fault for the disaster was George's own. 
 
 " May I ask, sir, are you engaged to my daughter? " 
 demanded Mr. Haim, getting every instant still more 
 excited. 
 
 George had once before seen him agitated about Mar-
 
 120 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 guerite, but by no means to the same degree. He 
 trembled. He shook. His dignity had a touch of the 
 grotesque ; yet it remained dignity and it enforced re- 
 spect. For George destiny seemed to dominate the 
 kitchen and the scullery like a presence. He and the 
 old man were alone together in that presence, and he 
 was abashed. He was conscious of awe. The old 
 man's mien accused him of an odious crime, of something 
 base and shameful. Useless to argue with himself that 
 he was entirely guiltless, that he had the right to be 
 the betrothed of either Mr. Haim's daughter or any 
 other girl, and to publish or conceal the betrothal as 
 he chose and as she chose. Yes, useless ! He felt, in- 
 explicably, a criminal. He felt that he had committed 
 an enormity. It was not a matter of argument ; it was 
 a matter of instinct. The old man's frightful and 
 irrational resentment was his condemnation. He could 
 not face the old man. 
 
 He thought grievously : " I am up against this man. 
 All politeness and conventions have vanished. It's the 
 real, inmost me, and the real, inmost him." Nobody 
 else could take a part in the encounter. And he was 
 sad, because he could not blame the old man. Could 
 he blame the old man for marrying a charwoman.'' 
 Why, he could only adinire him for marrying the char- 
 woman. In marrj'ing the charwoman the old man had 
 done a most marvellous thing. Could he blame Mar- 
 guerite? Impossible. Marguerite's behaviour was 
 perfectly comprehensible. He understood Marguerite 
 and he understood her father ; he sympathised with both 
 of them. But Marguerite could not understand her 
 father, and her father could not understand either his 
 daughter or George. Never could they understand! 
 He alone understood. And his understanding gave him 
 a melancholy, hopeless feeling of superiority, without
 
 THE TEA 121 
 
 at all lessening the strange conviction of guilt. He had 
 got himself gripped bj destiny. Destiny had captured 
 all three of them. But not the fourth. The char- 
 woman possessed the mysterious power to defy destiny. 
 Perhaps the power lay in her simplicity. . . . Fool ! 
 An accursed negligence had eternally botched his high 
 plans for peace and goodwill. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " I am." 
 
 " And how long have you been engaged, sir? " 
 
 " Oh ! Since before Marguerite left here." He tried 
 to talk naturally and calmly. 
 
 " Then j'ou've been living here all this time like a spy 
 — a dirty spy. My daughter behaves to us in an in- 
 famous manner. She makes an open scandal. And all 
 the time you're " 
 
 George suddenly became very angry. And his anger 
 relieved and delighted him. With intense pleasure he 
 felt his anger surging within him. He frowned sav- 
 agely. His eyes blazed. But he did not move. 
 
 " Excuse me," he interrupted, with cold and danger- 
 ous fury. " She didn't do anything of the kind." 
 
 Mr. Haim went wildly on, daunted possibly by 
 George's defiance, but desperate; 
 
 " And all the time, I say, you stay on here, deceiving 
 us, spying on us. Going every night to that wicked, 
 cruel, shameful girl and tittle-tattling. Do you sup- 
 pose that if we'd had the slightest idea " 
 
 George walked up to him. 
 
 " I'm not going to stand here and listen to you talk- 
 ing about Marguerite like that." 
 
 Their faces were rather close together. George 
 forced himself away by a terrific effort and left the 
 kitchen. 
 
 " Jackanapes ! " 
 
 George swung round, very pale. Then with a hard
 
 122 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 laugh he departed. He stood in the hall, and thought 
 of Mrs. Haim upstairs. The next moment he had got 
 his hat and overcoat and was in the street. A figure 
 appeared in the gloom. It was Mr. Prince. 
 " Hello! Going out.'' How are things? " 
 "Oh! Fine!" He could scarcely articulate. A 
 ghastly sob impeded the words. Tears gushed into his 
 eyes. The dimly glowing oblongs in the dark fafades of 
 the Grove seemed unbearably tragic. 
 
 in 
 
 No. 6 Romney Studios, ^lanresa Road, Chelsea, was 
 at the end of the narrow alley which, running at right 
 angles to the road, had a blank wall on its left and 
 Romney Studios on its right. The studios themselves 
 were nondescript shanties which reminded George of 
 nothing so much as the office of a clerk-of-the-works 
 nailed together anyhow on ground upon which a large 
 building is in course of erection. Thev were con- 
 structed of brick, wood, waterproof felting, and that 
 adaptable material corrugated iron. No two were alike. 
 None had the least pretention to permanency, comeli- 
 ness, or even architectural decency. They were all 
 horribly hot in summer, and they all needed immense 
 stoves to render them habitable in winter. In putting 
 them up, however, cautiously' and one by one, the land- 
 lord had esteemed them to be the sort of thing that was 
 good enough for artists and that artists would willingly 
 accept. He had not been mistaken. Though inex- 
 pensive they were dear, but artists accepted tliem with 
 eagerness. None was ever empty. Thus it was dem- 
 onstrated once more that artists were exactly what 
 capitalists and other sagacious persons had always ac- 
 cused Hioni of being. 
 
 When George knocked on the door of No. 6, the en-
 
 THE TEA 123 
 
 tire studio, and No. 5 also, vibrated. As a rule Agg, 
 the female Cerberus of the shanty, answered any sum- 
 mons from outside ; but George hoped that to-night she 
 would be absent ; he knew by experience that on Sunday 
 nights she usually paid a visit to her obstreperous fam- 
 ily in Alexandra Grove. 
 
 The door was opened by a young man in a rich but 
 torn and soiled eighteenth-century costume, and he 
 looked, in the half-light of the entrance, as though he 
 was just recovering from a sustained debauch. The 
 young man stared haughtily in silence. Only after an 
 appreciable hesitation did George see through the dis- 
 guise and recover himself sufficiently to remark with 
 the proper nonchalance: 
 
 " Hello, Agg ! What's the meaning of this ? " 
 
 " You're before your time," said she, shutting the 
 door. 
 
 While he took off his overcoat Agg walked up the 
 studio. She made an astonishingly life-like young man. 
 George and Agg were now not unfriendly ; but each 
 constantly criticised the other in silence, and both were 
 aware of the existence of this vast body of unspoken 
 criticism. Agg criticised more than George, who had 
 begun to take the attitude that Agg ought to be phil- 
 osophically accepted as incomprehensible, rather than 
 criticised. He had not hitherto seen her in male cos- 
 tume, but he would not exhibit any surprise. 
 
 "Where's Marguerite?" he enquired, advancing to 
 the stove and rubbing his hands above it. 
 
 " Restrain your ardour," said Agg lightly. " She'll 
 appear in due season. I've told you — you're before 
 your time." 
 
 George offered no retort. Despite his sharp walk, 
 he was still terribl}' agitated and preoccupied, and the 
 phenomena of the lamplit studio had not yet fully im-
 
 124 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 pressed his mind. He saw them, inchiding Agg, as 
 hallucinations gradually turning to realities. He could 
 not be worried with Agg. His sole desire was to be 
 alone with Marguerite immediately, and he regarded the 
 fancy costume chiefly as an obstacle to the fulfilment of 
 that desire, because Agg could not depart until she had 
 changed it for something else. 
 
 Then his gaze fell upon a life-size oil-sketch of Agg in 
 the eighteenth-century male dress. The light was bad, 
 but it disclosed the sketch sufficiently to enable some 
 judgment on it to be formed. The sketch was exceed- 
 ingly clever, painted in the broad synthetic manner 
 which Steer and Sickert had introduced into England 
 as a natural reaction from the finicking false exactitudes 
 of the previous age. It showed Agg, glass in hand, as 
 a leering, tottering young drunkard in frills and velvet. 
 The face was odious, but it did strongly resemble Agg's 
 face. The hair was replaced by a bag wig. 
 
 "Who did that?" 
 
 " I did, of course," said Agg. She pointed to the 
 large mirror at the opposite side of the studio. 
 
 " The dickens you did ! " George murmured, struck. 
 But now that he knew the sketch to be the work of a 
 woman he at once became more critical, perceiving in it 
 imitative instead of original qualities. " What is it.'* 
 I mean what's the idea at the back of it, if it isn't a rude 
 question, Agfr? " 
 
 *' Title: ' Bonnie Prince Charlie,' " said Agg, without 
 a smile. She was walking about, in a convincing mascu- 
 line style. Unfortunately she could not put her hands 
 in her pockets, as the costume was without pockets. 
 
 " Is that your notion of the gent.'' " 
 
 " Didn't you know I'm supposed to be very like him? " 
 cried Agg, vain. The stern creature had frailties. 
 Then she smiled grimly. " Look at my cold blue eyes,
 
 THE TEA 125 
 
 my sharp chin, my curly-curly lips, my broad forehead, 
 my clear complexion. And I hope I'm thin enough. 
 Look ! " She picked up the bag wig, which was lying 
 on a chair, and put it on, and posed. The pose was 
 effective. 
 
 " You seem to know a lot about this Charlie." 
 
 " Well, our well-beloved brother Sam is writing a 
 monograph on him, you see. Besides, every one " 
 
 "But what's the idea.'' What's the scheme? Why 
 is he drunk.'' " 
 
 " He always was drunk. He was a confirmed drunk- 
 ard at thirty. Both his fair ladies had to leave him 
 because he was just a violent brute. And so on and 
 so on. I thought it was about time Charlie was shown 
 up in his true colours. And I'm doing it ! . . . After 
 all the sugarstick Academy pictures of him, my picture 
 will administer a much needed tonic to our dear public. 
 I expect I can get it into next year's New English Art 
 Club, and if I do it will be the sensation of the show. 
 ... I haven't done with it yet. In fact I only started 
 yesterday. There's going to be a lot more realism in 
 it yet. All those silly Jacobite societies will furiously 
 rage together. . . . And it's a bit of pretty good paint- 
 ing, you know." 
 - " It is," George agreed. " But it's a wild scheme." 
 
 " Not so wild as you think, my minstrel boy. It's 
 very much needed. It's symbolic, that picture is. It's 
 a symbolic antidote. Shall I tell you what put me on 
 to it? Look here." 
 
 She led liini to Marguerite's special work-table, under 
 the curtained window. There, on a sheet of paper 
 stretched upon a drawing-board, was the finished de- 
 sign which Marguerite had been labouring at for two 
 days. It was a design for a book-binding, and the 
 title of the book was, " Tlie Womanly Woman," and
 
 12€ THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 the author of the book was Sir Aniurath Onway, ^LD., 
 D.Sc, F.R.S., a famous specialist in pathology. Mar- 
 guerite, under instruction from the bookbinders, had 
 drawn a sweet picture, in quiet colours, of a womanly 
 woman in a tea-gown, sitting in a cosy corner of a 
 boudoir. The volume was destined to open the spring 
 season of a publishing firm of immense and historic 
 respectability. 
 
 ''Look at it! Look at it!"' Agg insisted. ''I've 
 read the book myself. Poor Marguerite had to go 
 through the proofs, so that she could be sure of getting 
 the spirit of the binding right. Do you know why he 
 wrote it.'* He hates his wife — that's why. His wife 
 isn't a womanly woman, and he's put all his hatred of 
 her into this immortal rubbish. Read this great work, 
 and you will be made to see what fine, noble creatures 
 we men are " — she strode to and fro — " and how a 
 woman's first duty is to recognise her inferiority to us, 
 and be womanly. . . . Damme ! ... As soon as I saw 
 what poor Marguerite had to do I told her I should 
 either have to go out and kill some one, or produce an 
 antidote. And then it occurred to me to tell the truth 
 about one of the leading popular heroes of history." 
 She bowed in the direction of the canvas. " I began 
 to feel better at once. I got the costume from a friend 
 of the learned Sam's, and I've ruined it. . . . I'm feel- 
 ing quite bright to-night." 
 
 She gazed at George with her cold blue eyes, arraign- 
 ing in his person the whole sex which she thought she 
 despised, but which her deepest instinct it was to coun- 
 terfeit. George, while admiring, was a little dismayed. 
 She was sarcastic. She had brains and knowledge and 
 ideas. There was an intellectual foundation to her 
 picture. And she could paint — like a witch' Oh! 
 She was ruthlessly clever ! Well, he did not like her.
 
 THE TEA • 127 
 
 What he wanted, though he would not admit it, was 
 old Onway's womanly woman. And especially in that 
 hour he wanted the womanly woman. 
 
 " What's Marguerite up to? " he asked quietly. 
 
 " After the heat and the toil of the day she's beau- 
 tifying herself for your august approval," said Agg 
 icily. " I expect she's hurrying all she can. But 
 naturally you expect her to be in a permanent state of 
 waiting for you — fresh out of the cotton wool." 
 
 The next instant Marguerite appeared out of the 
 cubicle or dressing-room which had been contrived in a 
 corner of the studio to the left of the door. She was 
 in her plain, everyday attire, but she had obviously 
 just washed, and her smooth hair shone from the 
 brush. 
 
 " Well, George." 
 
 « Well, Marguerite." 
 
 Both spoke casually. Celia Agg was the only person 
 in the world privy to their engagement ; but they per- 
 mitted themselves no freedoms in front of her. As 
 IMarguerite came near to George, she delicately touched 
 his arm, — nothing more. She was smiling happily, but 
 as soon as she looked close at his face under the lamp, 
 her face changed completely. He thought : " She un- 
 derstands there's something up." 
 
 She said, not without embarrassment : 
 
 " George, I really must have some fresh air. I 
 haven't had a breath all day. Is it raining? " 
 
 "No. Would you like to go for a walk?" 
 
 "Oh! I should!" 
 
 He was very grateful, and also impressed by the 
 accuracy of her intuitions and her quick resourceful- 
 ness. She had comprehended at a glance that he had 
 a profound and urgent need to be alone with her. She 
 was marvellously comforting, precious beyond price.
 
 128 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 All his susceptibilities, wounded by the scene at Alex- 
 andra Grove, and further irritated by Agg, were in- 
 stantaneously salved and soothed. Her tones, her 
 scarcely perceptible gesture of succour, produced the 
 assuaging miracle. She fulfilled her role to perfection. 
 She was a talented and competent designer, but as the 
 helpmeet of a man she had genius. His mind dwelt on 
 her with rapture. 
 
 " You'll be going out as soon as you've changed, 
 dear? " she said affectionately to Agg. 
 
 *' Yes," answered Agg, who at the mirror was wiping 
 from her face the painted signs of alcoholism. She had 
 thrown off the bag wig. *' You'd better take the key 
 with you. You'll be back before I am." She sat down 
 on one of the draped settees which were beds in dis- 
 guise, and Marguerite got a hat, cloak, and gloves. 
 
 While George was resuming his overcoat, which Mar- 
 guerite held for him, Agg suddenly sprang up and 
 rushed towards them. 
 
 " Good night. Flora Macdonald," she murmured in 
 her deep voice in Marguerite's ear, put masculine arms 
 round her and kissed her. It was a truly remarkable 
 bit of male impersonating, as George had to admit, 
 though he resented it. 
 
 Then she gave a short, harsh laugh. 
 
 " Good night, old Agg,''^ said Marguerite, with sweet 
 responsiveness, and smiled ingenuously at George. 
 
 George, impatient, opened the door, and the damp 
 wind swept anew into the studio. 
 
 IV 
 
 It was a fine night ; the weather had cleared, and the 
 pavements were drying. George, looking up in a pause 
 of the eager conversational exchanges, drew tonic air 
 mightily into his lungs.
 
 THE TEA 129 
 
 " Where are we? " he asked. 
 
 " Tite Street," said Marguerite. " That's the Tower 
 House." And she nodded towards the formidable sky- 
 scraper which another grade of landlord had erected 
 for another grade of artists who demanded studios from 
 the capitalist. Marguerite, the Chelsea girl, knew 
 Chelsea, if she knew nothing else; her feet turned cor- 
 ners in the dark with assurance, and she had no need 
 to look at street signs. George regarded the short thor- 
 oughfare made notorious by the dilettantism, the mod- 
 ishness, and the witticisms of art. It had an impressive 
 aspect. From the portico of one higlily illuminated 
 house a crimson carpet stretched across the pavement 
 to the gutter; some dashing blade of the brush had 
 maliciously determined to affront the bourgeois Sab- 
 bath. George stamped on the carpet ; he hated it be- 
 cause it was not his carpet ; and he swore to himself to 
 possess that verj' carpet or its indistinguishable brother. 
 
 " I was a most frightful ass to leave that letter lying 
 about ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 " Oh ! George ! " she protested lovingly. " It could 
 so easily happen — a thing like that could. It was 
 just bad luck." 
 
 A cushion ! The divinest down cushion ! That was 
 what she was ! She was more. She defended a man 
 against himself. She restored him to perfection. Her 
 affectionate faith was a magical inspiration to him ; it 
 was, really, the greatest force in the world. Most 
 women would have agreed with him, however tactfully, 
 that he had been careless about the letter. An Adela 
 would certainly have berated him in her shrewish, thin 
 tones. A Lois would have been sarcastic, scornfully 
 patronising him as a " boy." And what would Agg 
 have done? . . . They might have forgiven and even 
 forgotten, but they would have indulged themselves
 
 130 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 first. Marguerite was exteriorly simple. After all, 
 she would not perhaps successfully dominate a drawing- 
 room. She would cut no figure playing with lives at 
 the wheel of an automobile. She would no doubt be 
 ridiculous in the costume of Bonnie Prince Charlie. 
 But she was finer than the other women whose images 
 floated in his mind. And she was worth millions of 
 them. He was overpowered by the sense of his good 
 fortune in finding her. He went cold at the thought of 
 what he would have missed if he had not found her. He 
 would not try to conceive what his existence would be 
 without her, for it would be unendurable. Of this he 
 was convinced. 
 
 "Do you think he'll go talking about it.''" George 
 asked, meaning of course Mr. Haim. 
 
 " More likely she will," said Marguerite. 
 
 He positively could feel her lips tightening. Futile 
 to put in a word for Mrs. Haim ! When he had de- 
 scribed the swoon. Marguerite had shown neither con- 
 cern nor curiosity. Not the slightest ! Antipathy to 
 her stepmother had radiated from her almost visibly 
 in the night like the nimbus round a street-lamp. Well, 
 she did not understand; she was capable of injustice; 
 she was quite wrong about Mrs. Haim. What matter? 
 Her whole being was centralised on himself. He was 
 aware of his superiority. 
 
 He went on quietly : 
 
 " If the old man gets chattering at the office, the 
 Orgreavcs will know, and the next minute the news'll 
 be in the Five Towns. I can't possibly let my people 
 hear from anybody else of my engagemevt before they 
 hear from me. However, if it comes to the point, we'll 
 tell everybody. Why not?" 
 
 " Oh, but dearest! It was so nice it being a secret. 
 It was the loveliest thing in the world."
 
 THE TEA 131 
 
 « 
 
 Yes, it was jollj." 
 
 " Perhaps father will feel differently in the morning, 
 and then you can " 
 
 " He won't," said George flatly. " You don't know 
 what a state he's in. I didn't tell you — he called 
 me a spy in the house, a dirty spy. Likewise a jacka- 
 napes. Doubtless a delicate illusion to my tender 
 years." 
 
 " He didfiH! " 
 
 " He did, honestly." 
 
 " So that was what upset you so ! " Marguerite mur- 
 mured. It was her first admission that she had noticed 
 his agitation. 
 
 " Did I look so upset then.? " 
 
 " George, you looked terrible. I felt the only thing 
 to do was for us to go out at once." 
 
 " Oh ! But surely I wasn't so upset as all that ? " 
 said George, finding in Marguerite's statement a reflec- 
 tion upon his ability to play the part of an imperturb- 
 able man of the world. " Agg didn't seem to see any- 
 thing." 
 
 " Agg doesn't know you like I do." 
 
 She insinuated her arm into his. He raised his 
 hand and took hold of hers. In the left pocket 
 of his over-coat he could feel the somewhat un- 
 wield}'^ key of the studio. He was happy. 
 The domestic feel of the key completed his happi- 
 ness. 
 
 " Of course I can't stay on there," said he. 
 
 " At father's ? Oh ! I do wish father hadn't talked 
 like that." She spoke sadly, not critically. 
 
 " I suppose I must sleep there to-night. But I'm 
 not going to have my breakfast there to-morrow morn- 
 ing. No fear ! I'll have it up town. Lucas'Il be able 
 to put me up to some new digs. He always knows about
 
 13a THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 that sort of thing. Then I'll drive down and remove 
 all my worldly in a four-wheeler." 
 
 He spoke with jauntiness, in his role of male who is 
 easily equal to any situation. But she said in a low, 
 tenderly commiserating' voice : 
 
 " It's a shame ! " 
 
 " Not a bit ! " he replied. Then he suddenly stood 
 still and brouglit her to a halt. Under his erratic 
 guidance they had turned along Dilke Street, and north- 
 wards again, past the Botanical Garden. " And this 
 is Paradise Row ! " he said, surveying the broad street 
 which they had come into. 
 
 "Paradise Row?" she corrected him softly. "No, 
 dear, it's Queen's Road. It runs into Pimlico Road." 
 
 " I mean it used to be Paradise Row," he explained. 
 ** It was the most fashionable street in Chelsea, you 
 know. Everybody that was anybody lived here." 
 
 " Oh ! Really ! " She showed an amiable desire to 
 be interested, but her interest did not survive more than 
 a few seconds. " I didn't know. I know Paradise 
 Walk. It's that horrid little passage down there on 
 the right." 
 
 She had not the historic sense ; and she did not 
 understand his mood, did not in the slightest degree 
 suspect that events had been whipping his ambition 
 once more, and that at that moment he was enjoying 
 the seventeenth and even the sixteenth centuries, and 
 thinking of Sir Thomas More and Miss More and all 
 manner of grandiose personages and abodes, and re- 
 belling obstinately against the fact that he was as yet 
 a nonentity in Chelsea, whereas he meant in the end to 
 yield to nobody in distinction and renown. He knew 
 that she did not understand, and he would not pretend 
 to himself that she did. There was no reason whv she
 
 THE TEA 133 
 
 should understand. He did not particularly want her 
 to understand. 
 
 " Let's have a look at the river, shall we? " he sug- 
 gested, and they moved towards Cheyne Walk. 
 
 " Dearest," she said. " You must come and have 
 breakfast at the studio to-morrow morning. I shall 
 get it myself." 
 
 " But Agg won't like me poking my nose in for 
 breakfast." 
 
 " You great silly ! Don't you know she simply 
 adores you.'' " 
 
 He was certainly startled by this remark, and he 
 began to like Agg. 
 
 " Old Agg ! Not she ! " he protested, pleased, but a 
 little embarrassed. " Will she be up.'' " 
 
 " You'll see whether she'll be up or not. Nine 
 o'clock's the time, isn't it.'' " 
 
 They reached the gardens of Cheyne Walk. Three 
 bridges hung their double chaplets of lights over the 
 dark river. On the southern shore the shapes of high 
 trees waved mysteriously above the withdrawn woodland 
 glades that in daytime were Battersea Park. Here and 
 there a tiny red gleam gave warning that a pier jutted 
 out into the stream ; but nothing moved on the water. 
 The wind that swept clean the pavements had un- 
 clouded ten million stars. It was a wind unlike any 
 other wind that ever blew, at once caressing and roughly 
 challenging. The two, putting it behind them, faced 
 eastward, and began to pass one by one the innumer- 
 able ornate gas-lamps of Chelsea Embankment, which 
 stretched absolutely rectilinear in front of them for a 
 clear mile. No soul but themselves was afoot. But 
 on the left rose gigantic and splendid houses, palaces 
 designed by modern architects, vying with almost any
 
 134. THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 houses in London, some dark, others richly illuminated 
 and full of souls luxurious, successful, and dominant. 
 As the girl talked creatively about the breakfast, her 
 arm pressed his ; and his fingers clasped her acquiescent 
 fingers, and her chaste and confiding passion ran 
 through him in powerful voltaic currents from some 
 inexhaustible source of energy in her secret heart. It 
 seemed to him that since their ride home in the hansom 
 from the Promenade concert her faculty for love had 
 miraculously developed. He divined great deeps in her, 
 and deeps beyond those deeps. The tenderness which 
 he felt for her was inexpressible. He said not a word, 
 keeping to himself the terrific resolves to which she, and 
 the wind, and the spectacular majesty of London in- 
 spired him. He and she would live regally in one of 
 those very houses, and people should kowtow to her 
 because she was the dazzling wife of the renowned young 
 architect George Cannon. And he would show her to 
 Mrs. John Orgreave and to Lois, and those women 
 should acknowledge in her a woman incomparably their 
 superior. They should not be able to hide their im- 
 pressed astonishment when they saw her. 
 
 Nothing of all this did he impart to her as she hung 
 supported and inspiring on his arm. He held it all in 
 reserve for her. And then, thinking again for a mo- 
 ment of what she had said about Agg's liking for him, 
 he thought of Agg's picture and of INLarguerite's design 
 whicli had originated the picture. It was a special 
 design, new for Marguerite, whose bindings were gen- 
 erally of conventional patterns; it was to be paid for 
 at a special price because of its elaborateness ; she had 
 worked on it for nearly two days ; in particular she 
 had stayed indoors during the whole of Sunday to finish 
 it; and it was efficient, skilful, as good as it could be. 
 It had filled her life for nearly two days, — and he had
 
 THE TEA 135 
 
 not even mentioned it to her ! In the ruthless egotism 
 of the ambitious man he had forgotten it, and forgotten 
 to imagine sympathetically the contents of her mind. 
 Sharp remorse overcame him ; she grew noble and pa- 
 thetic in his eyes. . . . Contrast her modest and tal- 
 ented industry with the exacting, supercilious, incapable 
 idleness of a Lois ! 
 
 " That design of yours is J0II3' good," he said shortly, 
 without any introductory phrases. 
 
 She perceptibly started. 
 
 " Oh ! George ! I'm so glad you think so. I was 
 afraid. You know it was horribly difficult — they give 
 you no chance." 
 
 " I know. I know. You've come out of it fine." 
 
 She was in heaven ; he also, because it was so easy for 
 him to put her there. He glanced backwards a few 
 hours into the past, and he simply could not compre- 
 hend how it was that he had been so upset by the 
 grotesque scene with Mr. Haim in the basement of 
 No. 8. Everything was aU right ; everything was ut- 
 terly for the best.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE DINNER 
 
 Early on the morning of a Tuesday in the second 
 half of June, 1903, George Cannon was moving fast on 
 a motor-bicycle westwards down the slope of Piccadilly. 
 At any rate he had the sensation of earliness, and was 
 indeed thereby quite invigorated ; it almost served in- 
 stead of the breakfast which he had not yet taken. But 
 thousands of people travelling in the opposite direction 
 in horse-onmibuses and in a few motor-buses seemed 
 to regard the fact of their being abroad at that hour 
 as dully normal. They had fought, men and girls, for 
 places in the crammed vehicles ; they had travelled from 
 far lands such as Putney ; they had been up for hours, 
 and the morning, which was so new to George, had lost 
 its freshness for them ; they were well used to the lus- 
 trous summer glories of the Green Park ; what they 
 chiefly beheld in the Green Park was the endless lines 
 of wayfarers radiating from Victoria along the various 
 avenues on the way, like themselves, to offices, ware- 
 houses, and shops. Of the stablemen, bus-washers, driv- 
 ers, mechanics, chauffeurs, and conductors, who had 
 left their beds much in advance even of the travellers, 
 let us not speak — even they had begun the day later 
 than their wives, mothers, or daughters. All this flying 
 population, urged and preoccupied b}' pitiless time, 
 
 gazed down upon George and saw a gay young swell 
 
 136
 
 THE DINNER 137 
 
 without a care in the world rushing on ** one of those 
 motor-bikes " to freedom. 
 
 George was well aware of the popular gaze, and he 
 supported it with negligent pride. He had the air of 
 having been born to greatness ; cigarette smoke and 
 the fumes of exploded petrol and the rattle of explosions 
 made a fine wake behind his greatness. In two years, 
 since he had walked into Mr. Haira's parlour, his body 
 had broadened, his e^'es had slightly hardened, and his 
 complexion and hair had darkened. And there was his 
 moustache, very sprightly, and there was a glint of gold 
 in his teeth. He had poor teeth, but luxuriant hair, 
 ruthlessly cut and disciplined and subjugated. His 
 trousers were clipped tightly at the ankles, and his 
 jacket loosely buttoned by the correct button; his soft 
 felt hat achieved the architect's ideal of combining the 
 perfectlj^ artistic with the perfectly modish. But 
 the most remarkable and envy-raising portion of 
 his attire was the loose washable yellow gloves, with 
 large gauntlets, designed to protect the delicately- 
 tended hands when they had to explore among ma- 
 chinery'. 
 
 He had obtained the motor-bicycle in a peculiar wav. 
 On arriving at Axe station for the previous Christmas 
 holidays, he had seen two low-hung lamps brilliantly 
 flashing instead of the higher and less powerful lamps of 
 the dog-cart, and there had been no light-reflecting 
 flanks of a horse in front of the lamps. The dark 
 figure sitting behind the lamps proved to be his mother. 
 His mother herself liad driven him home. He noted 
 calmly that as a chauffeur she had the same faults as 
 the contemned Lois Ingram. Still, she did drive, and 
 they reached Ladderedge Hall in safety. He admired, 
 and he was a little frightened by, his mother's terrific 
 voUtion to widen her existence. She would insist on
 
 138 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 doing everything that might be done, and nobody could 
 stop her. Who would have dreamt that she, with her 
 narrow, troubled past, and her passionate temperament 
 rendered somewhat harsh by strange experiences, would 
 at the age of forty six or so, be careering about the 
 country at the wheel of a motor-car? Ah! But she 
 would! She would be a girl. And by her individual 
 force she successfully carried it off! Those two plot- 
 ters, she and his stepfather, had conspired to buy a 
 motor-car in secret from him. No letter from home 
 had breathed a word of the motor-car. He was thun- 
 derstruck, and jealous. He had spent the whole of the 
 Christmas holidays in that car, ajud in four days could 
 drive better than his mother, and also — what was 
 more difficult — could convince her obstinate self-assur- 
 ance that he knew far more about the mechanism than 
 she did. As a fact, her notions of the mechanism, 
 though she was convinced of their rightness, were mainly 
 fantastic. George of course had had to punish his 
 parents. He had considered it his duty to do so. 
 " The least you can do," he had said discontentedly and 
 menacingly, " the least j^ou can do is to give me a de- 
 cent motor-bike I " The guilty pair had made amends 
 in the manner thus indicated for them. George gath- 
 ered from various signs that his stepfather was steadily 
 and rapidly growing richer. George had acted accord- 
 ingly, — not only in the matter of the motor-bicycle, 
 but in other matters. 
 
 Now, on this June morning he had just begun to 
 breast the slope rising from the hollow to Hyde Park 
 Corner when a boy shot out from behind a huge sta- 
 tionary dust-cart on the left and dashed unrcgarding 
 towards him. George shouted. The boy, faced wit}i 
 sudden death, was happily so paralysed that he fell 
 down, thus checking his momentum by the severest form
 
 THE DINNER 139 
 
 of friction. George swerved aside, missing the small 
 outstretched hands by an inch or two, but missing also 
 by an inch or two the front-wheel of a tremendous 
 motor-bus on his right. He gave a nervous giggle as 
 he flashed by the high red side of the motor-bus ; and 
 then he deliberately looked back at the murderous boy, 
 who had jumped up. At the same moment George was 
 brought to a sense of his own foolishness in looking 
 back by a heavy jolt. He had gone over half a creo- 
 soted wood-block which had somehow escaped from a 
 lozenge-shaped oasis in the road where two workmen 
 were indolently using picks under the magic protection 
 of a tinj', dirty red flag. Secure in the guardianship of 
 the bit of bunting, which for them was as powerful and 
 sacred as the flag of an empire, the two workmen gazed 
 with indifference at George and at the deafening traffic 
 "which swirled affronting but harmless around them. 
 George slackened speed, afraid lest the jar might have 
 snapped the plates of his accumulator. The motor- 
 bicycle was a wondrous thing, but as capricious and 
 delicate as a horse. For a trifle, for nothing at all, it 
 would cease to function. The high-tension magneto 
 and the float-feed carburetter, whose invention was to 
 transform the motor-bicycle from an everlasting har- 
 assment into a means of locomotion, were yet years 
 away in the future. However, the jar had done no 
 harm. The episode, having occupied less than ten sec- 
 onds, was closed. George felt his heart thumping. He 
 thought suddenly of the recent Paris-INIadrid automo- 
 bile race, in which the elite of the world had perished. 
 He saw himself beneath the motor-bus, and a futile star- 
 ing crowd round about. Simply by a miracle was 
 he alive. But this miracle was only one of a score of 
 miracles. He believed strongly in luck. He had al-
 
 140 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 ways believed in it. The smoke of the cigarette dis- 
 played his confidence to all Piccadilly. Still, his heart 
 was thumping. 
 
 And it had not ceased to thump when a few minutes 
 later he turned into Manresa Road. Opposite the 
 entrance to the alley of Romney Studios, there hap- 
 pened to be a small hiatus in the kerbstone. George 
 curved the machine largely round and, mounting the 
 pavement through this hiatus, rode gingerly up the 
 alley, in defiance of the regulations of a great city, and 
 stopped precisely at the door of No. 6. It was a mat- 
 ter of honour with him to arrive thus. Not for a 
 million would he have walked the machine up the alley. 
 He got off, sounded a peremptory call on the horn, and 
 tattooed with the knocker. No answer came. An ap- 
 prehension visited him. By the last post on the pre- 
 vious night he had received a special invitation to 
 breakfast from Marguerite. Never had he been kept 
 waiting at the door. He knocked again. Then he 
 heard a voice from the side of the studio : 
 
 " Come round here, George." 
 
 In the side of the studio was a very small window 
 from which the girls, when unpresentable, would parley 
 with early tradesmen. Agg was at the window. He 
 could see only her head and neck, framed by the win- 
 dow. Her short hair was tousled and she held a dress- 
 ing-gown tight about her neck. For the first time she 
 seemed to him like a real feminine girl, and her tones 
 were soft as they never were when Marguerite was 
 present with her. 
 
 " I'm very sorry," she said. " You woke me. I was 
 fast asleep. You can't come in." 
 
 " Anytliing up?" he questioned, rather anxiously. 
 " Where's Marguerite? " 
 
 "Oh! George! A dreadful night!" she answered,
 
 THE DINNER 141 
 
 almost plaintively, almost demanding sympathy from 
 the male, — she, Agg ! " We were wakened up at two 
 o'clock. Mr. Prince came round to fetch Marguerite 
 to go to No. 8'." 
 
 " To go to No. 8 ! " he repeated, frightened, and 
 wondered why he should be frightened. " What on 
 earth for? " 
 
 " Mrs. Haim very ill ! " Agg paused. " Something 
 about a baby." 
 
 " And did she go ? " 
 
 " Yes. She put on her things and went off at once." 
 
 He was silent. He felt the rough grip of destiny, of 
 some strange power irresistible and inescapable, just 
 as he had momentarily felt it in the basement of No. 8 
 more than eighteen months before, when the outraged 
 Mr. Haim had quarrelled with him. The mere idea of 
 Marguerite being at No. 8 made him feel sick. He no 
 longer believed in his luck. 
 
 "How soon d'ye think she'll be back? " 
 
 "I — I don't know, George. I should have thought 
 she'd have been back before this." 
 
 " I'll run round there," he said curtly. 
 
 Agg was disconcertingly, astoundingly sympathetic. 
 Her attitude increased his disturbance. 
 
 II 
 
 When George rang the bell at No. 8 Alexandra 
 Grove his mysterious qualms were intensified. He 
 dreaded the moment when the door should open, even 
 though it should be opened by Marguerite herself. 
 And yet he had a tremendous desire to see Marguerite, 
 — merely to look at her face, to examine it, to read it. 
 His summons was not answered. He glanced about. 
 The steps were dirty. The brass knob and the letter- 
 flap had not been polished. After a time he pushed up
 
 142 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 the flap and gazed within, and saw the interior which 
 he knew so well and which he had not entered for so 
 many months. Nothing was changed in it, but it also 
 had a dusty and neglected air. Every detail roused 
 his memory. The door of what had once been his room 
 was shut ; he wondered what the room was now. This 
 house held the greatest part of his history. It lived 
 in his mind as vitally as even the boarding-house kept 
 by his mother in a side-street in Brighton, romantic and 
 miserable scene of his sensitive childhood. It was a 
 solemn house for him. Through the basement window 
 on a dark night he had first glimpsed Marguerite. Un- 
 forgettable event ! Unlike anything else that had ever 
 happened to anybody ! . . . He heard a creak, and 
 caught sight through the letter-aperture of a pair of 
 red slippers, and then the lower half of a pair of 
 trousers, descending the stairs. And he dropped the 
 flap hurriedly. Mr. Haim was coming to open the 
 door. Mr. Haim did open the door, started at the 
 apparition of George, and stood defensively and for- 
 biddingly in the very centre of the doorway. 
 
 " Oh ! " said George nervously. " How is Mrs. 
 Haim?" 
 
 " Mrs. Haim is very ill indeed." The reply was 
 emphatic and inimical. 
 
 " I'm sorry." 
 
 Mr. Haim said nothing further. George had not 
 seen him since the previous Saturday, having been ex- 
 cused by Mr. Enwright from the office on Monday on 
 account of examination work. He did not know that 
 Mr. Haim had not been to the office on Monday either. 
 In the interval the man had shockingly changed. He 
 seemed much older, and weaker too ; he seemed worn out 
 by acute anxiety. Nevertheless he so evidently re- 
 sented sympathy that George was not sympathetic, and
 
 THE DINNER 143 
 
 regarded liim coldly as a tiresome old man. The official 
 relations between the two had been rigorously polite 
 and formal. No reference had ever been made by either 
 to the quarrel in the basement or to the cause of it. 
 And for the world in general George's engagement had 
 remained as secret as before. Marguerite had not seen 
 her father in the long interval, and George had seen 
 only the factotum of Lucas and Enwright. But he now 
 saw Marguerite's father again, — a quite different per- 
 son from the factotum. . . . Strange, how the house 
 seemed forlorn ! " Something about a baby," Agg had 
 said vaguely. And it was as though something that 
 Mr. Haim and his wife had concealed had burst from its 
 concealment and horrified and put a curse on the whole 
 Grove. Something not at all nice! What in the name 
 of decent propriety was that slippered old man doing 
 with a baby? George would not picture to himself 
 Mrs. Haim lying upstairs. He did not care to think of 
 Marguerite secretly active somewhere in one of those 
 rooms. But she was there ; she was initiated. He did 
 not criticise her. 
 
 " I should like to see Marguerite," he said at length. 
 Despite himself he had a guilty feeling. 
 
 " My daughter ! " Mr. Haim took up the heavy 
 role. 
 
 " Only for a minute," said George, boyishly, and irri- 
 tated by his own boyishness. 
 
 " You can't see her, sir." 
 
 " But if she knows I'm here, she'll come to me," 
 George insisted. He saw that the old man's hatred of 
 him Avas undiminished. Indeed, time had probably 
 strengthened it. 
 
 " You can't see her, sir. This is my house." 
 
 George considered himself infinitely more mature 
 than in the November of 1901 when the old man had
 
 144 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 worsted him. And yet he was no more equal to this 
 situation than he had been to the former one. 
 
 " But what am I to do, then.'' " he demanded, not 
 fiercely' but crossly. 
 
 "What are you to do? Don't ask me, sir. My 
 wife is very ill indeed, and you come down the Grove 
 making noise enough to wake the dead — " he indicated 
 the motor-bicycle, of which the silencer was admittedly 
 defective — " and you want to see my daughter. My 
 daughter has more important work to do than to see 
 you. I never heard of such callousness. If you want 
 to communicate with my daughter you had better write 
 — so long as she stays in this house." 
 
 Mr. Haim shut the door, which rendered his ad- 
 vantage over George complete. 
 
 From the Post Office nearly opposite the end of the 
 Grove George despatched a reply-paid telegram to 
 Marguerite : " Where and when can I see j'ou ? 
 George. Russell Square." It seemed a feeble retort 
 to Mr. Haim, but he could think of nothing better. 
 
 On the way up town he suddenly felt, not hungry, but 
 empty, and he called in at a tea-shop. He was the only 
 customer, in a great expanse of marble-topped tables. 
 He sat down at a marble-topped table. On the marble- 
 topped table next to him were twenty four sugar-basins, 
 and on the next to that a large number of brass-bells, 
 and on another one an infinity of cruets. A very slat- 
 ternly woman was washing the linoleum in a corner of 
 the floor. Two thin wrinkled girls in shabby black were 
 whispering together behind the counter. The cash- 
 den was empty. Through the open door he could keep 
 an eye on his motor-bicycle, which was being surrep- 
 titiously regarded by a boy theoretically engaged in 
 cleaning the window. A big van drove up, and a man 
 entered with pastry on a wooden tray and bantered one
 
 THE DINNER 14.5 
 
 of the girls in black. She made no reply, being pre- 
 occupied with the responsibility of counting cakes. 
 The man departed and the van disappeared. Nobody 
 took the least notice of George. He might have been a 
 customer invisible and inaudible. After the fiasco of 
 his interview with Mr. Haim, he had not the courage to 
 protest. He framed withering sentences to the girls in 
 black, such as : " Is this place supposed to be open for 
 business, or isn't it.? " but they were not uttered. Then 
 a girl in black with a plain ugly white apron and a 
 dowdy white cap appeared on the stairs leading from 
 the basement, and removed for her passage a bar of 
 stained wood lettered in gilt : " Closed," and she halted 
 at George's table. She spoke no word. She just stood 
 over him, unsmiling, placid, flaccid, immensely indiffer- 
 ent. She was pale, a poor sort of a girl, without vig- 
 our. But she had a decent, honest face. She was not 
 aware that she ought to be bright, welcoming, provoca- 
 tive, for a penny farthing an hour. She had never 
 heard of Hebe. George thought of the long, desolat- 
 ing day that lay before her. He looked at her seri- 
 ously. His eyes did not challenge her as they were 
 accustomed to challenge Hebes. He said in a friendly, 
 matter-of-fact tone: 
 
 " A meat-pie, please, and a large coffee." 
 
 And she repeated in a thin voice: 
 
 " Meat pie. Large coffee." 
 
 A minute later she dropped the order on the table, as 
 it might have been refuse, and with it a bit of white 
 paper. The sadness of the city, and the inexplicable 
 sadness of June mornings, overwhelmed George as he 
 munched at the meat-pie and drank the coffee, and 
 reached over for the sugar and reached over for the 
 mustard. And he kept saying to himself : 
 
 " She doesn't see her father at all for nearly two
 
 146 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 years, and then she goes off to him like that in the 
 middle of the night — at a word." 
 
 ui 
 
 The office was not at its normal. The empty cubicle 
 of the factotum looked strange enough. But there was 
 more than that in the abnormality. There were cur- 
 rents of excitement in the office. The door of the prin- 
 cipals' room was open, and George saw John Orgreave 
 and Everard Lucas within, leaning over one of the great 
 flat desks. The hour was early for Lucas, and self- 
 satisfaction was on Lucas's face as he raised it to look 
 at the entering of George. 
 
 " I say," he remarked quietly through the doorway, 
 " that town hall scheme is on again." 
 
 " Oh ! " said George, depositing his hat and gloves 
 and strolling into the principals' room. " Good morn- 
 ing, Mr. Orgreave. Got the conditions there.'* " For 
 a moment his attitude of interest was a pose, but very 
 quickly it became sincere. Astonishing how at sight 
 of a drawing-board and a problem he could forget all 
 that lay beyond them ! He was genuinely and extremely 
 disturbed by the course of affairs at Chelsea ; neverthe- 
 less he now approached Mr. Orgreave and Lucas with 
 eagerness, and Chelsea slipped away into another di- 
 mension. 
 
 " No," said John Orgreave, " the conditions aren't 
 out yet. But it's all right this time, I know for a fact." 
 
 The offices of all the regular architectural competi- 
 tors in London were excited that morning. For the 
 conception of the northern town hall was a vast one. 
 Indeed, journalists had announced, from their mysteri- 
 ous founts of information, that the town hall would be 
 the largest public building erected in England during 
 half a century. The scheme had been the sport of
 
 THE DINNER 147 
 
 municipal politics for many months, for years. Ap- 
 parently it could not get itself definitely born. And 
 now the Town Clerk's wife had brought about the august 
 parturition. It is true that her agency was uninten- 
 tional. The Town Clerk had belonged to a powerful 
 provincial dynasty of town clerks. He had the illusion 
 that without him a great town would cease to exist. 
 There was nothing uncommon in this illusion, which 
 indeed is rife among town clerks ; but the Town Clerk in 
 question had the precious faculty of being able to com- 
 municate it to mayors, aldermen, and councillors. He 
 was a force in the municipal council. Voteless there, he 
 exercised a moral influence over votes. And he hap- 
 pened to be opposed to the scheme for the new town hall. 
 He gave various admirable reasons for the postpone- 
 ment of the scheme, but he never gave the true reasons, 
 even to himself. The true reasons were, first that he 
 hated and detested the idea of moving office, and second 
 that he wanted acutely to be able to say in the fulness of 
 years that he had completed half a century of municipal 
 work in one and the same room. If the pro-scheme 
 party had had the wit to invent a pretext for allowing 
 the Town Clerk to remain in the old municipal build- 
 ings, the scheme would instantly have taken life. The 
 Town Clerk, being widowed, had consoled himself with 
 a young second wife. This girl adored dancing; the 
 Town Clerk adored her ; and therefore where she danced 
 he deemed it prudent to attend. Driving home from a 
 January ball at four a. m. the Town Clerk had caught 
 pneumonia. In a week he was dead, and his dynasty 
 with him. In a couple of months the pro-scheme party 
 had carried the Council off its feet. Such are the reali- 
 ties, never printed in newspapers, of municipal politics 
 in the grim north. 
 
 Sketches of the site had appeared in the architectural
 
 148 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 press. John Orgreave and Lucas were pencilling in 
 turn upon one of these, a page torn out of a weekly. 
 George inserted himself between them, roughly towards 
 Lucas and deferentially towards Mr. John. 
 
 " But you've got the main axis wrong ! " he ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 " How, wrong? " John Orgreave demanded. 
 
 " See here Give me the pencil, Looc." 
 
 George felt with a little thrill of satisfaction the re- 
 spect for him which underlay John Orgreave's curt tone 
 of a principal — and a principal from the Midlands. 
 He did not miss, either, Lucas's quick, obedient, ex- 
 pectant gesture in surrendering the pencil. Ideas for 
 the plan of the building sprang up multitudinously in 
 his mind. He called; they came. He snatched to- 
 wards him a blank sheet of tracing-paper, and scrawled 
 it over with significant lines. 
 
 " That's my notion. I thought of it long ago," he 
 said. " Or if you prefer " 
 
 The other two were imjiressed. He himself was im- 
 pressed. His notion, which he was modifying and 
 improving every moment, seemed to him perfect and 
 ever more perfect. He was intensely and happily stim- 
 ulated in the act of creation; and they were all three 
 absorbed. 
 
 "Why hasn't my desk been arranged?" said a dis- 
 contented voice behind them. Mr. Enwright had ar- 
 rived by the farther door from the corridor. 
 
 Lucas glanced up. 
 
 " I expect Haim hasn't come again to-day," he 
 answered, urbanely, placatingly. 
 
 " Why hasn't he come? " 
 
 *' I hear his wife's very ill," said George. 
 
 " Who told you ? " 
 
 " I happened to be round that way this morning,"
 
 THE DINNER 149 
 
 (( 
 
 Oh! I thought all was over between you two." 
 
 George flushed. Nothing had ever been said in the 
 office as to his relations with Haim, though it was of 
 course known that George no longer lodged with the 
 factotum. Mr. Enwright, however, often had discon- 
 certing intuitions concerning matters to which Mr. Or- 
 greave and Lucas were utterly insensible. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " George haltingly murmured. 
 
 « Well, this is all very well, this is ! " Mr. En- 
 wright ruthlessly proceeded, beginning to marshal the 
 instruments on his desk. 
 
 He had been a somewhat spectacular martyr for some 
 time past. A mysterious facial neuralgia had harried 
 his nights and days. For the greater part of a week 
 he had dozed in an armchair in the office under the 
 spell of eight tabloids of aspirin per diem. Then a 
 specialist had decided that seven of his side teeth, al- 
 ready studded with gold, must leave him. Those teeth 
 were not like any other person's teeth, and in Mr. En- 
 wright's mind the extracting of them had become a 
 major operation, as for example the taking off of a 
 limb. He had spent three days in a nursing home in 
 Welbeck Street. His life was now saved, and he was a 
 convalescent, and passed several hours daily in giving 
 to friends tragi-farcical accounts of existence in a nurs- 
 ing home. Mr. Enwright's career was one unending 
 romance. 
 
 " I was just looking at that town hall affair," said 
 John Orgreave. 
 
 *' ^\liat town hall ? " his partner snapped. 
 
 " The town hall," answered the imperturbable John. 
 
 George here has got an idea." 
 
 " I suppose you know Sir Hugh Corver Bart is to 
 be the assessor," said Mr. Enwright in a devastating 
 tone. 
 
 a
 
 a 
 it 
 
 150 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 Sir Hugh Corver, formerly a mere knight, had re- 
 ceived a baronetcy, to Mr. Enwright's deep disgust. 
 Mr. Enwright had remarked that any decent-minded 
 man who had been a husband and cliildless for twenty 
 four years would have regarded the supplementary hon- 
 our as an insult, but that Sir Hugh was not decent- 
 minded and moreover was not capable of knowing an 
 insult when he got one. This theory of Mr. Enwright's, 
 however, did not a bit lessen his disgust. 
 
 Oh, yes," John Orgreave admitted lamely. 
 I for one am not going in for any more competi- 
 tions with Corver as assessor," said Mr. Enwright. " I 
 won't do it." 
 
 Faces fell. Mr. Enwright had previously published 
 this resolve, but it had not been taken quite seriously. 
 It was entirely serious. Neuralgia and a baronetcy 
 had given it the consistency of steel. 
 
 " It isn't as if we hadn't got plenty of work in the 
 office," said Mr. Enwright. 
 
 This was true. The firm was exceedingly prosperous. 
 Nobody else spoke. 
 
 " What can you expect from a fellow like Corver.'* " 
 Mr. Enwright cried, with a special glance at George. 
 " He's the upas tree of decent architecture." 
 
 George's mood changed immediately. Profound dis- 
 couragement succeeded to his creative stimulation. Mr. 
 Enwright had reason on his side. What could you 
 expect from a fellow like Corver? With all the ardour 
 of a disciple George dismissed the town hall scheme, and 
 simultaneously his private woes surged up and took 
 full possession of him. He walked silently out of the 
 room, and Lucas followed. As a fact, Mr. Enwright 
 ought not to have talked in such a way before the pupils. 
 A question of general policy should first have been dis- 
 cussed in private between the partners, and the result
 
 THE DINNER 151 
 
 then formally announced to the staff. Mr. Enwright 
 was not treating his partner with proper consideration. 
 But Mr. Enwright, as every one said at intervals, was 
 " like that " ; and his partnev did not seem to care 
 greatly. 
 
 Lucas shut the door between the principals' room and 
 the pupils' room. 
 
 " I say," said Lucas importantly. " I've got a show 
 on to-night. Women. Cafe Royal. I want a fourth. 
 You must come.'* 
 
 " Yes," sneered George. " And what about my exam, 
 I should like to know. . . . Besides, I can't." 
 
 The Final was due to begin on Thursday. 
 
 " That's all right," Lucas answered, with tact. 
 " That's all right. I'd thought of the exam of course. 
 You'll have to-morrow to recover. It'll do you all the 
 good in the world. And you know you're more than 
 ready for the thing. You don't want to be over- 
 trained, my son. Besides, you'll sail through it. As 
 for ' can't,' * can't ' be damned. You've got to." 
 
 A telegraph boj^ after hesitating at the empty cu- 
 bicle, came straight into the room. 
 
 " Name of Cannon." 
 
 George nodded, trembling. 
 
 The telegram read : " Impossible to-day. Mar- 
 guerite." 
 
 It was an incredible telegram, as much by what it 
 said, as by what it didn't say. It overthrew George. 
 
 " Seven forty-five, and I'll drive you round," said 
 Lucas. 
 
 " 'Tis well," said George. 
 
 Immediately afterwards Mr. Enwright summoned 
 Lucas.
 
 152 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 IV 
 
 The two young men of fashion were silent that even- 
 ing as they drove to the Cafe Royal in the car which 
 Lucas loosely called " my car," but which was his 
 mother's and only to be obtained by him upon his own 
 conditions after delicate diplomacies. The chief of his 
 conditions was that the chauffeur should not accompany 
 the car. Lucas, having been engaged upon outdoor 
 work for the firm, had not seen George throughout the 
 day. Further, he was late in calling for George, and 
 therefore rather exacerbated in secret; and if George 
 had not been ready and waiting for him at the club 
 trouble might have arisen. George understood his 
 host's mood and respected it. Lucas drove rapidly 
 and fiercely, with appropriate frowns and settings of 
 cruel teeth ; his mien indeed had the arrogance of the 
 performer who, having given only a fraction of his time 
 to the acquirement of skill, reckons that he can beat the 
 professional who has given the whole of his time. 
 Lucas's glances at chauffeurs who hindered his swift- 
 ness were masterpieces of high disdain, and he would 
 accelerate, after circumventing them, with positive 
 ferocity. 
 
 George himself, an implacable critic, could not find 
 fault with the technique of Lucas's driving. But ex- 
 acerbation tells, even in the young, and at Piccadilly 
 Circus Lucas, in obeying a too-suddenly uplifted hand 
 of a policeman, stopped his engine. The situation, 
 horribly humiliating for Lucas and also for George, 
 provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs and drivers in 
 Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocular- 
 ity of a kind then fairly new. Lucas cursed the inno- 
 cent engine, and George leapt down to wield the crank. 
 But the engine, apparently resenting curses, refused
 
 THE DINNER 153 
 
 to start again. No, it would not start. Lucas leapt 
 down, too. " Get out of the way," he muttered sav- 
 agely to George, and scowled at the bonnet as if 
 saying to the engine : " I'm not going to stand any 
 of your infernal nonsense ! " But still the engine re- 
 fused to start. 
 
 The situation, humiliating before, was now appalling. 
 Two entirely correct young gentlemen, in evening dress 
 with light overcoats and opera hats, struggling with a 
 refractory car that in its obstinacy was far more digni- 
 fied than themselves, — and the car obstructing traffic 
 at the very centre of the world in the very hour when 
 the elect of Britain were driving by on the way to 
 " Tristan " at the Opera ! Sebastians both, they were 
 martyrised by the poisoned arrows of vulgar wit, shot at 
 them from all sides and especially from the lofty thrones 
 of hansom-cab drivers. The policeman ordered them to 
 shove the car to the kerb, and with the aid of a boy 
 and the policeman himself they did so, opposite the 
 shuttered front of Swan and Edgar's. 
 
 The two experts then examined the engine in a pro- 
 fessional manner ; they did everything but take it down ; 
 they tried in vain all known devices to conquer the recal- 
 citrancy of engines ; and when they had reached despair 
 and fury George, startlingly visited by an idea, de- 
 manded : 
 
 "Any petrol in the tank? . . ." 
 
 In those days men of fashion were apt to forget, at 
 moments of crises, that the first necessity of the engine 
 was petrol. George behaved magnanimously. He 
 might have extinguished Lucas with a single inflection 
 as Lucas, shamed to the uttermost, poured a spare half- 
 tin of petrol into the tank. He refrained. 
 
 In one minute, in less than one minute, they were at 
 the side entrance to the Cafe Royal, which less than a
 
 154 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 minute earlier had been inconceivably distant and un- 
 attainable. Lucas dashed first into the restaurant. 
 To keep ladies waiting in a public place was for him 
 the very worst crime, surpassing in turpitude arson, 
 embezzlement, and the murder of innocents. The ladies 
 must have been waiting for a quarter of an hour, half 
 an hour ! His reputation was destroyed ! 
 
 However, the ladies had not arrived. 
 
 " That's all right," Lucas breathed, at ease at last. 
 The terrible scowl had vanished from his face, which 
 was perfectly re-composed into its urbane, bland charm. 
 
 " Now perhaps you'll inform me who they are, old 
 man," George suggested, relinquishing his overcoat to 
 a flunkey, and following Lucas into the cloister set apart 
 for the cleansing of hands which have meddled with 
 machinery. 
 
 "The Wheeler woman is one, — didn't I tell you?'* 
 Lucas answered, unsuccessfully concealing his pride. 
 
 "Wheeler?" 
 
 " Irene Wheeler. You know." 
 
 George was really impressed. Lucas had hitherto 
 said no word as to his acquaintance with this celebrated 
 woman. It was true that recently Lucas had been 
 spreading himself in various ways — he had even passed 
 his Intermediate — but George had not anticipated such 
 a height of achievement as the feat of entertaining at a 
 restaurant a cynosure like Irene Wheeler. George had 
 expected quite another sort of company at dinner, for 
 he had publicly dined with Lucas before. All day he 
 had been abstracted, listless, and utterly desolate. All 
 day he had gone over again and again the details of the 
 interview with Mr. Haim, his telegram to Marguerite 
 and her unspeakable telegram to him, hugging close a 
 terrific grievance. Only from pique against Marguerite 
 had he accepted Lucas's invitation. The adventure in
 
 THE DINNER 155 
 
 Piccadilly Circus had somewhat enlivened him, and now 
 the fluttering prospect of acquaintance with the legend- 
 ary Irene Wheeler pushed Marguerite into the back- 
 ground of his mind, and excitement became quite 
 pleasant. 
 
 " And a Miss Ingram," Lucas added. 
 
 "Not Lois Ingram?" exclaimed George, suddenly 
 dragging the names of Ingram and Wheeler out of the 
 same drawer of his memory. 
 
 " No. Laurencine. But she has a sister named Lois. 
 V'STiat do you know about her?" Lucas spoke chal- 
 lengingly, as if George had trespassed on preserves 
 sacred to himself alone. He had not yet admitted that 
 it was merely Mrs. John Orgreave who had put him in 
 the way of Irene Wheeler. 
 
 George was surprised and shocked that it had never 
 occurred to him to identify Lois Ingram's wealthy 
 friend Miss Wheeler with the Irene Wheeler of society 
 columns of newspapers. And Lois Ingram rose in his 
 esteem, not because of the distinction of her friend, but 
 because she had laid no boastful stress on the distinction 
 of her friend. 
 
 " Don't you remember," he said, " I told you once 
 about a girl who jolly nearly got me into a motor acci- 
 dent all through her fancying herself as a chauffeur. 
 That was Lois Ingram. Paris girl. Same lot, isn't 
 it?" 
 
 " Oh ! Was that Lois ? " Lucas murmured. " Well, 
 Pm dashed ! " 
 
 They returned in a hurry to the entrance-hall, fearful 
 lest the ladies might have arrived. However, the ladies 
 had not arrived. Lucas had the inexpressible satis- 
 faction of finding in an illustrated weekly a full-page 
 portrait of Miss Irene Wheeler. 
 
 " Here you are! " he ejaculated, with an air of use.
 
 156 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 as though he was habitually picking up from the tables 
 of fashionable restaurants high-class illustrated papers 
 containing portraits of renowned beauties to whom he 
 said " Come ! " and they came. It was a great moment 
 for Lucas. 
 
 Ten n)inutes later the ladies very calmly arrived, 
 seeming perfectly unaware that they were three quar- 
 ters of an hour behind time. Lucas felt that, much 
 as he already knew about life, he had learned something 
 fresh. 
 
 To George Irene Wheeler was not immediately recog- 
 nisable as the original of her portrait. He saw the 
 resemblance when he looked for it, but if after seeing 
 the photograph he had met the woman in the street he 
 would have passed her by unknowing. At first he was 
 disappointed in her. He had never before encountered 
 celebrated people — except architects, who Enwright 
 always said never could be really celebrated — and he 
 had to learn that celebrated people seldom differ in 
 appearance from uncelebrated people. Nevertheless it 
 was not to be expected that George should escape where 
 the most experienced and the most wary of two capitals 
 had not escaped. He did not agree that she was beauti- 
 ful, but her complexion enthralled him. He had never 
 seen such a complexion ; nobody had ever seen such a 
 complexion. It combined extremely marvellous whites 
 and extremely marvellous pinks, and the skin had the 
 exquisite, incredible softness of a baby's. Next he was 
 struck by her candid, ingenuous, enquiring gaze, and 
 by her thin voice with the slight occasional lisp. The 
 splendid magnificence of her frock and jewels came in- 
 to play later. Lastly her demeanour imposed itself. 
 That simple gaze showed not the slightest diffidence, 
 scarcely even modesty ; it was more brazen than effront- 
 ery. She preceded the other three into the restaurant,
 
 THE DINNER 167 
 
 where electricity had finally conquered the expiring 
 daylight, and her entry obviously excited the whole 
 room ; yet, guided by two waving and fawning waiters, 
 and a hundred glances upon her, she walked to the ap- 
 pointed table without a trace of self-consciousness, — as 
 naturally as a policeman down a street. When she sat 
 down, George on her right, Lucas on her left, and the 
 tall, virginal Laurencine Ingram opposite, she was the 
 principal person in the restaurant. George had al- 
 ready passed from disappointment to an impressed 
 nervousness. The inquisitive diners might all have 
 been quizzing him instead of Irene Wheeler. He envied 
 Lucas ; who was talking freely to both Miss Wheeler and 
 Laurencine about what he had ordered for dinner. 
 That morning over a drawing-board and an architec- 
 tural problem, Lucas had been humble enough to George, 
 and George by natural right had laid the law down to 
 Lucas, but now Lucas, who George was obliged to admit 
 never said anything brilliant or original, was outshin- 
 ing him. ... It was unquestionable that in getting 
 Irene Wheeler to dinner, Lucas, by some mysterious 
 talent which he possessed, had performed a feat greater 
 even than George had at first imagined, — a prodigious 
 feat. 
 
 George waited for Irene Wheeler to begin to talk. 
 She did not begin to talk. She was content with the 
 grand function of existing. Lucas showed her the 
 portrait in the illustrated paper, which he had kept. 
 She said it was comparatively an old one and had been 
 taken at the Durbar in January. " Were you at the 
 Durbar? " asked the simpleton George. Irene Wheeler 
 looked at him. " Yes. I was in the Viceroy's house- 
 party," she answered mildly. And then she said to 
 Lucas that she had sat three times to photographers 
 that week — " They won't leave me alone "— but that
 
 158 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 the proofs were none of them satisfactory. At this 
 Laurencine Ingrain boldly and blushingly protested, 
 maintaining that one of them was lovely. George was 
 attracted to Laurencine, in whom he saw no likeness 
 to her sister Lois. She could not long have left school. 
 She was the product finished for the world: she had 
 been taught everything that was considered desirable, 
 — even to the art of talking easily and yet virginally 
 on all subjects at table; and she was a nice, honest, 
 handsome girl, entirely unspoilt by the mysterious 
 operations practised upon her. She related how she 
 had been present when a famous photographer ar- 
 rived at Miss Wheeler's flat with his apparatus, and 
 what the famous photographer had said. The boys 
 laughed. Miss Wheeler smiled faintly. " I'm glad we 
 didn't have to go to that play to-night," she remarked, 
 quitting photography. " However, I shall have to go 
 to-morrow night. And I don't care for first nights in 
 London, only they will have me go.'* In this last 
 phrase, and in the intonation of it, was the first sign 
 she had given of her American origin ; her speech was 
 usually indistinguishable from English English, which 
 language she had in fact carefully acquired years ear- 
 lier. George gathered that Lucas's success in getting 
 Miss Wheeler to dinner was due to the accident of a 
 first night being postponed at the last moment and 
 Miss Wheeler thus finding lierself with an empty even- 
 ing. He covertly examined her. Why was the feat of 
 getting Miss Wheeler to dinner so enormous? Why 
 would photographers not leave her alone? Why would 
 theatrical managers have her accept boxes gratis which 
 they could sell for money? Why was she asked to join 
 the Viceregal party for the Durbar? Why was the res- 
 taurant agog? Why was he himself proud and flat- 
 tered — yes, proud and flattered — to be seen at the
 
 THE DINNER 159 
 
 same table with her ? . . . She was excessively rich ; no 
 doubt ; she was reputed to be the niece of a railway man 
 in Indianapolis who was one of the major rivals of Har- 
 riman. She dressed superbly, perhaps too superbly. 
 But there were innumerable rich and well-dressed women 
 on earth. After all, she put her gold bag and her 
 gloves down on the table with just the same gesture as 
 other women did; and little big Laurencine had a gold 
 bag too. She was not witty. He questioned whether 
 she was essentially kind. She was not young; her age 
 was an enigma. She had not a remarkable figure, nor 
 unforgettable hair, nor incendiary eyes. She seemed 
 too placid and self-centred for love. If she had loved, 
 it must have been as she sat to photographers or occu- 
 pied boxes on first nights, — because " they " would 
 have it so. George was baffled to discover the origin 
 of her prestige. He had to seek it in her complexion. 
 Her complexion was indubitably miraculous. He en- 
 joyed looking at it, though he lacked the experience to 
 know that he was looking at a complexion held by con- 
 noisseurs who do naught else but look at complexions to 
 be a complexion unique in Europe. George, unsophis- 
 ticated, thought that the unaffected simplicity — far 
 exceeding self-confidence — with which she acquiesced in 
 her prestige was perhaps more miraculous than her 
 complexion. It staggered him. 
 
 The dinner was a social success. Irene ^Mieeler lis- 
 tened adroitly, if without brilliance, and after one glass 
 of wine George found himself quite able to talk in the 
 Enwright manner about architecture and the profes- 
 sion of architecture, and also to talk about automobiles. 
 The casualness with which he mentioned his Final Exam- 
 ination was superb, — the examiners might have been 
 respectfully waiting for him to arrive and discomfit 
 them. But of course the main subject was automobiles.
 
 160 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 Even Laurencine knew the names of all the leading 
 makers, and when the names of all the leading makers 
 had been enumerated and their products discussed, the 
 party seemed to think that it had accomplished some- 
 thing that was both necessary and stylish. When the 
 table-cloth had been renewed, and the solemn moment 
 came for Everard Lucas to order liqueurs, George felt 
 almost ga}^ He glanced round the gilded and mirrored 
 apartment, now alluringly animated by the subdued yet 
 vivacious intimacies of a score of white tables, and de- 
 cided that the institution of restaurants was a laudable 
 and agreeable institution. Marguerite had receded 
 farther than ever into the background of his mind ; and 
 as for the Final, it had diminished to a formality. 
 
 " And you? " Everard asked Laurencine, after Miss 
 Wheeler. 
 
 George had thought that Laurencine was too young 
 for liqueurs. She had had no wine. He expected her 
 to say " Nothing, thanks," as conventionally as if her 
 late head-mistress had been present. But she hesitated, 
 smiling, and then, obedient to the profound and univer- 
 sal instinct which seems to guide all young women to 
 the same liqueur, she said : 
 
 " May I have a creme de menthe? I've never had 
 creme de menthe.** 
 
 George was certainly shocked for an instant. But 
 no one else appeared to be shocked. Miss Wheeler, in 
 charge of Laurencine, offered no protest. And then 
 George reflected : " And why not ? Why shouldn't she 
 have a creme de menthe? " When Laurencine raised 
 the tiny glass to her firm, large mouth, George thought 
 that the sight of the young virginal thing tasting a 
 liqueur was a fine and a beautiful sight. 
 
 " It's just heavenly! " murmured Laurencine ecstat- 
 ically.
 
 THE DINNER 161 
 
 Miss Wheeler was gazing at George. 
 
 "What's the matter?" he demanded, smiling, and 
 rested one elbow on the table and looked enigmatically 
 through the smoke of his cigar. 
 
 " I was just wondering about you," said Miss 
 Wheeler. Her voice, always faint, had dropped to a 
 murmur which seemed to expire as it reached George's 
 ear. 
 
 " Why ? " He was flattered. 
 
 " I've been wanting to see you." 
 
 " Really ! " he laughed, rather too loudly. " What a 
 pity I didn't know earlier." He was disturbed as well 
 as flattered, for such a remark from such a person as 
 Irene Wheeler to such a person as himself was bound 
 to be disturbing. His eyes sought audaciously to com- 
 mune with hers, but hers were not responsive ; they were 
 entirely non-committal. 
 
 " You are the man that wouldn't let my friend Lois 
 drive him in my car, aren't you.'' " 
 
 " Yes," he said defianth% but rather guiltily. " Did 
 she tell you about that .'' It's an awful long time ago." 
 She told me something about it." 
 And you've remembered it all this long while ! " 
 Yes," she answered, and her thin queer tone and her 
 tepid impartial glance had the eff^ect of a challenge to 
 him to justify himself. 
 
 " And don't you think I was quite right.'' " he ven- 
 tured. 
 
 " She drives very well." 
 
 It was not the sort of answer he was expecting. His 
 desire was to argue. 
 
 " She didn't drive very well then," he said with con- 
 viction. 
 
 " Was that a reason for your leaving her to drive 
 home alone .'' " 
 
 a 
 
 a
 
 162 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 Women were astounding! 
 
 " She ought to have let the chauffeur drive," he 
 maintained. 
 
 " Ah ! A man mustn't expect too much from a 
 woman." 
 
 " But I was risking my life in that car ! Do jou 
 mean to say I ought to have kept on risking it? " 
 
 " I don't express any opinion on that. That was 
 for vou to decide. . . . You must admit it was very 
 humiliating for poor Lois." 
 
 He felt himself cornered, but whether justly or un- 
 justly- he was uncertain. 
 
 " Was she vexed? " 
 
 " No, she wasn't vexed. Lois isn't the woman to be 
 vexed. But I have an idea she was a little hurt." 
 
 " Did she say so? " 
 
 " Say so? Lois.'* She'd never say anything against 
 anybody. Lois is a perfect angel. . . . Isn't she, Lau- 
 rencine? " 
 
 Laurcncine was being monopolised by Everard. 
 
 " What did you say ? " the girl asked, collecting her- 
 self. 
 
 " I was just saying what an angel Lois is." 
 
 "Oh! She is!" the younger sister agreed with im- 
 mense and sincere emphasis. 
 
 George, startled, said to himself suddenly : 
 
 "Was I mistaken in her? Some girls 3'ou are mis- 
 taken in ! They're regular bricks, but they keep it 
 from you at first." 
 
 Somehow, in spite of a slight superficial mortification, 
 he was very pleased by the episode of the conversation, 
 and his curiosity was titillated. 
 
 " Lois would have come to-night instead of Lauren- 
 cine," Miss Wheeler went on, " only she wasn't feeling 
 very well."
 
 THE DINNER 163 
 
 N 
 
 " Is she in London ? I've only seen her once from 
 that day to this, and then we didn't get near each other 
 owing to the crush. So we didn't speak. It was at 
 Mrs. Orgreave's." 
 
 " Yes, I know." 
 
 "Did she tell you?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Is she at your flat.'* " 
 
 " Yes. But she's not well." 
 
 *' Not in bed, I hope, or anything like that.'* " 
 
 " Oh, no ! She's not in bed." 
 
 Laurencine threw laughingly across the table: 
 
 " She's as well as I am." 
 
 It was another aspect of the younger sister. 
 
 When they left the restaurant it was nearly empty. 
 They left easily, slowly, magnificently. The largesse 
 of Everard Lucas — his hat slightlj^ raked — in the 
 foyer and at the portico was magnificent in both quan- 
 tity' and manner. There was no need to hurry ; the 
 hour, though late for the end of dinner, was early for 
 separation. They moved and talked without the slight- 
 est diffidence, familiar and confident ; the whole world 
 was reformed and improved for them by the stimulus of 
 food and alcohol. The night was sultry and dark. 
 The two women threw their cloaks back from their 
 shoulders, revealing the whiteness of toilettes. At the 
 door the headlights of Miss Wheeler's automobile shot 
 horizontally right across Regent Street. The chauf- 
 feur recognised George, and George recognised the car ; 
 he was rather surprised that Miss Wheeler had not had 
 a new car in eighteen months. Lucas spoke of his own 
 car which lay beyond in the middle of the side street 
 like a ship at anchor. He spoke in such a strain that 
 Miss Wheeler deigned to ask him to drive her home in 
 it. The two 3'oung men went to light the headlights.
 
 164 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 George noticed the angry scowl on Everard's face when 
 three matches had been blown out in the capricious 
 breeze. The success of the fourth match restored his 
 face to perfect benignit}^ He made the engine roar 
 triumphantly, imperiously sounded his horn, plunged 
 forward and drew the car up in front of Miss Wheeler's. 
 His bliss, when Miss Wheeler had delicately inserted 
 herself into the space by his side, was stern and yet 
 radiant. The big car, with George and Laurencine on 
 board, followed the little one like a cat following a 
 mouse, and Laurencine girlishly interested herself in 
 the chase. 
 
 George, with his mind on Lois, kept saying to 
 himself: " She's been thinking about that little affair 
 ever since last November but one. They've all been 
 thinking about it." He felt apprehensive, but his sat- 
 isfaction amounted to excitement. His attitude was: 
 " At any rate I gave them something to think about." 
 Also he breathed appreciatively the atmosphere of the 
 three women — two seen and one unseen. How extraor- 
 dinarily different all of them were from Aggl They 
 reminded him acutely of his deep need of luxury. Af- 
 ter all, the life lived by those two men about town, 
 George and Everard, was rather humdrum and monot- 
 onous. In spite of Everard's dash, and in spite of 
 George's secret engagement, neither of tliem met enough 
 women or enough sorts of women. George said to him- 
 self: "I shall see her to-night. We shall go up to 
 the flat. She isn't in bed. I shall see her to-night." 
 
 He wanted to see her because he had hurt her and be- 
 cause she had remembered and had talked about him and 
 had raised curiosity about him in others. Was she 
 really unwell? Or had she been excusing herself? 
 Was she an angel? He wanted to see her again in
 
 THE DINNER 165 
 
 order to judge for himself whether she was an angel. 
 If Laurencine said she was an angel she must be an 
 angel. Laurencine was a jolly, honest girl. To be in 
 the car with her was agreeable. But she was insipid. 
 So he assessed the splendidly budding Laurencine, pat- 
 ronising her a little. Miss Wheeler gave him pause. 
 Her simple phrases had mysterious intonations. He 
 did not understand her glance. He could not settle 
 the first question about her, — her age. She might be 
 very wicked ; certainly she could be very ruthless. And 
 he had no hold over her. He could give her nothing 
 that she wanted. He doubted whether any man could. 
 
 " Have you been in London long? " he asked Lau- 
 rencine. 
 
 " A week," she said. " I came over with Miss 
 Wheeler. I didn't think mother would let me, but she 
 did." 
 
 " And did your sister come with you ? " 
 
 " No. Lois only came yesterday." 
 
 "By herself.^" ^ 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I suppose you go about a lot ? " 
 
 " Oh ! We do. It's such a change from Paris." 
 
 " Well, I should prefer Paris." 
 
 " You wouldn't ! London's much more romantic. 
 Paris is so hard and matter-of-fact." 
 
 " So's London." 
 
 She squirmed about lissomly on the seat. 
 
 " You don't know what I mean," she said. " I never 
 can make people see what I mean — about anything." 
 
 He smiled indulgently and dropped the point. 
 
 " Miss Wheeler taken you to Mrs. Orgreave's yet.? '* 
 
 " Yes. We were there on Saturday afternoon." 
 
 " Well, what do you think of Mrs. Orgreave.'* "
 
 166 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " Oh ! She's very nice," Laurencine answered with 
 polite tepidity, and added eager!}' : " Mr. Orgreave's a 
 dear." 
 
 George was glad that she had not been enthusiastic 
 about jNIrs. Orgreave. Her reserve showed that she 
 could discriminate. Ecstasy was not altogether a 
 habit. If she said that Lois was an angel, Lois prob- 
 ably was an angel. 
 
 The cars stopped at the foot of a huge block of ma- 
 sonry in a vast leafy square. George suddenly became 
 very nervous. He thought : *' I shall be seeing her in a 
 minute." 
 
 Then, as he got out of the car, he heard Miss Wheeler 
 saying to Lucas : 
 
 " Well, good night. And thanlc you so much. It's 
 been most delightful. . . . We expect you soon, of 
 course." 
 
 She actuallj' was not asking them to go up ! George 
 •was excessively disappointed. He watched IVIiss 
 Wheeler and Laurencine disappear into the rich and 
 guarded interior with envy, as though they had en- 
 tered a delectable paradise to which he could not as- 
 pire; and the fact that Miss Wheeler had vaguely in- 
 vited him to call did not brighten him very much. He 
 had assumed that he would see Lois the angel that night. 
 
 The young men finished the evening at Pickering's. 
 Pickering's was George's club. George considered, 
 rightly, that in the matter of his club he had had great 
 luck. Pickering's was a small club, and it had had 
 vicissitudes. Most men whose worldly education had 
 been completed in St. James's were familiar with its 
 historical name, but few could say offhand where it 
 was. Its address was Candle Court, and Candle Court
 
 THE DINNER 167 
 
 lay at the end of Candle Alley (a very short passage) 
 between Duke Street and Ryder Street. The Court 
 was in fact a tiny square of several houses, chiefly used 
 by traders and agents of respectability — as respecta- 
 bility is understood in St. James's ; it had a lamp post 
 of its own. The report ran, and was beheved by per- 
 sons entitled to an opinion, that the Duke of Welling- 
 ton had for some years hidden there the lovely desire of 
 his heart from an inquisitive West End. Pickering's 
 had of course originally been a coffee-house; later, like 
 many other coffee-houses in the neighbourhood, it had 
 developed into a proprietary club. Misfortunes due 
 to the caprices of taste and to competition had brought 
 about an arrangement by which the ownership was 
 vested in a representative committee. The misfortunes 
 had continued, and at the beginning of the century a 
 crisis was reached and Pickering's tried hard to popu- 
 larise itself, thereby doing violence to its feelings. 
 Rules were abated, and the entrance fee fell. It was in 
 this period that Everard Lucas, whose ears were always 
 open for useful items, heard of it and suggested it to 
 George. George wanted to join Lucas's club, which 
 was in St. James's Street itself, but Lucas wisely 
 pointed out that if they belonged to different clubs each 
 would in practice have two clubs. Moreover, he said 
 that George might conceivably get a permanent bed- 
 room there. The first sight of the prim, picturesque 
 square, the first liint of the scandal about the Duke of 
 Wellington, decided George. It was impossible for a 
 man about town to refuse the chance of belonging to 
 a club in a Court where the Duke of Wellington had 
 committed follies. 
 
 George was proposed, seconded, and duly elected, 
 together with other new blood. Some of the old blood 
 naturally objected, but the feud was never acute.
 
 168 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 Solely owing to the impression which his young face 
 made on the powerful and aged hall-porter, George ob- 
 tained a bedroom. It was small, and at the top of the 
 house; but it was cheap, it solved the even more tire- 
 some and uncomfortable problem of lodging; and fur- 
 ther it was a bedroom at Pickering's, and George could 
 say that he lived at his club, — an imposing social ad- 
 vantage. He soon learnt how to employ the resources 
 of the club for his own utmost benefit. Nobody could 
 surpass him in choosing a meal inexpensively. He could 
 have his breakfast in his bedroom for tenpence, or even 
 sixpence when his appetite was poor. He was well 
 served by a valet who apparently passed his whole life 
 on stairs and landings. This valet, courteous rather in 
 the style of old Haim, had a brain just equal to the 
 problems presented by his vocation. Every morning 
 George would say : " Now, Downs, how soon can I have 
 my bath? " or " Now, Downs, what can I have for break- 
 fast?" And Downs would conscientiously cerebrate 
 and come forth after some seconds with sound solutions, 
 such as : " I'll see if I can put you in before Mr. de 
 Gales if you're in a hurry, sir," or " Scrambled eggs, 
 sir, — it'll make a bit of a change." And when George 
 agreed. Downs would exhibit a restrained but real satis- 
 faction. Yes, George had been very lucky. The club 
 too was lucky. The oldest member, who being paralysed 
 had not visited the club for eleven years, died and be- 
 queathed ten thousand pounds to the institution where 
 he had happily played cards for several decades. Pick- 
 ering's was refurnished, and the stringency of its rules 
 re-established. The right wing of the Committee wished 
 that the oldest member could have managed to die a year 
 or two earlier and so have obviated the crisis. It was 
 recognised, however, by the more reasonable that you 
 cannot have everything in this world.
 
 THE DINNER 169 
 
 Pickering's was very dull ; but it was still Pickering's. 
 George was often bored at Pickering's. He soon 
 reached the stage at which a club member asserts gloom- 
 ily that the club cookery is simply damnable. Never- 
 theless he would have been desolated to leave Picker- 
 ing's. The place was useful to him in another respect 
 than the purely material. He learnt there the code 
 which governs the familiar relations of men about 
 town. 
 
 On the night of the Cafe Royal dinner, George and 
 Lucas reclined in two easy-chairs in the inner smoking- 
 room of Pickering's. They were alone. Through the 
 wide archway that marked the division between the inner 
 and the outer smoking-rooms they could see one solitary 
 old gentleman dozing in an attitude of abandonment, a 
 magazine on his knees. Ash-trays were full of ash and 
 cigarette ends and matches. Newspapers were scat- 
 tered around, some folded inside out, some not folded, 
 some whose component sheets had been divided forever 
 like the members of a ruined family. The windows were 
 open ; and one gave a view of the Court's watchful lamp- 
 post, and the other of the house — now occupied by an 
 art dealer and a commission agent — where the Duke 
 had known both illusion and disillusion. The delicate 
 sound of the collision of billiard-balls came from some- 
 where, and the rat-tatting of a tape-machine from some- 
 where else. The two friends had arrived at the condi- 
 tion of absolute wisdom and sagacity and tolerance 
 which is apt to be achieved at a late hour in clubs by 
 young and old men who have discussed at length the 
 phenomena of society. 
 
 " Well, I must be toddling," said Lucas, yawning as 
 he looked idly at the coloured horses on each wall who 
 were forever passing winning-posts or soaring over bull- 
 finches or throwing riders into brooks.
 
 ITO THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " Here ! Hold on ! " George protested. " It's 
 early." 
 
 "Is it?" 
 
 They began again to smoke and talk. 
 
 " Nice little thing, what's-her-name ! What's her 
 funny name? " George murmured. 
 
 " Laurencine, do you mean? Yes." 
 
 Lucas spoke coldly, with a careful indifference. 
 George, to whom insight had not been denied, under- 
 stood tiiat Everard did not altogether care for Lauren- 
 cine to be referred to as a little thing, that he had ren- 
 dered Laurencine sacred by his secret approval. 
 
 " I say," said George, sitting up slightly, and increas- 
 ing the intimacy of his tone. " Devilish odd, wasn't it, 
 that the Wheeler woman didn't ask us up? " 
 
 Hitherto they had avoided this question in their pro- 
 found gossip. It had lain between them untouched, like 
 a substance possibly dangerous and explosive. Yet 
 they could not have parted without touching it, and 
 George, with characteristic moral courage or rashness, 
 had touched it first. Lucas was of a mind to reply suc- 
 cinctly that the Wheeler woman's conduct was not a bit 
 devilish odd. But sincerity won. The dismissal at the 
 entrance to the Mansions had affected him somewhat 
 deeply. It had impaired the perfection of his most not- 
 able triumph. The temptation to release his feelings 
 was too strong. 
 
 " Well, if you ask me," he answered, " it was." 
 
 After a little pause he went on : 
 
 " Especially seeing that she practically asked me to 
 ask them to dinner." His nice features loosened to dis- 
 satisfaction. 
 
 " The deuce she did ! " 
 
 " Yes ! Practically asked me ! Anyhow gave me the 
 tip. What can you do? " He implied that, far from
 
 THE DINNER 171 
 
 deriving unique and unhoped-for glory from the conde- 
 scension of Irene Wheeler in consenting to dine with him, 
 he had conferred a favour on her by his invitation. He 
 implied that brilliant women all over London competed 
 for his invitations. His manner was entirely serious ; 
 it probably deceived even himself. George's manner 
 corresponded, instinctively, chivalrously ; but George 
 was not deceived — at any rate in the subconscious 
 depth of his mind. 
 
 " Exactly ! " murmured George. 
 
 " Yes," said Lucas. *' She said : ' I could bring 
 Laurencine with me, if you can get another man. That 
 would make a four.' She said she wanted to wake 
 Laurencine up." 
 
 " Did you tell her you should ask me? " George ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 " Oh ! She seemed to know all about you, my boy." 
 
 " Well, but she couldn't know all about me," said 
 Goerge insincerely. 
 
 " Well, if you want to know then, she suggested I 
 should ask you." 
 
 " But she'd never seen me ! " 
 
 " She's heard of you. Mrs. Orgreave, I expect." 
 
 " Odd ! . . . Odd ! " George now pretended to be 
 academically' assessing an announcement that had no 
 intrinsic interest for him. In reality, he was greatly 
 excited. 
 
 " Well, you know what those sort of women are ! " 
 Lucas summed up wisely, as if referring to truths of 
 knowledge common among men of their kidney. 
 
 " Oh, of course ! " 
 
 The magazine slid from the knees of the sleeper. 
 The sleeper snorted and woke up. The spell was 
 broken. 
 
 Lucas rose suddenly.
 
 172 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " By-bye ! " He was giving an ultimatum as to his 
 departure. 
 
 George rose also, but slowly. 
 
 " All that doesn't explain why she didn't ask us up," 
 said he. 
 
 But in his heart he thought he knew why Miss 
 Wheeler hadn't asked them up. The reason was that 
 she maliciously wanted to tantalise him, George. She 
 had roused his curiosity about Lois, and then she had 
 said to herself : " You think you're going to see her 
 to-night, but you just aren't." Such, according to 
 George, was Irene Wheeler the illustrious. He reflected 
 on the exasperating aff'air until he had undressed and 
 got into bed. But as soon as he had put out the light 
 Marguerite appeared before him, and at the back of her 
 were the examiners for the Final. He slept ill.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE RUPTURE 
 
 During the whole of the next day George waited for 
 a letter from Marguerite. There was nothing at the 
 Club by the first post ; he went to the office, hoping that 
 as he had addressed his telegram from Russell Square 
 she might have written to Russell Square; there was 
 nothing at Russell Square. At lunch-time no word had 
 arrived at the Club; when the office closed no word had 
 arrived at the office ; the last post brought nothing to 
 the Club. He might have sent another telegram to 
 Alexandra Grove, but he was too proud to do so. He 
 dined alone and most miserably at the Club. Inspired 
 by unhappiness and resentment, he resolved to go to 
 bed ; in bed, he might read himself to sleep. But in the 
 hall of the Club his feet faltered. Perhaps it was the 
 sight of hats and sticks that made him vacillate, or a 
 glimpse of reluctantly-d^nng silver in the firmament over 
 Candle Court. He wavered ; he stood still at the foot 
 of the stairs. The next moment he was in the street. 
 He had decided to call on Agg at the studio, -^gg 
 might have the clue to Marguerite's astounding conduct, 
 though he had it not. He took a hansom, after saying 
 he would walk ; he was too impatient for walking. Pos- 
 sibly Marguerite would be at the studio ; possibly a 
 letter of hers had miscarried ; letters did miscarry. He 
 was in a state of peculiar excitement as he paid the 
 cabman, — an enigma to himself. 
 
 173
 
 174 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 The studio was quite dark. Other studios showed 
 lights, but not Agg's. From one studio came the sound 
 of a mandolin — he thought it was a mandolin — and 
 the sound seemed pathetic, tragic, to his ears. Agg was 
 perhaps in bed ; he might safely arouse her ; she would 
 not object. But no! He would not do that. Pride, 
 again ! It would be too humiliating for him, the 
 affianced, to have to ask Agg: "I say, do you know 
 anything about Marguerite? " The affianced ought to 
 be the leading authority as to the doings of Marguerite. 
 He turned away, walked a little, and perceived the cab- 
 man swinging himself cautiously down from his perch in 
 order to enter a public-house. He turned back. Mar- 
 guerite too might be in bed at the studio. Or the girls 
 might be sitting in the dark talking, — a habit of theirs. 
 . . . Fanciful suppositions ! At any rate he would not 
 knock at the door of the studio, would not even enter 
 the alley again. What carried him into the Fulham 
 Road and westwards as far as the Workhouse tower 
 and the corner of Alexandra Grove? Feet! But 
 surely the feet of another person, over which he had no 
 control ! He went in the lamplit dimness of Alexandra 
 Grove like a thief; he crept into it. The silver had not 
 yet died out of the sky ; he could see it across the spaces 
 between the dark houses ; it was sad in exactly the same 
 way as the sound of the mandolin had been sad. 
 
 What did he mean to do in the Grove? Nothing! 
 He was just walking in it by chance. He could indeed 
 do nothing. For if he rang at No. 8 old Haim would 
 again confront him in the portico. He passed by No. 8, 
 on the opposite side of the road. No light showed, ex- 
 cept a very dim glow through the blind of the basement 
 window to the left of the front-door. Those feet be- 
 neath him strolled across the road. The basement win- 
 dow was wide open. The blind being narrower than the
 
 THE RUrTURE 175 
 
 window-frame, he could see, through the railings, into 
 the room within. He saw Marguerite. She was sit- 
 ting, in an uncomfortable posture, in the rather high- 
 seated armchair in which formerly, when the room was 
 her studio, she used to sit at her work. Her head had 
 dropped on one shoulder. She was asleep. On the 
 table a candle burned. His heart behaved strangely. 
 He flushed. All his flesh tingled. The gate creaked 
 horribly as he tiptoed into the patch of garden. He 
 leaned over the little chasm between the level of the 
 garden and the window, and supported himself with a 
 hand on the lower sash. He pushed the blind sideways 
 with the other hand. 
 
 " Marguerite ! " in a whisper. Then louder : 
 " Marguerite ! " 
 
 She did not stir. She was in a deep sleep. Her 
 hands hung limp. Her face was very pale and very 
 fatigued. She liberated the same sadness as the sound 
 of the mandolin and the gleam of silver in the June sky, 
 but it was far more poignant. At the spectacle of those 
 weary and unconscious features and of the soft bodily 
 form, George's resentment was annihilated. He won- 
 dered at his resentment. He was aware of nothing in 
 himself but Avarm, protective love. Tenderness surged 
 out from the impenetrable secrecy of his heart, filled 
 him, overflowed, and floated in waves towards the sleeper. 
 In the intense sadness, and in the uncertainty of events, 
 he was happy. 
 
 An older man might have paused, but without hesi- 
 tancy George put his foot on the window-sill, pushed 
 down the window further, and clambered into the room 
 in which he had first seen Marguerite. His hat, press- 
 ing backward the blind, fell off and bounced its hard 
 felt on the floor, which at the edges was uncarpeted. 
 The noise of the hat and the general stir of George's
 
 176 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 infraction disturbed Marguerite, who awoke and looked 
 up. The melancholy which she was exhaling suddenly 
 vanished. Her steady composure in the alarm delighted 
 George. 
 
 " Couldn't wake you," he murmured lightly. It was 
 part of his Five Towns upbringing to conceal excite- 
 ment. " Saw you through the window." 
 
 " Oh ! George ! Was I asleep ? " 
 
 Pleasure shone on her face. He deposited his stick 
 and sprang to her. He sat on the arm of the chair. 
 He bent her head back and examined her face. He 
 sat on her knee and held her. She did not kiss ; she was 
 kissed ; he liked that. Her fatigue was adorable. 
 
 " I came here for something, and I just sat down for 
 a second because I was so tired, and I must have gone 
 right off. ... No ! No ! " 
 
 The admonishing negative was to stop him from get- 
 ting up off her knee. She was exhausted, yet she had 
 vast resources of strength to bear him on her knee. She 
 was wearing her oldest frock. It was shabby. But it 
 exquisitely suited her then. It was the frock of her 
 capability, of her great labours, of her vigil, of her 
 fatigue. It covered, but did not hide, her beautiful con- 
 tours. He thought she was marvellously beautiful — 
 and very young, far younger than himself. As for him, 
 he was the dandy, in striking contrast to her. His 
 dandyism as he sat on her knee pleased both of them. 
 He looked older than his years, his shoulders had broad- 
 ened, his dark moustache thickened. In his own view 
 he was utterly adult, as she was in hers. But their 
 young faces so close together, so confident, were touch- 
 ingly immature. As he observed her grave satisfaction 
 at his presence, the comfort which he gave her, he felt 
 sure of her, and the memory of his just resentment 
 came to him, and he was tenderly reproachful.
 
 THE RUPTURE 177 
 
 ** I expected to hear from you," he said. The male in 
 him relished the delicate accusation of his tone. 
 
 Marguerite answered with a little startled intake of 
 breath : 
 
 " She's dead ! " 
 
 "Dead?" 
 
 " She died this afternoon. The layer-out left about 
 half an hour ago," 
 
 Death parted them. He rose from her knee, and 
 Marguerite did not try to prevent him. He was pro- 
 foundly shocked. With desolating vividness he recalled 
 the Sunday afternoon when he had carried upstairs the 
 plump, living woman now dead. He had always liked 
 Mrs. Lob, — it was as Mrs. Lob that he thought of her. 
 He had seen not much of her. Only on that Sunday 
 afternoon had he and she reached a sort of intimacy — 
 unspoken but real. He had liked her. He had even 
 admired her. She was no ordinary being. And he had 
 sympathised with her for Marguerite's quite explicable 
 defection. He had often wished that those two, the 
 charwoman and his beloved, could somehow have been 
 brought together. The menaces of death had brought 
 them together. Mrs. Lob was laid out in the bedroom 
 which he had once entered. Mrs. Lob had been dying 
 while he dined richly with Miss Wheeler and Laurencine, 
 and while he talked cynically with Everard Lucas. And 
 while he had been resenting Marguerite's neglect Mar- 
 guerite was watching by the dying bed. Oh! The 
 despicable superficialities of restaurants and clubs ! He 
 was ashamed. The mere receding shadow of death 
 shamed him. 
 
 " The baby's dead too, of course," Marguerite added. 
 " She ought never to have had a baby. It seems she 
 had had two miscarriages." 
 
 There were tears in Marguerite's eyes and in her
 
 178 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 voice. Nevertheless her tone was rather matter-of-fact 
 as she related these recondite and sinister things. 
 George thought that women were very strange. Imag- 
 ine Marguerite quietly talking to him in this strain ! 
 Then the sense of the formidable secrets that lie hidden 
 in the history of families, and the sense of the conti- 
 nuity of individual destinies, overwhelmed him. There 
 was silence. 
 
 " And your exam begins to-morrow," whispered the 
 astonishing Marguerite. 
 
 " Where's the old gentleman ? " 
 
 " He's sitting in the parlour in the dark." 
 
 It was a terrible house: they two intimidated and 
 mournful in the basement ; the widower solitary on the 
 ground-floor ; the dead bodies, the wastage and futility 
 of conception and long bearing, up in the bedroom. 
 And in all the house the light of one candle ! George 
 suddenly noticed, then, that Marguerite was not wearing 
 the thin, delicate ring which he had long ago given her. 
 Had she removed it because of her manual duties? He 
 wanted to ask the question, but, even unspoken, it seemed 
 too trivial for the hour. . . . 
 
 There was a shuffling sound beyond the door, and a 
 groping on the outer face of the door. Marguerite 
 jumped up. Mr. Haim stumbled into the room. He 
 had incredibly aged ; he looked incredibly feeble. But 
 as he pointed a finger at George he was in a fury of 
 anger, and his anger was senile, ridiculous, awful. 
 
 " I thought I heard voices," he said, half-squeaking. 
 *' How did you get in? You didn't come in by the door. 
 Out of my house. My wife lying dead upstai-rs, and 
 you choose this night to break in ! " He was implacable 
 against George, absolutely ; and George recoiled. 
 
 The opening of the door had created a draught in
 
 THE RUPTURE 179 
 
 which the candle-flame trembled, and the shadow of the 
 old man trembled on the door. 
 
 "You'd better go. I'll write. I'll write," Mar- 
 guerite murmured to George very calmly, very gently, 
 very persuasively. She stood between the two men. 
 Her manner was perfect. It eternally impressed itself 
 on George. " Father, come and sit down." 
 
 The old man obeyed her. So did George. He 
 snatched his hat and stick. By the familiar stone steps 
 of the basement, and along the familiar hall, he felt his 
 way to the door, turned the familiar knob, and de- 
 parted. 
 
 n 
 
 The examination began the next day. Despite his 
 preoccupation about Marguerite, George's perform- 
 ances during the first days were quite satisfactory to 
 himself. Indeed, after a few minutes in the examina- 
 tion-room, after the preliminary critical assessing of the 
 difficulty of the problems in design, and the questions, 
 and of his ability to deal with them, George successfully 
 forgot everything except the great seven-day duel be- 
 tween the self-constituted autocratic authorities backed 
 by prestige and force, and the aspirants who had naught 
 but their wits to help them. He was neither a son, nor 
 a friend, nor a lover ; he ceased to have human ties ; he 
 had become an examinee. Marguerite wrote him two 
 short letters which were perfect, save that he always re- 
 garded her handwriting as a little too clerical, too like 
 her father's. She made no reference whatever to the 
 scene in the basement-room. She said that she could 
 not easily arrange to see him immediately, and that for 
 the sake of his exam he ought not to be distracted. She 
 would have seen him on the Saturday, but on Saturday 
 George learnt that her father was a little unwell and re-
 
 180 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 quired, even if he did not need, constant attention. The 
 funeral, unduly late, occurred by Mr. Haim's special 
 desire on the Sunday, most of which day George spent 
 with Everard Lucas. On the Monday he had a ren- 
 dezvous at eight o'clock with Marguerite at the studio. 
 
 She opened the door herself; and her welcome was 
 divine. Her gestures spoke, delicate, and yet robust in 
 their candour. But she was in deep mourning. 
 
 " Oh ! " he said, holding her. " You're wearing 
 black, then." 
 
 " Of course ! " she answered sweetly. " You see I had 
 to be there all through the funeral. And father would 
 have been frightfully shocked if I hadn't been in black 
 — naturally." 
 
 " Of course ! " he agreed. It was ridiculous that he 
 should be surprised and somewhat aggrieved to find her 
 in mourning; still, he was surprised and somewhat 
 aggrieved. 
 
 " Besides " she added vaguely. 
 
 And that " besides " disquieted him, and confirmed his 
 grievance. Why should she wear mourning for a woman 
 to whom she was not related, whom she had known 
 simpl}^ as a charwoman, and who had forced her to leave 
 her father's house.'* There was no tie between Mar- 
 guerite and her stepmother. George, for his part, had 
 liked the dead woman, but Marguerite had not even 
 liked her. No, she was not wearing black in honour of 
 the dead, but to humour the living. And why should 
 her father be humoured.'* George privately admitted 
 the unreasonableness, the unsoundness, of these consid- 
 erations — obviously mourning wear was imperative for 
 Marguerite — nevertheless they were present in his 
 mind. 
 
 " That frock's a bit tight, but it suits you," he said, 
 advancing with her into the studio.
 
 THE RUPTURE 181 
 
 " It's an old one," she smiled. 
 
 "An old one?" 
 
 " It's one I had for mother." 
 
 He had forgotten that she had had a mother, that she 
 had known what grief was, only a very few years earlier. 
 He resented these bereavements and the atmosphere 
 which they disengaged. He wanted a different atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 " Is the exam really all right ? " she appealed to him, 
 taking both his hands and leaning against him and 
 looking up into his face. 
 
 " What did I tell you in my letter? " 
 
 " Yes, I know." 
 
 " The exam is as right as rain." 
 
 " I knew it would be." 
 
 " You didn't," he laughed. He imitated her : " ' Is 
 the exam really all right?'" She just smiled. He 
 went on confidently : " Of course you never know your 
 luck, you know. There's the viva to-morrow. . . . 
 Where's old Agg? " 
 
 " She's gone home." 
 
 "Thoughtful child! How soon will she be back?" 
 
 " About nine," said Marguerite, apparently unaware 
 that George was being funny. 
 
 " Nine ! " ' 
 
 " Oh, George ! " Marguerite exclaimed, breaking 
 away from him. " I'm awfully sorry, but I must get on 
 with my packing." 
 
 "What packmg?" 
 
 " I have to take my things home." 
 
 "What home?" 
 
 " Father's, I mean." 
 
 She was going back to live with her father who 
 would not willingly allow him, George, to enter the 
 house ! How astounding girls were ! She had written
 
 182 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 to him twice without giving the least hint of her resolve. 
 He had to learn it as it were incidentally, through the 
 urgency of packing. She did not tell him she was going, 
 — she said she must get on with her packing ! And 
 there, lying on the floor, was on open trunk; and two 
 of her drawing-boards already had string round them. 
 
 George enquired : 
 
 " How is the old man — to-day ? " 
 
 " He's very nervy," said Marguerite briefly and sig- 
 nificantly. " I'd better light the lamp, I shall see bet- 
 ter." She seemed to be speaking to herself. She stood 
 on a chair and lifted the chimney off^ the central lamp. 
 George absently passed her his box of matches. 
 
 As she was replacing the chimney, he said suddenly 
 in a very resolute tone : 
 
 " This is all very well. Marguerite. But it's going to 
 be jolly awkward for me." 
 
 She jumped lightly down from the chair, like a little 
 girl. 
 
 "Oh! George! I know!" she cried. "It will be 
 awkward for both of us. But we shall arrange some- 
 thing." She might have resented his tone. She might 
 have impulsively defended herself. But she did not. 
 She accepted his attitude with unreserved benevolence. 
 Her gaze was marvellously sympathetic. 
 
 " I can't make out what your father's got against 
 me," said George angrily, building his vexation on her 
 benevolence. " What have I done, I should like to 
 know." 
 
 " It's simply because you lived there all that time 
 without him knowing we were engaged. He says if he'd 
 known he would never have let you stay there a day.'* 
 She smiled, mournfully, forgivingly, excusingly. 
 
 " But it's preposterous ! " 
 
 "Oh! It is."
 
 THE RUPTURE 183 
 
 " And how does he behave to you^ Is he treating 
 you decently ? " 
 
 " Oh ! Fairly. You see he's got a lot to get over. 
 And he's most frightfully upset about — his wife. 
 Well, you saw him yourself, didn't you? " 
 
 " That's no reason why he should treat you badly." 
 
 " But he doesn't, George ! " 
 
 " Oh ! I know ! I know ! Do you think I don't 
 know. He's not even decent to you. I can see it in 
 your voice. Why should you go back and live with 
 him if he isn't prepared to appreciate it.? " 
 
 " But he expects it, George. And what am I to do.'' 
 He's all alone. I can't leave him all alone, can I.'' " 
 
 George burst out : 
 
 " I tell you what it is, Marguerite. You're too good- 
 natured. That's what it is. You're too good-natured. 
 And it's a very bad thing." 
 
 Tears came into her eyes ; she could not control them. 
 She was grieved by his remark. 
 
 " I'm not, George, trul3\ You must remember 
 father's been through a lot this last week. So have I." 
 
 " I admit all that. But you're too good-natured, and 
 I'll stick to it." 
 
 She was smiling again. 
 
 " You only think that because you're fond of me. 
 Nobody else would say it, and I'm not. Help me to lift 
 this trunk on to the chest." 
 
 While the daylight withdrew, and the smell of the 
 lamp strengthened and then faded, and the shadows cast 
 by the lamp-rays grew blacker, she went on rapidly with 
 her packing, he serving her at intervals. They said 
 little. His lower lip fell lower and lower. The evening 
 was immensely, horribly different from what he had ex- 
 pected and hoped for. He felt once more the inescap- 
 able grip of destiny fastening upon him.
 
 184. THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 « 
 
 Why are you in such a hurry? " he asked, after a 
 long time. 
 
 " I told father I should be back at a quarter past 
 
 * j> 
 nine. 
 
 This statement threw George into a condition of total 
 dark disgust. He made no remark. But what remarks 
 he could have made, — sarcastic, bitter, unanswerable ! 
 Why indeed in the name of heaven should she promise 
 her father to be back at a quarter past nine, or at a 
 quarter past anything? Was she a servant? Had she 
 no rights? Had he himself, George, no rights? 
 
 A little before nine Agg arrived. Marguerite was 
 fastening the trunk. 
 
 " Now be sure, Agg," said Marguerite. " Don't for- 
 get to hang out the Carter Paterson card at the end of 
 the alley to-morrow morning. I must have these things 
 at home to-morrow night for certain. The labels are 
 on. And here's twopence for the man." 
 
 " Do I forget? " retorted Agg cheerfully. " By the 
 way, George, I want to talk to you." She turned to 
 Marguerite and repeated in quite a different voice : " I 
 want to talk to him, dear, to-night. Do let him stay. 
 Will you?" 
 
 Marguerite gave a puzzled assent. 
 
 " I'll call after I've taken Marguerite to Alexandra 
 Grove, Agg — on my way back to the club." 
 
 " Oh, no, you won't ! " said Agg. " I shall be gone to 
 bed then. Look at that portrait and see how I've 
 worked. My family's concerned about me. It wants 
 me to go away for a holiday." 
 
 George had not till then noticed the portrait at all. 
 
 " But I must take Marguerite along to the Grove," 
 he insisted. " She can't go alone." 
 
 " And why can't she go alone? What sort of a con- 
 ventional world do you think you live in? Don't girls
 
 THE RUPTURE 185 
 
 go home alone? Don't they come in alone? Don't I? 
 Anybody would think, to listen to some people, that the 
 purdah flourishes in Chelsea. But it's all pretence. I 
 don't ask for the honour of a private interview with you 
 every night. You've both of you got all your lives be- 
 fore you. And for once in a way Marguerite's going 
 out alone. At least you can take her to the street, I 
 don't mind that. But don't be outside more than a 
 minute." 
 
 Agg, who had sat down, rose and slowly removed her 
 small hat. With pins in her mouth she said something 
 about the luggage to Marguerite. 
 
 " All right ! All right ! " George surrendered gloom- 
 ily. In truth he was not sorry to let Marguerite depart 
 solitary. And Agg's demeanour was very peculiar; he 
 would have been almost afraid to be too obstinate in 
 denying her request. He had never seen her hysterical, 
 but a suspicion took him that she might be capable of 
 hysteria. . . . You never knew, with that kind of girl 
 — he thought sagaciously. 
 
 In the darkness of the alley, George said to Marguer- 
 ite, feigning irritation : 
 
 " What on earth does she want ? " 
 "Agg? Oh! It's probably nothing. She does get 
 excited sometimes, you know." 
 
 The two girls had parted with strange hard demon- 
 strations of affection from Agg. 
 
 " I suppose you'll write," said George coldly. 
 " To-morrow, darling," she replied quite simply and 
 gravely. 
 
 Her kiss was warm, complete, faithful, very loving, 
 very sympathetic. Nothing in her demeanour as she 
 left him showed that George had received it in a non- 
 committal manner. Yet she must have noticed his 
 wounded reserve. He did not like such duplicity. He
 
 186 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 would have preferred her to be less miraculously angelic. 
 
 When he re-entered the studio, Agg, who very seldom 
 smoked, was puffing violently at a cigarette. She re- 
 clined on one elbow on the settee, her eyes fixed on the 
 portrait of herself. George was really perturbed by 
 the baffling queerness of the scenes through which he 
 was passing. 
 
 " Look here, infant-in-arms," she began immediatel3\ 
 " I only wanted to say two words to you about Mar- 
 guerite. Can you stand it.'' " 
 
 There was a pause. George walked in front of her, 
 hiding the easel. 
 
 " Yes," he said gruffly. 
 
 " Well, Marguerite's a magnificent girl. She's ex- 
 traordinarily capable. You'd think she could look after 
 herself as well as any one. But she can't. I know her 
 far better than you do. She needs looking after. 
 She'll make a fool of herself if she isn't handled." 
 
 " How do you mean? " 
 
 " You know how I mean." 
 
 " D'you mean about the old man.'' " 
 
 " I mean about the perfectly horrid old man. . . . 
 Ah ! If I was in your place, if I was a man," she said 
 passionately, " do you know what I should do with Mar- 
 guerite.'' I should carry her off. I should run away 
 with her. I should drag her out of the house, and she 
 should know what a real man was. I'm not going to 
 discuss her with you. I'm not going to say any more 
 at all. I'm off to bed. But before you go, I do think 
 you might tell mo my portrait's a pretty good thing." 
 
 And she did not say any more. 
 
 ni 
 
 The written part of the examination lasted four days; 
 and then there was an interval of one day in which the
 
 THE RUPTURE 187 
 
 harassed and harried aspirants might restore them- 
 selves for the two days' ordeal of the viva voce. George 
 had continued to be well satisfied with his work up to 
 the interval. He considered that he had perfectly suc- 
 ceeded in separating the lover and the examinee, and 
 that nothing foreign to the examination could vitiate his 
 activity therein. It was on the day of repose, a 
 Wednesday, that a doubt suddenly occurred to him as 
 to the correctness of his answer, in the " Construction " 
 paper, to a question which began with the following for- 
 midable words : " A girder, freely supported at each 
 end and forty feet long, carries a load of six tons at a 
 distance of six feet from one end and another load of 
 
 ten tons " Thus it went on for ten lines. He had 
 
 always been impatient of detail, and he hated every kind 
 of calculation. Nevertheless he held that calculations 
 were relatively easy, and that he could do them as well 
 as the dryest duffer in the profession when he set his 
 mind to them. But the doubt as to the correctness of 
 his answer developed into a certainty. Facing the 
 question in private again, he obtained four different 
 solutions In an hour ; It was John Orgreave who ulti- 
 mately set him right, convicting him of a most elemen- 
 tary misconception. Forthwith his faith In his whole 
 " Construction " paper vanished. He grumbled that It 
 was monstrous to give candidates an unbroken stretch 
 of four hours' work at the end of a four-day effort. 
 Yet earlier he had been boasting that he had not felt the 
 slightest fatigue. He had expected to see Marguerite 
 on the day of repose. He did not see her. She had 
 offered no appointment, and he said to himself that he 
 had not the slightest intention of running after her. 
 Such had become the attitude of the lover to the be- 
 loved. 
 
 On the Thursday morning, however, he felt fit enough
 
 188 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 to face a dozen oral examiners, and he performed his 
 morning exercises in the club bedroom with a positive 
 ferocity of vigour. And then he was gradually over- 
 taken by a black moodiness which he could not explain. 
 He had passed through similar though less acute moods 
 as a boy ; but this was the first of the inexplicable som- 
 bre humours which at moments darkened his manhood. 
 He had not the least suspicion that prolonged nervous 
 tension due to two distinct causes had nearly worn him 
 out. He was melancholy, and his melancholy increased. 
 But he was proud ; he was defiant. His self-confidence, 
 as he looked back at the years of genuine hard study be- 
 hind him, was complete. He disdained examiners. He 
 knew that with all their damnable ingenuity they could 
 not floor him. 
 
 The crisis arrived in the afternoon of the first of the 
 two days. His brain was quite clear. Thousands of 
 details about drainage, ventilation, shoring, architec- 
 tural practice, lighting, subsoils, specifications, iron and 
 steel construction, underpinning, the properties of build- 
 ing materials, strains, thrusts, water-supply ; thousands 
 of details about his designs — the designs in his " testi- 
 monies of study," the design for his Thesis, and the de- 
 signs produced during the examination itself, — all these 
 peopled his brain ; but they were in order ; they were 
 under control, they were his slaves. For four and a 
 half hours, off and on, he had admirably displayed the 
 reality of his knowledge, and then he was sent into a 
 fresh room to meet a fresh examiner. There he stood in 
 the room alone with his designs for a small provincial 
 town-hall, — a key-plan, several one-eighth scale plans, 
 a piece of half-inch detail, and two rough perspective 
 sketches which he knew were brilliant. The room was 
 hot ; through the open window came the distant sound 
 of the traffic of Regent Street. The strange melan-
 
 THE RUPTURE 189 
 
 choly of a city in summer floated towards him from 
 the outside and reinforced his own. 
 
 The examiner, who had been snatching tea, entered 
 briskly and sternly. He was a small, dapper, fair man 
 of about fifty, with wonderfully-tended finger-nails. 
 George despised him because Mr. Enwright despised him, 
 but he had met him once in the way of the firm's business 
 and had found him urbane. 
 
 " Good afternoon," said George politely. 
 
 The examiner replied, trotting along the length of the 
 desk with quick short steps : 
 
 " Now about this work of yours. I've looked at it 
 with some care " His speech was like his de- 
 meanour and his finger-nails. 
 
 " Boor ! " thought George. But he could not actively 
 resent the slight. He glanced round at the walls ; he 
 was in a prison. He was at the mercy of a tyrant in- 
 vested with omnipotence. 
 
 The little tyrant, however, was superficially affable. 
 Only now and then in his prim, courteous voice was 
 there a hint of hostility and cruelty. He put a num- 
 ber of questions, the answers to which had to be George's 
 justification. He said " Hm ! " and "Ah!" and 
 *' Really? " He came to the matter of spouting. 
 
 " Now I object to hopper-heads," he said. " I re- 
 gard them as unhygienic." 
 
 And he looked coldh^ at George with eyebrows lifted. 
 George returned the gaze. 
 
 " I know you do, sir," George replied. 
 
 Indeed it was notorious that hopper-heads to vertical 
 spouting were a special antipathy of the examiner's ; he 
 was a famous faddist. But the reply was a mistake. 
 The examiner, secure in his attributes, ignored the sally. 
 A little later, taking up the general plan of the town- 
 hall, he said :
 
 190 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " The fact is, I do — not — care for this kind of 
 thing. The whole tendency " 
 
 " Excuse me, sir," George interrupted, with conscious 
 and elaborate respectfulness, " but surely the ques- 
 tion isn't one of personal preferences. Is the design 
 good or is it bad ? " 
 
 " Well, I call it bad," said the examiner, showing tes- 
 tiness. The examiner too could be impulsive, was indeed 
 apt to be short-tempered. The next instant he seized 
 one of the brilliant perspective sketches, and by his 
 mere manner of holding it between his thumb and finger 
 he sneered at it and condemned it. 
 
 He snapped out, not angrily, — rather pityingly: 
 
 " And what the devil's this?" 
 
 George, furious, retorted : 
 
 " What the hell do you think it is.? " 
 
 He had not foreseen that he was going to say such a 
 thing. The traffic in Regent Street, which had been in- 
 audible to both of them, was loud in their ears. 
 
 The examiner had committed a peccadillo, George a 
 terrible crime. The next morning the episode, in vari- 
 ous forms, was somehow common knowledge and a source 
 of Immense diversion. George went through the second 
 day, but lifelessly. He was sure he had failed. Apart 
 from the significance of the fact that the viva voce 
 counted for 550 marks out of a total of 1,200, he felt 
 that the Royal Institute of British Architects would 
 know how to defend its dignity. On the Saturday morn- 
 ing John Orgrcave had positive secret information that 
 George would be plucked. 
 
 IV 
 
 On that same Saturday afternoon George and Mar- 
 guerite went out together. She had given him a ren- 
 dezvous in Brompton Cemetery, choosing this spot
 
 THE RUPTURE 191 
 
 partly because it was conveniently near and partly in 
 unconscious obedience to the traditional instinct of lov- 
 ers for the society of the undisturbing dead. Each of 
 them had a roofed habitation, but neither could employ 
 it for the ends of love. No. 8 was barred to George as 
 much by his own dignity as by the invisible sword of 
 the old man ; and of course he could not break the im- 
 memorial savage taboo of a club by introducing a girl 
 into it. The Duke of Wellington himself, though Can- 
 dle Court was his purdah, could never have broken the 
 taboo of even so modest a club as Pickering's. Owing 
 to the absence of Agg, who had gone to Wales with part 
 of her family, the studio in Manresa Road was equally 
 closed to the pair. 
 
 Marguerite was first at the rendezvous. George saw 
 her walking sedately near the entrance. Despite her 
 sedateness she had unmistakably the air of waiting at a 
 tryst. Anybody at a glance would have said that she 
 was expecting a man. She had the classical demure 
 innocency of her situation. George did not care for 
 that. Why? She in fact was expecting a man, and 
 in expecting him she had nothing to be ashamed of. 
 Well, he did not care for it. He did not care for her 
 being like other girls of her class. In liis pocket he had 
 an invitation from Miss Wheeler for the next evening. 
 Would Miss Wheeler wait for a man in a public place, 
 especially a cemetery? Would Lois Ingram? Would 
 Laurencine? He could not picture them so waiting. 
 Oh, simpleton, unlearned in the world ! A snob too, no 
 doubt! (He actually thought that Hyde Park would 
 have been " better " than the cemetery for their ren- 
 dezvous.) And illogical! If No. 8 had been open to 
 them, and the studio, and the club, he would have ac- 
 cepted with gusto the idea of an open-air rendezvous. 
 But since there was no alternative to an open-air ren-
 
 192 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 dezvous the idea of it humiliated and repelled him. 
 
 Further, in addition to her culpable demure inno- 
 cency, Marguerite was wearing black. Of course she 
 was. She had no choice. Still, he hated her mourning. 
 Moreover, she was too modest; "she did not impose her- 
 self. Some girls wore mourning with splendid defiance. 
 Marguerite seemed to apologise ; seemed to turn the 
 other cheek to death. . . . He arrived critical, and nat- 
 urally he found matter to criticise. 
 
 Her greeting showed quite candidly the pleasure she 
 had in the sight of him. Her heart was in the hand 
 she gave him ; he felt its mystic throbbings there. 
 
 " How are things ? " he began. " I rather thought I 
 should have been hearing more from you." He softened 
 his voice to match the tenderness of her smile, but he 
 did it consciously. 
 
 She replied : 
 
 " I thought you'd have enough to worry about with 
 the exam, without me." 
 
 It was not a wise speech, because it implied that he 
 was capable of being worried, of being disturbed in the 
 effort of absorption necessary for the examination. He 
 laughed a little harshly. 
 
 " Well, you see the result ! " 
 
 He had written to tell her of the disastrous incident 
 and that failure was a certainty ; a sort of shame had 
 made him recoil from telling her to her face; it was 
 easier to be casual in writing than in talking; the letter 
 had at any rate tempered for both of them the shock 
 of communication. Now, he was out of humour with 
 her because he had played the ass with an ass of an 
 examiner, — not because she was directly or indirectly 
 responsible for his doing so ; simply because he had done 
 so. She was the woman. It was true that she in part 
 was indirectly responsible for the calamity, but he did
 
 ii 
 
 THE RUPTURE 193 
 
 not believe it, and anyhow would never have admitted it. 
 
 " Oh ! George ! What a shame it was ! " As usual, 
 not a trace of reproach from her ; an absolute conviction 
 that he was entirely blameless. " What shall you do.f* 
 You'll have to sit again." 
 
 " Sit again ! Me ! " he exclaimed haughtily. " I 
 never shall ! I've done with exams." He meant it. 
 But — shall you give up architecture, then ? " 
 Certainly not ! My dear girl, what are you think- 
 ing oi? Of course I shan't give up architecture. But 
 you needn't pass any exams to be an architect. Any- 
 body can call himself an architect, and be an architect, 
 without passing exams. Exams are optional. That's 
 what makes old Enwright so cross with our beautiful 
 profession." 
 
 He laughed again harshly. All the time, beneath his 
 quite genuine defiance, he was thinking what an idiot 
 he had been to cheek the examiner, and how staggeringly 
 simple it wa." to ruin years of industry by one impul- 
 sive moment's folly, and how iniquitous was a world in 
 which such injustice could be. 
 
 Marguerite was puzzled. In her ignorance she had 
 imagined that professions were inseparably connected 
 with examinations. However, she had to find faith to 
 accept his dictum, and she found it. 
 
 " Now about this afternoon," he said. " I vote we 
 take a steamboat down the river. I've made up my 
 mind I must have a look at Greenwich again from the 
 water. And we both need a blow." 
 
 " But won't it take a long time? " she mildly objected. 
 
 He turned on her violently, and spoke as he had 
 never spoken : 
 
 "What if it does?" 
 
 He knew that she was thinking of her infernal father, 
 and he would not have it. He remembered all that Agg
 
 194 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 had said. Assuredly Agg had shown nerve, too much 
 nerve, to tackle him in the way she did, and the more 
 he reflected upon Agg's interference the more he resented 
 it as impertinent. Still, Agg had happened to talk 
 sense. 
 
 " Oh, nothing ! " Marguerite agreed quickly, fear- 
 fully. " I should like to go. I've never been. Do we 
 go to Chelsea Pier.'' Down Fernshaw Road will be the 
 nearest." 
 
 " We'll go down Beaufort Street," he decided. He 
 divined that she had suggested Fernshaw Road in order 
 to avoid passing the end of the Grove, where her father 
 might conceivably see them. Well, he was not going 
 out of his way to avoid her father. Nay, he was going 
 slightly out of his way in order to give her father every 
 chance of beholding them together. 
 
 Although the day was Saturday there was no stir 
 on Chelsea Pier. The pier-keeper, indeed, was alone on 
 the pier, which rose high on the urgent flood tide, so that 
 the gangway to it sloped unusually upwards. No 
 steamer was in sight, and it seemed impossible that any 
 steamer should ever call at that forlorn and decrepit 
 platform that trembled under the straining of the water. 
 Nevertheless, a steamer did after a little while appear 
 round the bend, in Battersea Reach, drooped its funnel, 
 aimed its sharp nose at an arch of Battersea Bridge, 
 and finally, poising itself against the strong stream, 
 bumped very gently and neatly into contact with the 
 pier. The pier-keeper went through all the classic mo- 
 tions of mooring, unbarring, barring, and casting off^, 
 and in a few seconds the throbbing steamer, which was 
 named with the name of a great Londoner, left the pier 
 again with George and Marguerite on board. Nobody 
 had disembarked. The shallow and handsome craft, 
 flying its gay flags, crossed and re-crossed the river,
 
 THE RUPTURE 195 
 
 calling- at three piers in the space of a few minutes ; but 
 all the piers were like Chelsea Pier ; all the pier-keepers 
 had the air of castaways upon shaking islets. The 
 passengers on the steamer would not have filled a motor- 
 bus, and they carried themselves like melancholy adven- 
 turers who have begun to doubt the authenticity of the 
 inspiration which sent them on a mysterious quest. 
 Such was travel on the Thames in the years immediately 
 before Londoners came to a final decision that the 
 Thames was meet to be ignored by the genteel town 
 which it had begotten. 
 
 George and Marguerite sat close together near the 
 prow, saying little, the one waiting to spring, the other 
 to suffer onslaught. It was in Lambeth Reach that the 
 broad, brimming river challenged and seized George's 
 imagination. A gusty, warm southwest wind met the 
 rushing tide and blew it up into foamy waves. The 
 wind was powerful, but the tide was irresistible. Far 
 awa}'. Land's End having divided the Atlantic surge, 
 that same wind was furiously driving vast waters up the 
 English Channel and round the Forelands, and also vast 
 waters up the west coast of Britain. The twin surges 
 had met again in the outer estuary of the Thames and 
 joined their terrific impulses to defy the very wind 
 which had given them strength, and the mighty flux 
 swept with unregarding power through the mushroom 
 city whose existence on its banks was a transient episode 
 in the everlasting life of the river. 
 
 The river seemed to threaten the city that had con- 
 fined it in stone. And George, in the background of 
 his mind which was obsessed by the tormenting enigma 
 of the girl by his side, also threatened the city. With 
 the uncompromising arrogance of the student who has 
 newly acquired critical ideas, he estimated and judged 
 it. He cursed the Tate Gallery and utterly damned
 
 196 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 Doulton's works. He sternly approved Lambeth Pal- 
 ace, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, 
 Somerset House, Waterloo Bridge, and St. Paul's. He 
 cursed St. Thomas's Hospital and the hotels. He pat- 
 ronised New Scotland Yard. The " Isambard Brunei " 
 penetrated more and more into the heart of the city, 
 fighting for every yard of her progress. Flags stood 
 out straight in the blue sky traversed by swift white 
 clouds. Huge rudderless barges, each with a dwarf in 
 the stern struggling at a giant's oar, were borne west- 
 wards broadside on like straws upon the surface of a 
 hurrying brook. A launch with an orchestra on board 
 flew gaily past. Tugs with a serpentine tail of craft 
 threaded perilously through the increasing traffic. 
 Railway trains, cabs, coloured omnibuses, cyclists, and 
 footfarers, mingled in and complicated the scene. Then 
 the first ocean-going steamer appeared, belittling all 
 else. And then the calm pale beauty of the Custom 
 House at last humbled George, and for an instant made 
 him think that he could never do an3'thing worth doing. 
 His pride leapt up, unconquerable. The ocean-going 
 steamers, as they multiplied on the river, roused in him 
 wild and painful longings to rush to the ends of the 
 earth and gorge himself on the immense feast which the 
 great romantic earth had to offer. 
 
 " By Jove ! " he exclaimed passionately. " I'd give 
 something to go to Japan." 
 
 "Would you?" Marguerite answered with mildness. 
 She had not the least notion of what he was feeling. 
 Her voice responded to him, but her imagination did not 
 respond. True, as he had always known, she had no 
 ambition ! The critical quality of his mood developed. 
 The imperious impulse came to take her to task. 
 
 "What's the latest about your father? " he asked, 
 with a touch of impatient, aggrieved disdain. Both
 
 THE RUPTURE 197 
 
 were aware that the words had opened a crucial inter- 
 view between them. She moved nervously on the seat. 
 The benches that ran along the deck-rails met in an 
 acute angle at the stem of the steamer, so that the pair 
 sat opposite each other with their knees almost touch- 
 ing. He went on : "I hear he hasn't gone back to the 
 office 3'et." 
 
 " No," said Marguerite. " But he'll start again on 
 Monday, I think." 
 
 " But is he fit to go back ? I thought he looked 
 awful." 
 
 She flushed slightly — at the indirect reference to the 
 episode in the basement on the night of the death. 
 
 " It will do him good to go back," said Marguerite. 
 " I'm sure he misses the office dreadfully." 
 
 George gazed at her person. Under the thin glove 
 he suddenly detected the form of her ring. She was 
 wearing it again, then. (He could not remember 
 whether she had worn it at their last meeting, in Agg's 
 studio. The very curious fact was that at their last 
 meeting he had forgotten to look for the ring.) Not 
 only was she wearing the ring, but she carried a stylish 
 little handbag which he had given her. When he bought 
 that bag, in the Burlington Arcade, it had been a bag 
 like any other bag. But now it had become part of her, 
 individualised by her personality, a mysterious and 
 provocative bag. Everything she wore, down to her 
 boots and even her bootlaces so neatly threaded and 
 knotted, was mysterious and provocative. He examined 
 her face. It was marvellously beautiful ; it was ordi- 
 nary; it was marvellously beautiful. He knew her to 
 the depth ; he did not know her at all ; she was a chance 
 acquaintance ; she was a complete stranger. 
 
 " How are you getting on with him.?* You know you 
 really ought to tell me."
 
 198 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 
 Oh, George ! " she said, earnestly vivacious. 
 
 You're wrong in thinking he's not nice to me. He is. 
 He's quite forgiven me." 
 
 " Forgiven you ! " George took her up. " I should 
 like to know what he had to forgive." 
 
 *' Well," she murmured timorously, " you understand 
 what I mean." 
 
 He drummed his elegant feet on the striated deck. 
 Out of the corner of his left eye he saw the mediaeval 
 shape of the Tower rapidl}' disappearing. In front 
 were the variegated funnels and masts of fleets gathered 
 together in St. Katherine's Dock and London Dock. 
 The steamer gained speed as she headed from Cherry 
 Gardens Pier towards the middle of the river. She was 
 a frail trifle compared to the big boats that lined the 
 wharves ; but in herself she had size and irresistible force, 
 travelling quite smoothly over the short, riotous, spark- 
 ling waves which her cut-water divided and spurned 
 away on either side. Only a tremor faintly vibrated 
 throughout her being. 
 
 " Has he forgiven you for being engaged.'' " George 
 demanded, with rough sarcasm. 
 
 She showed no resentment of his tone, but replied 
 gently : 
 
 " I did try to mention it once, but it was no use — 
 he wasn't in a condition. He made me quite afraid 
 — not for me of course, but for him." 
 
 " Well, I give it up ! " said George. " I simply give 
 it up ! It's past me. How soon's he going to be in con- 
 dition? He can't keep us walking about the streets 
 forever." 
 
 " No, of course not ! " She smiled to placate him. 
 
 There was a pause, and then George, his eyes fixed on 
 her hand, remarked : 
 
 " I see you've got your ring on."
 
 THE RUPTURE 199 
 
 She too looked at her hand. 
 
 " My ring? Naturally. What do you n>ean? *' 
 
 He proceeded cruelly: 
 
 " I suppose you don't wear it in the house, so that the 
 sight of it shan't anno}' him." 
 
 She flushed once more. 
 
 " Oh, George dear ! " Her glance asked for mercy, 
 for magnanimity. 
 
 " Do you wear it when you're in the house, or don't 
 
 you?" 
 
 Her eyes fell. 
 
 *' I daren't excite him. Truly I daren't. It wouldn't 
 do. It wouldn't be right." 
 
 She was admitting George's haphazard charge against 
 her. He was astounded. But he merely flung back 
 his head and raised his eyebrows. He thought : 
 
 " And yet she sticks to it he's nice to her ! My God ! " 
 
 He said nothing aloud. The Royal Hospital Green- 
 wich showed itself in the distance like a domed island 
 rising fabulously out of the blue-green water. Even 
 far off", before he could decipher the main contours of 
 the gigantic quadruple pile, the vision excited him. His 
 mind, darkened by the most dreadful apprehensions con- 
 cerning Marguerite, dwelt on it darkly, sardonically, 
 and yet with pleasure. And he proudly compared his 
 own disillusions with those of his greatest forerunners. 
 His studies, and the example of Mr. Enwright, had 
 inspired him with an extremely enthusiastic worship 
 of Inigo Jones, whom he classed, not without reason, 
 among the great creative artists of Europe. He 
 snorted when he heard the Royal Hospital referred to 
 as the largest and finest charitable institution in the 
 world. For him it was the supreme English architect- 
 ural work. He snorted at the thought of that pompous 
 and absurd monarch James I ordering Inigo Jones to
 
 200 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 design him a palace surpassing all palaces and choosing 
 a sublime site therefor, and then doing nothing. He 
 snorted at the thought of that deluded monarch Charles 
 I ordering Inigo Jones to design him a palace surpass- 
 ing all palaces, and receiving from Inigo Jones the 
 plans of a structure which would have equalled in beauty 
 and eclipsed in grandeur an}' European structure of the 
 Christian era, — even Chambord, even the Escurial, even 
 Versailles — and then accomplishing nothing beyond a 
 tiny fragment of the sublime dream. He snorted at the 
 thought that Inigo Jones had died at the age of nearly 
 eighty ere the foundations of the Greenwich palace had 
 begun to be dug, and without having seen more than the 
 fragment of his unique Whitehall, — after a youth spent 
 in arranging masques for a stupid court, and an old age 
 spent in disappointment. But then no English monarch 
 had ever begun and finished a palace. George wished, 
 rather venturesomely, that he had lived under Francis 
 I! . . . 
 
 The largest and finest charitable institution ! The 
 ineffable William and Mary had merely turned it into 
 a charitable institution because they did not know what 
 else to do with it. The mighty halls which ought to 
 have resounded to the laughter of the mistresses of 
 Charles II were diverted to the inevitable squalor of 
 alms-giving. The mutilated victims of the egotism 
 and the fatuity of kings were imprisoned together under 
 the rules and regulations of charity, the cruellest of all 
 rules and regulations. And all was done meanly — 
 that is, all that interested George. Christopher Wren, 
 who was building St. Paul's and fighting libels and 
 slanders at a salary of two hundred a year, came down 
 to Greenwich and for years worked immortally for 
 nothing amid material difficulties that never ceased to 
 multiply ; and he too was beaten by the huge monster.
 
 THE RUPTURE 201 
 
 Then Vanbrugh arrived and blithely finished in corrupt 
 brick and flaming manifestations of decadence that 
 which the pure and monumental genius of Inigo Jones 
 had first conceived. The north frontages were marvels 
 of beauty ; the final erections to the south amounted to 
 an outrage upon Jones and Wren. Still the affair was 
 the largest and finest charitable institution on earth ! 
 What a country, thought George, hugging injustice! 
 So it had treated Jones and Wren and many another. 
 So it had treated Enwright. And so it would treat, 
 was already treating, him, George. He did not care. 
 As the steamer approached Greenwich, and the details 
 of the aborted palace grew clearer, and he could dis- 
 tinguish between the genius of Jones and the genius of 
 Wren, he felt grimly and victoriously sure that both 
 Jones and Wren had had the best of the struggle against 
 indifference and philistinism, — as he too would have the 
 best of the struggle, though he should die obscure and in 
 penury. He was miserable and resentful, and yet he 
 was triumphant. The steamer stopped at the town- 
 pier. 
 
 "Are we there.''" said Marguerite. "Already?" 
 
 " Yes," said he. " And I think we may as well go 
 back by the same steamer." 
 
 She concurred. However, an official insisted on them 
 disembarking, even if they meant to re-embark at once. 
 They went ashore. The facade of the palace-hospital 
 stretched majestically to the left of them, in sharp per- 
 spective, a sensational spectacle. 
 
 " It's very large," Marguerite commented. Her 
 voice was nervous. 
 
 " Yes, it's rather more than large," he said drily. 
 
 He would not share his thoughts with her. He knew 
 that she had some inklings of taste, but in that moment 
 he preferred to pretend that her artistic perception
 
 202 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 was on a level with that of WilHam and Mary. They 
 boarded the steamer again, and took their old places; 
 and the menacing problem of their predicament was still 
 between them. 
 
 " We can have some tea downstairs if j'ou like," he 
 said after the steamer had turned round and started 
 upstream. 
 
 She answered in tones imperfectly controlled: 
 
 " No, thank you. I feel as if I couldn't swallow any- 
 thing." And she looked up at him very quickly, with 
 the embryo of a smile, and then looked down again very 
 quickly because she could not bring the smile to ma- 
 turity. 
 
 George thought : 
 
 " Am I going to have a scene with her — on the 
 steamer ? " It would not matter much if a scene did 
 occur. There was nobody else on deck forward of the 
 bridge. They were alone — they were more solitary 
 than they might have been in the studio, or in any 
 room at No. 8. The steamer was now nearly heading 
 the wind, but she travelled more smoothly, for she had 
 the last of the flood tide under her. 
 
 George said kindly and persuasively : 
 
 " Upon my soul, I don't know what the old gentle- 
 man's got against me." 
 
 She eagerly accepted his advance, which seemed to 
 give her courage. 
 
 " But there's nothing to know, dear. We both know 
 that. There's nothing at all. And yet of course I can 
 understand it. So can you. In fact it was you who 
 first explained it to me. If you'd left No. 8 when I did 
 and he'd heard of our engagement afterwards, he 
 wouldn't have thought anything of it. But it was you 
 staying on in the house that did it, and him not know- 
 ing of the engagement. He thought you used to come
 
 THE RUPTURE 203 
 
 to see me at nights at the studio, me and Agg, and make 
 fun of everything at No. 8 — especially of his wife. 
 He's evidently got some such idea in his head, and there's 
 no getting it out again." 
 
 " But it's childish." 
 
 " I know. However, we've said all this before, 
 haven't we? " 
 
 " But the idea's got to be got out of his head again ! '* 
 said George vigorously — more dictatorially and less 
 persuasively than before. 
 
 Marguerite offered no remark. ' 
 
 *' And after all," George continued. " He couldn't 
 have been so desperately keen on — your stepmother. 
 When he married her your mother hadn't been dead so 
 very long, had she.'' " 
 
 " No. But he never cared for mother anything like 
 so much as he cared for Mrs. Lobley — at least not as 
 far back as I can remember. It was a different sort of 
 thing altogether. I think he was perfectly mad about 
 Mrs. Lobley. Oh ! He stood mother's death much — 
 much better than hers ! You've no idea " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I have. We know all about that sort of 
 thing," said George, the man of the world, impatiently.. 
 
 Marguerite said tenderly: 
 
 " It's broken him." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " 
 
 " It has, George." Her voice was very soft. 
 
 But George would not listen to the softness of her 
 voice. 
 
 " Well," he objected firmly and strongly, " suppos- 
 ing it has ! What then.'' We're sorry for him. What 
 then.'^ That affair has nothing to do with our affair. 
 Is all that any reason why I shouldn't see you in your 
 own home ? Or are we to depend on Agg — when she 
 happens to be at her studio.'^ Or are we always to see
 
 <( 
 
 204 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 each other in the street, or in museums and things — 
 or steamers — just as if you were a shopgirl? We 
 may just as well look facts in the face, you know." 
 
 She flushed. Her features changed under emotion. 
 
 " Oh ! George ! I don't know what to do." 
 
 " Then you think he's determined not to have any- 
 thing to do with me.'' " 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 " You think he's determined not to have anything 
 to do with me, I say .'' " 
 
 He may change," Marguerite murmured. 
 May change ' be dashed ! We've got to know 
 where we stand." 
 
 He most surprisingly stood up, staring at her. She 
 did not speak, but she lifted her eyes to his with timid 
 courage. They were wet. George abruptly walked 
 away along the deck. The steamer was passing the 
 Custom House again. The tide had now almost slacked. 
 Fresh and heavier clouds had overcast the sky. All 
 the varied thoughts of the afternoon were active in 
 George's head at once ; architecture, architects, beauty, 
 professional injustices, girls — his girl. Each af- 
 fected the others, for they were deeply entangled. It 
 is a fact that he could not put Inigo Jones and Christo- 
 pher Wren out of his head ; he wondered what had been 
 their experiences with women — histories and text- 
 books of architecture did not treat of this surch' im- 
 portant aspect of architecture ! He glanced at Mar- 
 guerite from the distance. He remembered what Agg 
 had said to him about her ; but what Agg had said did 
 not appear to help him practically. . . . Why had he 
 left Marguerite? Why was he standing thirty feet 
 from her and observing her inimically? He walked 
 back to her, sat down, and said calmly : 
 
 " Listen to me, darling. Suppose we arrange now,
 
 THE RUPTURE 206 
 
 definitely, to get married in two years' time. How will 
 that do for you? " 
 
 " But, George, can you be sure that you'll be able to 
 marry in two years ? " 
 
 He put his chin forward. 
 
 " You needn't worry about that," said he. *' You 
 needn't think because I've failed in an exam I don't 
 know what I'm about. You leave all that to me. In 
 two years I shall be able enough to keep a wife — and 
 well! Now shall we arrange to get married in two 
 years' time.'' " 
 
 " It might be a fearful drag for you," she said. " Be- 
 cause you know I don't really earn very much." 
 
 *' That's not the point. I don't care what you earn. 
 I shan't want you to earn anything — so far as that 
 goes. Any earning that's wanted I shall be prepared 
 to do. I'll put it like this : — Supposing I'm in a posi- 
 tion to keep you, shall we arrange to get married in two 
 years' time? " He found a fierce pleasure in reiterat- 
 ing the phrase. " So long as that's understood, I don't 
 mind the rest. If we have to depend on Agg, or meet 
 in the streets, — never mind. It'll be an infernal nui- 
 sance, but I expect I can stand it as well as you can. 
 Moreover, I quite see your difficulty — quite. And 
 let's hope the old gentleman will begin to have a little 
 
 sense." 
 
 " Oh, George ! If he only would ! " 
 
 He did not like her habit of "Oh, George! Oh! 
 George ! " 
 
 " Well? " He waited. Ignoring her pious aspiration, 
 
 " I don't know what to say, George." 
 
 He restrained himself. 
 
 " We're engaged, aren't we? " She gave no answer, 
 and he repeated: " We're engaged, aren't we? " 
 
 " Yes."
 
 206 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " That's all right. Well, will you give me your 
 absolute promise to marry me in two years' time — if 
 I'm in a position to keep you? It's quite simple. You 
 say you don't know what to say. But you've got to 
 know what to say." As he looked at her averted face, 
 his calmness began to leave him. 
 
 " Oh, George ! I can't promise that ! " she burst out, 
 showing at length her emotion. The observant skipper 
 on the bridge noted that there were a boy and a girl for- 
 ward having a bit of a tifF. 
 
 George trembled. All that Agg had said recurred to 
 him once more. But what could he do to act on it.'' 
 Anger was gaining on him. 
 
 " Why not ? " he menaced. 
 
 " It would have to depend on how father was. Surely 
 you must see that ! " 
 
 " Indeed I don't see it. I see quite the contrary. 
 We're engaged. You've got the first call on me, and 
 I've got the first call on you — not your father." The 
 skin over his nose was tight, owing to the sudden swell- 
 ing of two points, one on either side of the bone. 
 
 " George, I couldn't leave him — again. I think now 
 I may have been wrong to leave him before. However, 
 that's over. I couldn't leave him again. It would be 
 very wrong. He'd be all alone." 
 
 " Well, then, let him be friends with me." 
 
 " I do wish he would." 
 
 *' Yes. Well, wishing won't do much good. If 
 there's any trouble it's entirely your father's fault. 
 And what I want to know is — will you give me your 
 absolute promise to marry me in two years' time? " 
 
 "I can't, George. It wouldn't be honest. I can't! 
 I can't ! How can you ask me to throw over my duty 
 to father? " 
 
 He rose and walked away, again. She was pro-
 
 THE RUPTURE 207 
 
 foundlj moved, but no sympathy for her mitigated his 
 resentment. He considered that her attitude was ut- 
 terly monstrous — monstrous ! He could not find a 
 word adequate for it. He was furious ; his fury in- 
 creased with each moment. He returned to the prow, 
 but did not sit down. 
 
 " Don't you think then you ought to choose between 
 your father and me.'* " he said, in a low, hard voice, 
 standing over her. 
 
 " What do you mean .'' " she faltered. 
 
 " What do I mean.P It's plain enough what I mean, 
 isn't it.'' Your father may live twent}^ years yet. No- 
 body knows. The older he gets the more obstinate 
 he'll be. We may be kept hanging about for years and 
 years and years. Indefinitely. What's the sense of it.? 
 You say you've got your duty, but what's the object of 
 being engaged ? " 
 
 " Do you want to break it off, George.-^ " 
 
 " Now don't put it hke that. You know I don't 
 ■want to break it off. You know I want to marry you. 
 Only you won't, and I'm not going to be made a fool of. 
 I'm absolutely innocent." 
 
 " Of course you are ! " she agreed eagerly. 
 
 " Well, I'm not going to be made a fool of by your 
 father. If we're engaged, you know what it means. 
 Marriage. If it doesn't mean that, then I say we'v^e 
 no right to be engaged." 
 
 Marguerite seemed to recoil at the last words, but 
 she recovered herself. And then, heedless of being in a 
 public place, she drew off her glove, and drew the en- 
 gagement ring from her finger, and held it out to George. 
 She could not speak. The gesture was her language. 
 George was extremel}' staggered. He was stupefied 
 for an instant. Then he took the ring, and under an 
 uncontrollable savage impulse he threw it into the river.
 
 208 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 He did not move for a considerable time, staring at the 
 river in front. Neither did she move. At length he 
 said, in a cold voice, without moving his head : 
 
 " Here's Chelsea Pier." 
 
 She got up and walked to the rail amidships. He 
 followed. The steamer moored. A section of rail slid 
 aside. The pier-keeper gave a hand to Marguerite, 
 who jumped on to the pier. George hesitated. The 
 pier-keeper challenged him testily : 
 
 " Now then, are ye coming ashore or aren't ye? " 
 
 George could not move. The pier-keeper banged the 
 rail to close the gap, and cast off the ropes, and the 
 steamer resumed her voy&ge. 
 
 A minute later George saw Marguerite slowly cross- 
 ing the gangway from the pier to the embankment. 
 There she went ! She was about to be swallowed up in 
 the waste of human dwellings, in the measureless and 
 tragic expanse of the indifferent town. . . . She was 
 gone. Curse her, with her reliability ! She was too 
 reliable. He knew that. Her father could rely on her. 
 Curse her, with her outrageous, incredibly cruel and 
 unjust sense of duty! She had held him once. Once 
 the sight of her had made him turn hot and cold. Once 
 the prospect of life without her had seemed unbearable. 
 He had loved her instinctively and intensely. He now 
 judged and condemned her. Her beauty, her sweet- 
 ness, her belief in him, her reliability — these qualities 
 were neutralised by her sense of duty, awful, uncom- 
 promising, blind to fundamental justice. The affair 
 was over. If he knew her, he knew also himself. The 
 affair was over. He was in despair. His mind went 
 round and round like a life-prisoner exercising in an 
 enclosed yard. No escape. Till then, he had always 
 believed in his luck. Infantile delusion! He was now 
 aware that destiny had struck him a blow once for all.
 
 THE RUPTURE 209 
 
 But of course he did not perceive that he was too young, 
 not ripe, for such a blow. The mark of destiny was on 
 his features, and it was out of place there. . . . He had 
 lost Marguerite. And what had he lost? What was 
 there in her? She was not brilliant; she had no posi- 
 tion ; she had neither learning nor wit. He could re- 
 member nothing remarkable that they had ever said to 
 each other. Indeed, their conversations had generally 
 been rather banal. But he could remember how they 
 had felt, how he had felt, in their hours together. The 
 sensation communicated to him by her hand when he 
 had drawn off her glove in the tremendous silence of the 
 hansom ! Marvellous, exquisite, magical sensation that 
 no words of his could render ! And there had been 
 others as rare. These scenes were love : thev were 
 Marguerite ; they were what he had lost. . . . Strange, 
 that he should throw the ring into the river ! Never- 
 theless it was a right gesture. She deserved it. She 
 was absolutely wrong ; he was absolutely right, — she 
 had admitted it. Towards him she had no excuse. 
 Logically her attitude was absurd. Yet no argument 
 would change it. Stupid, — that was what she was ! 
 Stupid ! And ruthless ! She would be capable of 
 martyrising the whole world to her sense of dutv, her 
 damnable, insane sense of duty. . . . She was gone. 
 He was ruined ; she had ruined him. But he respected 
 her. He hated to respect her, but he respected her. 
 
 A thought leapt up in his mind, — and who could have 
 guessed it ? It was the thought that the secrecy of the 
 engagement would save him from a great deal of public 
 humiliation. He would have loathed saying: "We've 
 broken it off."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 INSPIEATION 
 
 George, despite his own dispositions, as he went up in 
 the lift, to obviate the danger of such a mishap, was put 
 out of countenance by the overwhehning splendour of 
 Miss Irene Wheeler's flat. And he did not quite re- 
 cover his aplomb until the dinner was nearly finished. 
 The rooms were very large and lofty ; they blazed with 
 electric light, though the day had not yet gone ; they 
 gleamed with the polish of furniture, enamel, book- 
 bindings, marble, ivory and precious metals ; they were 
 ennobled by magnificent pictures, and purified by im- 
 mense quantities of lovely flowers. George had made 
 the mistake of arriving last. He found in the vast 
 drawing-room five people who had the air of being at 
 home and intimate together. Tlicre were, in addition 
 to the hostess, Lois and Laurencine Ingram, Everard 
 Lucas, and a Frenchman from the F^rcnch Embassy 
 whose name he did not catch. Miss Wheeler wore an 
 elaborate oriental costume, and apologised for its sim- 
 plicity on the grounds that she was fatigued by a 
 crowded and tiresome reception which she had held that 
 afternoon, and that the dinner was to be without cere- 
 mony. This said, her conversation seemed to fail, but 
 she remained by George's side, apart from the others. 
 George saw not the least vestige of the ruinous disorder 
 which in the society to which he was accustomed usually 
 accompanied a big afternoon tea, or any sign of a lack 
 
 of ceremony. He had encountered two male servants 
 
 210
 
 INSPIRATION 211 
 
 in the hall, and had also glimpsed a mulatto woman in a 
 black dress and a white apron, and a Frenchwoman in 
 a black dress and a black apron. Now a third manserv- 
 ant entered, bearing an enormous silver-gilt tray on 
 which were multitudinous bottles, glasses, decanters, and 
 jugs. George comprehended that aperitifs were being 
 offered. The tray contained enough cocktails and other 
 combinations, some already mingled and some not, to 
 produce a factitious appetite in the stomachs of a 
 whole platoon. The girls declined, Miss Wheeler de- 
 clined, the Frenchman declined, George declined (from 
 prudence and diffidence) ; only Lucas took an aperitif, 
 and he took it, as George admitted, in style. The man- 
 servant, superbly indifferent to refusals, marched pro- 
 cessionally off with the loaded tray. The great prin- 
 ciple of conspicuous ritualistic waste had been illustrated 
 in a manner to satisfy the most exacting standard of the 
 leisured class; and incidentally a subject of talk was 
 provided. 
 
 George observed the name of " Renoir " on the gor- 
 geous frame of a gorgeous portrait in oils of the hostess. 
 
 "Is that a Renoir?" he asked the taciturn Miss 
 Wheeler, who seemed to jump at the opening with relief. 
 
 " Yes," she said, with her slight lisp. " I'm glad you 
 noticed it. Come and look at it. Do you think it's a 
 good one? Do you like Renoir? " 
 
 By good fortune George had seen a Renoir or two in 
 Paris under the guidance of Mr. Enwright. They 
 stared at the portrait together. 
 
 " It's awfully distinguished," he decided, employing a 
 useful adjective which he had borrowed from Mr. En- 
 wright. 
 
 " Isn't it ! " she said, turning her wondrous com- 
 plexion towards him, and admiring his adjective. " I 
 have a Boldini, too."
 
 212 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 He followed her across the room to the Boldini por- 
 trait of herself, which was dazzling in its malicious 
 flattery. 
 
 " And here's a Nicholson," she said. 
 
 These three portraits were the most striking pictures 
 in the salon, but there were others of at least equal 
 value. 
 
 "Are you interested in fans.''" she demanded, and 
 pulled down a switch which illuminated the interior of 
 a large cabinet full of fans. She pointed out fans 
 painted by Lami, Glaize, Jacquemart. " That one is 
 supposed to be a Lancret," she said. " But I'm pot 
 sure about it, and I don't know anybody that is. Here's 
 the latest book on the subject." She indicated Lady 
 Charlotte Schreiber's work in two volumes which, bound 
 in vellum and gold, lay on a table. *' But of course it 
 only deals with English fans. However, Conder is go- 
 ing to do me a couple. He was here yesterday to see 
 me about them. Of course you know him. What a 
 wonderful man ! The only really cosmopolitan artist 
 in England, I say, now Beardsley's dead. I've got a 
 Siegfried drawing by Beardsley. He was a great friend 
 of mine. I adored him." 
 
 " This is a fine thing," said George, touching a bronze 
 of a young girl, on the same table as the books. 
 
 " You think so? " Miss Wheeler responded uncer- 
 tainly. " I suppose it is. It's a Gilbert. He gave it 
 me. But do you really think it compares with this 
 Barye? It doesn't, does it.'' " She directed him to an- 
 other bronze, of a crouching cheetah. 
 
 So she moved him about. He was dazed. His mod- 
 est supply of adjectives proved inadequate. When she 
 paused, he murmured: 
 
 " It's a great room you've managed to get here." 
 
 "Ah!" she cried thinly. "But you've no idea of
 
 INSPIRATION 213 
 
 the trouble I've had over this room. Do you know it's 
 really two rooms. I had to take two flats in order to 
 fix this room." 
 
 She was launched on a supreme topic, and George 
 heard a full history. She would not have a house. She 
 would have a flat. She instructed house-agents to find 
 for her the best flat in London. There was no best flat 
 in London. London landlords did not understand flats, 
 which were comprehended only in Paris. The least im- 
 perfect flats in London were two on a floor, and as their 
 drawing-rooms happened to be contiguous on their 
 longer sides, she had the idea of leasing two intolerable 
 flats so as to obtain one flat that was tolerable. She 
 had had terrible difficulties about the central heating. 
 No flats in London were centrally' heated except in the 
 corridors and on the staircases. However, she had 
 imposed her will on the landlord, and radiators had 
 appeared in every room. George had a vision of exces- 
 sive wealth subjugating the greatest artists and riding 
 with implacable egotism over the customs and institu- 
 tions of a city obstinately conservative. The cost and 
 the complexity of Irene Wheeler's existence amazed and 
 intimidated George, — for this double flat was only one 
 of her residences. He wondered what his parents would 
 say if they could see him casually treading the oak par- 
 quetry and the heavy rugs of the resplendent abode. 
 And then he thought, the humble and suspicious upstart : 
 ** There must be something funny about her, or she 
 wouldn't be asking me here ! " 
 
 They went in to dinner, without ceremony. George 
 was last, the hostess close to his side. 
 
 " Who's the Frenchman? " he enquired casually, with 
 the sudden boldness that often breaks out of timidity, 
 " I didn't catch." 
 
 " It's Monsieur Defourcambault," said Miss Wheeler
 
 214 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 in a low voice of sincere admiration. " He's from the 
 Embassy. A most interesting man. Been everywhere. 
 Seen everything. Read everything. Done every- 
 thing." 
 
 George could not but be struck by the ingenuous 
 earnestness of her tone, so different from the perfunc- 
 tory accents in which she had catalogued her objects of 
 art. The dining-room, the dinner, and the service of 
 the dinner were equally superb. The broad table 
 seemed small in the midst of the great m^'sterious cham- 
 ber, of which the illumination was confined bj' shades to 
 the centre. The glance wandering round the obscurity 
 of the walls could rest on nothing that was not obviously 
 in good taste and very costly. The three menservants, 
 moving soundless as phantoms, brought burdens from a 
 hidden country behind a gigantic screen, and at inter- 
 vals in the twilight near the screen could be detected the 
 transient gleam of the white apron of the mulatto, whose 
 sex clashed delicately and piquantly with the grave, 
 priest-like performances of the male menials. The table 
 was of mahogany covered with a sheet of plate glass. A 
 large gold epergne glittered in the middle. Suitably 
 dispersed about the rim of the board were six rectangu- 
 lar islands of pale lace, and on each island lay a com- 
 plete set of the innumerable instruments and condi- 
 ments necessary to the proper consumption of the meal. 
 Thus, every diner dined independently, cut off from his 
 fellows, but able to communicate with them across ex- 
 panses of plate glass over mahogany. George was 
 confused by the multiplicity of metal tools and crystal 
 receptacles — he alone had four wine-glasses — but in 
 the handling of the tools he was saved from shame by 
 remembering the maxim, — a masterpiece of terse clar- 
 ity worthy of a class which has given its best brains
 
 INSPIRATION 215 
 
 to the perfecting of the formahties preliminary to deg- 
 lutition : " Take always from the outside." 
 
 The man from the French Embassy sat on the right 
 of the hostess, and George on her left. George had 
 Lois Ingram on his left, Laurencine was opposite her 
 sister. Everard Lucas, by command of the hostess, had 
 taken the foot of the table and was a sort of " Mr. 
 Vice." The six people were soon divided into two equal 
 groups, one silent and the other talkative, the talkative 
 three being M. Defourcambault, Laurencine, and Lucas. 
 The diplomatist, though he could speak diplomatic 
 English, persisted in speaking French. Laurencine 
 spoke French quite perfectly, with exactly the same 
 idiomatic ease as the Frenchman. Lucas neither spoke 
 nor understood French, — he had been to a great public 
 school. Nevertheless these three attained positive lo- 
 quacity. Lucas guessed at words, or the Frenchman 
 obliged with bits of English, or Laurencine interpreted. 
 Laurencine was far less prim and far more girlish than 
 at the Cafe Royal dinner. She kept all the freshness of 
 her intensely virginal quality, but she was at ease. Her 
 rather large body was at ease, continually restless in 
 awkward and exquisite gestures ; she laughed at ease, 
 and made fun at ease. She appeared to have no sex- 
 consciousness, nor even to suspect that she was a most 
 delightful creature. The conversation was disjointed 
 in its gaiety, and had no claim to the attention of the 
 serious. Laurencine said that Lucas ought really to 
 know French. Lucas said he would learn if she would 
 teach him. Laurencine said that she would teach him 
 if he would have his first lesson instantly, during dinner. 
 Lucas said that wasn't fair. Laurencine said that it 
 was. Both of them appealed to M. Defourcambault. 
 M. Defourcambault said that it was fair. Lucas said
 
 216 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 that there was a plot between them, but that he would 
 consent to learn at once if Laurencine would play the 
 piano for him after dinner. Laurencine said she didn't 
 play. Lucas said she did. M. Defourcambault, in- 
 voked once again, said that she played magnificently. 
 Laurencine blushed and asked M. Defourcambault how 
 he could! . . . And so on, indefinitely. It was all 
 naught, yet the taciturn three, smiling indulgently and 
 glancing from one to another of the talkers, as taciturn 
 and constrained persons must, envied that peculiar abil- 
 ity to maintain a rush and gush of chatter. 
 
 George was greatly disappointed in Lois. In the 
 period before dinner his eyes had avoided her, and now, 
 since they sat side by side, he could not properly see her 
 without deliberately looking at her; which he would 
 not do. She gave no manifestation. She was almost 
 glum. Her French, though free, was markedly inferior 
 to Laurencine's. She denied any interest in music. 
 George decided, with self-condemnation, that he had 
 been deliberately creating in his own mind an illusion 
 about her ; on no other hypothesis could either his im- 
 patience to meet her to-night, or his disappointment 
 at not meeting her on the night of the Cafe Royal din- 
 ner, be explained. She was nothing, after all. And 
 he did not deeply care for Miss Irene Wheeler, whom he 
 could watch at will. She might be concealing something 
 very marvellous, but she was dull, and she ignored the 
 finer responsibilities of a hostess. She collected many 
 beautiful things ; she had some knowledge of what they 
 were ; she must be interested in them — or why should 
 she trouble to possess them? She must have taste. 
 And yet had she taste? Was she interested in her 
 environment? A tone, a word, will create suspicion 
 that the exhibition of expertise for hours can not allay, 
 George did not like the Frenchman. The Frenchman
 
 INSPIRATION 217 
 
 was about thirty, — small, thin, fair, with the worn face 
 of the man who lives several lives at once. He did not 
 look kind ; he did not look reliable ; and he offered little 
 evidence in support of Miss Wheeler's ardent assertion 
 that he had been everywhere, seen everything, read 
 everything, done everything. He assuredly had not, 
 for example, read Verlaine, who was mentioned by Miss 
 Wheeler. Now George had read one or two poems of 
 Verlaine, and thought them unique ; hence he despised 
 M. Defourcambault. He could read French, in a way, 
 but he was incapable of speaking a single word of it in 
 the presence of compatriots ; the least monosyllable 
 would have died on his lips. He was absurdly envious 
 of those who could speak two languages ; he thought 
 sometimes that he would prefer to be able to speak two 
 languages than to do anything else in the world ; not to 
 be able to speak two languages humiliated him intensely ; 
 he decided to " take up French seriously " on the mor- 
 row, but he had several times arrived at a similar de- 
 cision. 
 
 If Lois was glum, George, too, was glum. He wished 
 he had not come to the dinner; he wished he could be 
 magically transported to the solitude of his room at the 
 club. He slipped into a reverie about the Marguerite 
 affair. Nobody could have divined that scarcely 
 twenty four hours earlier he had played a principal part 
 in a tragedy affecting his whole life. He had borne the 
 stroke better than he otherwise would have done, for the 
 simple reason that nobody knew of his trouble. He had 
 not to arrange his countenance for the benefit of people 
 who were aware what was behind the countenance. But 
 also he was philosophical. He recognised that the Mar- 
 guerite affair was over. She would never give way, and 
 he would never give way. She was wrong. He had 
 been victimized. He had behaved with wisdom and with
 
 218 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 correctness (save for the detail of throwing the ring 
 into the Thames). Agg's warnings and injunctions 
 were ridiculous. What could he have done that he had 
 not done.f* Run away with ^Marguerite, carry her off? 
 Silly ! No, he was well out of the affair. He perceived 
 the limitations of the world in which Marguerite lived. 
 It was a world too small and too austere for him. He 
 required the spaciousness and the splendour of the new 
 world in which Irene Wheeler and the Ingrams lived — 
 yea, though it was a world that excited the sardonic in 
 him. He liked it. It flattered authentic if unsuspected 
 appetites in him. Still, the image of Marguerite inhab- 
 ited his memory. He saw her as she stood between him- 
 self and old Haim in the basement of No. 8. He heard 
 her. . . . She was absolutely unlike any other girl ; she 
 was so gentle, so acquiescent. Only she put her lover 
 second to her father. . . . What would Miss Wheeler 
 think of the basement of No. 8? 
 
 The chatterers, apropos of songs in musical comedies, 
 were talking about a French popular song concerning 
 Boulanger. 
 
 "You knew Boulanger, didn't you, Jules.''" Miss 
 Wheeler suggested. 
 
 M. Defourcambault looked round, content. He re- 
 lated in English how his father had been in the very 
 centre of the Boulangist movement, and had predicted 
 disaster to the General's cause from the instant that 
 Madame de Bonncmain came on the scene. (Out of 
 consideration for the girls, M. Defourcambault phrased 
 his narrative with neat discretion.) His grandfather 
 also had been of his father's opinion, and his grand- 
 father was in the Senate, and had been Minister at 
 Brussels. . . . He affirmed that Madame de Bonne- 
 main had telegraphed to Boulanger to leave Paris at the 
 very moment when his presence in Paris was essential,
 
 INSPIRATION 219 
 
 and Boulanger had obediently gone. He said that he 
 always remembered what his mother had said to him : 
 a clever woman irregularly in love with a man may 
 make his fortune, but a stupid woman is certain to ruin 
 it. Finally he related how he, Jules Defourcambault, 
 had driven the General's carriage on a famous occasion, 
 through Paris, and how the populace in its frenzy of 
 idolatry had even climbed on to the roof of the carriage. 
 
 " And what did you do, then? " George demanded in 
 the hard tone of a cross-examiner. 
 
 " I drove straight on," said M. Defourcambault, re- 
 turning George's cold stare. 
 
 This close glimpse into history — into politics and 
 passion — excited George considerably. He was fu- 
 riously envious of M. Defourcambault, who had been 
 in the middle of things all his life, whose father, mother 
 and grandfather were all in the middle of things. M. 
 Defourcambault had an immense and unfair advantage 
 over him. To whatever heights he might rise, George 
 would never be in a position to talk as M. Defourcam- 
 bault talked of his forbears. He would always have to 
 stand alone, and to fight for all he wanted. He could 
 not even refer to his father. He scorned M. Defour- 
 cambault because M. Defourcambault was not worthy of 
 his heritage. M. Defourcambault was a little rotter, 
 yet he had driven the carriage of Boulanger in a crisis 
 of the history of France ! Miss Wheeler, however, did 
 not scorn M. Defourcambault. On the contrary she 
 looked at him with admiration, as though he had now 
 proved that he had been everywhere, seen everything, 
 and done everything. George's mood was black. He 
 was a nobody ; he would always be a nobody ; why should 
 he be wasting his time and looking a fool in this new 
 world ?
 
 220 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 After dinner, in the drawing-room which had cost 
 Irene Wheeler an extra flat, there was, during coffee, a 
 certain amount of general dulness, slackness, and self- 
 consciousness which demonstrated once more Miss 
 Wheeler's defects as a hostess. Miss Wheeler would 
 not or could not act as shepherdess and inspirer to her 
 guests. She reclined, and charmingly left them to man- 
 ufacture the evening for her. George was still disap- 
 pointed and disgusted ; for he had imagined, very ab- 
 surdly as he admitted, that artistic luxuriousness always 
 implied social dexterity and the ability to energise and 
 reinvigorate diversion without apparent effort. There 
 were moments during coffee which reminded him of the 
 maladroit hospitalities of the Five Towns. 
 
 Then Everard Lucas opened the piano, and the duel 
 between him and Laurencine was resumed. The girl 
 yielded. Electric lights were adjusted. She began to 
 play, while Lucas, smoking, leaned over the piano. 
 George was standing by himself at a little distance be- 
 hind the piano. He had perhaps been on his way to a 
 chair wlien suddenly caught and immobilised by one of 
 those hazards which do notoriously occur — the victim 
 never remembers how — in drawing-rooms. Hands in 
 pockets, he looked aimlessly about, smiling perfunc- 
 torily, and wondering where he should settle or whether 
 he should remain where he was. In the deep embrasure 
 of the large east bow-window Lois was lounging. She 
 beckoned to him, not with her hand but with a brief, 
 bright smile — she smiled rarely — and with a lifting 
 of the chin. He responded alertly and pleasurably, 
 and went to sit beside her. Such invitations from 
 young women holding themselves apart in obscurity are 
 never received without excitement and never unanswered.
 
 INSPIRATION 221 
 
 Crimson curtains of brocaded silk would have cut off 
 the embrasure entirely from the room had they been 
 fully drawn, but they were not fully drawn ; one was 
 not drawn at all, and the other was only half drawn. 
 Still, the mere fact of the curtains, drawn or undrawn, 
 did morally separate the embrasure from the salon ; and 
 the shadows thickened in front of the window. The 
 smile had gone from Lois' face, but it had been there. 
 Sequins glittered on her dark dress, the line of the low 
 neck of which was distinct against the pallor of the flesh. 
 George could follow the outlines of her slanted plump 
 body from the hair and freckled face down to the elab- 
 orate shoes. The eyes were half-closed. She did not 
 speak. The figure of Laurencine, whose back was to- 
 wards the window, received an aura from the electric 
 light immediately over the music-stand of the piano. 
 She played brilliantly. She played with a brilliance 
 that astonished George. . . . She was exceedingly 
 clever, was this awkward girl who had not long since 
 left school. Her body might be awkward, but not her 
 hands. The music radiated from the piano and filled 
 the room with brightness, with the illusion of the joy of 
 life, and with a sense of triumph. To George it was an 
 intoxication. 
 
 A manservant entered with a priceless collection of 
 bon-bons, some of which he deferentially placed on a 
 small table in the embrasure. To do so he had to come 
 in to the embrasure, disturbing the solitude, which had 
 already begun to exist, of Lois and George. He ig- 
 nored the pair. His sublime indifference seemed to say : 
 " I am beyond good and evil." But at the same time it 
 left them more sensitively awake to themselves than be- 
 fore. The hostess indolently muttered an order to the 
 man, and in passing the door on his way out he ex- 
 tinguished several lights. The place and the hour grew
 
 222 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 romantic. George was impressed by the scene, and he 
 eagerly allowed it to impress him. It was, to him, a 
 marvellous scene: the splendour of the apartment, the 
 richly attired girls, the gay exciting music, the spots of 
 high light, the glooms, the glimpses everj'where of 
 lovely objects. He said to himself: "I was born for 
 this." 
 
 Lois turned her head slowly and looked out of the 
 window. 
 
 " Wonderful view from here," she murmured. 
 
 George turned his head. The flat was on the sixth 
 storey. The slope of central London lay beneath. 
 There was no moon, but there were stars in a clear 
 night. Roofs ; lighted windows ; lines of lighted traffic; 
 lines of lamps patterning the invisible meadows of a 
 park ; hiatuses of blackness ; beyond, several towers 
 scarcely discernible against the sky, — the towers of 
 Parliament, and the high tower of the Roman Catholic 
 Cathedral : these were London. 
 
 " You haven't seen it in daytime, have you? " said 
 Lois. 
 
 " No. I'd sooner see it at night." 
 
 " So would I." 
 
 The reply, the sympathy in it, the soft thrilled tone 
 of it, startled him. His curiosity about Lois was being 
 justified, after all. And he was startled too at the 
 extraordinary surprises of his own being. Yesterday 
 he had parted from Marguerite ; not ten years ago, but 
 yesterday. And now already he was conscious of pleas- 
 ure both physical and spiritual in the voice of another 
 girl heard in the withdrawn obscurity of the embrasure. 
 Yes, and a girl whom he had despised ! Yesterday he 
 had seriously believed himself to be a celibate for life; 
 he had dismissed for ever the hope of happiness. He 
 had seen naught but a dogged and eternal infelicity.
 
 INSPIRATION 223 
 
 And now he was, if not finding happiness, expecting it. 
 He felt disloyal — less precisely to Marguerite than to 
 a vanished ideal. He felt that he ought to be ashamed. 
 For Marguerite still existed; she was existing at that 
 moment less than three miles off — somewhere over there 
 in the dark. 
 
 " See the cathedral tower? " he said. 
 
 " Yes," she answered. " WTiat a shame Bentley died, 
 wasn't it?" 
 
 He was more than startled, now, — he was amazed and 
 enchanted. Something touching and strange in her 
 voice usually hard ; something in the elegant fragility 
 of her slipper! Everybody knew that Bentley was the 
 architect of the Cathedral and that he had died of can- 
 cer on the tongue. The knowledge was not esoteric ; it 
 did not by itself indicate a passion for architecture or 
 a comprehension of architecture. Yet when she said 
 the exclamatory words, leaning far back in the seat, her 
 throat emerging from the sequined frock, her tapping 
 slipper peeping out beneath the skirt, she cast a spell 
 on him. He perceived in her a woman gifted and en- 
 dowed. This was the girl whom he had bullied in the 
 automobile. She must have bowed in secret to his bully- 
 ing; though he knew she had been hurt by it, she had 
 given no sign of resentment, and her voice was acquies- 
 cent. Above all, she had remembered him. 
 
 " You only like doing very large buildings, don't 
 you? " she suggested. 
 
 "Who told you?" 
 
 " Everard." 
 
 "Oh! Did old Lucas tell you? Well, he's quite 
 right." 
 
 He had a sudden desire to talk to her about the great 
 municipal building in the north that was soon to be 
 competed for. He yielded to the desire. She listened,
 
 224 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 motionless. He gave vent to his regret that Mr. En- 
 wright absolutely declined to enter for the competition. 
 He said he had had ideas for it, and would have liked to 
 work for it. 
 
 " But why don't you go in for it 3'oursclf, George? " 
 she murmured gravely. 
 
 "Me!" he exclaimed, almost frightened. "It 
 wouldn't be any good. I'm too young. Besides " 
 
 " How old are you? " 
 
 " Twenty one." 
 
 " Good heavens ! You look twenty five at least ! I 
 know I should go in for it if I were you — if I were a 
 man." 
 
 He understood her. She could not talk well. She 
 could not easily be agreeable ; she could easily be rude ; 
 she could not play the piano like the delightful Lauren- 
 cine. But she w as passionate. And she knew the force 
 of ambition. He admired ambition perhaps more than 
 anything. Ambition roused him. She was ambitious 
 when she drove the automobile and endangered his life. 
 . . . She had called him by his Christian name quite 
 naturally. There was absolutely no nonsense about 
 her. Now Marguerite was not in the slightest degree 
 ambitious. The word had no significance for her. 
 
 " I couldn't ! " he insisted, humbly. " I don't know 
 enough. It's a terrific affair." 
 
 She made no response. But she looked at him, and 
 suddenly he saw the angel that Irene Wheeler and 
 Laurencine had so enthusiastically spoken of at the 
 Cafe Royal ! 
 
 " I couldn't ! " he murmured. 
 
 He was insisting too much. He was insisting against 
 himself. She had implanted the idea in his mind. Why 
 had he not thought of it? Certainly he had not thought 
 of it. Had he lacked courage to think of it? He be-
 
 INSPIRATION 225 
 
 held the idea as though it was an utterly original dis- 
 covery, revolutionary, dismaying, and seductive. His 
 inchoate plans for the building took form afresh in his 
 brain. And the luxury b}' which he was surrounded 
 whipped his ambition till it writhed. 
 
 Curious, she said no more ! After a moment she sat 
 up and took a sweet. 
 
 George saw, in a far corner, Jules Defourcambault 
 talking very quietly to Irene Wheeler, whose lackadais- 
 ical face had become ingenuous and ardent as she lis- 
 tened to him under the shelter of the dazzling music. 
 George felt himself to be within the sphere of unguessed 
 and highly perturbing forces. 
 
 in 
 
 He left early. Lucas seemed to regard his departure 
 as the act of a traitor, but he insisted on leaving. And 
 in spite of Lucas's great social success he inwardly 
 condescended to Lucas. Lucas was not a serious man 
 and could not comprehend seriousness. George went 
 because he had to go, because the power of an idea drove 
 him forth. He had no intention of sleeping. He 
 walked automatically through dark London, and his 
 eyes, turned within, saw nothing of the city. He did 
 not walk quickly — he was too preoccupied to walk 
 quickly — yet in his brain he was hurrying, he had 
 not a moment to lose. The goal was immensely far off. 
 His haste was as absurd and as fine as that of a man 
 who, starting to cross Europe on foot, must needs run 
 in order to get out of Calais and be fairly on his way. 
 
 At Russell Square he wondered whether he would be 
 able to get into the office. However, there was still a 
 light in the basement, and he rang the house-bell. The 
 housekeeper's daughter, a girl who plaA'ed at lx>ing par- 
 lourmaid in the afternoons and brought bad tea and
 
 226 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 thick bread-and-butter to the privileged in the office, 
 opened the front-door with bridling exclamations of as- 
 tonishment. She had her best frock on ; her hair was 
 in curling-pins; «he smelt delicately of beer; the ex- 
 citement of the Sunday Leagne excursion and of the 
 evening's dalliance had not quite cooled in this respect- 
 able and experienced young creature of central London. 
 She was very feminine and provocative and unparlour- 
 maidish, standing there in the hall ; and George passed 
 by her as callously as though she had been a real par- 
 lourmaid on duty. She had to fly to her mother for the 
 key of the office. Taking the key from the breathless, 
 ardent little thing, he said that he would see to the front- 
 door being properly shut when he went out. That was 
 all. Her legitimate curiosity about his visit had to go 
 to bed hungry. 
 
 In the office he switched on the lights in Haim's 
 cubicle, in the pupils' room, and in the principals' room. 
 He enjoyed the illumination and the solitude. He took 
 deep breaths. He walked about. After rummaging 
 for the sketches and the printed site-plan of the town- 
 hall projected by the northern city, he discovered them 
 under John Orgreave's desk. He moved them to Mr. 
 Enwright's desk, which was the best one, and he bent 
 over them rapturously. Yes, the idea of entering for 
 the competition himself was a magnificent idea. 
 Strange that it should have occurred not to him, but to 
 Lois ! A disconcerting girl, Lois ! She had said that 
 he looked twenty five. He liked that. Why should he 
 not enter for the competition himself? He would enter 
 for it. The decision was made, as usual without con- 
 sulting anybody: instinct was his sole guide. Failure 
 in the final examination was beside the point. More- 
 over, though he had sworn never to sit again, he could 
 easily sit again in December ; he could pass the exam on
 
 INSPIRATION 227 
 
 his head. He might win the competition ; to be even in 
 the selected first six or ten would rank as a glorious 
 achievement. But why should he not win outright.'^ 
 He was lucky, always had been lucky. It was essential 
 that he should win outright. It was essential that he 
 should create vast and grandiose structures, that he 
 should have both artistic fame and worldly success. He 
 could not wait loug for success. He required luxury. 
 He required a position enabling him to meet anybody 
 and everybody on equal terms, and to fulfil all his 
 desires. 
 
 He would not admit that he was too young for the 
 enterprise. He was not too young. He refused to be 
 too young. And indeed he felt that he had that very 
 night become adult, and that a new impulse, reducing all 
 previous impulses to unimportance, had inspired his 
 life. He owed the impulse to the baffling Lois. Mar- 
 guerite would never have given him such an impulse. 
 Marguerite had no ambition either for herself or for 
 him. She was profoundly the wrong girl for him. He 
 admitted his error candidly, with the eagerness of youth. 
 He had no shame about the blunder. And the girl's en- 
 vironment was wrong for him also. What had he to do 
 with Chelsea? Chelsea was a parish; it was not the 
 world. He had been gravely disappointed in Chelsea. 
 Marguerite had no shimmer of romance. She was 
 homely. And she was content with her sphere. And 
 she was not elegant ; she had no kind of smartness ; who 
 would look twice at her? And she was unjust, she was 
 unfair. She had lacerated his highly sensitive pride. 
 She had dealt his conceit a frightful wound. He would 
 not think of it. 
 
 x\nd in fact he could ignore the wound in the exquisite 
 activity of creating town-halls for mighty municipal- 
 ities. He drew plans with passion and with fury ; he
 
 228 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 had scores of alternative schemes ; he was a god fashion- 
 ing worlds. Having drawn plans, he drew elevations 
 and perspectives, he rushed to the files (rushed — be- 
 cause he was in haste to reach the goal) and studied 
 afresh the schedules of accommodation for other munici- 
 pal buildings that had been competed for in the past. 
 Much as he hated detail, he stooped rather humbly to 
 detail that night, and contended with it in all honesty. 
 He worked for hours before he thought of lighting a 
 cigarette. 
 
 It was something uncanny beyond the large windows 
 that first gently and imperceptibly began to draw away 
 his mind from the profusion of town-halls on the desk, 
 and so indirectly reminded him of the existence of cig- 
 arettes. When he lighted a cigarette he stretched him- 
 self and glanced at the dark windows, of which the 
 blinds had not been pulled down. He understood then 
 what was the matter. Dawn was the matter. The 
 windows were no longer quite dark. He looked out. A 
 faint pallor in the sky, and some stars sickening there- 
 in; and underneath the silent square with its patient 
 trees and indefatigable lamps ! The cigarette tasted 
 bad in his mouth, but he would not give it up. He 
 yawned heavily. The melancholy of the siquare await- 
 ing without hope the slow, hard dawn, overcame him 
 suddenly. . . . Marguerite was a beautiful girl ; her 
 nose was marvellous ; he could never forget it. He 
 could never forget her gesture as she intervened be- 
 tween him and her father in the basement at Alexandra 
 Grove. They had painted lampshades together. She 
 was angelically kind ; she could not be ruffled ; she would 
 never criticise, never grasp, never exhibit selfishness. 
 She was a unique combination of the serious and the 
 sensuous. He felt the passionate, ecstatic clinging of
 
 INSPIRATION 229 
 
 her arm as they walked under the interminable chain of 
 lampposts on Chelsea Embankment. Magical hours ! 
 . . . And how she could absorb herself in her work! 
 And what a damned shame it was that rascally em- 
 ployers should have cut down her prices ! It was in- 
 tolerable; it would not bear thinking about. He 
 dropped the cigarette and stamped on it angrily. Then 
 he returned to the desk and put his head in his hands 
 and shut his eyes. 
 
 He wakened with a start of misgiving. He was alone 
 in the huge house ( for the basement was under the house 
 and somehow did not count). Something was astir in 
 the house. He could hear it through the doors ajar. 
 His flesh crept. It was exactly like the flap of a wash- 
 ing-cloth on the stone stairs ; it stopped ; it came nearer. 
 He thought inevitably of the dead Mrs. Haim, once 
 charwoman and stcpcleaner. In an instant he believed 
 fully in all that he had ever heard about ghosts and 
 spirit manifestations. An icy wave passed down his 
 spine. He felt that if the phantom of Mrs. Haim was 
 approaching him he simply could not bear to meet it. 
 The ordeal would kill him. Then he decided that the 
 sounds were not those of a washing-cloth, but of slip- 
 pered feet. Odd that he should have been so deluded. 
 Somebody was coming down the long stairs from the 
 upper storeys, uninhabited at night. Burglars? He 
 was still very perturbed, but differently perturbed. 
 He could not move a muscle. The suspense as the foot- 
 steps hesitated at the cubicle was awful. George stood 
 up straight and called out in a rough voice, — louder 
 than he expected it to be : 
 
 " Who's there.? " 
 
 Mr. Enwright appeared. He was wearing beautiful 
 blue pyjamas and a plum-coloured silk dressing-gown
 
 230 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 and doeskin slippers. His hair was extremely de- 
 ranged ; he blinked rapidlj, and his lined face seemed 
 very old. 
 
 " WeU, I like this, I like this ! " he said in a quiet, 
 sardonic tone, " Sitting at my desk and blazing my 
 electricity away ! I happened to get up, and I looked 
 out of the window and noticed the glare below. So I 
 came to see what was afoot. Do you know yoxi fright- 
 ened me, and I don't like being frightened? " 
 
 " I hadn't the slightest notion you ever slept here," 
 George feebly stammered. 
 
 " Didn't you know I'd decided to keep a couple of 
 rooms here for myself? " 
 
 " I had heard something about it, but I didn't know 
 you'd really moved in. I — I've been away so much." 
 
 " I moved in, as you call it, to-day — yesterday, and 
 a nice night you're giving me ! And even supposing I 
 hadn't moved in, what's that got to do with your being 
 here? Give me a cigarette." 
 
 With hurrying deference George gave the cigarette, 
 and struck a match for it, and as he held the match he 
 had a near view of Mr. Enwright's prosaic unshaven 
 chin. The house was no longer the haunt of lurking 
 phantoms ; it was a common worldly house without any 
 mystery or any menace. George's skin was no longer 
 the field of abnormal phenomena. Dawn was conquer- 
 ing Russell Square. On the other hand, George was no 
 longer a giant of energy, initiating out of ample experi- 
 ence a tremendous and superb enterprise. He was sud- 
 denly diminished to a boy, or at best a lad. He really 
 felt that it was ridiculous for him to be sketching and 
 scratching away there in the middle of the night, in his 
 dress clothes. Even his overcoat, hat, and fancy muffler 
 cast on a chair seemed ridiculous. He was a child, pre- 
 tending to be an adult. He glanced like a child at Mr.
 
 INSPIRATION 281 
 
 Enwright; he roughened his hair with his hand like a 
 child. He had the most wistful and apologetic air. 
 
 He said : 
 
 " I just came along here for a bit instead of going to 
 bed. I didn't know it was so late." 
 
 " Do you often just come along here? " 
 
 " No. I never did it before. But to-night " 
 
 " What is it you're atf " 
 
 " I'd been tliinking a bit about that new town-hall." 
 
 " What new town-hall? " 
 
 " You know " 
 
 Mr. Enwright did know. 
 
 " But haven't I even yet succeeded in making it clear 
 that this firm is not going in for that particular com- 
 petition? '* 
 
 Mr. Enwright's sarcastic and discontented tone chal- 
 lenged George, who stiffened. 
 
 " Oh ! I know the firm isn't going in for it. But 
 what's the matter with me going in for it ? " 
 
 He forced himself to meet Mr. Enwright's eyes, but 
 he could not help blushing. He was scarcely out of his 
 articles ; he had failed in the Final ; and he aspired to 
 create the largest English public building of the last 
 half century. 
 
 " Arc 3'ou quite mad? " Mr. Enwright turned away 
 from the desk to the further window, hiding his coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 " Yes," said George firmly. " Quite ! " 
 
 Mr. Enwright, after a pause, came back to the desk. 
 
 " Well, it's something to admit that," he sneered. 
 " At any rate, we know where we are. Let's have a 
 look at the horrid mess." 
 
 He made a number of curt observations as he 
 handled the sheets of sketches. 
 
 " I see 3'ou've got that Saracenic touch in again.
 
 232 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " What's the scale here? 
 
 " Is this really a town-hall, or are you trying to beat 
 the Temple at Karnak? 
 
 " If that's meant for an Ionic capital, no assessor 
 would stand it. It's against all the text books to have 
 Ionic capitals where there's a side view of them. Not 
 that it matters to me. 
 
 " Have you made the slightest attempt to cube it up ? 
 You'd never get out of this under half a million, you 
 know." 
 
 Shaking his head, he retired once more to the win- 
 dow. George began to breathe more freely, as one who 
 has fronted danger and still lives. Mr. Enwright ad- 
 dressed the window : 
 
 " It's absolute folly to start on a thing like that be- 
 fore the conditions are out. Absolute folly. Have 
 you done all that to-night.'' " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, you've shifted the stuff. . . . But you haven't 
 the slightest notion what accommodation they want. 
 You simply don't know." 
 
 " I know what accommodation they ought to want, 
 with four hundred thousand inhabitants," George re- 
 torted, pugnaciously. 
 
 "Is it four hundred?" Mr. Enwright asked with 
 bland innocence. He generally left statistics to his 
 partner. 
 
 " And twent}^ five." 
 
 "You've looked it up?" 
 
 " I have." 
 
 Mr. Enwright was now at the desk yet again. 
 
 " There's an idea to it," he said shortly, holding up 
 the principal sheet and blinking. 
 
 " / shall go in for it! " The thought swept through 
 George's brain like a fierce flare, lighting it up vividly
 
 INSPIRATION 233 
 
 to its darkest corners, and incidentally producing upon 
 his skin phenomena similar to those produced by un- 
 canny sounds on the staircase. He had caught admira- 
 tion and benevolence in Mr. Enwright's voice. He was 
 intensely happy, encouraged, and proud. He began 
 to talk eagerly ; he babbled, entrusting himself to Mr. 
 Enwright's benevolence. 
 
 " Of course there's the Final, If they give six 
 months for the thing I could easily get through the Final 
 before sending-in day. I could take a room somewhere. 
 I shouldn't really want any assistance — clerk, I mean. 
 I could do it all myself. . . ." He ran on until Mr. 
 Enwright stopped him. 
 
 " You could have a room here — upstairs." 
 
 "Could I?" 
 
 " But you would want some help. And you needn't 
 think they'll give six months, because they won't. They 
 might give five." 
 
 " That's no good." 
 
 ''Why isn't it any good.?" snapped Mr. Enwright. 
 " You don't suppose they're going to issue the condi- 
 tions just yet, do you.? Not a day before September, 
 not a day. And you can take it from me ! " 
 
 "Ohl' Hurrah!" 
 
 " But look here, my boy, let's be clear about one 
 thing." 
 
 "Yes.?" 
 
 " You're quite mad." 
 
 They looked at each other. 
 
 " The harmless kind, though," said George confi- 
 dently, well aware that Mr. Enwright doted upon him. 
 
 In another minute the principal had gone to bed, 
 without having uttered one word as to his health. 
 George had announced that he should tidy the sacred 
 desk before departing. When he had done that he wrote
 
 234 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 a letter, in pencil. " It's the least I can do," he said to 
 himself seriously. He began : " Dear Miss Ingram." 
 " Dash it ! She calls me ' George,' " he thought, and 
 tore up the sheet. " Dear Lois. I think after what 
 you said it's only due to you to tell you that I've decided 
 to go in for that competition on my own. Thanks for 
 the tip. Yours. George Cannon." 
 
 He surveyed the message. 
 
 " That's about right," he murmured. 
 
 Then he looked at his watch. It showed 3.15, but it 
 had ceased to beat. He added at the foot of the letter : 
 " Monda}'^, 3.30 a. m." He stole one of John Orgreave's 
 ready-stamped envelopes. 
 
 In quitting the house he inadvertently banged the 
 heavy front-door. 
 
 " Do 'em good ! " he said, thinking of awakened 
 sleepers. 
 
 It was now quite light. He dropped the letter into 
 the pillar-box round the corner, and as soon as he had 
 irretrievably done so, the thought occurred to him : " I 
 wish I hadn't put ' 3.30 a. m.' There's something rot- 
 tenly sentimental about it." The chill fresh air was 
 bracing him to a more perfect sanity. He raised the 
 collar of his overcoat. 
 
 IV 
 
 At the club on Tuesday morning Downs brought to 
 his bedside a letter addressed in a large, striking, and 
 untidy hand. Not until he had generally examined the 
 letter did he realise that it was from Lois Ingram. He 
 remembered having mentioned to her that he lived at his 
 club — Pickering's; but he had laid no stress on the 
 detail, nor had she seemed to notice it. Yet she must 
 have noticed it. " Dear George. I am so glad. Miss 
 Wheeler is going to her bootmaker's in Conduit Street
 
 INSPIRATION 235 
 
 to-morrow afternoon. Slic's always such a long time 
 there. Come and have tea with me at the new Prosser's 
 in Regent Street, four sharp. I shall have half an hour. 
 L. I." In his heart he pretended to jeer at this letter. 
 He said it was " like " Lois. She calmly assumed that 
 at a sign from her he, a busy man, would arrange to be 
 free in the middle of the afternoon ! Doubtless the let- 
 ter was the consequence of putting " 3.30 a. m." on his 
 own letter. What could a follow expect.-^ . . . 
 
 All pretence! In realitv' the letter flattered and ex- 
 cited him. He thought upon the necktie he would -wear. 
 
 By the same post arrived a small parcel : it contained 
 a ring, a few other bits of jewellery, and all the letters 
 and notes that he had ever written or scribbled to Mar- 
 guerite. He did not want the jewellery back ; he did not 
 want the letters back. To receive them somehow hu- 
 miliated him. Surely she might have omitted this 
 nauseous conventionality ! She was so exasperatingly 
 conscientious. Her neat clerk-like calligraphy, on the 
 label of the parcel, exasperated him. She had carefully 
 kept every scrap of a missive from him. He hated to 
 look at the letters. What could he do with them except 
 rip them up.'' And the miserable trinklets — which she 
 had worn, which had been part of her.^ As for him, he 
 had not kept all her letters — not by any means. 
 There might be a few, lying about in drawers. He 
 would have to collect and return them. Odious job! 
 And he could not ask anybody else to do it for him. 
 
 He was obliged to question Lucas about the Regent 
 Street Prosser's, of which, regrettably, he had never 
 heard. He did not, in so many words, request John Or- 
 greave for the favour of an hour off. He was now out 
 of his articles, though still by the force of inertia at the 
 office, and therefore he informed John Orgreave that 
 unless Mr. John had any objection he proposed to take
 
 236 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 an hour off. Mr. Enwright was not in. Lucas knew 
 vaguely of the rendezvous, having somewhere met Lau- 
 rencine. 
 
 From the outside Prosser's was not distinguishable 
 from any other part of Regent Street. But George 
 could not mistake it because Miss Wheeler's car was 
 drawn up in front of the establishment, and Lois was 
 waiting for him therein. Strange procedure! She 
 smiled and then frowned, and got out sternly. She said 
 scarcely anything, and he found that he could make only 
 such silly remarks as : " Hope I'm not late, am 1? " 
 
 The new Prosser's was a grandiose by-product of 
 chocolate. The firm had taken the leading ideas of the 
 chief tea-shop companies catering for the million in hun- 
 dreds of establishments arranged according to pattern, 
 and elaborated them with what it called in its advertise- 
 ments " cachet." Its prices were not as cheap as those 
 of the popular houses, but they could not be called dear. 
 George and Lois pushed through a crowded lane of 
 chocolate and confectionery, past a staircase which 
 bore a large notice : " Please keep to the right." This 
 notice was needed. They came at length to the main 
 hall, under a dome, with a gallery between the dome and 
 the ground. The floor was carpeted. The multitudi- 
 nous small tables had cloths, flowers, silver, and menus 
 knotted with red satin ribbon. The place was full of 
 people, people seated at the tables and people walking 
 about. Above the rail of the gallery could be seen 
 the hats and heads of more people. People were enter- 
 ing all the time and leaving all the time. Scores of 
 waitresses, in pale green and white, moved to and fro 
 like an alien and mercenary population. The heat, the 
 stir, the hum, and the clatter were terrific. And from 
 on high descended thin, strident music in a rapid and 
 monotonous rhythm.
 
 INSPIRATION 237 
 
 " No room ! " said George, feeling that he had at last 
 got into the true arena of the struggle for life, 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " said Lois, with superior confidence. 
 
 She bore mercilessly across the floor. Round the 
 edge of the huge room, beneath the gallery, were a num- 
 ber of little alcoves framed in fretted Moorish arches of 
 white-enamelled wood. Three persons were just emerg- 
 ing from one of these. She sprang within, and sank 
 into a wicker arm-chair. 
 
 " There is always a table," she breathed, surveying 
 the whole scene with a smile of conquest. 
 
 George sat down opposite to her with his back to the 
 hall; he could survey nothing but Lois, and the world 
 of the mirror behind her. 
 
 " That's one of father's maxims," she said. 
 
 "What is?" 
 
 " ' There is always a table.' Well, you know, there 
 always is." 
 
 " He must be a very wise man." 
 
 " He is." 
 
 " What's his special line.? " 
 
 She exclaimed : 
 
 "Don't you know father? Hasn't Miss Wheeler 
 told you? Or Mrs. Orgreave? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " But you must know father. Father's ' Parisian ' in 
 the Sunday Journal." 
 
 Despite the mention of this ancient and very dignified 
 newspaper, George felt a sense of disappointment. He 
 had little esteem for journalists, whom Mr. Enwright 
 was continually scoffing at, and whom he imagined to be 
 all poor. He had conceived Mr. Ingram as perhaps a 
 rich cosmopolitan financier, or a rich idler, — but at any 
 rate rich, whatever he might be. 
 
 " Of course he does lots of other work besides that.
 
 238 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 He writes for the PaXl Mall Gazette and the St. Jameses 
 Gazette. In fact it's his proud boast that he writes for 
 all the gazettes and he's the only man who does. That's 
 because he's so liked. Everybody adores hira. I adore 
 him myself. He's a great pal of mine. But he's very 
 strict." 
 
 "Strict?" 
 
 " Yes," she insisted, rather defensively. " Why not ? 
 I should like a strawberry ice and a lemon squash, and 
 a millefeuille cake. Don't be alarmed, please. I'm a 
 cave-woman. You've got to get used to it." 
 
 " What's a cave-woman ? " 
 
 " It's something primitive. You must come over to 
 Paris. If father likes you, he'll take you to one of the 
 weekly lunches of the Anglo-American Press Circle. 
 He always does that when he likes any one. He's the 
 Treasurer. . . ^ Haven't you got any millefeuille 
 cakes ? " she demanded of the waitress, who had come 
 to renew the table and had deposited a basket of various 
 cakes. 
 
 " I'm afraid we haven't, miss," answered the waitress, 
 not comprehending the strange word any better than 
 George did. 
 
 "Bit rowdy, isn't it?" George observed, looking 
 round, when the waitress had gone. 
 
 Lois said with earnestness : 
 
 " I simply love these big, noisy places. They make 
 me feel alive." 
 
 He looked at her. She was very well dressed, — more 
 stylistic than any other girl that he could see in the 
 mirror. He could not be sure whether or not her yel- 
 low eyes had a slight cast; if they had it was so slight 
 as to be almost imperceptible. There was no trace of 
 diffidence in them; they commanded. She was not a 
 girl whom you could masculinely protect. On the con-
 
 INSPIRATION 239 
 
 trary she would protect not only herself but others. 
 
 "Haven't you cream?" she curtly challenged the 
 waitress, arriving with ice, lemon squash and George's 
 tea. 
 
 The alien mercenary met her glance inimically for a 
 second, and then, shutting her lips together, walked off 
 with the milk. At Prosser's the waitresses did not wear 
 caps, and were, in theory, ladies. Lois would have none 
 of the theory ; the waitress was ready to die for it and 
 carried it away with her intact. George preferred 
 milk to cream, but he said nothing. 
 
 " Yes," Lois went on. " You ought to come to Paris. 
 You have been, haven't you? I remember you told me. 
 We're supposed to go back next week, but if Irene 
 doesn't go, I shan't." She frowned. 
 
 George said that positively he would come to Paris. 
 
 When they had fairly begun the rich, barbaric meal, 
 Lois asked abruptly : 
 
 " Why did you write in the middle of the night? " 
 
 Sometimes her voice was veiled. 
 
 " Why did I write in the middle of the night ? Be- 
 cause I thought I would." He spoke masterfully. He 
 didn't mean to stand any of her cheek. 
 
 " Oh ! " she laughed nicely. *' / didn't mind. I liked 
 it — awfully. It was just the sort of thing I should 
 have done myself. But you might tell me all about it. 
 I think I deserve that much, don't you? " 
 
 Thus he told her all about it, — how he had arranged 
 everything, got a room, meant to have his name painted 
 on the door, meant to make his parents take their holi- 
 day on the northeast coast for a change, so that he 
 could study the site, meant to work like a hundred devils. 
 Etc. He saw with satisfaction that the arrogant, 
 wilful creature was impressed. 
 
 She said :
 
 240 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " Now listen to me. You'll win that competition." 
 
 " I shan't," he said. " But it's worth trying, for the 
 experience, — that's what Enwright says." 
 
 She said: 
 
 " I don't care a fig what Enwright says. You'll win 
 that competition. I'm always right when I sort of feel 
 — you know." 
 
 For the moment he believed in the miraculous, inex- 
 plicable intuitions of women. 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried, as the invisible orchestra started a 
 new tune. "Do you know that.'' It's the first time 
 I've heard it in London. It's the machiche. It's all 
 over Paris. I think it's the most wonderful tune in the 
 world." Her body swayed ; her foot tapped. 
 
 George listened. Yes, it was a maddening tune. 
 
 " It is," he agreed eagerly. 
 
 She cried : 
 
 " Oh ! I do love pleasure ! And success ! And 
 money ! Don't you ? " 
 
 Her eyes had softened; they were liquid with yearn- 
 ing; but there was something frankly sensual in them. 
 This quality, swiftly revealed, attracted George in- 
 tensely for an instant. 
 
 Immediately afterwards she asked the time, and said 
 she must go. 
 
 " I daren't keep Irene waiting," she said. Her eyes 
 now had a hard glitter. 
 
 In full Regent Street he put the haughty girl into 
 Irene's automobile, which had turned round ; he was 
 proud to be seen in the act; he privately enjoyed the 
 glances of common, unsuccessful persons. As he walked 
 away he smiled to himself, to hide from himself his own 
 nervous excitement. She was a handful, she was. 
 Within her life burned and blazed. He remembered Mr. 
 Prince's remark : " You must have made a consider-
 
 INSPIRATION 241 
 
 able impression on her," or words to that effect. The 
 startling thought visited him : " I shall marry that 
 woman." Then another thought: " Not if I know it! 
 I don't like her. I do not like her. I don't like her 
 eyes." 
 
 She had, however, tremendously intensified in him the 
 desire for success. He hurried off to work. The days 
 passed too slowly, and yet they were too short for his 
 task. He could not wait for the fulness of time. His 
 life had become a breathless race. " I shall win. I 
 can't possibly win. The thing's idiotic. I might. . . . 
 Enwright's rather struck." Yes, it was Mr. Enwright's 
 attitude that inspired him. To have impressed Mr. 
 Enwright — by Jove, it was something !
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 COMPETITION 
 
 On the face of the door on the third floor of the 
 house in Russell Square the words " G. E. Cannon " 
 appeared in dirt}^ white paint, and the freshly added 
 initials " A.R.I.B.A." in clean white paint. The ad- 
 dition of the triumphant initials (indicating that 
 George had kissed the rod of the Royal Institute of 
 British Architects in order to conquer) had put the 
 sign as a whole out of centre, throwing it consider- 
 ably to the right on the green door-face. Within the 
 small and bare room, on an evening of earhest spring 
 in 1904, sat George at the customary large flat desk 
 of the architect. He had just switched on the elec- 
 tric light over his head. He looked sterner and 
 older ; he looked very worried, fretful, exhausted. He 
 was thin and pale; his eyes burned, and there were 
 dark patches under the eyes ; the discipline of the hair 
 had been rather gravely neglected. In front of George 
 lay a number of large plans, mounted on thick card- 
 board whose upper surface had a slight convex curve. 
 There were plans of the basement of the projected 
 town-hall, of the ground-floor, of the building at a 
 hej<?ht of twelve feet from the ground, of the mez- 
 zanine-floor, of the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth 
 floors : these plans were coloured. Further, in plain 
 black and white, there were a plan of the roof (with 
 
 jtower), a -longitudinal section on the central axis, two 
 
 242
 
 COMPETITION 243 
 
 other sections, three elevations, and a perspective view 
 of the entire edifice. Seventeen sheets in all. 
 
 The sum of work seemed tremendous ; it made the 
 mind dizzy ; it made George smile with terrible satis- 
 faction at his own industry. For he had engaged 
 very little help. He would have been compelled to 
 engage more, had not the Corporation extended by one 
 month the time for sending in. The Corporation had 
 behaved with singular enlightenment. Its schedules of 
 required accommodation (George's copy was scored 
 over everywhere in pencil and ink and seriously torn) 
 were held to be admirably drawn, and its supplementary 
 circular of answers to questions from competitors had 
 displayed a clarity and a breadth of mind unusual in 
 corporations. Still more to the point, the Corporation 
 had appointed a second assessor to act with Sir Hugh 
 Corvcr. In short, it had shown that it was under no 
 mandarin's thumb and that what it really and seriously 
 wanted was the best design that the profession could 
 produce. Mr. Enwright, mdeed, had nearly admitted 
 regret at having kept out of the immense affair. John 
 Orgreave had expressed regret with vigour and can- 
 dour. They had in the main left George alone, though 
 occasionally at night Mr. Enwright in the little room 
 had suggested valuable solutions of certain problems. 
 In detail he was severely critical of George's design, 
 and he would pour delicate satires upon the idiosyn- 
 crasy which caused the wilful boy to " impurify " (a 
 word from Enwright's private vocabulary) a Renais- 
 sance creation with Saracenic tendencies in the treat- 
 ment of arches and wall-spaces. 
 
 Nevertheless Mr. Enwright greatly respected the de- 
 sign in its entirety, and both he and John Orgreave 
 (who had collected by the subterranean channels of the 
 profession a large amount of fact and rumour about
 
 244 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 the efforts of various competitors) opined that it stood 
 a fair chance of being among the selected six or ten 
 whose authors would be invited to submit final designs 
 for the final award. George tried to be hopeful ; but 
 he could not be hopeful by trying. It was impossible 
 to believe that he would succeed ; the notion was pre- 
 posterous ; yet at moments, when he was not cultivating 
 optimism, optimism would impregnate all his being and 
 he would be convinced that it was impossible not to win. 
 How inconceivably grand ! His chief rallying thought 
 was that he had undertaken a gigantic task and had 
 accomplished it. Well or ill, he had accomplished it. 
 He said to himself aloud : 
 
 " I've done it ! I've done it ! " 
 
 And that he actually had done it was almost incredi- 
 ble. The very sheets of drawings were almost incredi- 
 ble. But they existed there. All was complete. The 
 declaration that the design was G. E. Cannon's per- 
 sonal work drawn in his own office by his ordinary staff 
 was there, in the printed envelope officially supplied by 
 the Corporation. The estimate of cost and the cubing 
 was there. The explanatory report on the design, duly 
 typewritten, was there. Nothing lacked. 
 
 " I've done it ! I've done it ! " 
 
 And then, tired as he was, the conscience of the cre- 
 ative artist and of the competitor began to annoy him 
 and spur him. The perspective drawing did not quite 
 satisfy, — and there was still time. The point of view 
 for the perspective drawing was too high up, and the 
 result was a certain marring of the nobility of the 
 lines, and certainly a diminishment of the effect of the 
 tower. He had previously started another perspective 
 drawing with a lower view-point, but he had mistakenly 
 cast it aside. He ought to finish the first one and sub- 
 stitute it for the second one. The perspective draw-
 
 COMPETITION 245 
 
 ing had a moral importance ; it had a special influence 
 on the assessors and committees. Horrid, tiresome 
 labour ! Three, four, five or six hours of highly con- 
 centrated tedium. Was it worth while? It was not. 
 Mr. Enwright liked the finished drawing. He, George, 
 could not face a further strain. And yet he was not 
 content. . . . Pooh ! Who said he could not face a 
 further strain.? Of course he could face it. If he did 
 not face it, his conscience would accuse him of cow- 
 ardice during the rest of his life, and he would never 
 be able to say, honestly : " I did my level best w ith the 
 thing." He snapped his fingers lightly, and in one 
 second had decided to finish the original perspective 
 drawing, and in his very finest style. He would com- 
 plete it some time during the night. In the morning 
 it could be mounted. The drawings were to go to the 
 north in a case on the morrow by passenger train, and 
 to be met at their destination by a commissionaire com- 
 mon to several competitors ; this commissionaire would 
 deliver them to the Town Clerk in accordance with the 
 conditions. In a few minutes George was at work, 
 excited, having forgotten all fatigue. He was saying 
 to himself that he would run out towards eight o'clock 
 for a chop or a steak. As he worked he perceived that 
 he had been quite right to throw over the second draw- 
 ing ; he wondered that he could have felt any hesitation ; 
 the new drawing would be immeasurably superior. 
 
 Mr. Haim " stepped up," discreetly knocking, en- 
 tering with dignity. The relations between these two 
 had little b}' little resumed their old, purely formal 
 quality. Both seemed to have forgotten that passion- 
 ate anger had ever separated them and joined them to- 
 gether. George was young, and capable of oblivion. 
 Mr. Haim had beaten him in the struggle and could 
 afford to forget. They conversed politely, as though
 
 246 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 the old man had no daughter and the youth had never 
 had a lover, Mr. Haim had even assisted with the 
 lettering of the sheets, — not because George needed 
 his help, but because Mr. Haim's calligraphic pride 
 needed to help. To refuse the stately offer would have 
 been to insult. Mr. Haim had aged, but not greatly. 
 
 " You're wanted on the telephone, Mr. Cannon." 
 
 " Oh ! Dash it ! . . . Thanks ! » 
 
 After all George was no longer on the staff of Lucas 
 and Enwright, and Mr. Haim was conferring a favour. 
 
 Down below in the big office everybody had gone 
 except the factotum. 
 
 George seized the telephone receiver and called 
 brusquely for attention. 
 
 "Is that Mr. Cannon.?" 
 
 "Yes. Who is it.?" 
 
 "Ohl It's you, George! How nice to hear your 
 voice again ! " 
 
 He recognised, but not instantly, the voice of Lois 
 Ingram. He was not surprised. Indeed he had sus- 
 pected that the disturber of work must be either Lois 
 or Miss Wheeler, or possibly Laurencine. The three 
 had been in London again for several days, and he had 
 known from Lucas that a theatre-party had been ar- 
 ranged for that night to witness the irresistible musical 
 comedy, " The Gay Spark." Lucas and M. Defour- 
 cambault were to be of the party. George had not yet 
 seen Lois since her latest return to London ; he had 
 only seen her twice since the previous summer ; he had 
 not visited Paris in the interval. The tone of her voice, 
 even as transformed by the telephone, was caressing. 
 He had to think of some suitable response to her start- 
 ling amiability, and to utter it with conviction. He 
 tried to hold fast in his mind to the image of the per- 
 spective with its countless complexities and the co-
 
 COMPETITION 247 
 
 ordination of them all ; the thing seemed to be retreat- 
 ing from him and he dared not let it go. 
 
 " Do you know," said Lois, " I only came to London 
 to celebrate the sending-in of your design. I hear it's 
 marvellous. Aren't you glad you've finished it? " 
 
 " Well, I haven't finished it," said George. " I'm on 
 it now." 
 
 What did the girl mean by saying she'd only come 
 to London to celebrate the end of his work.? An in- 
 vention on her part ! Still, it flattered him. She was 
 very strange. 
 
 " But Everard's told us you'd finished a bit earlier 
 than you'd expected. We counted on seeing your lord- 
 ship to-morrow. But now we've got to see you to- 
 night." 
 
 " Awfully sorry I can't." 
 
 " But look here, George. You must really. The 
 party's all broken up. Miss Wheeler's had to go back 
 to Paris to-night, and Jules can't come. Everything's 
 upset. The flat's going to be closed and Laurencine 
 and I will have to leave to-morrow. It's most fright- 
 fully annoying. We've got the box all right, and 
 Everard's coming, and you must make the fourth. We 
 must have a fourth. Laurencine's here at the 'phone 
 and she says the same as me." 
 
 " Wish I could ! " George answered shortly. 
 " Look here ! What train are you going by to-mor- 
 row.? I'll come and see you off. I shall be free then." 
 
 " But, George. We zcant you to come to-night." 
 There seemed positively to be tears in the faint voice. 
 "Why can't you come.? You must come." 
 
 " I haven't finished one of the drawings. I tell you 
 I'm on it now. It'll take me half the night, or more. 
 I'm just in the thick of it, you see." He spoke with 
 a slight resentful impatience, — less at her over-per-
 
 248 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 suasiveness than at the fact that his mind and the draw- 
 ing were being more and more separated. Soon he 
 would have lost the right mood and he would be com- 
 pelled to recreate it before he could resume the work. 
 The forcible gradual dragging away of his mind from 
 its passionately gripped objective was torture. He 
 had an impulse to throw down the receiver and run off. 
 
 The distant squeaking voice changed to the petulant : 
 
 " You are horrid. You could come right enough if 
 you wanted to." 
 
 "But don't you understand? It's awfully impor- 
 tant for me." 
 
 He was astounded, absolutely astounded. She 
 would not understand. She had decided that he must 
 go to the musical comedy, and nothing else mattered. 
 His whole future did not matter. 
 
 " Oh ! Very well, then," Lois said, undisguisedly 
 vexed. " Of course if you won't, you won't. But 
 really when two girls implore you like that. . . . And 
 we have to leave to-morrow, and everything's upset ! 
 ... I do think it's . . . However, good night." 
 
 " Here ! Hold hard a sec. I'll come for an hour or 
 so. What's the number of the box.'' " 
 
 " Fourteen," said the voice brokenly. 
 
 Immediately afterwards she rang off. George was 
 hurt and bewildered. The girl was incredibly ruthless. 
 She was mad. Why had he yielded? Only a silly con- 
 ventional feeling had made him yield. And yet he was 
 a great scornor of convention. He went upstairs 
 again to the perspective drawing. He looked at his 
 watch. He might work for half an hour before leaving 
 to dress. No, ho could not. The mood had vanished. 
 The perspective had slipped into another universe. He 
 could not even pick up a pen. He despised himself ter- 
 ribly, despairingly, for yielding.
 
 COMPETITION 249 
 
 II 
 
 In spite of all this he anticipated with pleasure the 
 theatre-party. He wanted to go ; he was glad he was 
 going; the memory of Lois in the tea-palace excited 
 him. And he could refuse a hearing to his conscience, 
 and could prevent himself from thinking uncomfortably 
 of the future, as well as most young men. His secret, 
 unadmitted, voluptuous eagerness was alloyed only by 
 an apprehension that after the scene over the telephone 
 Lois might be peevish and ungracious. The fear 
 proved to be baseless. 
 
 Owing to the imperfections of the club laundry and 
 the erring humanity of Downs, he arrived late. " The 
 Gay Spark " had begun. He found a darkened audi- 
 torium and a glowing stage. In the dim box, Lois 
 and Laurencine were sitting in front on gilt chairs. 
 Lucas sat behind Laurencine, and there was an empty 
 chair behind Lois. Her gesture, her smile, her glance, 
 as she turned to George and looked up, were touching. 
 She was delighted to see him ; she had the mien of a 
 child who has got what it wanted and has absolutely 
 forgotten that it ever pouted, shrieked and stamped 
 its foot. She was determined to charm her uttermost. 
 Her eye in the gloom was soft with mysterious invita- 
 tions. George looked about the interior of the box; 
 he saw the rich cloaks of the girls hanging up next to 
 glossy masculine hats, the large mirror on the wall, and 
 mother-of-pearl opera-glasses, the chocolates and flow- 
 ers on the crimson ledge. He was very close to the 
 powerfully' -built and yet plastic Lois. He could watch 
 her changing curves as she breathed ; the faint scent she 
 used rose to his nostrils. He thought, with contained 
 rapture : " Nothing in the world is equal to this." He 
 did not care a fig for the effect of perspective draw-
 
 250 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 ings or the result of the competition. Lois, her head 
 half-turned towards him, her gaze lost in the sombre 
 distances of the auditorium, talked in a low tone, ig- 
 noring the performance. He gathered that the sudden 
 departure of Irene Wheeler had unusually impressed 
 and disconcerted and to a certain extent mortified the 
 sisters, who could not explain it and who resented the 
 compulsion to go back to Paris at once. And he de- 
 tected in Lois, not for the first time, a grievance that 
 Irene kept her, Lois, apart from the main current of 
 her apparently grandiose social career. Obviously an 
 evening at which the sole guests were two girls and a 
 youth all quite unknown to newspapers could not be 
 a major item in the life of a woman such as Irene 
 Wheeler. She had left them unceremoniously to them- 
 selves at the last moment, as it were permitting them 
 to do what they liked within the limits of goodness for 
 one night, and commanding them to return sagely home 
 on the morrow. 
 
 A rod-nosed actor, hands in pockets, waddled self- 
 consciously on to the stage, and the packed audience, 
 emitting murmurs of satisfaction, applauded. Con- 
 versations were interrupted. George, expectant, gave 
 his attention to the show. He knew little or nothing 
 of musical comedy, having come under influences which 
 had taught him to despise it. His stepfather, for 
 example, could be very sarcastic about musical comedy, 
 and through both Enwright and John Orgreave George 
 had further cultivated the habit of classical music, 
 already acquired in boyhood at home in the Five Towns. 
 In the previous year, despite the calls upon his time 
 of study for examinations, George had attended the 
 Covent Garden performances of the Wagnerian 
 " Ring " as he might have attended High Mass. He 
 knew by name a considerable percentage of the hundred
 
 COMPETITION 251 
 
 odd themes in " The Ring," and it was his boast that 
 he could identify practically all the forty-seven themes 
 in " The Meistersinger." He raved about Ternina in 
 *' Tristan," He had worshipped the Joachim quartet. 
 He was acquainted with all the popular symphonies of 
 Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mozart, Glazounov, 
 and Tschaikovsky. He even frequented the Philhar- 
 monic Concerts, which were then conducted by a com- 
 poser of sentimental drawing-room ballads, and though 
 he would not class this conductor with Richter or 
 Henry J, Wood, he yet believed that somehow, by the 
 magic of the sacred name of the Philharmonic Society, 
 the ballad-monger in the man expired in the act of rais- 
 ing the baton and was replaced by a serious and sensi- 
 tive artist. He was accustomed to hear the same pieces 
 of music again and again and again, and they were 
 all or nearly all very fine, indisputably great. It never 
 occurred to him that once they had been unfamiliar 
 and had had to fight for the notice of persons who in- 
 dulged in music exactly as he indulged in music. He 
 had no traffic with the unfamiliar. Unfamiliar items 
 on a programme displeased him. He had heard com- 
 positions by Richard Strauss, but he could make noth- 
 ing of them, and his timid, untravelled taste feared to 
 like them. Mr. Enwright himself was mainly inimical 
 to Strauss, as to most of modern Germany, perhaps 
 because of the new architecture in Berlin. George 
 knew that there existed young English composers with 
 such names as Cyril Scott, Balfour Gardiner, Donald 
 Tovey — for he had seen these names recently on the 
 front page of The Daily Telegraph — but he had never 
 gone to the extent of listening to their works. He was 
 entirely sure that they could not hold a candle to 
 Wagner, and his sub-conscious idea was that it was 
 rather like their cheek to compose at all. He had
 
 252 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 not noticed that Hugo Wolf had just died, nor indeed 
 had he noticed that Hugo Wolf had ever lived. 
 
 Nevertheless this lofty and exclusive adherent of the 
 " best " music was not prejudiced in advance against 
 "The Gay Spark." He was anxious to enjoy it and 
 he expected to enjoy it. "The Gay Spark" had al- 
 read^^ an enormous prestige; it bore the agreeable, 
 captivating label of Vienna ; and immense sums were 
 being made out of it in all the capitals of the world. 
 George did not hope for immortal strains, but he an- 
 ticipated a distinguished lilting gaiety, and in the 
 " book " a witty and cosmopolitan flavour that would 
 lift the thing high above such English musical comedies 
 as he had seen. It was impossible that a work of so 
 universal and prodigious a vogue should not have un- 
 questionable virtues. 
 
 The sight of the red-nosed comedian rather shocked 
 George, who had supposed that red-nosed comedians be- 
 longed to the past. However, the man was atoned for 
 by three extremely beautiful and graceful young girls 
 who followed him. Round about the small group was 
 ranged a semicircle of handsome creatures in long skirts, 
 behind whom was another semicircle of young men in 
 white flannels ; the scene was a street in Mandalay. The 
 red-nosed comedian began by making a joke concerning 
 his mother-in-law, and another concerning mendacious 
 statements to his wife to explain his nocturnal absences 
 from home, and another concerning his intoxicated con- 
 dition. The three extremely beautiful and graceful 
 young girls laughed deliciously at the red-nosed come- 
 dian ; they replied in a similar vein ; they clasped his neck 
 and kissed him rapturously, and thereupon he sang a 
 song of which the message was that all three extremely 
 beautiful and graceful girls practised professionally 
 the most ancient and stable of feminine vocations; the
 
 COMPETITION 253 
 
 girls by means of many refrains confirmed this defini- 
 tion of their status in society. Then the four of them 
 danced and there was enthusiastic applause from every 
 part of the house except the semicircle of European 
 odalisques lost for some unexplained reason in Manda- 
 lay. These ladies, the indubitable physical attractions 
 of each of whom were known by the managerhent to fill 
 five or six stalls every night, took no pains whatever 
 to hide that they were acutely bored by the whole pro- 
 ceedings. Self-sufl5cient in their beauty, deeply aware 
 of the power of their beauty, they deigned to move a 
 lackadaisical arm or leg at intervals in accordance with 
 the respectful suggestions of the conductor. 
 
 Soon afterwards the gay spark herself appeared, 
 amid a hysteria of applause. She played the part of 
 the wife of a military officer, and displayed therein a 
 marvellous, a terrifying vitality of tongue, leg, and 
 arm. The young men in white flannels surrounded 
 her, and she could flirt with all of them ; she was on 
 intimate terms with the red-nosed comedian and also 
 with the trio of dolisrhtful wantons, and her ideals in 
 life seemed to be identical with theirs. When, through 
 the arrival of certain dandies twirling canes, and the 
 mysterious transformation of the Burmese street into 
 a Parisian cafe, these ideals were on the point of 
 realisation, there was a great burst of brass in the 
 orchestra, succeeded by a violent chorus, some kicking, 
 and a general wassail, and the curtain fell on the first 
 act. It had to be raised four times before the grate- 
 fully appreciative clapping would cease. 
 
 The auditorium shone with light ; it grew murmurous 
 with ecstatic approval. The virginal face of Lauren- 
 cine shot its rapture to Lucas as she turned to shake 
 hands with George. 
 
 " Jolly well done, isn't it.** " said Lucas.
 
 254 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " Yes," said George. 
 
 Lucas, too content to notice the perfunctoriness of 
 George's affirmative, went on: 
 
 " When you think that they're performing it this 
 very night in St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, 
 and I fancy Rome but I'm not sure — marvellous, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 " It is," said George ambiguously. 
 
 Though continuing to like him, he now definitely 
 despised Everard. The fellow had no artistic per- 
 ceptions ; he was a child. By some means he had got 
 through his Final, and was soon to be a junior partner 
 in Lucas and Enwright. George, however, did not 
 envy Everard the soft situation; he only pitied Lucas 
 and Enwright. Everard had often urged George 
 to go to musical comedies more frequently, hinting 
 that they were frightfully better than George could 
 conceive. " The Gay Spark " gave Lucas away en- 
 tirely ; it gave away his method of existence. 
 
 " I don't believe you like it," said sharp Laurencine. 
 
 " I adore it," George protested. " Don't you.? " 
 
 " Oh ! I do, of course," said Laurencine. " I knew 
 I should." 
 
 Lucas, instinctively on the defence, said: 
 
 " The second act's much better than the first." 
 
 George's hopes, dashed but not broken, recovered 
 somewhat. After all there had been one or two gleams 
 of real jokes, and a catchiness in certain airs; and the 
 spark possessed temperament in profusion. It was 
 possible that the next act might be diverting. 
 
 " You do look tired," said Laurencine. 
 
 "Oh, no, darling!" Lois objected. "I think he 
 looks splendid." 
 
 She was intensely happy in the theatre. The box 
 was very well placed — since Irene had bought it —
 
 COMPETITION 255 
 
 with a view equally good of the stage and of the semi- 
 circle of boxes. Lois' glance wandered blissfully round 
 the boxes, all occupied by gay parties, and over the 
 vivacious stalls. She gazed, and she enjoyed being 
 gazed at. She batlied herself in the glitter and the 
 gaudiness and the opulence and the humanity, as in a 
 tonic fluid. She seemed to float sinuously and voluptu- 
 ously immersed in it, as in tepid water lit with sunshine. 
 
 " Do have a choc," she invited eagerly. 
 
 George took a chocolate. She took one. They all 
 took one. They all had the unconscious pride of youth 
 that does not know itself young. Each was different 
 from the others. George showed the reserve of the 
 artist ; Lucas the ease of the connoisseur of mundane 
 spectacles ; Laurencine the sturdy catholic girlish in- 
 nocence that nothing can corrupt. And the sovereign 
 was Lois. She straightened her shoulders ; she leaned 
 languorously ; she looked up, she looked down ; she 
 spoke softly and loudly ; she laughed and smiled. And 
 in every movement and in every gesture and tone she 
 symbolised the ecstasy of life. She sought pleasure, 
 and she had found it, and she had no after-thought. 
 She was infectious ; she was irresistible, and terrible, 
 too. For it was dismaying, at any rate to George, 
 to dwell on the fierceness of her instinct and on the 
 fierceness of its satisfaction. To George her burning 
 eyes were wistful, pathetic in their simplicity. He felt 
 a sort of fearful pity for her. And he admired her, — 
 she was something definite; she was something magnifi- 
 cently outright ; she did live. Also he liked her ; the 
 implications in her glance appealed to him. The pe- 
 culiar accents in which she referred to the enigma of 
 Irene Wheeler were extraordinarily attractive to that 
 part of his nature which was perverse and sophisticated. 
 " At least she is not a simpleton," he thought. " And
 
 256 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 she doesn't pretend to be. Some day I shall talk to 
 her." 
 
 The orchestra resumed ; the lights went out. Lois 
 settled herself to fresh enchantment as the curtain 
 rolled up to disclose the bright halls and staircases of 
 a supper-club. The second act was an amplification 
 and inflammation of the themes of the first. As for the 
 music, George listened in vain for an original tune, even 
 for a tune of which he could not foretell the end from 
 the beginning ; the one or two engaging bits of melody 
 which enlivened the first act were employed again in the 
 second. The disdainful lethargic chorus was the same ; 
 the same trio of delicious wantons fondled and kissed 
 the same red-nosed comedian, who was still in the same 
 state of inebriety, and the gay spark flitted royster- 
 ingly through the same evolutions, in pursuit of the 
 same simple ideals. The jocularity pivoted unend- 
 ingly on the same twin centres of alcohol and con- 
 cupiscence. Gradually the latter grew to more and 
 more importance, and the piece became a high and can- 
 did homage to the impulse by force of which alone one 
 generation succeeds another. No beautiful and grace- 
 ful young girl on the stage blenched before the salacious 
 witticisms of the tireless comedian ; on the contrary he 
 remained the darling of the stage. And as he was 
 the darling of the stage, so was he the darling of the 
 audience. 
 
 And if no beautiful and graceful young girl blenched 
 on the stage, neither did the beautiful and graceful 
 yoimg girls in the audience blench. You could see 
 them sitting happily with their fathers and mothers 
 and cousins and uncles and aunts savouring the spec- 
 tacle from dim stalls and boxes in the most perfect 
 respectability. Laurencine, leaning her elbows on the
 
 COMPETITION J^57 
 
 edge of the box, watched with eager parted lips, and 
 never showed the slightest sign of uneasiness. 
 
 George was uneasy ; he was distressed. The extraor- 
 dinary juxtaposition of respectability and a ribald 
 sexual display startled but did not distress him. If 
 the whole audience was ready to stand it he certainly 
 was. He had no desire to protect people from them- 
 selves, nor to blush on behalf of others — whoever they 
 might be. Had anybody accused him of saintliness he 
 would have resented the charge, quite justifiably, and if 
 the wit of " The Gay Spark " had been witty, he would 
 have enjoyed it without a qualm. What distressed 
 him, what utterly desolated him, was the grossness, 
 the poorness, the cheapness, the dulness, and the unin- 
 ventive monotony of the interminable entertainment. 
 He yawned, ho could not help yawning; he yawned his 
 soul away. Lois must have heard him yawning, but 
 she did not move. He looked at her curiously, piti- 
 fully, speculating how much of her luxury was due to 
 Irene Wheeler, and how little to " Parisian " of The 
 Sunday Journal, — for he had been enquiring about the 
 fruits of journalism. The vision of his own office and 
 of the perspective drawing rose seductively and irre- 
 sistibly in his mind. He could not stay in the theatre; 
 he felt that if he stayed he would be in danger of drop- 
 ping down dead, suffocated by tedium ; and the drawing 
 must be finished ; it would not wait ; it was the most 
 urgent thing in the world. And not a syllable had any 
 person in the box said to him about his great task. 
 Lois' forearm, braceleted, lay on the front of the box. 
 Unceremoniouslv he took her hand. 
 
 " By-bye." 
 
 ** You aren't going? " Her whisper was incredulous. 
 
 " Must."
 
 £58 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 He gave her no chance to expostulate. With one 
 movement he had seized his hat and coat and slid from 
 tlie box, just as the finale of the act was imminent and 
 the red-nosed comedian was measuring the gay spark 
 for new lingerie with a giant property-cigar. He had 
 not said good-bye to Laurencine. He had not asked 
 about their departure on the morrow. But he was 
 free. 
 
 In the foyer a couple — a woman in a rose plush 
 sortie de bed, and a blade — were mysteriously talking. 
 The blade looked at him, smiled, and left the lady. 
 
 ** Hcl/o, old fellow ! " It was Buckingham Smith, 
 who had been getting on in the world. 
 
 They shook hands. 
 
 *' You've left Chelsea, haven't you.'' ^ 
 
 *' Yes," said George. 
 
 " So've I. Don't see much of the old gang nowadays. 
 Heard anything of old Princey lately? " 
 
 George replied that he had not. The colloquy was 
 over in a moment. 
 
 " You must come and see my show — next week," 
 Buck Smitli called out after the departing George. 
 
 *' I will," cried George. 
 
 He walked quickly up to Russell Square, impatient to 
 steep himself anew in his work. All sense of fatigue 
 had left him. Time seemed to be flying past him, and 
 he rushing towards an unknown fate. On the previous 
 day he had received an enhcartening, challenging, sar- 
 donic letter from his stepfather, who referred to poli- 
 tics and envisaged a new epoch for the country. Ed- 
 win Clayhanger was a Radical of a type found only in 
 the Midlands and the North. For many years Clay- 
 hanger's party, to which he was passionately faithful, 
 had had no war-cry and no programme worthy of its 
 traditions. The increasing success of the campaign
 
 COMPETITION 259 
 
 against Protection and certain signs that the intro- 
 duction of Chinese labour into South Africa could be 
 effectively resisted, had excited the middle-aged pro- 
 vincial — now an Alderman — and he had managed to 
 communicate fire to George. But in George, though he 
 sturdily' shared his stepfather's views, the resulting 
 righteous energy was diverted to architectural cre- 
 ation. 
 
 m 
 
 The circumstances in which, about a month later, 
 George lunched with the Ingram famil}'^ at their flat in 
 the Rue d'Athenes, near the Gare St. Lazare, Paris, 
 had an appearance of the utmost simplicity and ordi- 
 nariness. He had been down to Staffordshire for a 
 rest, and had returned unrested. And then Mr. En- 
 wright had suggested that it would do him good to go 
 to Paris, even to go alone. He went, with no plan, 
 but having made careful arrangements for the tele- 
 graphing to him of the result of the competition, which 
 was daily expected. By this time he was very seriously 
 convinced that there was no hope of him being among 
 the selected six or ten, and he preferred to get the news 
 away from London rather than in it ; he felt that he 
 could not face London on the day or the morrow of a 
 defeat which would of course render his youthful au- 
 dacity ridiculous. 
 
 He arrived in Paris on a Wednesday evening and 
 took a room in a maison meuhlee of the Rue de Seze. 
 Every inexperienced traveller in Paris has a friend who 
 knows a lodging in Paris which he alleges is better and 
 cheaper than any other lodging — and which is not. 
 The house in the Rue de Seze was the economical para- 
 dise of Buckingham Smith, whom George had encount- 
 ered again at the Buckingham Smith exhibition.
 
 260 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 Buckingham Smith, with over half his pictures bear- 
 ing the red seal that indicates " Sold," felt justified in 
 posing to the younger George as a cosmopolitan ex- 
 pert, — especially as his opinions on modern French 
 art were changing. George spent three solitary and 
 dejected days in Paris affecting an interest in museums 
 and architecture and French opera, and committing 
 follies. Near the end of the third day, a Saturday, he 
 suddenly sent a threepenny express note to Lois In- 
 gram. He would have telephoned had he dared to use 
 the French telephone. On Sunday morning, an aproned 
 valet having informed him that Monsieur was demanded 
 at the telephone, he had to use the telephone. Lois 
 told him that he must come to lunch, and that after- 
 wards he would be escorted to the races. Dejection 
 was instantly transformed into a gay excitation. 
 Proud of having spoken through a French telephone, 
 he began to conceive romantically the interior of a 
 Paris home — he had seen naught but a studio or so 
 with Mr. Enwright — and to thrill at the prospect of 
 Sunday races. Not merely had he never seen a horse- 
 race on a Sunday, — he had never seen a horse-race at 
 all. He perhaps was conscious of a genuine interest 
 in Lois and her environment, but what most satisfied 
 and flattered him, after his loneliness, was the bare fact 
 of possessing social relations in Paris at all. 
 
 The Ingram home was up four flights of naked oaken 
 stairs, fairly swept, in a plain flat-fronted house. The 
 door of the home was opened b}' a dark, untidy, dis- 
 hevelled, uncapped, fat girl, with a full apron, dazzling- 
 white and rectangularly creased, that had obviously 
 just been taken out of a drawer. Familiarly and 
 amicably smiling, she led him into a small, modest 
 drawing-room where were Lois and her father and 
 mother. Lois was enigmatic and taciturn. Mr. and
 
 COMPETITION 261 
 
 Mrs. Ingram were ingenuous, loquacious, and at ease. 
 Both of them had twinkling eyes. Mrs. Ingram was 
 rather stout and grey and small, and wore a quiet, in- 
 expensive blue dress embroidered at the neck in the 
 Morrisian manner, of no kind of fashionableness. She 
 spoke in a low voice, smiled, to herself, with a benevo- 
 lence that was not without a touch of the sardonic, and 
 often looked at the floor or at the ceiling. Mr. Ingram, 
 very slim and neat, was quite as small as his wife and 
 seemed smaller. He talked much and rather amus- 
 ingly, in a somewhat mincing tone, as it were apologet- 
 ically, truly anxious to please. He had an extremely 
 fair complexion, and his youthfulness was quite start- 
 ling. His golden hair and perfect teeth might have 
 belonged to a boy. George leapt immediately into 
 familiarity with these two. But nobody could have less 
 resembled his preconceived image of " Parisian " than 
 Mr. Ingram. And he could not understand a bit 
 whence or how such a pair had produced their daughter 
 Lois. Laurencine was a far more comprehensible off- 
 spring for them. 
 
 The dining-room was even less spacious than the 
 drawing-room, and as unpretentious. The furniture 
 everywhere was sparse, but there were one or two rich 
 knickknacks, and an abundance of signed photographs. 
 The few pictures, too, were signed, and they drew at- 
 tention. On the table the napkins, save George's, were 
 in rings, and each ring different from the others. 
 George's napkin had the air of a wealthy, stiff, shiny 
 relative of the rest. Evidently in that home the long 
 art of making both ends meet was dail}' practised. 
 George grew light-hearted and happy, despite the su- 
 preme preoccupation which onlj' a telegram could allay. 
 He had keenly the sensation of being abroad. The 
 multiplicity of doors, the panelling of the doors, the
 
 262 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 narrow planking of the oaken floor, the moulding of the 
 cornices, the shape of the windows, the view of the 
 courtyard from the dining-room and of attics and 
 chimney cowls from the drawing-room, the closed 
 anthracite stoves in lieu of fires, the crockery, the 
 wine-bottle, the mustard, the grey salt, the unconven- 
 tional gestures and smiles and exclamations of the un- 
 kempt maid, — all these strange details enchanted him, 
 and they all set off very vividly the intense, nice, honest, 
 reassuring Englishness of the host and hostess. 
 
 It was not until after the others were seated for the 
 meal that Laurencine made her appearance. She was 
 a magnificent and handsome virgin, big-boned, physi- 
 cally a little awkward, candid. How exquisitely and 
 absurdly she flushed in shaking hands with George ! 
 With what a delicious mock-furious setting of the teeth 
 and tossing of the head she frowned at her mother's 
 reproaches for being late ! This family knew the mean- 
 ing of intimacy but not of ceremony. Laurencine sat 
 down at her father's left ; George was next to her on 
 Mrs. Ingram's right. Lois had the whole of the op- 
 posite side of the table. 
 
 "Does he know.''" Laurencine asked, and turning 
 to George: "Do you know.?" 
 
 "Know what.?" 
 
 " You'd better tell him, dad. You like talking, and 
 he ought to know. I shan't be able to eat if he doesn't. 
 It would be so ridiculous sitting here and pretending." 
 
 Mrs. Ingram looked upwards across the room at a 
 corner of the ceiling, and smiled faintly. 
 
 " You might," she said, " begin by asking Mr. Can- 
 non if he particularly wants to be burdened with the 
 weight of your secrets, my dear child." 
 
 " Oh ! I particularly do," said George.
 
 COMPETITION 263 
 
 " There's no secret about it — at least there won't 
 be soon," said Laurencine. 
 
 Lois spoke simultaneously: 
 
 *' My dear mother, please call George George. If 
 we call him George, you can't possibly call him Mr. 
 Cannon." 
 
 " I quite admit," Mrs. Ingram replied to her eldest, 
 " I quite admit that you and Laurencine are entitled to 
 criticise my relations with my husband, because he's 
 your father. But I propose to carry on my affairs 
 with other men just according to my own ideas, and any 
 interference will be resented. I've had a bad night, 
 owing to the garage again, and I don't feel equal to 
 calling George George. I've only known him about 
 twenty minutes. Moreover I might be misunderstood, 
 mightn't I, Mr. Cannon ? " 
 You might," said George. 
 Now, dad ! " Laurencine admonished. 
 
 Mr. Ingram, addressing George, began: 
 
 " Laurencine suffers from a grave form of self-con- 
 sciousness " 
 
 " I don't, dad." 
 
 " It is a disease akin to conceit. Her sufferings are 
 sometimes so acute that she cannot sit up straight 
 and is obliged to loll and curl her legs round the legs 
 of the chair. We are all very sorry for her. The 
 only treatment is brutal candour, as she herself advo- 
 cates " 
 
 Laurencine jumped up, towered over her father, and 
 covered his mouth with her hand. 
 
 " This simple hand," said Mr. Ingram, seizing it, 
 " will soon bear a ring. Laurencine is engaged to be 
 married," 
 
 *' I'm not, father." She sat down again. 

 
 264 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " Well, you are not. But you will be, I presume, by 
 post-time to-night. A young man of the name of 
 Lucas has written to Laurencine this morning in a 
 certain sense, and he has also written to rae. Lauren- 
 cine has seen my letter, and I've seen hers. But my 
 envelope contained only one letter. Whether her 
 envelope contained more than one, whether the epistle 
 which I saw is written in the style usually practised by 
 the present age, whether it was composed for the spe- 
 cial purpose of being shown to me, I do not know, 
 and discretion and nice gentlemanly feeling forbid me 
 to enquire. However " 
 
 At this point, Laurencine snatched her father's nap- 
 kin ofF his knees, and put it on her own. 
 
 *' However, my wife and I have met this Mr. Lucas, 
 and as our opinion about him is not wholly unfavour- 
 able, the matter was satisfactorily and quickly ar- 
 ranged — even before T had had my bath ; Laurencine 
 and I will spend the afternoon in writing suitable com- 
 munications to Mr. Lucas. I am ready to show her 
 mine for a shilling, but T doubt if five pounds would 
 procure me a sight of hers. Yet she is only an ama- 
 teur writer and I'm a professional." 
 
 There was a little silence, and then George said, 
 awkwardly : 
 
 " I congratulate old Lucas." 
 
 " This news must have astonished you extremely," 
 observed Mr. Ingram. " It must have come as a com- 
 plete surprise. In fact you are doubtless in the con- 
 dition known to charwomen as capable of being knocked 
 down with a feather." 
 
 " Oh ! Quite ! " George agreed. 
 
 Nevertheless, in spite of his light tone, he regretted 
 the engagement. He did not think Lucas was worthy 
 of the splendid girl. He felt sorry for her. At that
 
 COMPETITION 265 
 
 moment she faced him bravely, and smiled. Her face 
 had a tremendous deep crimson flush. There was a 
 woman somewhere in the girl ! Strange phenomenon ! 
 And another strange phenomenon: if Laurencine had 
 been self-conscious, George also was self-conscious ; and 
 he avoided Lois' eyes ! Why ? He wondered whether 
 the circumstances in which he had come to Paris and 
 entered the Ingram home were as simple and ordinary 
 as they superficially appeared. 
 
 " Laurencine," said her mother, " give your father 
 back his serviette." 
 
 " Mine's fallen." 
 
 " Never mind, my dear," said Mr. Ingram very benev- 
 olently, and he bent down and retrieved Laurencine's 
 napkin, which he kept. " And now," he proceeded, 
 *' the serious operation being over and the patient out 
 of danger, shall we talk about something else for a fey 
 moments ? " 
 
 " I should think so indeed ! " Laurencine exclaimed, 
 suddenly gay. " George, when shall you know about 
 the competition? " 
 
 " Any minute, I might," said he. 
 
 They all talked sympathetically to George on the 
 new subject. 
 
 After lunch, Lois disappeared. She came back re- 
 splendent for the races, when coffee had long been fin- 
 ished in the drawing-room. 
 
 Why aren't you read}', Laure.-* " she demanded. 
 I'm not going, darling." 
 
 Lois," Mr. Ingram exhorted. " Don't forget the 
 afternoon is to be spent in literary composition." 
 
 " It isn't," Laurencine contradicted. " I ma}' as 
 well tell 3'ou I've written all I mean to write in the way 
 of letters for one day. But I don't want to go, really, 
 Lois darling." 
 
 a 
 
 ii
 
 266 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " No. She wants to thinlc," Mrs. Ingram explained. 
 
 Lois set her lips together, and then glimpsed herself 
 in the large mirror over the anthracite stove. She 
 looked too rich and complicated for that simple draw- 
 ing-room. 
 
 A performance on a horn made itself heard in the 
 street below. 
 
 " There he is ! " said Laurencine. 
 
 She opened a window and ran out on to the balcony 
 and leaned over ; then glanced within the room and 
 nodded. George had assumed that Irene Wheeler was 
 the author and hostess of the race-party, and he was 
 not mistaken. Irene's automobile had been sent round 
 to embark him and the girls. Mrs. Ingram urged him 
 to come again the next day, and he said ardently that 
 he would. Mrs. Ingram's affair with him was pro- 
 gressing rapidly. 
 
 " But I hope you'll call me George, then," he added. 
 
 " I may," she said. " I may ! I may go even fur- 
 
 5> 
 
 ther. 
 
 Lois and George descended the stairs in silence. 
 He had not seen her, nor written to her, since the night 
 of the comedy when he had so abruptly loft the box. 
 Once or twice at the Ingrams' he had fancied that she 
 might be vexed with him for that unceremonious depar- 
 ture. But she was not. The frank sigh of relief 
 which she gave on reaching the foot of the interminable 
 stairs, and her equally frank smile, had no reserve 
 whatever. 
 
 The chauffeur's welcoming grin seemed to indicate 
 that he was much attached to Miss Ingram. He 
 touched his hat, bowed, and spoke to her at some length 
 in French. Lois frowned. 
 
 " It seems Miss Wheeler doesn't feel equal to going 
 out this afternoon," she translated to George. " But
 
 COI^IPETITION 267 
 
 she insists that we shall use the car all the same." 
 
 " Is she Ul? " 
 
 " She's lying down, trying to sleep." 
 
 " Well, then, I suppose we'd better use the car, hadn't 
 we? " 
 
 Lois said seriously: 
 
 " If you don't object, I don't." 
 
 IV 
 
 At Longchamps the sun most candidly and lovingly 
 blessed the elaborate desecration of the English Sab- 
 bath, The delicately ornamented grand-stands, the 
 flags, the swards, the terraces, the alleys, the booths, 
 the notice-boards, the vast dappled sea of hats and 
 faces in the distant cheaper parts of the Hippodrome, 
 were laved in the descending, caressing floods of volup- 
 tuous, warm sunshine. The air itself seemed lumi- 
 nous. The enchantment of the sun was irresistible ; it 
 stunned apprehensions and sad memories, obliterating 
 for a moment all that was or might be unhappy in the 
 past or in the future. George yielded to it. He 
 abandoned his preoccupations about the unsatisfac- 
 toriness of using somebody else's car in the absence of 
 the owner, about Mr. and Mrs. Ingram's ignorance of 
 the fact that their daughter had gone off alone with 
 him, about Lois' perfect indiff'erence to this fact, about 
 the engagement of Laurencine to a man not her equal 
 in worth, about the strange uncomfortable eff'ect of 
 Laurencine's engagement upon his attitude towards 
 Lois, and finally and supremely about the competition. 
 He gave himself up to the bright warmth like an animal, 
 and forgot. And he became part of the marvellous 
 and complicated splendour of the scene, took pride in 
 it, took even credit for it (heaven knew why!), and 
 gradually passed from insular astonishment to a bland.
 
 268 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 calm acceptance of the miracles of sensuous beatitude 
 which civilisation had to offer. 
 
 After all, he was born to such experiences ; they 
 were his right ; and he was equal to them. Neverthe- 
 less his conviction of the miraculous fortunately was 
 not impaired. What was impaired was his conviction 
 of his own culture. He was constantl}' thinking that 
 he knew everything or could imagine everything, and 
 constantly undergoing the shock of undeception ; but 
 the shock of the Longchamps Sunday was excessive. 
 He had quite failed to imagine the race-meeting; he 
 had imagined an organism brilliant, perhaps, but bar- 
 baric and without form and style; he had imagined 
 grotesque contrasts of squalor, rascality, and fashion ; 
 he had imagined an affair predominantl}' equine and 
 masculine. The reality did not correspond ; it trans- 
 cended his imagination ; it painfully demonstrated his 
 jejune crudity. The Hippodrome was as formalised 
 and stylistic as an Italian garden ; the only contrasts 
 were those of one elegance with another ; horses were 
 not to be seen, except occasionally in the distance 
 when under their riders they shot past some dark back- 
 ground, a flitting blur of primary colours with a rum- 
 ble of muffled thunder ; and women, not men, predom- 
 inated. 
 
 On entering the Hippodrome George and Lois had 
 met a group of fashionably attired women, and he had 
 thought: "There's a bunch of jolly well-dressed 
 ones." But as the reserved precincts opened out be- 
 fore him he saw none but fashionably attired women. 
 They were there not in hundreds but in thousands. 
 They sat in rows on the grand-stands ; they jostled each 
 other on the staircases ; they thronged the alleys and 
 the swards. The men were negligible beside them. 
 And they were not only fashionably and very fashion-
 
 COMPETITION 269 
 
 ably attired — all their frocks and all their hats and 
 all their parasols and all their boots were new, glit- 
 tering, spick-and-span ; were complex and expensive ; 
 not one feared the sun. The conception of what those 
 innumerable chromatic toilettes had cost in the toil, 
 stitch by stitch, of malodorous workrooms and in the 
 fatigue of pale industrious creatures was really formid- 
 able. But it could not detract from the scenic triumph. 
 The scenic triumph dazzlingly justified itself, and 
 proved beyond any cavilling that earth was a grand, 
 intoxicating place, and Longchamps under the sun an 
 unequalled paradise of the senses. . . • Ah ! These 
 women were finished — finished to the least detail of 
 coiffure, sunshade-handle, hat-pin, jewellery, handbag, 
 boot-lace, glove, stocking, lingerie. Each was the prod- 
 uct of many arts in co-ordination. Each was of great 
 price. And there were thousands of them. They were 
 as cheap as periwinkles. George thought : " This is 
 Paris." 
 
 He said aloud: 
 
 " Seems to be a fine lot of new clothes knocking 
 about." 
 
 Evidently for Lois his tone was too impressed, not 
 suflScientl}" casual. She replied, in her condescending 
 manner, which he detested : 
 
 " My poor George, considering that this is the open- 
 ing of the spring season, and the place where all the 
 new spring fashions are tried out, — what did you 
 expect.'' " 
 
 The dolt had not known tliat he was assisting- at a 
 solemnity recognised as such by experts throughout the 
 clothed world. But Lois knew all those things. She 
 herself was trying out a new toilette, for which doubt- 
 less Irene Wheeler was partly sponsor. She could hold 
 her own on the terraces with the rest. She was stag-
 
 no THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 geringly different, now, from the daughter of the simple 
 home in the Rue d'Athenes. 
 
 The eyes of the splendid women aroused George's 
 antipathy, because he seemed to detect antipathy in 
 them, — not against himself but against the male in 
 him. These women, though by their glances they 
 largely mistrusted and despised each other, had the air 
 of having combined sexually against a whole sex. The 
 situation was very contradictory. They had beauti- 
 fied and ornamented themselves in order to attract a 
 whole sex, and yet they appeared to resent the neces- 
 sitj^ and instinct to attract. They submitted with a 
 secret repugnance to the mysterious and supreme bond 
 which kept the sexes inexorably together. And while 
 stooping to fascinate, while deliberately seeking atten- 
 tion, they still had the assured mien of conquerors. 
 Their eyes said that they knew they were indispensable, 
 that they had a transcendent role to play, that no con- 
 cealed baseness of the inimical sex was hidden from 
 them, and that they meant to exploit their position to 
 the full. These Latin women exhibited a logic, an ele- 
 gance, and a frankness beyond the reach of the Anglo- 
 Saxon. Their eyes said, not that they had been dis- 
 illusioned, but rather that they had never had illusions. 
 They admitted the facts ; they admitted everything, — 
 economic dependence, chicane, the intention to seize 
 every advantage, rutliless egotism. They had no shame 
 for a depravity which they shared equally with the in- 
 escapable and cherished enemy. And it was the young- 
 est who, beneath the languishing and the softness and 
 the invitation deceitful and irresistible, gazed out most 
 triumphantly to the enemy : " You are the victims, 
 — we have tried our strength and your infirmity." 
 They were heroic. There was a feeling in tlie bright 
 air of melancholy and doom as the two hostile forces,
 
 COMPETITION 271 
 
 inseparable, inextricably involved together, surveyed 
 the opponent in the everlasting conflict. George felt 
 its influence upon himself, upon Lois, upon the whole 
 scene. The eyes of the most feminine women in the 
 world, denying their smiles and their lure, had discov- 
 ered to him something which marked a definite change in 
 his philosophy of certain ultimate earthly values. 
 
 Lois said: 
 
 " Perhaps a telegram is waiting for you at the hotel." 
 
 " Well, I can wait till I get back," he replied 
 stoutly. 
 
 He thought, looking at her by his side : 
 
 "She is just like these French women!" And for 
 some reason he felt proud. 
 
 " You needn't," said Lois. " We can telephone from 
 under the grand-stand if you like." 
 
 " But I don't know the number." 
 
 " We can get that out of the book, of course." 
 
 " I don't reckon I can use these French telephones." 
 
 " Oh ! ]\Iy poor boy, I'll telephone for you — un- 
 less you prefer not to risk knowing the worst." 
 
 Yes, her tone was the tone of a strange woman. And 
 it was she who thirsted for the result of the competi- 
 tion. 
 
 Controlling himself, submissively he asked her to 
 telephone for him, and she agreed in a delightfully 
 agreeable voice. She seemed to know the entire geog- 
 raphy of the Hippodrome. She secured a telephone- 
 cabin in a very business-like manner. As she entered 
 the cabin she said to George: 
 
 " I'll ask them if a telegram has come, and if it has 
 I'll ask them to open it and read it to me — or spell it, 
 of course it'll be in English . . . Eh?" 
 
 Through the half-open door of the cabin he watched 
 her and listened. She rapidly turned over the foul
 
 272 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 and torn pages of the telephone-book with her thumb. 
 She spoke into the instrument very clearly, curtly and 
 authoritatively. George could translate in his mind 
 what she said, — his great resolve to learn French had 
 carried him so far. 
 
 " On the part of Monsieur Cannon, one of your 
 clients. Monsieur Cannon of London. Has there ar- 
 rived a telegram for him? " 
 
 She waited. The squalor of the public box increased 
 the effect of her young and proud stylishness and of her 
 perfume. George waited, humbled by her superior 
 skill in the arts of life, and saying anxiously to himself : 
 " Perhaps in a moment I shall know the result," almost 
 trembling. 
 
 She hung up the instrument, and with a glance at 
 George shook her head. 
 
 " There isn't anything," she murmured. 
 
 He said: 
 
 " It's very queer, isn't it? However. . . ." 
 
 As they emerged from the arcana of the grand- 
 stand, Lois was stopped by a tall, rather handsome Jew, 
 who, saluting her with what George esteemed to be 
 French exaggeration of gesture, nevertheless addressed 
 her in a confidential tone in English. George, having 
 with British restraint acknowledged the salute, stood 
 aside and gazed discreetly away from the pair. He 
 could not hear what was being said. After several 
 minutes Lois rejoined George, and the}' went back into 
 the crowds and the sun. She did not speak. She did 
 not utter one word. Onl}^ when the numbers went up 
 for a certain race, she remarked : 
 
 " This is the Prix du Cadran. It's the principal 
 race of the afternoon." 
 
 And when that was over, amid cheering that ran 
 about the field like fire through dried bush, she added :
 
 COMPETITION ns 
 
 " I think I ought to go back now. I told the 
 chauffeur to be here after the Prix du Cadran. What 
 time is it exactly? " 
 
 They sat side by side in the long open car, facing 
 the chauffeur's creaseless back. After passing the 
 Cascade, the car swerved into the Allee de Longchanips, 
 which led in an absolutely straight line two miles long 
 to the Port Maillot and the city. Spring decorated 
 the magnificent wooded thoroughfare. The side-alleys, 
 aisles of an interminable nave, were sprinkled with 
 revellers and lovers and the most respectable families 
 half hidden amid black branches and gleams of tender 
 green. Automobiles and carriages threaded the main 
 alley at varying speeds. The number of ancient horse- 
 cabs gradually increased until, after the intersection 
 of the Allee de la Reine Marguerite, they thronged the 
 vast road. All the humble and shabby genteel people 
 in Paris who could possibly afford a cab seemed to 
 have taken a cab. Nearly every cab was over-loaded. 
 The sight of this vast pathetic effort of the disinher- 
 ited towards gaiety and distraction and the mood of 
 spring intensified the vague sadness in George due to 
 the race-crowd, Lois' silence, and the lack of news 
 about the competition. 
 
 At length Lois said, scowling — no doubt involun- 
 tarily : 
 
 " I think I'd better tell you now. Irene Wheeler's 
 committed suicide. Shot herself." She pressed her 
 lips together and looked at the road. 
 
 George gave a startled exclamation. He could not 
 for an instant credit the astounding news. 
 
 " But how do you know? Who told you? " 
 
 " The man who spoke to me in the grand-stand. 
 He's correspondent of The London Courier — friend 
 of father's of course."
 
 ^74 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 George protested: 
 
 " Then why on earth didn't you tell me before? . . . 
 Shot herself? What for? " 
 
 " I didn't tell you before because I couldn't." 
 
 All the violence of George's nature came to the sur- 
 face as he said brutally : 
 
 " Of course you could ! " 
 
 " I tell you I couldn't ! " she cried. " I knew the 
 car wouldn't be there for us until after the Prix du 
 Cadran. And if I'd told you I couldn't have borne to 
 be walking about that place three quarters of an hour. 
 We should have had to talk about it. I couldn't have 
 borne that. And so you needn't be cross, please." 
 
 But her voice did not break, nor her eyes shine. 
 
 " I was wondering whether I should tell the chauffeur 
 at once, or let him find it out." 
 
 " I should let him find it out," said George. " He 
 doesn't know that you know. Besides, it might upset 
 his driving." 
 
 " Oh ! I shouldn't mind about his driving," Lois 
 murmured disdainfully. 
 
 When the uninformed chauffeur drove the car witK 
 a grand sweep under the marquise of the ostentatious 
 pale yellow block in the Avenue Hoche where Irene 
 Wheeler had had her flat, Mr. Ingram and a police- 
 agent were standing on the steps, but nobody else was 
 near. Little Mr. Ingram came forward anxiously, his 
 eyes humid and his face drawn with pain and distress. 
 
 " We know," said Lois. " I met Mr. Cardow at 
 Longchamps. He knew." 
 
 Mr. Ingram's pain and distress seemed to increase. 
 
 He said, after a moment: 
 
 " Alfred will drive you home, dear, at once. Alfred,
 
 COMPETITION 275 
 
 vous seriez gentU de reconduire Mademoiselle a la rue 
 d'Athenes." He had the air of supplicating the amiable 
 chauffeur. " Mr. Cannon, I particularly want a few 
 words with you." 
 
 " But, father, I must come in ! " said Lois. " I 
 must " 
 
 " You will go home immediately. Please, please do 
 not add to m^^ difficulties. I shall come home myself 
 as quickly as possible. You can do nothing here. 
 The seals have been affixed." 
 
 Lois raised her chin in silence. 
 
 Then Mr. Ingram turned to the police-agent, spoke 
 to him in French, and pointed to the car persuasively ; 
 and the police-agent permissively nodded. The 
 chauffeur, with an affectation of detachment worthy 
 of the greatest days of valetry, drove off, leaving 
 George behind. Mr. Ingram descended the steps. 
 
 " I think perhaps we might go to a cafe," said he 
 in a tone which dispersed George's fear of a discus- 
 sion as to the propriety of the unchaperoned visit to 
 the races. 
 
 They sat down on the terrasse of a larffe cafe near 
 the Place des Ternes, a few hundred yards away from 
 the Avenue Hoche. The cafe was nearly emptv, citi- 
 zens being either in the Bois or on the main boule- 
 vards. Mr. Ingram sadly ordered bocks. The waiter 
 flapping his long apron called out in a loud voice as 
 he went within : " Deux blonds, deux." George sup- 
 plied cigarettes. 
 
 " Mr. Cannon," began :Mr. Ingram, " it is advisable 
 for me to tell you a most marvellous and painful story. 
 I have only just heard it. It has overwhelmed me, 
 but I must do my duty." He paused. 
 
 " Certainly," said George, self-consciously, not 
 knowing what to say. He nearly blushed as, in an
 
 276 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 attempt to seem at ease, he gazed negligent^ round 
 at the rows of chairs and marble-tables, and at the 
 sparse traffic of the somnolent Place. 
 
 Mr. Ingram proceeded. 
 
 " When I first knew Irene Wheeler she was an art 
 student here. So was I. But I was already married 
 of course, and older than she. Exactly what her age 
 was I should not care to say. I can, however, say 
 quite truthfully that her appearance has scarcely al- 
 tered in those nineteen years. She always affirmed that 
 her relatives, in Indianapolis, were wealth}' — or at least 
 had money, but that they were very mean with her. 
 She lived in the simplest way. As for me, I had to 
 give up art for something less capricious, but ca- 
 pricious enough in all conscience. Miss Wheeler went 
 to America and was awa}' for some time — a year or 
 two. When she came back to Paris she told us that 
 she had made peace with her people, and that her 
 uncle, whom for present purposes I will call Mr. X, a 
 very celebrated railway magnate in Indianapolis, had 
 adopted her. Her new manner of life amply confirmed 
 these statements." 
 
 " Deux bocks," cried the waiter, slapping down on 
 the table two saucers and two stout glass mugs filled 
 with frothing golden liquid. 
 
 George, unaccustomed to the ritual of cafes, began 
 at once to sip, but Mr. Ingram, aware that the true 
 boulevardier always ignores his bock for several min- 
 utes, behaved accordingly. 
 
 " She was evidently extremely rich. I have had 
 some experience, and I estimate that she had the han- 
 dling of at least half a million francs a year. She 
 seemed to be absolutely her own mistress. You have 
 had an opportunity of judging her style of existence. 
 However, her attitude towards ourselves was entirely
 
 COMPETITION 277 
 
 unchanged. She remained intimate with my wife, who 
 I may say is an excellent judge of character, and she 
 was exceedingly kind to our girls, especially Lois — 
 but Laurencine too — and as they grew up she treated 
 them like sisters. Now, jNIr. Cannon, I shall be per- 
 fectly frank with you. I shall not pretend that I was 
 not rather useful to Miss Wheeler — I mean in the 
 press. She had social ambitions. And why not? 
 One ma}'^ condescend towards them, but do they not 
 serve a purpose in the structure of society? Very 
 rich as she was, it was easy for me to be useful to her. 
 And at worst her pleasure in publicity was quite inno- 
 cent, — indeed it was so innocent as to be charming. 
 Naive, shall we call it? " 
 
 Here Mr. Ingram smiled sadly, tasted his bock, and 
 threw away the end of a cigarette. 
 
 " Well," he resumed, " I am coming to the point. 
 This is the point, which I have learnt scarcely an hour 
 ago, — I was called up on the telephone immediately 
 after you and Lois had gone. This is the point. Mr. 
 X was not poor Irene's uncle, and he had not adopted 
 her. But it was his money that she was spending." 
 Mr. Ingram gazed fixedly at George. 
 
 " I see," said George calmly, rising to the role of 
 man of the world. " I see." He had strange mixed 
 sensations of pleasure, pride, and confusion. " And 
 you've just found this out? " 
 
 " I have just found it out from Mr. X himself, whom 
 I met for the first time to-day, — in poor Irene's flat. 
 I never assisted at such a scene. Never ! It posi- 
 tively unnerved me. Mr. X is a man of fifty-five, 
 fabulously wealthy, used to command, autocratic, 
 famous in all the Stock Exchanges of the world. When 
 I tell you that he cried like a child. . . . Oh ! I never 
 had such an experience. His infatuation for Irene —
 
 278 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 indescribable ! Indescribable ! She had made her own 
 terms with liim. He told me himself. Astounding 
 terms, but for him it was those terms or nothing. He 
 accepted them — had to. She was to be quite free. 
 The most absolute discretion was to be observed. He 
 came to Paris or London every year, and sometimes 
 she went to America. She utterly refused to live in 
 America." 
 
 " Why didn't she marry him ? " 
 
 *' He has a wife. I have no doubt in m}"^ own mind 
 that one of his reasons for accepting her extraordinary 
 terms was to keep in close touch with her at all costs 
 in case his wife should die. Otherwise he might have 
 lost her altogether. He told me many things about 
 poor Irene's famil}' in Indianapolis which I will not 
 repeat. It was true that they had money, as Irene 
 said ; but as for anything else. . . . ! The real name 
 was not Wheeler." 
 
 " Has he been over here long? " 
 
 " He landed at Cherbourg last night. Just ar- 
 rived." 
 
 " And she killed herself at once." 
 
 " Whether the deed was done immediately before or 
 immediately after his arrival is not yet established. 
 And I need hardly tell you that Mr. X has already 
 fixed up arrangements not to appear in the case at all. 
 But one thing is sure — she had made all the prepara- 
 tions for suicide, made them with the greatest care. 
 The girls saw her yesterday, and both Lois and I 
 spoke to her on the telephone this morning. Not a 
 trace of anything in her voice. I assume she had given 
 a message for Lois to the chauffeur." 
 
 " Yes," said George. " We never dreamed " 
 
 " Of course not. Of course not."
 
 COMPETITION 279 
 
 " But why did she " 
 
 " Another man, my dear sir ! Another man ! A 
 young man named Defourcambault, in the French Em- 
 bassy in London." 
 
 " Oh, him ! " George burst out. " I know him," he 
 added fiercel3\ 
 
 "You do.^* Yes, I remember Laurencine saying. 
 . . . Poor Irene, I fear, was very deeply in love with 
 him. She had written to Mr. X about Defourcam- 
 bault. He showed me the letter — most touching, 
 really most touching. His answer to it was to come 
 to Europe at once. But poor Irene's death had noth- 
 ing to do with his coming. She did not know he was 
 coming. She shot herself as she lay in bed, and on the 
 pillow was a letter from this man Defourcambault — 
 well, saying good-bye to her. I saw the letter. Not 
 a letter that I should wish to remember. Perhaps she 
 had told him something of her life. I much fear that 
 Defourcambault will be fetched from London, though I 
 hope not. There would be no object. . . . No, thank 
 you. I will not smoke again. I only wanted to say 
 this to you. All Paris knows that m}^ daughters were 
 intimate with poor Irene. Now, if anything comes out, 
 if anything should come out, if there's any talk, — you 
 see my fear. I wish to assure you, Mr. Cannon, that 
 I had not the slightest suspicion, not the slightest. 
 And yet we journalists cannot exactly be called in- 
 genuous ! But I had not the slightest suspicion, nor 
 had my wife. You know the situation between Lauren- 
 cine and 3^our friend Lucas. You and he are very 
 intimate, I believe. May I count on you to explain 
 everytliing from my point of view to Mr. Lucas? I 
 could not bear that the least cloud should rest upon my 
 little Laurencine."
 
 280 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " You needn't trouble about Lucas," said George 
 positively. " Lucas'll be all right. Still, I'll talk to 
 him." 
 
 " Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I 
 knew I could rely on you. I've kept j^ou a long time, 
 but I'm sure you understand. I'm thinking only of my 
 girls. Not for anything would I have them know the 
 truth about the affair." 
 
 " But aren't thej^ bound to know it ? " George asked. 
 
 Mr. Ingram was wounded. " I hope not. I hope 
 not," he said gravely. " It is not right that young 
 girls should know such things." 
 
 " But surely sooner or later " 
 
 " Ah ! After they are married, conceivably. That 
 would be quite different," he admitted with cheerful- 
 ness. " And now," he smiled. " I'm afraid I've got to 
 go and write the case up for London. I can catch the 
 mail, I think. If not, I must cable. But they hate 
 me to cable when the mail is possible. Can I drop you 
 anywhere .'' " 
 
 Simultaneously, he signalled to a taxi and knocked 
 on the window for the attendance of the waiter. 
 
 " Thanks. If you're going anywhere near the Place 
 de I'Opcra," said George. 
 
 VI 
 
 He was excited, rather than saddened, by the tragic 
 event. He was indeed very excited. And also he had 
 a deep satisfaction, because it seemed to him that he 
 had at last been truly admitted into the great secret 
 fellowship of adult males. The initiation flattered his 
 pride. He left Mr. Ingram at the door of an English 
 newspaper office in the Boulevard des Italiens, and, 
 after vainly asking for telegrams at the hotel, walked 
 away, aimlessly at first, along broad pavements en-
 
 COMPETITION 281 
 
 cumbered with the chairs and tables of vast, crowded 
 cafes, and with bright Sunday idlers and sinister street- 
 vendors. But in a moment he had decided that he must 
 and ought to pay a call in the Rue d'Athenes. Mr. 
 Ingram had said nothing about his seeing Lois again, 
 had not referred to Mrs. Ingram's invitation to repeat 
 his visit, might even vaguely object to an immediate 
 interview between him and Lois. Yet he could not, as 
 a man of the world, abandon Lois so unceremoniously. 
 He owed something to Lois and he owed something to 
 himself. And he was a free adult. The call was nat- 
 ural and necessary, and if Mr. Ingram did not like it he 
 must, in the Five Towns phrase, lump it. George set 
 off to find the Rue d'Athenes unguided. It was pleas- 
 urable to tliink that there was a private abode in the 
 city of cafes, hotels, and museums, to which he had the 
 social right of entry. 
 
 The watching concierge of the house nodded to him 
 politely as he began to mount the stairs. The Ingrams' 
 servant smiled upon him as upon an old and familiarly- 
 respected friend. 
 
 " Mademoiselle Lois? " he said with directness. 
 
 The slatternly benevolent girl widened her mouth 
 still further in a smile still more cordial, and led him 
 to the drawing-room. As she did so she picked up a 
 newspaper-packet that lay on a table in the tiny hall, 
 and, without putting it on a salver, deposited it in front 
 of Lois, who was alone in the drawing-room. George 
 wondered what Lois would have thought of such an 
 outrage upon established ritual had it happened to 
 her in the home of Irene Wheeler instead of in her own ; 
 and then the imagined vision of Irene lying dead in the 
 sumptuous home in the Avenue Hoche seemed to render 
 all established ritual absurd. 
 
 " So you've come ! " exclaimed Lois harshly.
 
 282 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " Mother's quite knocked over, and Laurencine's look- 
 ing after her. All the usual eau-de-Cologne business. 
 And I should say father's not much better. My poor 
 parents! What did dad want you for?" 
 
 The servant had closed the door. Lois had got up 
 from her chair and was walking about the room, pulling 
 aside a curtain and looking out, tapping the mantel- 
 piece with her hand, tapping with her feet the base of 
 the stove. George had the sensation of being locked 
 in a cage with a mysterious, incalculable and powerful 
 animal. He was fascinated. He thought : " I wanted 
 to see her alone and I am seeing her alone." 
 
 "Well.?" she insisted. "What did dad want you 
 for.?" 
 
 " Oh ! He told me a few things about Miss Wheeler." 
 
 " I suppose he told you about Jules, and I suppose 
 he told you I wasn't to know on any account ! Poor 
 old dad ! Instead of feeling he's my father, d'you know 
 what I feel.? I feel as if I was his mother. He's so 
 clever ; he's frightfully clever ; but he was never meant 
 for this world. He's just a beautiful child. How in 
 heaven's name could he think that a girl like me could 
 be intimate with Irene, and not know about the things 
 that were in her mind.? How could he.? Why! I've 
 talked for hours with Irene about Jules ! She'd much 
 sooner talk with me even than with mother. She's 
 cried in front of me. But I never cried. I always 
 told her she was making a mistake about Jules. I de- 
 tested the little worm. But she couldn't see it. No, 
 she couldn't. She'd have quarrelled with me if I'd let 
 her quarrel. However, I wouldn't let her. Fancy 
 quarrelling — over a man ! She couldn't help being 
 mad over Jules. ' I told her she couldn't — that was 
 why I bore with her. I always told her he was only 
 playing with her. The one thing that I didn't tell
 
 COMPETITION 283 
 
 her was that she was too old for him. She really be- 
 lieved she never got any older. When I say too old 
 for him, I mean for her sake, not for his. He didn't 
 think she was too old. He couldn't — with that com- 
 plexion of hers. I never envied her anything else ex- 
 cept her complexion and her money. But he wouldn't 
 marry an American. His people wouldn't let him. 
 He's got to marry into a family like his own, and 
 there 're only about ten for him to choose from. I know 
 she wrote to him on Thursday. She must have had 
 the answer this morning. Of course she had a revolver. 
 I've got one myself. She went to bed and did it. She 
 used to say to me that if ever she did it that was how 
 she would do it. . . . And father tells me not to add 
 to his difficulties! Don't 3'OU think it's comic? . . . 
 But she did not tell me everything. I knew that. I ac- 
 cused her of not telling me everj^thing. She admitted 
 it. However. . . ." 
 
 Lois spoke in a low regular murmur, experimentally 
 aware that privacy in a Paris flat is relative. There 
 were four doors in the walls of the drawing-room, and a 
 bedroom on either side. At moments George could 
 scarcely catch her words. He had never heard her 
 say so much at once, for she was taciturn by habit, 
 even awkward in conversation. She glowered at him 
 darkl3^ The idea flashed through his mind : " There 
 can't be another girl like her. She's unique." He al- 
 most trembled at the revelation. He was afraid, and 
 yet courageous, challenging, combative. She had 
 grandeur. It might be moral, or not ; but it was gran- 
 deur. And — (that touch about the complexion!) 
 — she could remember her freckles ! She might, in 
 her hard egotism, in the rushing impulses of her appe- 
 tites, — she might be an enemy, an enemy to close 
 with whom would be terrible rapture, and the war of
 
 284 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 the sexes was a sublime war, infinitely superior in emo- 
 tions to tame peace. (And had she not been certified 
 an angel? Had he not himself seen the angel in her?) 
 She dwarfed her father and mother. The conception, 
 especially, of Mr. Ingram at lunch, deliciously pla3'ful 
 and dominating, and now with the adroit wit crushed 
 out of him and only a naive sentimentality left, was 
 comic — as she had ruthlessly characterised it. She 
 alone towered formidably over the devastated ruins of 
 Irene's earthly splendour. 
 
 He said nothing. 
 
 She rang the bell by the mantelpiece. He heard it 
 ring. No answer. She rang again. 
 
 " Arrivez done, jeune fille! " she exclaimed impa- 
 tiently. 
 
 The servant came. 
 
 " Apportez du the, Seraphine." 
 
 " Oui, mademoiselle.^^ 
 
 Then Lois lounged towards the table and tore sharply 
 the wrapper of the newspaper. George was still stand- 
 ing. 
 
 " He's probably got something in about her this 
 week — about her soiree last Tuesday. We weren't 
 invited. Of course he went." 
 
 George saw the name The Sunday Journal. The pa- 
 per had come by the afternoon mail, and had been de- 
 livered, according to weekly custom, by messenger from 
 Mr. Ingram's ofl'ice. Lois' tone and attitude tore 
 fatally the whole factitious " Parisian " tradition, as 
 her hand had torn the wrapper. 
 
 " See here," she said quietly, after a few seconds, and 
 gave him the newspaper, with her thumb indicating a 
 paragraph. 
 
 He could hardly read the heading, because it un-
 
 COMPETITION 285 
 
 nerved him ; nor the opening lines. But he read this : 
 *' The following six architects have been selected by the 
 Assessors and will be immediately requested by the 
 Corporation to submit final designs for the town-hall: 
 
 Mr. Whinburn, Mr. , Mr. , Mr. George E. 
 
 Cannon. . . ." 
 
 " What did I always tell you ? " she said. 
 
 And then she said : 
 
 " Your telegram must have been addressed wrong or 
 something." 
 
 He sat down. Once again he was afraid. He was 
 afraid of winning in the final competition ! A vista 
 of mayors, corporations, town-clerks, committees, con- 
 tractors, clerks-of-works, frightened him. He was 
 afraid of his immaturity, of his inexperience. He could 
 not carry out the enterprise ; he would reap only ig- 
 nominy. His greatest desire had been granted. He 
 had expected, in the event, to be wildly happy. But 
 he was not happy." 
 
 " Well, I'm blowed 1 " he exclaimed. 
 
 Lois, who had resumed the paper, read out: 
 
 " In accordance with the conditions of the competi- 
 tion, each of the above named will receive an honor- 
 arium of one hundred guineas." 
 
 She looked at him. 
 
 " You'll get that towTi-hall to do," she said, posi- 
 tively. " You're bound to get it. You'll see." 
 
 Her incomprehensible but convincing faith passed 
 mysteriously into him. A holy dew relieved him. He 
 began to feel happy. 
 
 Lois glanced again at the paper, which with arms 
 outstretched she held in front of her like a man, like 
 the men at Pickering's. Suddenly it fell rustling to 
 the floor, and she burst into tears.
 
 286 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 She murmured indistinctly: 
 
 " The last tiling she did was for my pleasure — 
 sending the car." 
 
 George jumped up, animated by an inexpressible 
 tenderness for her. She had weakened. He moved to- 
 wards her. He did not consider what he was doing; he 
 had naught to say ; but his instinctive arms were about 
 to clasp her. He was unimaginably disturbed. She 
 straightened and stiffened in a second. 
 
 " But of course you've not got it yet," she said 
 harshly, with apparent irrelevance. 
 
 Seraphine entered bouncingly with the tea. Lois re- 
 garded the tray, and remarked the absence of the 
 strainer. 
 
 " Et la passoire? " she demanded with implacable 
 sternness. 
 
 Seraphine gave a careless, apologetic gesture. 
 
 vn 
 
 It was late in September, when most people had re- 
 turned to London after the holidays. John Orgreave 
 mounted to the upper floor of the house in Russell 
 Square where George had his office. Underneath 
 George's name on the door had been newly painted tlie 
 word " Enquiries," and on another door, opposite, the 
 word "Private." John Orgreave knocked with exag- 
 gerated noise at this second door and went into what 
 was now George's private room. 
 
 " I suppose one ought to knock," he said in his hearty 
 voice. 
 
 " Hello, Mr. Orgreave! " George exclaimed, jumping 
 up. 
 
 " If the mountain doesn't come to Mahomet, Mahomet 
 must come to the mountain," said John Orgreave. 
 
 " Come in," said George.
 
 COMPETITION 287 
 
 He noticed, and ignored, the touch of sarcasm in 
 John Orgreave's attitude. He had noticed a similar 
 phenomenon in the attitude of various people within 
 the last four days, since architectural circles and even 
 the world in general had begun to resound with the 
 echoing news that the competition for the northern 
 town-hall had been won by a youth not twenty-three 
 years of age. Mr. Enwright had been almost cross, 
 asserting that the victory was perhaps a fluke, as the 
 design of another competitor was in reality superior to 
 George's. Mr. Enwright had also said, in his crabbed 
 way : " You'll soon cut me now," and, George protest- 
 ing, had gone on : " Oh ! Yes you will. I've been 
 through this sort of thing before. I know what I'm 
 talking about. You're no different from the rest." 
 Whereupon George, impatient and genuinely annoyed, 
 had retorted upon him quite curtly, and had remem- 
 bered what many persons had said about Mr. En- 
 wright's wrong-headed jealous sensitiveness — animad- 
 versions which he, as a worshipper of ]Mr. Enwright, 
 had been accustomed to rebut. Further, Lucas him- 
 self had not erred by the extravagance of his enthusi- 
 asm for George's earth-shaking success. For exam- 
 ple, Lucas had said : " Don't go and get above your- 
 self, old chap. They may decide not to build it after 
 all. You never know with these corporations." A re- 
 mark extremely undeserved, for George considered that 
 the modesty and the simplicity of his own demeanour 
 under the stress of an inordinate triumph were rather 
 notable. Still, he had his dignity to maintain against 
 the satiric, and his position was such that he could 
 afford to maintain it. 
 
 Anyhow he preferred the sardonic bearing of his 
 professional intimates to the sycophancy of certain ac- 
 quaintances and of eager snobs unknown to him.
 
 288 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 Among sundry telegrams received was one composed 
 regardless of cost and signed Turnbull. He could not 
 discover who Turnbull might be until John Orgreave 
 had reminded him of the wigged, brown, conversational 
 gentleman whom he had met, on one occasion only, at 
 Adela's. In addition to telegrams, he had had letters, 
 some of which contained requests for money (demanded 
 even as a right by the unlucky from the lucky), and an 
 assortment of charity circulars, money-lenders' cir- 
 culars, and bucket-shop lures. His mother's great 
 sprawling letter had pleased him better than any save 
 one. The exception was his stepfather's. Edwin 
 Clayhanger, duly passing on to the next generation the 
 benevolent Midland gibe which he had inherited, wrote: 
 " Dear George. It's better than a bat in the eye with 
 a burnt stick. Yours affectionately, Nunks." As a 
 boy George had at one period called his stepfather 
 *' Nunks," but he had not used the appellation for 
 years. He was touched, now. 
 
 The newspapers had been hot after him, and he knew 
 not how to defend himself. His photograph was im- 
 plored. He was waylaid by journalists shabby and by 
 journalists spruce, and the resulting interviews made 
 him squirm. He became a man of mark at Pickering's. 
 Photographers entreated him to sit free of charge. 
 What irritated him in the whole vast affair was the 
 continual insistence upon his lack of years. Nobody 
 seemed to be interested in his design for the towTi-hall ; 
 everybody had the air of regarding him as a youthful 
 prodigy, a performing animal. Personalh^ he did not 
 consider that he was so very young. (Nevertheless, he 
 did consider that he was a youthful prodigy. He could 
 recall no architect in history who had done what he 
 had done at his age.) The town-clerk who travelled 
 from the North to see him treated his age in a different
 
 COMPETITION 289 
 
 manner, the patronising. He did not care for the 
 town-clerk. However, the town-clerk was atoned for 
 by the Chairman of the New Town-hall Sub-committee, 
 a true human being named Soulter, with a terrific ac- 
 cent and a taste for architecture, pictures, and music. 
 Mr. Soulter, though at least forty five, treated George, 
 without any appearance of effort, as a coeval. George 
 immediately liked him, and the mere existence of Mr. 
 Soulter had the effect of dissipating nearly all George's 
 horrible qualms and apprehensions about his own com- 
 petence to face the overwhelming job of erection. Mr. 
 Soulter was most soothing in the matter of specifica- 
 tions and contractors. 
 
 " So you've got into your new room," said John 
 Orgreave. 
 
 Never before had he mounted to see George either in 
 the new room or in the old room. The simple fact of 
 the presence there of one of the partners in the his- 
 toric firm below compensated for much teasing sar- 
 casm and half- veiled jealousy. It was a sign. It was 
 a seal authenticating renown. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I only wanted to give you a message from Adela. 
 The Ingram young woman is staying with us " 
 
 "Lois.'*" The name shot out of him unbidden. 
 
 " Yes. You're humbly supplicated to go to tea to- 
 day. Four o'clock. Thank God I've not forgotten 
 it!" 
 
 George arrived fifty five minutes late at Bedford 
 Park. Throughout the journey thither he kept repeat- 
 ing: "She said I should do it. And I've done it! 
 I've done it ! I've done it ! " The triumph was still 
 so close behind him that he was constantly realising it 
 afresh, and saying, wonder-struck : " I've done it.'* 
 And the miraculous phantasm of the town-hall, up-
 
 290 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 lifted in solid stone, formed itself again and again in 
 his enchanted mind, against a background of tremen- 
 dous new ambitions rising endlessly one behind an- 
 other like snowy Alps. 
 
 "Is this what you call four o'clock?" twittered 
 Adela, between cajolery and protest, somewhat older 
 and facially more artificial, but eternally blonde ; still 
 holding her fair head on one side and sinuously waving 
 the palm. 
 
 " Sorry ! Sorry ! I was kept at the last moment 
 by a journalist johnn3\" 
 
 " Oh ! Of course ! " said Adela, pooh-poohing with 
 her lips. " Of course we expect that story nowadays ! " 
 
 " Well, it was a chap from The Builder, or I wouldn't 
 have seen him. Can't trifle with a trade paper, you 
 know." 
 
 He thought : 
 
 " She's like the rest of them, as jealous as the devil." 
 
 Then Lois came into the room, hatted and gloved, 
 in half-mourning. She was pale, and appreciably 
 thinner ; she looked nervous, weak, and wear}'. As he 
 shook hands with her he felt very self-conscious, as 
 though in winning the competition and fulfilling her 
 prophecy he had done something dubious for which he 
 ought to apologise. This was exceedingly strange, but 
 it was so. She had been ill after the death of Irene 
 Wheeler. Having left Paris for London on the day 
 following the races, he had written to her about noth- 
 ing, in particular, a letter which meant everything but 
 what it said, — and had received an answer from 
 Laurcncine, who announced that her sister was in bed 
 and likely to be in bed ; and that father and mother 
 wished to be remembered to him. Then he wrote to 
 Laurencine. When the result of the final competition 
 was published he had written again to Lois. It seemed
 
 COMPETITION 291 
 
 to him that he was bound to do so, for had she not willed 
 and decided his victory? No reply; but there had 
 scarcely been time for a reply. 
 
 " Did you get my letter? " he smiled. 
 
 " This afternoon," she said gravely. " It followed 
 me here. Now I have to go to Irene's flat. I should 
 have been gone in another minute." 
 
 " She will go alone," Adela put in, anxiously. 
 
 " I shall be back for dinner," said Lois, and to the 
 stupefaction of George she moved towards the door. 
 
 But just as she opened the door, she turned her 
 head and, looking at George with a frown, murmured: 
 
 " You can come with me if you like." 
 
 Adela burst out : 
 
 " He hasn't had any tea ! " 
 
 " I'm not urging him to come, my dear. Good-bye." 
 
 Adela and George exchanged a glance, each signalling 
 to the other that perhaps this sick, strange girl ought 
 to be humoured. He abandoned the tea. . . . He was 
 in the street with Lois. He was in the train with her. 
 Her ticket was in his pocket. He had explained to 
 her why he was late, and she had smiled, amiably but 
 enigmatically. He thought : " She's no right to go 
 on like this. But what does it matter?" She said 
 nothing about the competition, — not a word of con- 
 gratulation. Indeed she hardly spoke beyond telling 
 him that she had to choose some object at the flat. 
 He was aware of the principal terms of Irene's will, 
 which indeed had caused the last flutter of excitement 
 before oblivion so quickly descended upon the notoriety 
 of the social star. Irene's renown had survived her 
 complexion by only a few short weeks. The will was 
 of a rather romantic nature. Nobody familiar with 
 the intimate circumstances would have been surprised 
 if Irene had divided her fortune between Lois and Lau-
 
 292 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 rencine. The bulk of it, however, went back to Indlan- 
 apoHs. The gross total fell farr short of popular esti- 
 mates. Lois and Laurencine received five thousand 
 pounds apiece, and in addition they were requested to 
 select each an object from Irene's belongings, — Lois out 
 of the London flat, Laurencine out of the Paris flat. 
 Lois had come to London to choose, and she was staying 
 with Adela, the sole chaperone available. Since the 
 death of Irene, Mrs. Ingram had been excessively strict 
 in the matter of chaperones. 
 
 They took a hansom at Victoria. Across the great 
 square, whose leaves were just yellowing, George saw 
 the huge block of flats, and in one storey all the blinds 
 were down. Lois marched first into the lift, master- 
 fully, as though she inhabited the block. She asked 
 no one's permission. Characteristically she had an or- 
 der from the solicitors, and the kej'^s of the flat. She 
 opened the front door of the flat without any trouble. 
 They were inside, within the pale-sheeted interior. 
 Scarcely a thing had yd been moved, for, with the for- 
 malities of the judicatures of France, England, and the 
 State of Indiana to be complied with, events marched 
 slowly, under the sticky manipulation of three different 
 legal firms. Lois and George walked cautiously across 
 the dusty, dulled parquets into the vast drawing-room. 
 George dofFcd his hat. 
 
 " I'd better draw the blinds up," he suggested. 
 
 *' No, no ! " she sharply commanded. " I can see 
 quite well. I don't want any more light." 
 
 There was the piano upon which Laurencine had 
 played! The embrasure of the window! The corner 
 in which Irene had sat spellbound by Jules Defourcam- 
 bault! The portraits of Irene, at least one of which 
 would perpetuate her name ! The glazed cases full of 
 her collections ! . . . The chief pieces of furniture and
 
 COMPETITION 293 
 
 all the chairs were draped in the pale, ghostly sheet- 
 ing. 
 
 Suddenly Lois, rushing to the mantelpiece, cried: 
 
 " This is wliat I shall take." 
 
 It was a large photograph of Jules Defourcambault, 
 bearing the words : '* A Miss Irene Wheeler. Hom- 
 mages respectueux de J.D.F." 
 
 " You won't I " he exclaimed, incredulous, shocked. 
 He thought : " She is mad ! " 
 
 " Yes, I shall." 
 
 There were hundreds of beautiful objects in the 
 place, and she chose a banal photograph of a despicable 
 creature whom she detested. 
 
 "Why don't you take one of Iter portraits? Or 
 even a fan. What on earth do you want with a thing 
 like that?" His voice was changing. 
 
 " I shall take it and keep it for ever. He was the 
 cause of it all. This photograph was everything to 
 her once." 
 
 George revolted utterly, and said with cold, harsh 
 displeasure : 
 
 " You're simply being morbid. There's no sense in 
 it." 
 
 She dropped down into a chair, and the impress of 
 her body dragged the dust-sheet from its gilt arms, 
 exposing them. She put her face in her hands and 
 sobbed. 
 
 " You're awfully cruel ! " she murmured thickly. 
 
 The sobs continued, shaking her body. She was 
 beautifully dressed. Her shoes were adorable, and the 
 semi-transparent hose over her fine ankles. She made 
 a most disturbing, an unbearable figure of compas- 
 sion. She needed wisdom, protection, guidanco, 
 strength. Every bit of her seemed to appeal for these 
 qualities. But at the same time she dismayed. He
 
 294! THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 moved nearer to her. Yes, she had grandeur. All 
 the costly and valuable objects in the drawing-room 
 she had rejected in favour of the satisfaction of a 
 morbid and terrible wliim. Who could have foreseen 
 it? He moved still nearer. He stood over her. He 
 seized her yielding wrists. He lifted her veil. Tears 
 were running down her cheeks from the ^^ellow eyes. 
 She looked at him through her tears. 
 
 " You're frightfully cruel," she feebly repeated. 
 
 "And what if I am?" he said solemnly. Did she 
 really think him hard, had she always thought him 
 hard, she the hard one? How strange! Yet no doubt 
 he was hard. 
 
 His paramount idea was : 
 
 " She had faith in me." It was as if her faith had 
 created the man he was. She was passionately ambi- 
 tious : so was he. 
 
 And when he kissed her wet mouth, and stroked with 
 incredible delicacy those streaming cheeks, he felt him- 
 self full of foreboding. But he was proud and confi- 
 dent. 
 
 He took her back to Bedford Park. She carried 
 the photograph, unwrapped; but he ventured no com- 
 ment. She went straight up to her room. 
 
 " You must tell Mrs. Orgreave," she said on the 
 stairs. 
 
 Adela made a strange remark: 
 
 " Oh ! But we always intended you to marry Lois ! "
 
 PART TWO 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE TRIUMPH 
 
 George came into the conjugal bedroom. The hour 
 was about three o'clock in the afternoon. Lois lay on 
 the sofa at the foot of the twin beds. It was perhaps 
 characteristic of her that she sincerely preferred the 
 sofa to her bed. Sometimes in the night when she 
 could not sleep she would get up and go sighing to the 
 sofa, and, with nothing but a slippery eiderdown to 
 cover her, sleep perfectly till George arose in the morn- 
 ing. Quite contentedly conventional in most matters 
 of mere social deportment, she often resisted purely 
 physical conventions. A bed was the recognised ma- 
 chine for slumber ; hence she would instinctively choose 
 another machine. Also, the sofa was nearer to the 
 ground. She liked to be near the ground. She had 
 welcomed with ardour the first beginnings of the new 
 fashion which now regularly permits ladies to sit on 
 the hearthrug after a ceremonial dinner and prop their 
 backs with cushions or mantelpieces. Doubtless a trait 
 of the " cave-woman " that as a girl she had called 
 herself ! 
 
 She was now stretched on the sofa in a luxurious 
 and expensive ribboned muslin negligee, untidy, pale, 
 haggard, heavy, shapeless, the expectant mother in- 
 tensely conscious of her own body and determined to 
 
 297
 
 298 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 maintain all the privileges of the exacting role which 
 nature had for the third time assigned to her. Little 
 Laurencine aged eight and little Lois aged five, in their 
 summer white, were fondling her, tumbling about her, 
 burying themselves in her ; she reclined careless, be- 
 nignant, and acquiescent under their tiny assaults ; it 
 was at moments as though the three were one being. 
 When their father appeared in the doorway she warned 
 them in an apparently awed tone that father was there 
 and that nursey v»as waiting for them and that they 
 must run off quietly. And she kissed them with the 
 enormous kiss of a giantess suddenly rendered pas- 
 sionate by a vast uprush of elemental feeling. And 
 they ran off, smiling confidently at their father, gig- 
 gling, chattering about important affairs in their in- 
 tolerable shrieking voices. George could never under- 
 stand why Lois should attempt as she constantly did 
 to instil into them awe of their father ; his attitude to 
 the children made it impossible that she should suc- 
 ceed. But she kept on trying. The cave-woman 
 again! George would say to himself: "All women 
 are cave-women." 
 
 " Have you come to pack.? " she asked with fatigued 
 fretfulness, showing no sign of surprise at his arrival. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " he answered, and implied that in his over- 
 charged existence packing would have to be done when 
 it could, if at all. " I only came in for one second 
 to see if I could root out that straw hat I wore last 
 year." 
 
 " Do open the window," she implored grievously. 
 
 " It is open." 
 
 "Both sides.?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, open it more." 
 
 " It's wide open."
 
 THE TRIUMPH 299 
 
 "Both sides?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " It's so stuffy in this room," she complained, ex- 
 pelling much breatli. 
 
 It was stuffy in the room. The room was too full 
 of the multitudinous belongings and furniture of wife 
 and husband. It was too small for its uses. The pair, 
 unduly thrown together, needed two rooms. But tlie 
 house could not yet yield them two rooms, though 
 from the outside it had an air of spaciousness. The 
 space was employed in complying with custom, in imi- 
 tating the disposition of larger houses, and in persuad- 
 ing the tenant that he was as good as his betters. 
 There was a basement, because the house belonged to 
 the basement era, and because it is simpler to burrow 
 than to erect. On the ground-floor were the hall, nar- 
 row, and the dining-room, narrow. To have placed the 
 dining-room elsewhere would have been to double the 
 number of stairs between it and the kitchen ; moreover 
 the situation of the dining-room in all such correct 
 houses is imnmtably fixed by the code. Thus the han- 
 diest room in the house was occupied during four hours 
 of the twenty four and wasted during the remaining 
 twenty. Behind the dining-room was a very small room 
 appointed by the code to be George's " den." It would 
 never have been used at all had not George considered 
 it his duty to use it occasionally and had not Lois at 
 intervals taken a fancy to it because it was not hers. 
 
 The whole of the first-floor was occupied by the land- 
 ing, the well of the staircase, and the drawing-room, 
 which last was inevitably shaped in the resemblance 
 of an L. The small back portion of it over George's 
 den was never utilised save by the grand piano and 
 rare pianists. Still, the code demanded that the draw- 
 ing-room should have this strange appendage and that
 
 300 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 a grand piano should reside in it modestly, apologeti- 
 cally, like a shame that cannot be entirely concealed. 
 Nearly every liouse in Elm Park Road and every house 
 in scores of miles of other correct streets in the West 
 End had a drawing-room shaped in the semblance of 
 an L, and a grand piano in the hinterland thereof. The 
 di'awing-room, like the dining-room, was occupied dur- 
 ing about four hours of the twenty four and wasted 
 during the remaining twenty. 
 
 The two main floors of the house being in such man- 
 ner accounted for, the family and its dependants prin- 
 cipally lived aloft on the second and third floors. 
 Eight souls slept up there nightly. A miracle of com- 
 pression. 
 
 George had had the house for ten years ; he entered 
 it as a bridecrroom. He had staved in it for seven 
 years because the landlord would onU'^ confide it to iiim 
 on lease, and at the end of the seven years he lacked 
 the initiative to leave it. An ugly house, utterly with- 
 out architectural merit ! A strange house for an ar- 
 chitect to inhabit ! George, however, had never liked 
 it. Before his marriage he had discovered a magnifi- 
 cent house in Fitzroy Square, a domestic masterpiece 
 of the Adams period, exquisitely designed without and 
 within, huge rooms and many rooms, lovely ceilings, a 
 forged-iron stair-rail out of Paradise ; a house appre- 
 ciably nearer to the centre than the one in Elm Park 
 Road, and with a lower rental. George would have 
 taken the house, had not Lois pointed out to him its 
 fatal disadvantage, which had escaped him, namely, 
 that people simply did not live in Fitzroy Square. In- 
 stantly Lois entered Fitzroy Square George knew him- 
 self for a blind fool. Of course the house was impossi- 
 ble. He was positively ashamed to show her tlie house. 
 She admitted tliat it was beautiful. So Elm Park
 
 THE TRIUMPH 301 
 
 Road was finally selected, Elm Park Road being a 
 street where people could and in fact did live. It was 
 astounding how Lois, with her small and fragmentary 
 knowledge of London, yet knew, precisely and infallibly, 
 by instinct, by the sound of the names of the thorough- 
 fares, by magic diabolical or celestial, what streets 
 were inhabitable and what were not. And something 
 in George agreed with her. 
 
 He now rummaged among hat-boxes beneath the 
 beds, pulled one out, and discovered a straw hat in it. 
 " Will it do ? " he questioned doubtfully, 
 " Let me look at it." 
 
 He approached her and gave her the hat, which she 
 carefully examined, frowning. 
 " Put it on," she said. 
 
 He put it on, and she gazed at him for what seemed 
 to him an unnecessarily long time. His thought was 
 that she liked to hold him under her gaze. 
 " Well? " he exclaimed impatiently. 
 " It's quite all right," she said. " What's the mat- 
 ter with it? It makes you look about fourteen." He 
 felt envy in her voice. Then she added. " But surely 
 you won't be able to wear that thing to-morrow? " 
 
 " Of course not. I only want it for this afternoon. 
 . . . This sun." 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried. " I do think it's a shame I can't 
 go to the Opening! It's just my luck." 
 
 He considered that she arraigned her luck much too 
 often ; he considered that on the whole her luck was 
 decidedly good. But he knew that she had to be 
 humoured. It was her right to be humoured. 
 
 " Yes," he said judicially and rather shortly. " I'm 
 sorry too! But what are you going to do about it? 
 If you can't go, you can't. And you know it's abso- 
 lutely out of the question." As a fact he was glad
 
 302 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 that her condition made such an excursion impossible 
 for her. She would certainly have been rather a tick- 
 lish handful for him at the Opening. 
 
 " But I should so have enjoyed it ! " she insisted, with 
 emphasis. 
 
 There it was, the thirst for enjoyment, pleasure! 
 The supreme unslakable thirst ! She had always had 
 it, and he had always hardened himself against it — 
 while often nevertheless accepting with secret pleasure 
 the satisfactions of her thirst. Thus, for example, in 
 the matter of dancing. She had shared to the full in 
 the extraordinary craze for dancing which had held the 
 West End for several years. Owing to her initiative 
 they had belonged to two dancing-clubs whose mem- 
 bers 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 ex- 
 pense, 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' 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 pre- 
 tences, 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 dinirers and theatre-parties. She would
 
 THE TRIUMPH 303 
 
 sooner eat a bad dinner in company anywhere than a 
 good dinner quietly at home ; she Avould 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 for- 
 gotten it, and she would adduce the trifle again and 
 again as evidence of the sanity of her ideas about so- 
 cial life. George really did not care for designing 
 houses ; the}' were not worth the trouble ; he habitually 
 thought in public edifices and the palaces of kings, no- 
 bles, and plutocrats of taste. Moreover his commis- 
 sion on the house would not have kept his own house- 
 hold 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 ordinar}'^ times, really tired. Dinners, teas, even 
 lunches, restaurants, theatres, music-halls, other peo- 
 ple'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 nat- 
 ural ; 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 
 invariabl}^ one of deep solicitude for him. She would 
 look at him with eyes troubled and anxious for his 
 welfare. When they were driving te a dance which he
 
 304 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 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 role, she 
 pla^^ed it well. She made him comfortable. She was a 
 good housekeeper, and a fair organiser generally. She 
 knew how to be well served. He thought that her man- 
 ner 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 conversa- 
 tion, 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 
 ho 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 furnitiire. 
 The house was beautifully furnished and she had done 
 her share. And in the alterations, additions, and re- 
 placements 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, — any- 
 how 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 in- 
 stance, he suspected that she had no notion of money, 
 but he could not be sure. She did what slie liked with 
 her own income, which was about two hundred a year ;
 
 THE TRIUMPH 305 
 
 that is to say, she clothed herself out of it. Her house- 
 hold accounts were unknown to him; he had once es- 
 sayed to comprehend them, but had drawn back af- 
 frighted. 
 
 " 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 childi'en 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. Lie 
 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
 
 306 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 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- 
 argimients, 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, gifve 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. Some- 
 where, 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 
 eves. He examined her face. She was still voung; 
 
 •' V CD 
 
 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 hai'd. 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
 
 THE TRIUMPH 307 
 
 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 tendcrl}'. 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 prom- 
 enade. A prodigious affair! The parlourmaid (a de- 
 lightful creature who was, unfortunate^, 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 sun- 
 shade 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
 
 308 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 moved, munitioned, provisioned, like a caravan setting 
 forth into the desert, the parlourmaid amiably waving 
 adieux. 
 
 George thought : " I support all that. It all de- 
 pends 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 un- 
 wittingly 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 lie had left unat- 
 tended at the kerb, Mrs. Buckingham Smith's magnifi- 
 cent 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 pal- 
 ace 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.
 
 THE TRIUMPH 309 
 
 " I thought I'd come and see Lois," said Mrs. Buck, 
 efFulgently sinihng, as George handed her out of the 
 car. " How is the dear thing? You just fljdng 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, 3^es ! The Opening! How perfectly splen- 
 did ! " 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 inter- 
 ested." 
 
 " 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 offhand 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 devo- 
 tion ; and he saw her lips and the rapt glance of her 
 eyes as beautiful as in the past. What a soft, sooth- 
 ing, assuaging contrast to the difficult Lois, so im- 
 perious and egoistic ! (An unforgettable phrase of 
 Lois' had inhabited his mind for over a decade:
 
 310 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " Fancy quarrelling over a man ! ") He had never met 
 Marguerite since their separation, and for 3^ears he 
 had heard nothing whatever about her ; he did not un- 
 derestimate the ordeal of meeting her again. Yet he 
 at once decided that he must meet her again. He sim- 
 ply 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 un- 
 reality 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 Pick- 
 ering'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 remem- 
 bered 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 busi- 
 ness. 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 de- 
 lusion as to his being seriously pressed for time.
 
 THE TRIUMPH 311 
 
 As he curved, slackening and accelerating, with the 
 perfect assurance of long habit, through the swift, in- 
 tricate, towering motor traffic of Fulham Road, it was 
 inevitable that he should recall the da^s, eleven 3^ears 
 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, hon- 
 estly, 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 youthfiil 
 prodigy who had won the biggest competition of mod- 
 ern 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 disap- 
 pointment 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 en- 
 terprises, 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.
 
 312 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 And if the job had been enormous, his responsibilities 
 were likewise enormous. Home expenses with an in- 
 creasing family ; establishment expenses ; a heavy in- 
 surance ! Slaver}' to habits ! The common story, with- 
 out 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. Im- 
 agine those kids with the perambulator and the doll's 
 perambulator, — imagine them in an earthquake ! He 
 could sec no future beyond perhaps eight months 
 ahead. No, he could not ! Of course his stepfather 
 was a sure resource. But he could not conceive him- 
 self 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 
 hot. . . . However, he would obtain more work. It 
 was impossible that he should not obtain it. The mat- 
 ter with Sir Isaac was as good as arranged. And the 
 chances of winning at any rate one of the two com- 
 petitions were very favourable. . . . He dismissed 
 every apprehension. His health was too good to tol- 
 erate apprehensions permanently. And he had a super- 
 stitious 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 fi- 
 nancial pessimism ; they seemed to be causeless, inex- 
 plicable, and indescribable, — abysses in wliich cerebra- 
 tion ceased.
 
 THE TRIUMPH 313 
 
 m 
 
 She was just closing the side gate leading to the 
 studio when he drove up. He recognised 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 inti- 
 mate 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 advertisements 
 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 pas- 
 sionately kissed in that very house ; and indeed the 
 woman was not the girl, — the connection 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 Lon-
 
 314 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 don. 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 knowl- 
 edge 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 hus- 
 band 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 batli. 
 
 "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 liands. His hair was al- 
 most white, his tliin, 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
 
 THE TRIUMPH 315 
 
 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 pre- 
 cisely as of old, except that it was very clean. Mar- 
 guerite, 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 cig- 
 arettes. 
 
 "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 stair- 
 case. " 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 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 la- 
 bours. 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
 
 316 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 a iew M'eeks 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 ear- 
 nest frequenter of fashionable exhibitions who takes 
 pride in his familiarit}^ 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 laudator}^ illus- 
 trated 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 Avho hopes 
 for the best and fears the worst. He could meet dealers 
 with a firm glance, for throughout life he had subju- 
 gated his desires to his resources. His look was mod- 
 est but independent ; and Marguerite had the same 
 look. 
 
 " Hello ! " cried George. " I see you've got that 
 here ! " Pie pointed to Celia Agg's portrait of herself 
 as Bonnie Prince Charlie.
 
 THE TRIUMPH 317 
 
 " Yes," said Marguerite. " She Insisted on me tak- 
 ing 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 dis- 
 approving. " I always said she'd end in that kind of 
 thing, didn't I, Margy ? " 
 
 " You did, dear," said Marguerite, with wifely eager- 
 ness. 
 
 These two respected not only themselves but each 
 other. The ensuing conversation showed that Mr. 
 Prince was somewhat disgusted with the mundane move- 
 ment, 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 sane and the wise. 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
 
 S18 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 any man into insecurity. He had realised already that 
 afternoon that there were different degrees of success ; 
 he now realised that there were different kinds of suc- 
 cess. 
 
 " 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 slighth' 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 desiou 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.
 
 THE TRIUMPH 319 
 
 To George it seemed pathetic that a rise, after vicissi- 
 tudes, 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 connection 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 to- 
 gether," 
 
 " 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. " Ger- 
 many'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 INIr. Prince's phrases, 
 that Mr. Prince must have talked a lot about a Eu- 
 ropean 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
 
 320 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 in the German army last Jul}-. And look at the spe- 
 cial levy. The thing's as clear as day." Mr. Prince 
 now seemed to be a little aijgry 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 onl}' fight us on the sea. 
 If she fought us now on the sea she'd be wiped out. 
 That's admitted. In ten j^ears, if she keeps on build- 
 ing, she might have a chance. But not now ! Not 
 yet ! And she knows it." George did not mention that 
 he had borrowed the whole weiffhtv argument from his 
 stepfather ; but he spoke with finality, and was rather 
 startled when Mr. Prince blew the whole weighty argu- 
 ment into the air with one scornful, pitying exhala- 
 tion. 
 
 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. "N^Hiat 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. " Al- 
 fred's been very strong on the European war ever since 
 he heard Lord Roberts speak at Chelsea Town HalL' 
 
 jj
 
 THE TRIUMPH 321 
 
 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 com- 
 mon phenomenon ! George had met before the man 
 obsessed by one idea, with his crude reasoning, his im- 
 patience, 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 im- 
 perialist was noxious, and a source of real danger. 
 " That man ought to be shot." Imagine such a re- 
 mark ! 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 some- 
 what inimically assessing the car, which he referred 
 to as " she." jMarguerite had remained in the studio. 
 She was wonderful. She admired her husband too sim- 
 ply, and she was too content, but she had marvellous 
 qualities of naturalness, commonsense in demeanour, 
 realism, and placidity. Thanks to her remarkable in- 
 stinct 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 senti- 
 ment ! 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,
 
 322 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 and fundamentally decent. While condescending to 
 them, he somehow envied them. But he knew what the 
 opinion of Lois about them would be ! 
 
 rv 
 
 After a period of shallow sleep he woke up in the 
 morning factitiously refreshed as the train was rum- 
 bling slowW 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 sil- 
 houette of it wrote romance upon the sky, and the con- 
 tours 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 eigh- 
 teen-forties it challenged grimly the modern architect. 
 On his hasty first visit to the cit}^ George had noticed 
 little save that custom-house. He had seen a slatternly 
 provincial town, large and picturesque certainly, but 
 
 /
 
 THE TRIUMPH 323 
 
 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 con- 
 tained 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 farther. Its fragmentary walls had sur- 
 vived through seven centuries, its cathedral through six, 
 its chief churches through five. It had the most per- 
 fect Norman keep within two hundred miles. It had 
 ancient walls, mansions, towers, markets, and jail. 
 And to these the Victorian-Edwardian age had added 
 museums, law-courts, theatres; such astonishing mod- 
 ernities 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 his- 
 tory 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 distin- 
 guish a bit of the town-hall tower, amid masses of gran- 
 ite and brick : which glimpse symbolised 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 higlily vitalised.
 
 324 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 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 inde- 
 cision 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 re- 
 ceived 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 connection with the authorities, had several op- 
 portunities 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 com- 
 mittee ; he had learnt more about mankind in the com- 
 mittee-rooms of the old town-hall than he could have 
 learnt in ten thousand London clubs. He could di- 
 vide the city council infallibly into wire-pullers, axe- 
 grinders, vain nincompoops, honest mediocrities, and the 
 handful who combined honesty with sagacity and sagac-
 
 THE TRIUMPH 325 
 
 ity 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 grad- 
 ually 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 un- 
 perceived 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, sleep- 
 ing 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 bed- 
 room the porter undid the straps of the portmanteau, 
 and then : 
 
 "Anything else, sir.''"
 
 326 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 « That's all, John." 
 
 And as he turned to leave, John stopped and re- 
 marked 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 '11 
 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 de- 
 fenceless 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 
 realising the extremity of his fatigue. 
 
 He did not have his sleep out. Despite the menace 
 of death, a courageous creature knocked heavily at his 
 door at ten o'clock iind entered. It was a page-boy 
 with a telegram. George opened the envelope resent- 
 fully. 
 
 " No answer." 
 
 The telegram read: 
 
 " Am told we have got it. Pouting." 
 
 Pouting 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 Pouting had useful acquaintanceship with 
 a clerk in the India Office. 
 
 He thought, trying not to believe: 
 
 " Of course Pouting will swallow anything." 
 
 But he made no attempt to sleep again. He was too 
 elated.
 
 THE TRIUMPH 327 
 
 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 con- 
 tractor, with the bishop and the most famous sporting 
 peer of the north, a man who for some mystical rea- 
 son was idolised by the masses of the City. Unfortu- 
 nately 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 con- 
 tracting 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 in- 
 teresting ! 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 mo- 
 ment: 
 
 " They will not begin without us. I say grace." 
 His antique eye twinkled.
 
 328 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 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 ]\Iayor. 
 Thouffh 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 Ma3^or in his high chair and in his 
 heav}^ 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 digni- 
 taries 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 fem- 
 inine 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 mid- 
 dle 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
 
 THE TRIUMPH 329 
 
 celebrated, to be the object of a great deal of curiosity 
 at the luncheon. But in this expectation he was de- 
 ceived. 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 person- 
 age originally hoped for attended the luncheon. The 
 august personage had not attended on account of an 
 objection, apropos of an extreme passage in an elec- 
 tion-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 representa- 
 tive, and the Council had determined that the inaugura- 
 tion 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 boarding of any building in course of erection
 
 330 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 seemed to give distinction to that building. He was 
 very rich, and popular in municipal circles and espe- 
 cially 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 after meat 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 cata- 
 logue 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 ad- 
 dressed 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 infinitesi- 
 mallv 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 Trades Union 
 leader could be fiercely eloquent with workingmen. He 
 mentioned Alderman Soulter, and there was a tremen- 
 dous cheer. He did not mention Alderman Soulter 
 again ; a feud burned between these two. After Alder- 
 man 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 
 bis speech, until he came to the peroration, — " success 
 and prosperity to our new town-hall, the grandest civic
 
 THE TRIUMPH 331 
 
 monument which any city has erected to itself in this 
 country within Hving 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-haU, and the alderman who took his place apolo- 
 gised 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 accord- 
 ing 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 hun- 
 dreds of Mr. Enwright's remarks. . . . Phrases of the 
 orator wandered into his ear. " The competition sys- 
 tem. . . . We went to Sir Hugh Corver, the head of
 
 332 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 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 
 hght. . . . 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 to- 
 wards 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, feehng 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 ex- 
 pectant of good things. 
 
 " When I was a little boy I remember my father tell- 
 ing me that this town-hall had been started. I never 
 expected to live to see it finished " 
 
 Delighted guflPaws, uproarious laughter, explosions of 
 mirth, interrupted this witty reference to the delays in 
 construction. The speaker smiled at ease. His eyes
 
 THE TRIUMPH 333 
 
 glinted. He knew his audience, held it consummately, 
 and went on. 
 
 In the afternoon there was a Conversazione, or re- 
 ception, 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, admir- 
 ing 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 humilia- 
 tion of the lunch. jNIuch 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 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 re- 
 sented the exacting irksomeness of trifles in the reahsa- 
 tion of a splendid idea. At intervals he met an ac- 
 quaintance 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 di- 
 vided artistically into two classes : himself in one class, 
 the entire remainder in the other. And nobody ap- 
 peared to be inconvenienced by the sense of the height 
 of his achievement or of the splendour of his triumph
 
 334 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 that day. It is true that the north hates to seem im- 
 pressed, and will descend to any duplicity in order not 
 to seem impressed. 
 
 The To\vn 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 senti- 
 mental of contraltos, helped by other first-class throats, 
 was to minister wholesale to the insatiable secret senti- 
 mentality 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 gor- 
 geous rooms, throbbing to two-steps and fox-trots, 
 were crammed with customers ; but the waitresses be- 
 haved competently. Thence he drove out in a taxi to 
 the residence of Alderman Soultcr. 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 even- 
 ing. In broad Side Gate were massed the chief resorts 
 of amusement. The facade of the Empire music-hall 
 glowed with great rubies and emeralds and amethysts
 
 THE TRIUMPH 335 
 
 and topazes in the fading light. Its lure was more 
 powerful than the lure of the ballad concert. Ignor- 
 ing 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 indis- 
 tinguishable points in the smoke-misted gloom. Every 
 seat was occupied ; the ballad concert had made no im- 
 pression 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 enter- 
 tainments were proceeding with the same exactitude : an- 
 other example of the huge standardisation of life. 
 George laughed with the best at the inventive drollery 
 of the knock-about comedians — Britain's sole gen- 
 uine 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 con- 
 cert could be, moments when George could not bear to 
 look over the footlights. And these items were ap- 
 plauded in ecstasy by the enchanted audience. He 
 thought of the stupidity, the insensibilit}^, the sheer 
 ignorance of the exalted lunchers; and he compared
 
 336 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 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 com- 
 fortable, reassuring, inspiring. The men had their 
 pipes, cigarettes and women ; the women had the men, 
 the luxury, the glitter, the publicity. They had at- 
 tained, they were happy. The frightful curse of the 
 provinces, ennui, had been conjured away by the benef- 
 icent and sublime institution invented, organised, and 
 controlled by throe great trusts. 
 
 George stayed till the end of the show. The empty- 
 ing 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, cither 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, dis- 
 solved 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, su- 
 preme, 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 trium- 
 phant. Throughout the day he had had no recogni- 
 tion ; 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
 
 THE TRIUMPH 337 
 
 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 in- 
 fluence so powerfully and so mysteriously upon the un- 
 conscious 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 re- 
 belliously. He was filled with the realisation of uni- 
 versality. 
 
 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 assur- 
 ance of that in his bones.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE ROLL-CALIi 
 
 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 fa- 
 tigued 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 dis- 
 dain, attenuated and weakened in the telephone, sug- 
 gesting 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 criti- 
 cism 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." 
 
 338
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 339 
 
 " Well, you'd better come along here, if you can. I 
 want to sec you," said the unrufHed 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 monopolised 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 un- 
 profitable. 
 
 The winning of the Indian limited competition, cou- 
 pled 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 bar- 
 racks 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
 
 340 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 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 there- 
 fore to be deeply grateful. It said that in view of the 
 war the barracks must be erected with the utmost pos- 
 sible, or rather with quite impossible, despatch, 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 pro- 
 fessional architect and George an amateur, and it in- 
 volved him in a seemly but intense altercation between 
 itself and the subordinate bureaucracy of a Presidency. 
 It kept George employed. In due course people dis- 
 covered that business must proceed as usual, and even 
 the architectural profession, despite its traditional pes- 
 simism, had hopes of municipalities and other bodies 
 which were to inaugurate public works in order to dimin- 
 ish unemployment. 
 
 Nevertheless George had extreme difficulty in apply- 
 ing himself efficiently to urgent tasks. He kept think- 
 ing: " 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
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 341 
 
 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) Ger- 
 many'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 
 quicklj'. Germany, he reckoned superiorh-, in " taking 
 on England " had " bitten off more than she could 
 chew." 
 
 He knew almost naught of the progress of the fight- 
 ing. 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 exacti- 
 tude. He had moved the pins daily until little Lauren- 
 cine 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 send- 
 ing 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 scien- 
 tific conception of the western campaign, — not to men- 
 tion the eastern, as to which his ignorance was nearly 
 perfect. 
 
 Yet he read much about the war. Some of the re- 
 counted 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
 
 342 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 high road — a procession without beginning and with- 
 out 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 re- 
 citals 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 Liege, 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 signifi- 
 cance 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 enemj^ forces, that 
 the troops which marched through Brussels were a tiny, 
 theatrical side-show, a circus, that the attack on 
 Liege 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 tlie 
 German Army, unimagined in its hugeness, horror and 
 miglit, was creeping like a fatal and monstrous cater- 
 pillar 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 south-
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 343 
 
 wards, of the gathering together of Atlantic liners and 
 excursion steamers from all the coasts into an unprec- 
 edented 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 sur- 
 vived 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 Ln- 
 perialists, 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 t& 
 go to the Club. 
 
 n 
 
 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 fashion- 
 able taste of twenty years earlier and were crying out 
 for some one brave enough to put them out of their
 
 344 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 miser}'. 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 num- 
 ber 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 j'ears, 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-fit- 
 ting 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 continualh' 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 tip 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,
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 345 
 
 and could prove his descent for generations, — not that 
 he minded being taken for a Jew (he would add), was 
 indeed rather flattered thercb}^ 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 dif- 
 ferent in Welsh." He was an exceedingly rich indus- 
 trial, and had made his money by organisation ; he 
 seemed always to have leisure. 
 
 " Here," he curtly advised George, producing a mag- 
 nificent Partaga, similar to the one he was himself smok- 
 ing, " you'd better have this." 
 
 He cut the cigar carefully with a club tool, and 
 pushed the matchstand 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 hurr}^" 
 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 dif- 
 fered strangely from all other men — because the sin- 
 ister 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 Admiraltv have
 
 346 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 told me they have all the explosives they want," he 
 sneered. " But I've made a few enquiries, 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. Daresay 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 compas- 
 sion 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 ex- 
 plosives, 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 satisfac- 
 torily, 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 fornmlated it and he had never thought consecu- 
 tively 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
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 347 
 
 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 mil- 
 lion 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. " WTiat's more, it's not 
 wanted at all. They think it is, because they're abso- 
 lutely 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
 
 U8 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 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 get- 
 ting 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 connection be- 
 tween the word ' war ' and the word ' barracks.' " 
 
 George laughed, and then, after a few seconds, Sir 
 Isaac gave a short, rough laugh. 
 
 " But if the}' 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."
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 349 
 
 He took some papers from his tail-pocket. The dis- 
 cussion grew technicah 
 
 ni 
 
 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 " Eng- 
 land " 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 ex- 
 plaining 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, 
 stating that Namur was the " chief bastion " of the de- 
 fensive line, and that hence the Germans would not be 
 " allowed " to take it. Almost every motor-bus car- 
 ried 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. Im- 
 pressive person, Sir Isaac, even if hateful ! It was re- 
 markable how the fellow seemed always to have leisure. 
 Organisation, of course! Indubitably the fellow's ar- 
 guments 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
 
 350 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 be produced without a factory. The populace would 
 never understand the close interdependence of various 
 activities ; it would never see bej^ond the recruiting-sta- 
 tion ; 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 in- 
 stead, 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 tlie profession. The war could not 
 really touch him — no more than it could touch Sir 
 Isaac ; by good fortune, and by virtue of the impar- 
 tiality of his intelligence, he was above the war. . . . 
 Yes, Sir Isaac, disliked and unwillingly but deeply re- 
 spected, 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, per- 
 suasively and flatteringly. 
 
 George demanded with firmness : 
 
 " Who are the other two? " 
 
 " Miss Horton and Gladys What's-her-name."
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 351 
 
 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 encoun- 
 tered 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 slight- 
 est untidiness nor deshabille ; rising irregularly in tier 
 over tier to the high roof-line, they w^ere 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 conscien- 
 tious 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 her- 
 self 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 gen-
 
 352 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 eration 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 blowsi- 
 ness of their forerunners. Walking in Piccadilly or 
 Bond Street or the Park, you migJit 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 sim- 
 ply 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 op- 
 pressed his stomach. He supposed that nearly every- 
 body 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 curv- 
 ing path screened by a pergola, and came near the court 
 with a small white paper in his solemn hand. At a suit- 
 able 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 tele- 
 phone from a friend at the War Office. 
 
 The youth raised his eyebrows, and witli a side-glance 
 seemed to say that there could be no object in telling
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 353 
 
 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 Liege, 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 arrondisse- 
 ment, imposing peace, dictating peace, forcing upon 
 Europe unspeakable humiliations. He saw Great Brit- 
 ain 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 systematised 
 scene of correctness and tradition trembled as if per- 
 ceived 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 re- 
 minded 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 
 coupe of the superior discreet sort, with a smart horse
 
 354. THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 (the same being more "distinctive" than motor-trac- 
 tion), 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 
 st3'lishly 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 gar- 
 ments not very dissimilar, producing a rich and ex- 
 citing 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 re- 
 garded 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 crea- 
 ture, 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 won- 
 dered how it was that he had not fallen in love with her 
 instead of with Lois. But he knew the reason now.
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 355 
 
 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 sim- 
 pleton! Yet wise! Another thing was that her mind 
 Avas too pure. Instead of understanding, it rejected. 
 It was a mind absolutely impregnable to certain phe- 
 nomena. And this girl still enjoyed musical comedies 
 and their successors in vogue, the revues ! 
 
 " The Germans have taken Namur," George an- 
 nounced. 
 
 The news impressed. Even the young woman in 
 black permitted hei'self 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 Avhat'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 inspec- 
 tion. 
 
 " Well, I can't judge if I don't see it on, can 1? " 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
 
 356 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 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 Laur- 
 encine earnestly. 
 
 *' Thank you, madam." 
 
 In three minutes, the priestess, bearing easily the 
 trunk by a strap, had gone, bowing. Lois' 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 Ever- 
 ard, through a major known to his late mother, had
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 357 
 
 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 as- 
 tounded; 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 pro- 
 duced 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 tui-ned 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 regi- 
 ment " 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
 
 358 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 lightly. " The old firm will carry on as usual ; En- 
 wright 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, Lauren- 
 cine.'' " 
 
 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! " ob- 
 served Lucas in the pause. " Tres chic! I suppose 
 Laurencine's told you all about the chauffeur being run 
 oflp with against his will by a passionate virgin. / 
 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 ? "
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 359 
 
 George woke up in the middle of the night. Lois 
 slept cahnly ; 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 ra- 
 pacity of tradesmen, the incompetence of clerks, the 
 mere pompous foolishness of Government departments, 
 the arrogance of Jew patrons, and the terrifying com- 
 plexity 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 col- 
 lapse ; she would do dreadful things. He was indis- 
 pensable, 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 per- 
 forming his highest duty, he was fulfilling the widest 
 usefulness of which he was capable. . . . Besides, sup- 
 posing 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 liis susceptibility. He had no need of
 
 360 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 excuses. The woman was taciturn by nature, and yet 
 she was constantly saying too much 1 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 com- 
 pleted, and began again. He thought of all the occu- 
 pied bedrooms. . . . Thus, in the dark, warm night 
 the contents of his mind revolved endlessly, with ex- 
 treme 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 re- 
 sumed 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 mysteri- 
 ous 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 increas- 
 ingly apprehensive ; he feared a disaster, 3^et he could 
 not believe that it would occur. It did occur. Before
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 361 
 
 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 gravel}' for- 
 ward 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 si- 
 lence, 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' very untidy and very small writing desk, 
 and wrote a letter on her notepaper. The early morn- 
 ing was lovely ; it was celestial. 
 
 " Dear Davids," the letter began. That would an- 
 noy the fellow, who liked the address respectful. " Dear 
 Davids. I have decided to join the army, and there- 
 fore cannot proceed further with your commission. 
 However, the general idea is complete. I advise you 
 to get it carried out by Lucas and Enwright. En- 
 wright 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 and En- 
 wright, 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."
 
 362 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 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 mone}' would be coming in. The 
 professional objection was equally ridiculous. The de- 
 sign for the Indian barracks existed complete ; any mid- 
 dle-aged mediocrity could carry it out in a fashion, and 
 Lucas and 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 
 oflBce. The other competition had not been won. If 
 people said that he had been influenced by Lucas's uni- 
 form, well, they must say it. They would not say it for 
 more than a few days. After a few days the one inter- 
 esting fact would be that he had joined. By such simple 
 and curt arguments did he annihilate the once over- 
 whelming reasons against his joining the army. 
 
 But he did not trouble to marshal the reasons in fa- 
 vour of his joining the army. He had only one reason: 
 he must ! He quite ignored the larger aspects of the 
 war — the future of civilisation, freedom versus slav- 
 ery, right versus wrong, even the responsibilities of 
 citizenship and the implications of patriotism. His 
 decision was the product, not of argument, but of feel- 
 ing. 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 pri- 
 vate affairs altogether; he hated soldiering; he looked 
 inimically at the military caste. An unspeakable nui- 
 sance ! But there the war was, and he was going to 
 answer to liis name. He simply could not tolerate the 
 dreadful silence and stillness on the plain after his name
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 363 
 
 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 English- 
 man 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, ly- 
 ing calmly on one side, her head half buried in the pil- 
 low, and the bedclothes pushed back from her shoulders, 
 she was wide awake 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 let- 
 ter. Moving nothing but her hand, she took the letter 
 and held it in front of her e^'es. He sat down between 
 the beds, on the edge of his own bed, facing her. 
 
 "What ever is it?" 
 
 " Read it. You've got it," he said with impatience. 
 He was trembling, aware that the crisis had suddenly 
 leapt at him. 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 She had read the opening phrase; she had received 
 the first shock. But the tone of her exclamation gave 
 no clue at all to her attitude. It might mean anything 
 — anything. She shut her eyes ; then glanced at him, 
 terror-struck, appealing, wistful, implacable. 
 
 "Not at once?" 
 
 " Yes, at once." 
 
 " But surely you'll at least wait until after October."
 
 364; THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " But why can't jou? " 
 
 " I can't." 
 
 " But there's no object — 
 
 " I've got to do it." 
 
 5> 
 
 " You're horribly cruel." 
 
 " Well, that's me ! " He was sullen, and as hard as 
 a diamond. 
 
 " George, I shall never be able to stand it. It's too 
 much to expect. It'll kill me." 
 
 " Not it! What's the use of talking like that.? If 
 I'd been in the Territorials before the war like lots of 
 chaps, I should have been gone long ago, and you'd 
 have stood it all right. Don't you understand we're 
 at war? Do you imagine the war can wait for things 
 like babies ? " 
 
 She cried: 
 
 " It's no good you're going on in that strain. You 
 can't leave me alone with all this house on my shoulders, 
 and so that's flat." 
 
 "Who wants to leave 3'ou all alone in the house .'* 
 You can go and stay at Ladderedge, children and nurse 
 and all." This scheme presented itself to him as he 
 spoke. 
 
 " Of course I can't ! We can't go and plant our- 
 selves on people like that. Besides " 
 
 "Can't you.? You'll see!" 
 
 He caught her eye. Why was he being so brutal 
 to her.? What conceivable purpose was served by this 
 harshness.? He perceived that his nerves were over- 
 strung. And in a swift rush of insight he saw the whole 
 situation from her point of view. She was exhausted 
 by gestation ; she lived in a world distorted. Could 
 she help her temperament? She was in the gravest 
 need of his support ; and he was an ass, a blundering
 
 TPIE ROLL-CALL 365 
 
 fool. His severity melted within him, and secretly he 
 became tender as only a man can be. 
 
 " You silly girl ! " he said, slightly modifying his 
 voice, taking care not to disclose all at once the change 
 in his mood. " You silly girl ! Can't you see they'll 
 be so proud to have you they won't be able to contain 
 themselves? They'll turn the whole place upside down 
 for you. I know them. They'll pretend it's nothing, 
 but mother won't sleep at night for thinking how to ar- 
 range things for the best, and as for my cuckoo of an 
 uncle, if you notice something funny about your feet, 
 it'll be the esteemed alderman licking your boots. 
 You'll have the time of your life. In fact they'll ruin 
 your character for j'ou. There'll be no holding you 
 afterwards." 
 
 She did not smile, but her eyes smiled. He had got 
 the better of her. He had been cleverer than she was. 
 She was beaten. 
 
 " But we shall have no money." 
 " Read the letter, child. I'm not a fool." 
 " I know you're not a fool. No one knows that bet- 
 ter than me." 
 He went on: 
 
 " And what's uncle's money for, if it comes to that.'' " 
 " But we can't sponge on them like that ! " 
 "Sponge be dashed! What's money for.'' It's no 
 good till it's spent. If he can't spend it on us, who can 
 he spend it on.'' He always makes out he's fiendishly 
 hard, but he's the most generous idiot ever born." 
 " Yes, you're awfull}^ like him." 
 " I'm not." 
 
 He was suddenly alive to the marvellous charm of 
 the intimacy of the scene with his wife, in the early sum- 
 mer dawn, in the silent enchanted house of sleepers, in 
 the disorder of the heaped bedroom. They were alone
 
 366 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 together, shameless in front of one another, and nobody 
 knew or was, or could ever know or see. Their rela- 
 tions were unique, the resultant of long custom, of fric- 
 tion, of misunderstanding, of affection, of incompre- 
 hensible instincts, of destiny itself. He thought : " I 
 have lived for this sensation, and it is worth living for." 
 
 Without the slightest movement, she invited him with 
 her strange eyes, and as she did so she was as mysterious 
 as ever she had been. He bent down responsively. She 
 put her hot, clammy hands on his shoulders, and kept 
 his head at a little distance and looked through his 
 eyes into his soul. The letter had dropped to the floor. 
 
 " I knew you would ! " she murmured, and then 
 snatched him to her, and kissed him and kept her mouth 
 on his. 
 
 " You didn't," he said, as soon as she loosed him. " I 
 didn't know myself." 
 
 But he privately admitted that perhaps she did know. 
 She had every fault, but she was intelligent. Con- 
 stantly he was faced with that fact. She did not under- 
 stand the significance of the war; she lacked imagina- 
 tion; but her understanding was sometimes terrible. 
 She was devious ; but she had a religion. He was her 
 religion. She would cast the god underfoot — and then 
 in a passion of repentance restore it ardently to the 
 sacred niche. 
 
 She said: 
 
 " I couldn't have borne it if Everard had gone and 
 you hadn't. But of course you meant to go all the 
 time." 
 
 That was how she saved his amour propre. 
 
 " I always knew you were a genius " 
 
 " Oh ! Chuck it, kid ! " 
 
 " But you're more, somehow. This business " 
 
 "You don't mean joining the army?"
 
 THE ROLL-CALL 367 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " What rot ! There's nothing in it. Fellows are 
 doing it everywhere." 
 
 She smiled superiorly, and then enquired: 
 
 "How do you join.'' What are you going to do.? 
 Shall you ask Everard "^ " 
 
 " Well " he hesitated. He had no desire to 
 
 consult Lucas. 
 
 "Why don't you see Colonel Rannion.^' " she sug- 
 gested. 
 
 " Jove ! That's a scheme. Never thought of him ! " 
 
 Her satisfaction at the answer was childlike, and he 
 was filled with delight that it should be so. They 
 launched themselves into an interminable discussion 
 about ever}" possible arrangement of everything. But 
 in a pause of it he destroyed its tremendous importance 
 by remarking casually : 
 
 " No hurrjs of course. I bet you I shall be kept 
 knocking about here for months."
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 IN THE MACHINE 
 
 Colonel, Rannion was the brother of the wife of the 
 man for whom George had built the house at Hampstead. 
 George had met him several times at the dinners and 
 other reunions to Mliich a sympathetic architect is often 
 invited in the dwelHng that he has created. Colonel 
 Rannion had greatly liked his sister's house, had ac- 
 cordingly shown much esteem for George, and had even 
 spoken of ordering a house for himself. 
 
 Just as breakfast was being served, George had the 
 idea of ringing up the Hampstead people for the Col- 
 onel's address, which he obtained at once. The Colonel 
 was staying at the Berkeley Hotel. The next moment 
 he got the Berkeley, and the Colonel in person. The 
 Colonel remembered him instantly. George said he 
 wanted to see him. What about? Well, a commission. 
 The Colonel said he had to leave the hotel in twenty- 
 five minutes. " I can be with you in less than a quarter 
 of an hour," said George, — or rather, not George but 
 some subconscious instinct within him, acting independ- 
 ently of him. The children, with nurse, were in the 
 dining-room, waiting to breakfast with father. They 
 were washed, they were dressed ; the dining-room had 
 been cleaned ; the pleasant smell of breakfast-cooking 
 wandered through the rooms; since the early talk be- 
 tween George and Lois in the silent, sleeping house the 
 
 368
 
 IN THE MACHINE 369 
 
 house had gradually come to life ; it was now in full be- 
 ing — even to the girl scrubbing the front-steps — 
 except that Lois was asleep. Exhausted after the 
 strange and crucial scene, she had dozed off, and had. 
 never moved throughout George's dressing. 
 
 Now he rushed into the dining-room — "I have to 
 go, nurse. Fardy can't have his breakfast with you ! " 
 — and rushed out. A minute previously he had felt 
 a serious need of food after the long sleepless morning. 
 The need vanished. He scurried up Elm Park Gar- 
 dens like a boy in the warm fresh air, and stopped a taxi. 
 He was extremely excited. None but Lois knew the 
 great secret. He had kept it to himself. He might 
 have burst into the kitchen — for he was very apt to be 
 informal — and said : " Well, cook, I'm going into the 
 Army ! " What a household sensation the news would 
 cause, and what an office sensation ! His action would 
 affect the lives of all manner of people. And the house, 
 at present alive and organic, would soon be dead. He 
 was afraid. What he was doing was tremendous. Was 
 it madness? He had a feeling of unreality. 
 
 At the entrance to the Berkeley Hotel lay a large 
 automobile, with a spurred and highl}^ polished military 
 chauffeur. At the door of Colonel Rannion's room was 
 stationed a spurred and highly polished erect orderly, — 
 formidable contrast to the flaccid waiters who slouched 
 palely in the corridors. The orderly went into the 
 room and saluted with a click. George followed, as 
 into a dentist's surgery. It was a small elegant private 
 sitting-room resembling a boudoir. In the midst of 
 dclicatclv-tinted cushions and flower-vases stood Colonel 
 Rannion, grey-haired, blue-eyed, very straight, very 
 tall, very slim — the slimness accentuated by a close- 
 fitting uniform which began with red-tabs and ended 
 in light leggings and gleaming spurs. He conformed
 
 370 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 absolutely to the traditional physical type of soldier, 
 and the sight of him gave pleasure. 
 
 " Good morning, Cannon. Glad to see you." He 
 seemed to put a secret meaning into the last words. 
 
 He shook hands as he spoke, firmly, decisively, effi- 
 ciently. 
 
 " I hope I'm not troubling you too much," George 
 began. 
 
 " Troubling me ! Sit down. You want a commis- 
 sion. The Army wants to give commissions to men 
 like 3'ou. I think you would make a good officer." 
 
 " Of course I'm absolutely ignorant of the Army. 
 Absolutely." 
 
 " Yes. What a pity that is ! If you'd only been a 
 pre-war Territorial you might have done three weeks 
 urgent work for your country by this time." The re- 
 mark was a polite reproof. 
 
 " I might," admitted George, to whom the notion of 
 working for his country had never before occurred. 
 
 "Do you think you'd like the Artillery?" Colonel 
 Rannion questioned sharply. His tone was increasing 
 in sharpness. 
 
 With an equal sharpness George answered unhesi- 
 tatingly : 
 
 " Yes, I should." 
 
 " Can you ride? " 
 
 " I can ride. In holidays and so on I get on my 
 mother's horses." 
 
 " Have you hunted? " 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " Hm ! . . . Well, I know my friend Colonel Hull- 
 ocher, who commands the Second Brigade of — er — 
 my Division, is short of an officer. Would you care for 
 that?" 
 
 " Certainly."
 
 IN THE MACHINE 371 
 
 Without saying anything else Colonel Rannion took 
 up the telephone. In less than half a minute George 
 heard him saying: "Colonel Hullocher. . . . Ask him 
 to be good enough to come to the telephone at once. 
 . . . That you, Hullocher?" 
 
 George actually trembled. He no longer felt that 
 heavy weight on his stomach, but he felt " all gone." 
 He saw himself lying wounded near a huge gun on a 
 battlefield. 
 
 Colonel Rannion was continuing into the telephone: 
 
 " I can recommend a friend of mine to you for a 
 commission. George Cannon — C-a-n-n-o-n — the ar- 
 chitect, I don't know whether you know of him. . . . 
 Oh ! About thirty. . . . No, but I think he'd suit you. 
 . . . Who recommends him.'' / do. . . . Like to see 
 him, I suppose, first? . . . No, no necessity to see him. 
 I'll tell him. . . . Yes, I shall see you in the course of 
 the da}'." The conversation then apparently deviated 
 to other subjects, and drew to a close. ..." Good- 
 bye. Thanks. ... Oh! I say. Shall he get his kit? 
 . . . Cannon. . , . Yes, he'd better. Yes, that's un- 
 derstood of course. Good-bye." 
 
 " That will be quite all right," said Colonel Rannion 
 to George. " Colonel Hullocher thinks you may as 
 well see to your kit at once, provided of course you pass 
 the doctor and you are ready to work for nothing 
 until your commission comes along." 
 
 " Oh ! Naturally ! " George agreed, in a dream. He 
 was saying to himself, frightened, astounded, stag- 
 gered, and yet uplifted: "Get my kit! Get my kit! 
 But it's scarcely a minute since I decided to go into 
 the Army." 
 
 " I may get your commission ante-dated. I haven't 
 all the papers here, but give me an address where I can 
 find you at once, and you shall have them this afternoon.
 
 872 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 I'll get the Colonel to send them to the Territorial Asso- 
 ciation to-morrow, and probably in about a month 
 you'll be in the Gazette. I don't know when Colonel 
 Hullocher will want you to report for duty, but I shall 
 see him to-day. You'll get a telegram when you're 
 needed. Now I must go. Which way are you going? " 
 
 " I'm going home for m}^ breakfast," said George, 
 writing down his two addresses. 
 
 Colonel Rannion said : 
 
 " I'm off to Wimbledon. I can drop you in Fulham 
 Road if you like." 
 
 In the automobile George received a few useful hints, 
 but owing to the speed of the vehicle the time was far too 
 short for any extensive instruction. The car drew up. 
 For an instant Colonel Rannion became freely cordial. 
 " He must rather have cottoned to me, or he wouldn't 
 have done what he has," thought George, jn'oud to be 
 seen in converse with a staff officer, waving a hand in 
 adieu. And he thought : " Perhaps next time I see him 
 I shall be saluting him ! " 
 
 The children and nurse were still at breakfast. 
 Nothing had changed in the house during his absence. 
 But the whole house was changed. It was a house un- 
 convincing, incredible, which might vanish at any mo- 
 ment. He himself was incredible. What had happened 
 was incredible. The screeching voices of the children 
 were not real voices, and the children were apparitions. 
 The newspaper was illegible. Its messages for the most 
 part had no meaning, and such as bore a meaning 
 seemed to be utterly unimportant. The first reality 
 for George was food. He discovered that he could not 
 eat the food — could not swallow ; the nausea was acute. 
 He drank a little coffee, and then went upstairs to see 
 his wife. Outside the bedroom door he stood hesitant. 
 A desolating sadness of disappointment suddenly surged
 
 IN THE MACHINE 373 
 
 over him. He had destroyed his ambitions, he had 
 transformed all his life, by a single unreflecting and 
 irretrievable impulse. What he had done was terrific, 
 and yet he had done it as though it were naught. . . . 
 The mood passed as suddenly as it had come, and left 
 him matter-of-fact, grim, as it were swimming strongly 
 on and with the mighty current which had caught him. 
 He went into the bedroom on the current. Lois was 
 awake. 
 
 " I've seen Colonel Rannion." 
 
 " You haven't, George ! " 
 
 " Yes, I have. I've just come back." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 He replied with his damnable affected casualness : 
 
 " I'm in the Army. Royal Field Artillery. And so 
 that's that." 
 
 "But where's your uniform?" 
 
 " I knew 3^ou'd say that. I'm in mufti, you see." 
 
 u 
 
 He promptly received his papers and returned them. 
 His medical examination was quite satisfactory. Then 
 there was no further sign from the Army. The Army 
 might have completely forgotten him; his enrolment in 
 the Army might have been an illusion. Every day and 
 every hour he expected a telegram of command. It was 
 in anticipation of the telegram, curt and inexorable, 
 that he kept harrying his tradesmen. To be caught 
 unprepared by the telegram would be a disaster. But 
 the tradesmen had lessons to teach him, and by the time 
 the kit was approximately completed he had learnt the 
 lessons. Wliether the transaction concerned his tunic, 
 breeches, spurs, leggings, cane, sword, socks, shirts, 
 cap, camp field-kit, or any of the numerous other ar- 
 ticles without which an officer might not respectably
 
 374 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 enter the British Army, the chief lesson was the same, 
 namely that the tradesmen were bearing the brunt of 
 the war. Those who had enrolled and made spectacular 
 sacrifices of homes and careers and limbs and lives 
 were enjoying a glorious game amid the laudations of 
 an ecstatic populace, but the real work was being done 
 in the shops and in the workrooms. The mere aspect 
 of tradesmen was enough to restore the lost modesty of 
 officers. Useless to argue with the tradesmen, to ex- 
 postulate, to vituperate. The facts were in their fa- 
 vour ; the sublime law of supply and demand was in their 
 favour. If the suddenly unloosed military ardour had 
 not been kept down it might have submerged the island. 
 The tradesmen kept it down, and the island was saved 
 by them from militarisation. Majors and Colonels and 
 even Generals had to flatter and cajole tradesmen. As 
 for lieutenants, they cringed. And all officers were 
 obliged to be grateful for the opportunity to acquire 
 goods at prices fifty per cent higher than would have 
 been charged to civilians. Within a few days George, 
 who had need of every obtainable sovereign for family 
 purposes, had disbursed some forty pounds out of his 
 own pocket in order to exercise the privilege of defend- 
 ing at the risk of ruin and death the ideals of his 
 country. 
 
 At the end of the week what as a civilian he would 
 have described as his first " suit " had not been delivered, 
 and he spent Saturday and Sunday in most uncomfort- 
 able apprehension of the telegraph-boy and in studying 
 an artillery manual now known to hundreds of thou- 
 sands as " F.A.T." On the Monday morning he col- 
 lected such portions of his kit as had to be worn with 
 the " suit " (leggings, boots, spurs, cap, shirt, collar, 
 etc.) and took them in a taxi to the tailor's, intending 
 to change there and emerge a soldier. The clothes were
 
 IN THE MACHINE 375 
 
 not ready, but the tailor, intimidated by real violence, 
 promised them for three o'clock. At three o'clock they 
 were still not ready, for buttons had to be altered on the 
 breeches ; another hour was needed. 
 
 George went to call at Lucas and Enwright's. That 
 office seemed to function as usual, for Everard Lucas 
 alone had left it for the profession of arms. The facto- 
 tum in the cubicle was a young man of the finest military 
 age, and there were two other good ones in the clerks' 
 room, including a clerk just transferred from George's 
 own office. And George thought of his own office, al- 
 ready shut up, and his glance was sardonic. Mr. En- 
 wright sat alone in the principals' room, John Orgreave 
 being abroad in London in pursuit of George's two 
 landlords, the landlord of his house and the landlord of 
 his office, neither of whom had yet been brought to see 
 that George's caprice for a military career entitled him 
 in the slightest degree to slip out of contracts remuner- 
 ative to the sacred caste of landlords. Lucas and En- 
 wright had behaved handsomely to George, having taken 
 everything over, assumed all responsibilities, and allot- 
 ted to George more than a fair share of percentages. 
 And John Orgreave, who in his rough provincial way 
 was an admirable negotiator, had voluntarily busied 
 himself with the affair of the resiliation of George's 
 leases. 
 
 "Not gone, then?" Mr. Enwright greeted him. 
 *' Well, you'd better be going or I shan't get my chance 
 of being Vice-President." 
 
 " What do you mean.'* " 
 
 " Orgreave was at a Committee at the Institute this 
 morning. It seems you might have been the next Vice 
 in spite of your tender years, if you'd stayed. You're 
 becoming the rage, you know," 
 Am I? " said George startled. 
 
 ((
 
 376 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 He hungered for further details of this great and 
 highly disturbing matter, but Enwright, jealous by na- 
 ture and excusably jealous by reason of the fact that 
 despite his immense artistic reputation he had never suc- 
 ceeded in being even Vice-President of the Institute, 
 would say no more. Indeed he took malicious pleasure 
 in saying no more. 
 
 The ageing man, more hypochondriacal, thinner, and 
 more wrinkled than ever, was full to the brim of one 
 subject, — India. Somebody at the India Office had 
 flattered him by showing a knowledge of his work. The 
 India Office had very graciously agreed to the transfer 
 of the barracks enterprise to Lucas and Enwright, and 
 now Mr. Enwright was for going to India himself. He 
 had never been there. Indian scenery, Indian manners, 
 Indian architecture boiled in his brain. The menace 
 of German raiders would not prevent him from going 
 to India. He had already re-visited the photographs 
 of Indian buildings at South Kensington Museum. 
 Moreover, he had persuaded himself that the erection 
 of the barracks formed an urgent and vital part of 
 British war activity. 
 
 At the same time, he was convinced that the war would 
 soon end, and in favour of Germany. He assumed, as 
 beyond doubt, that a German army would occupy Paris, 
 and when George with a wave of the hand pushed the 
 enemy back and magically rendered Paris impregnable, 
 he nearly lost his temper. This embittered Englishman 
 would not hear a word against the miraculous efficiency 
 of the Germans, whom he admired as much as he hated 
 them. The German military reputation could not have 
 been safer in Potsdam than it was in Russell Square. 
 George, impatient of his master and inspirer, rose to 
 depart, whereupon IVIr. Enwright began to talk at large 
 about the terrible derangement of his daily life caused
 
 IN THE MACHINE 377 
 
 by the sudden disappearance of his favourite barber, 
 deemed now to have been a spy. " But the only barber 
 who ever really understood my chin," said Mr. En- 
 wright. George went, shaking hands perfunctorily. 
 Mr. Enwright was too preoccupied to wish him luck. 
 
 The clothes were ready at the tailor's, and they passed 
 the tests, George stood up disguised as a second lieu- 
 tenant in the R. F. A., booted, spurred, gloved, nicely 
 managing a cane. He examined himself in the great 
 mirror and was well pleased with his military appear- 
 ance. In particular his dark moustache fitted the role 
 excellently. 
 
 " Now you'll send the overcoat and all my civilian 
 things down this afternoon, without fail," he said. 
 " I'll let you have an addi'ess for the other suit." 
 
 And he walked manfull}^ out of the shop. Before he 
 could find himself, a superb sergeant-major strode up, 
 saluted in the highest and strictest perfection, and 
 passed. The encounter was unfortunate. George, 
 taken aback, muddled his share of the rite. Further 
 the self-consciousness of the potential Vice-President 
 of the Royal Institute of British Architects was so 
 extreme in uniform that it could scarcely have been 
 more extreme had he been thrust by destiny into Oxford 
 Street naked. He returned to the shop, and said : 
 
 " I think I'll take everything home myself, to make 
 sure. You might get me a taxi." 
 
 He crept into his own house furtively with his parcels, 
 like a criminal, though he well knew that the servants 
 would be ready to worship him as a new god. The chil- 
 dren were evidently out. Lois was not in the drawing- 
 room. He ran to the bedroom. She lay on the sofa. 
 
 " Here I am ! " he announced, posing bravely for her 
 inspection. 
 
 She did not move for a few seconds. Her eyes were
 
 378 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 hard set. Then she gave a tremendous shattering sob, 
 and burst into wild tears. George stooped to pick up 
 a telegram which was lying on the floor. It read : " You 
 are to report to Adjutant Headquarters Second First 
 West Midland R. F. A. Wimbledon to-morrow Tuesday 
 before noon." The Army had not forgotten him. 
 Throughout the week his name upon various forms had 
 been under the eye of authority and at last the order 
 had gone forth. 
 
 in 
 
 The next morning, after a disturbed night, Lois was 
 taken ill. George telephoned for the doctor, and as 
 soon as he had seen the patient the doctor telephoned 
 for the nurse, and as soon as the doctor had telephoned 
 for the nurse George telephoned for Laurencine. What 
 with George's uniform and approaching departure, and 
 the premature seizure of Lois, the household had in an 
 exceedingly short time reached a state of intense excite- 
 ment and inefficiency. Nurse was with Lois ; the chil- 
 dren were with cook in the kitchen ; the other two ser- 
 vants were noisily and vaguely active on the stairs and 
 the landings. The breakfast had been very badly 
 cooked; the newspapers, with a detailed description of 
 the retreat from Mons, were not glanced at. George 
 was expecting a letter from his mother concerning the 
 arrangements for the visit of Lois and the children to 
 Ladderedge, already decided upon, and no letter had 
 come. 
 
 At half-past ten he sent the parlourmaid to get a 
 taxi. Having inspected his luggage in the hall, he went 
 to the telephone again and ascertained that Laurencine 
 had actually started from home. Almost at the same 
 moment a taxi stopped in front of the house. " She's 
 been jolly quick," thought George, meaning the par-
 
 IN THE MACHINE 379 
 
 lourmaid ; but going to the window he saw that his step- 
 father and his mother were in the taxi. He did not rush 
 out to greet them. He did not move. The comfortable 
 sense of the perfect reliabihty and benevolence of his 
 " people " filled and warmed him. They had not writ- 
 ten again; they had just come themselves. 
 
 He affectionately and critically watched them as they 
 got out of the taxi. Alderman Edwin Clayhanger, un- 
 deniably stout, with grey hair and beard, was passing 
 from middle-age into the shadow of the sixties. He 
 dressed well, but the flat crown of his felt hat, and the 
 artificial exaggerated squareness of the broad shoulders, 
 gave him a provincial appearance. His gesture as 
 he paid the driver was absolutely characteristic, — a 
 mixture of the dignified and the boyish, the impressive 
 and the timid. He had descended from the vehicle with 
 precautions, but Mrs. Clayhanger jumped down lightly, 
 though she was about as old and as grey as her hus- 
 band. Her costume was not successful; she did not 
 understand and never had understood how to dress her- 
 self. But she had kept her figure ; she was as slim as a 
 girl, and as restless. 
 
 George ran to the door, which the feverish parlour- 
 maid had neglected to shut. His mother, mounting the 
 steps, was struck full in the face by the apparition of 
 her son in uniform. The Alderman, behind her, cried 
 mockingly to cover his emotion : " Hello ! Hello ! " 
 
 " When did you come up ? " asked George quietly, 
 taking his mother's hand and kissing her. She slid past 
 him into the house. Her eyes were moist. 
 
 " Last night," the Alderman answered. " Last train. 
 Your mother's idea. All of a sudden. Thought you 
 might be leaving." 
 
 " Well, I am," said George. " I have to report at 
 Headquarters at Wimbledon by twelve o'clock. It's,
 
 380 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 rather a good thing you've come. Lois is ill. Oh! 
 Here's my taxi." The parlourmaid had driven up. 
 
 " 111 ! " exclaimed Mrs. Clayhanger. 
 
 " Yes. I've sent for the doctor, and he's sent for 
 the nurse. I'm expecting the nurse every minute." 
 
 " You don't mean to say " Mrs. Clayhanger 
 
 began. 
 
 George nodded. 
 
 " She must have had a shock. I knew what it would 
 be for her. It's all very well, but " Mrs. Clay- 
 hanger again left a sentence unfinished. 
 
 " I've sent for Laurencine, too," said George. " She 
 also may be here any minute." 
 
 " Oh ! " said the old lady tartly. " I can stay as 
 long as you like, you know. Lois and I get on splen- 
 didly." 
 
 It was true. They had had one enormous quarrel, 
 which had mysteriously ended by both of them denying 
 superiorly to all males that any quarrel had ever oc- 
 curred. 
 
 " Well, come into the dining-room." 
 
 " I think I'll go up and see Lois at once," said Mrs. 
 Clayhanger. 
 
 " The doctor's there." 
 
 "What if he is?" 
 
 The Alderman put in: 
 
 " Now look here, missis. Don't startle her." 
 
 Mrs. Clayhanger exhaled impatient scorn and went 
 upstairs. 
 
 " This your stuff? " the Alderman questioned, point- 
 ing with his stick to the kit-bag and strange packages 
 on the hall-floor. 
 
 " Yes," said George, and to the parlourmaid : " You 
 can put it all in the taxi. May. Come along in, uncle." 
 
 " Don't hurry me, boy. Don't hurry me."
 
 IN THE MACHINE 381 
 
 " Where are you staying? " 
 
 " Russell. . . . Bit awkward, this about Lois ! " 
 
 They were now within the dining-room. 
 
 " Yes." In the presence and under the influence of 
 his people George at once ceased to be an expansive 
 Londoner and reverted to the character of the Five 
 Towns. 
 
 " I suppose she'll be all right? " 
 
 " Doctor seems to think so." 
 
 " Yes. They generally are." The Alderman sighed 
 pleasantly and dropped rather heavily into a chair. 
 
 " Have a cigarette? " 
 
 " No ! " The Alderman refused regretfully. " I've 
 got a new rule now. I don't smoke till after dinner." 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " I'm glad we came." 
 
 " So'm I." 
 
 " You needn't worry about anything. Your mother 
 and I will see to everything. I'll go up and have a talk 
 with Johnnie about the leases." 
 
 " Thanks." 
 
 " What about money ? " 
 
 " I'll write you. No hurry." 
 
 " What sort of a woman is Laurencine? I've scarcely 
 set eyes on her." 
 
 " She's fine." 
 
 "She is?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 *' Will she hit it off^ with your mother? " 
 
 " Trust her." 
 
 " Well, then, I think I'll have one o' them cigarettes." 
 
 They smoked in taciturnity, nervous but relieved. 
 They had said what they had to say to each other. 
 After a time George remarked : 
 
 " I heard last night there was a chance of me being
 
 382 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 Vice-President of the Institute this year if I hadn't gone 
 into the Army." 
 
 Mr. Clayhanger raised his eyebrows. 
 
 " That'll keep all right for later." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Mrs. Clayhanger hurried into the dining-room. She 
 had removed her hat and gloves. 
 
 " Lois wants to see you." 
 
 " I was just coming up. I've got to go now," he 
 glanced at his watch. ' 
 
 "Go where?" It was like Mrs. Clayhanger to ask 
 a question to which she knew the answer. Her ardent 
 eyes, set a little too close together in the thin, lined, 
 nervous face, burned upon him challengingly. 
 
 " I told you ! I have to report at Headquarters be- 
 fore noon, 
 
 5> 
 
 " But you don't mean to say you're going to leave 
 your wife like this ! She's very ill." 
 
 " I'm bound to leave her." 
 
 " But you can't leave her." 
 
 The Alderman said : 
 
 " The boy's quite right. If he's got to report he's 
 got to report," 
 
 " And supposing she was dying? " 
 
 " Now missis, we needn't suppose that. She isn't." 
 
 " It would be just the same if she was," ]Mrs. Clay- 
 hanger retorted bitterly. " I don't know what men 
 are coming to. But I know this, — all husbands are 
 selfish. They probably don't know it, but they are." 
 
 She wept angrily. 
 
 " Don't you understand I'm in the machine now, 
 mater? " said George resentfully as he left the room. 
 
 In the bedroom Lois lay on her back, pale, perspir- 
 ing, moaning. He kissed her, glanced at the doctor for 
 instructions, and departed. Lois was not in a condition
 
 IN THE MACHINE 383 
 
 to talk, and the doctor wished her not to speak. Then 
 George went to the kitchen and took leave of the chil- 
 dren and incidentally of the servants. The nurse was 
 arriving as he re-entered the dining-room ; he had seized 
 his cap in the hall and put it on. 
 
 " Better give me an address," said the Alderman. 
 
 " You might wire during the day," George said, scrib- 
 bling on a loose-leaf from his pocket-book, which he 
 had to search for in unfamiliar pockets. 
 
 " The idea had occurred to me," the Alderman smiled. 
 
 " Au revoir, mater." 
 
 " But j'ou've got plenty of time ! " she protested. 
 
 " I know," said he. " I'm not going to be late. I 
 haven't the slightest notion where headquarters are, 
 and supposing the taxi had a breakdown ! " 
 
 He divined from the way in which she kissed him good- 
 bye that she was excessively proud of him. 
 
 " Mater," he said. " I see you're still a girl." 
 
 As he was leaving Mr. Claj-hanger halted him. 
 
 " You said something in your last letter about storing 
 the furniture, didn't you? Have ye made anj' en- 
 quiries? " 
 
 " No. But I've told Orgreave. You might look into 
 that, because — well, you'll see." 
 
 From the hall he glanced into the dining-room and 
 up the stairs. The furniture that filled the house had 
 been new ten years earlier ; it had been anybody's fur- 
 niture. The passage of ten years, marvellously swift, 
 had given character to the furniture, charged it with 
 associations, scarred it with the history of a famih' — ■ 
 his family — individualised it, humanised it. It was no 
 longer anybody's furniture. With a pang he pictured 
 it numbered and crowded into a warehouse, forlorn, 
 thick with dust, tragic, exiled from men and women. 
 
 He drove off, waving. His stepfather waved from
 
 384 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 the door, his mother waved from the dining-room ; the 
 cook had taken the children into the drawing-room, 
 where thej shook their short chubby arms at him, smil- 
 ing. On the second floor the back of the large rectangu- 
 lar mirror on the dressing-table presented a flat and 
 wooden negative to his anxious curiosity. 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Wimbledon the taxi-driver 
 ascertained his destination at the first enquiry from a 
 strolling soldier. It was the Blue Lion public-house. 
 The taxi skirted the Common, parts of which were 
 covered with horse-lines and tents. Further on, in 
 vague suburban streets, the taxi stopped at a corner 
 building with a blatant curved gilt sign and a very big 
 lamp. A sentry did something with his rifle as George 
 got out, and another soldier obligingly took the lug- 
 gage. A clumsy painted board stuck on a pole at the 
 entrance to a side-passage indicated that George had 
 indeed arrived at his Headquarters. He was directed 
 to a small frowsy apartment which apparently' had once 
 been the landlord's sitting-room. Two officers, Colonel 
 Hullocher and his Adjutant, both with ribbons, were 
 seated close together at a littered deal table, behind a 
 telephone whose cord instead of descending modestly 
 to the floor went up in sight of all men to the ceiling. 
 In a corner a soldier, the Colonel's confidential clerk, 
 was writing at another table. Everything was dirty 
 and untidy. Neither of the officers looked at George. 
 The Adjutant was excitedl}' reading to the Colonel and 
 the Colonel was excitedly listening and muttering. The 
 clerk too was in a state of excitement. George ad- 
 vanced towards the table, and saluted and stood at 
 attention. The Adjutant continued to read and the 
 Colonel to murmur, but the Adjutant did manage to 
 give a momentary surreptitious glance at George. 
 After some time the Colonel, who was a short, stout.
 
 IN THE MACHINE 385 
 
 bald, restless man, interrupted the reading, and, still 
 without having looked at George, growled impatiently 
 to the Adjutant: 
 
 "Who's this fellow?" 
 
 The Adjutant replied smoothly: 
 
 " Mr. Cannon, sir," 
 
 The Colonel said: 
 
 " He's got a devilish odd way of saluting. I must go 
 now." And jumped up and went cyclonically as far as 
 the door. At the door he paused and looked George 
 full in the face, glaring. 
 
 " You came to me with a special recommendation.'' " 
 he demanded loudly. 
 
 " Colonel Rannion kindly recommended me, sir." 
 
 " General Rannion, sir. Haven't you seen this 
 morning's Times? You should read your Gazette." 
 
 « Yes, sir." 
 
 "You're the celebrated architect.''" 
 
 *' I'm an architect, sir." 
 
 *' I wish you would condescend to answer, yes or no, 
 sir. That's the second time. I say — you're the cele- 
 brated architect.'' " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Well, remember this. When you come into the 
 Army what you were before you came into the Army 
 has not the slightest importance." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 Colonel Hullocher glared in silence for a moment 
 and was gone. The clerk slipped out after him. 
 
 The Adjutant rose: 
 
 " Now, Cannon, we're all very busy." 
 
 And shook hands.
 
 386 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 IV 
 
 The same afternoon, indeed within about two hours 
 of his entrance into the Army, George found himself 
 driving back from Wimbledon to London in a motor-bus. 
 
 Colonel Hullocher had vanished out of his world, and 
 he had been sent to another and still more frowsy pub- 
 lic-house which was the Headquarters of No. 2 Battery 
 of the Second Brigade. He was allotted to No. 2 Bat- 
 tery, subject to the approval of Major Craim, the com- 
 manding officer. Major Craim was young and fair 
 and benevolent, and at once approvingly welcomed 
 George, who thereupon became the junior subaltern of 
 the Battery. The other half dozen officers, to whom he 
 was introduced one by one as they came in, seemed ami- 
 able and very well-mannered, if unduly excited. When, 
 immediately before lunch, the Major was called away to 
 lunch with Colonel Hullocher, the excitement of the mess 
 seemed to boil over. The enormous fact was that the 
 whole division, yeomanry, infantry and artillery, had 
 been ordered to trek southward the next morning. The 
 division was not ready to trek ; in particular the Sec- 
 ond Brigade of its artillery, and quite specially Battery 
 No. 2 of the Second Brigade, was not ready to trek. 
 Nevertheless it would trek. It might even trek to 
 France. Southward was Franceward, and there were 
 those who joyously believed that this First Line Terri- 
 torial Division was destined to lead the Territorial 
 Army in France. 
 
 All the officers had a schoolboyish demeanour ; all of 
 them called one another by diminutives ending in " y " ; 
 all of them were pretty young. But George soon di- 
 vided them into two distinct groups, those who worried 
 about the smooth working of the great trek, and those 
 who did not. Among the former was Captain Resmith,
 
 IN 'IHE MACHINE 387 
 
 the second in command, a dark man with a positive, 
 strong voice, somewhat similar to George in appearance. 
 Captain Resmith took George very seriously, and prom- 
 ised to initiate him personally into as many technical 
 mysteries as could be compressed into one afternoon. 
 Then a Major Tumulty, middle-aged and pale, came 
 hurriedly into the stuffy room and said without any 
 prologue : 
 
 " Now, I must have one of you chaps this afternoon. 
 Otherwise I promise you you won't get all the things you 
 want." 
 
 Silence fell on the mess. 
 
 " The C. 0. isn't here, sir," said Captain Resmith. 
 
 " I can't help that. I'm not going alone." 
 
 " Cannon, you'd better go with Major Tumulty. 
 Major, this is Mr. Cannon, our latest addition." 
 
 George only knew about Major Tumulty that he 
 was Major Tumulty and that he did not belong to No. 
 2 Battery. So far as George was concerned he was a 
 major in the air. After drinking a glass of port with 
 the mess, Major Tumulty suddenly remembered that he 
 was in a hurry, and took George off and put him into a 
 scarlet London-General motor-bus that was throbbing 
 at the door of the public-house, with an ordinary civil- 
 ian driver at the steering-wheel and a soldier on the 
 step. George felt like a parcel; he had no choice of 
 movement, no responsibility, no knowledge. The men- 
 tality of a parcel was not disagreeable to him. But at 
 times, vaguely uneasy, he would start out of it, and ask 
 himself: " What is wrong? " And then the vision of a 
 distant, half-forgotten street called Elm Park Road 
 would rise in his mind and he would remember : " My 
 wife is very ill and everything is upset at home." 
 
 The motor-bus travelled a few yards and stopped ; 
 and out of yet another ofBce a soldier carried, stagger-
 
 388 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 ing, a heavy bag with a brass lock, and dropped it on the 
 floor of the bus between the Major and George; and the 
 bus, after a good imitation by the soldier-conductor of 
 a professional double ting on the bell, went away afresh. 
 
 " That's money," said the Major, in his mild, veiled 
 voice, pointing to the bag. 
 
 Little by little George learnt that the Major had 
 *' won " the bus " out of " the War Office and had been 
 using it daily for several days for the purpose of buying 
 and collecting urgent stores and equipment. The bus 
 had become celebrated within the Division in an astound- 
 ingly short time, and on this, the last day preceding the 
 trek, the various units had burdened the good-natured 
 Major with a multitude of commissions. 
 
 " I try to keep accounts," said the Major. " But I 
 know I've made a loss every day. I've been in the T. F. 
 ever since there was one, and it has always cost me 
 money. Now, I shall put you in charge of this little 
 book." 
 
 The little book was a penny account book, with pages 
 lettered in pencil A, B, C, D, etc., and items scribbled 
 on each page. 
 
 " The letters show the batteries," the Major ex- 
 plained. " I've got a key to the batteries somewhere in 
 my pocket. And here's what I call my grand list." 
 He produced a roll of foolscap. " I like everything 
 orderly. It saves so much trouble, doesn't it? I mean 
 in the end. Now, as I buy things I shall strike them off 
 here and I want you to strike them off in your book and 
 put down the price from the bill. I always insist on a 
 receipted bill. It saves so much trouble in the end. I 
 meant to bring a file or a clip for the bills, but I forgot. 
 You understand, don't you.''" 
 
 George answered solemnly and sharply : 
 
 " Yes, sir."
 
 IN THE MACHINE 389 
 
 The Major weakly cried: 
 
 " Hall ! " 
 
 *' Yessir !" The soldier-conductor came to attention. 
 
 " Did you tell him to go to Harrods first? " 
 
 " Yessir ! " 
 
 " I think we might go and sit on the top," said the 
 Major. " It's a nice afternoon." 
 
 So the two officers went and sat on the top of the 
 motor-bus. The Major gossiped with soothing tran- 
 quillity. He said that he was a pianoforte manufac- 
 turer ; his father, from whom he had inherited, had 
 traded under a German name because people preferred 
 German pianos to English ; he now regretted this piece 
 of astuteness on the part of his father ; he was trying 
 to sell his business, — he had had enough of it. 
 
 " Hi ! You ! " he called, standing up quite unexpect- 
 edly and leaning over the front of the bus to hail the 
 driver. " Hi ! You ! " But the driver did not hear, 
 and the bus drove forward like fate. The Major, who 
 had hitherto seemed to be exempt from the general per- 
 turbation of Wimbledon troops, suddenly showed ex- 
 citement. " We must stop this bus somehow ! Why 
 the devil doesn't he stop.'' I've forgotten the rope- 
 shop." 
 
 " I'll stop it, sir," said George, maintaining an admir- 
 able presence of mind in the crisis, and he rose and 
 pushed down the knob of the signal-rod at the back 
 of the bus. The bus did actually stop. 
 
 **Ah!" murmured the Major, calmed. 
 
 The soldier raced upstairs. 
 
 " Hall ! " 
 
 " Yessir." 
 
 " Do you know a rope and string shop near the 
 Granville Theatre of Varieties at Walham Green?" 
 
 " No, sir."
 
 390 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 " Well, there is one. Tell him to stop at the Gran- 
 ville." 
 
 " Yessir." 
 
 The Major resumed his bland conversation. At Put- 
 ney the}' saw the first contents-bills of the afternoon 
 papers. 
 
 " How do you think things are going, sir? " George 
 asked. 
 
 " It's very difficult to say," answered the Major. 
 *' This Mons business is serious." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 The discovery of the rope-shop involved a police- 
 man's aid. When the rope had been purchased and 
 new silver brought forth from the bag, and the receipt 
 made out, and the item struck off and the amount en- 
 tered, and the bus had started again, George perceived 
 that he would soon be passing the end of Elm Park 
 Gardens. Dared he ask the IVIajor to deflect the bus 
 into Elm Park Road so that he might obtain news of 
 Lois.'' He dared not. The scheme, simple and feasible 
 enough, was nevertheless unthinkable. The bus, with 
 " Liverpool Street " inscribed on its forehead, rolled 
 its straight inevitable course along Fulham Road, pur- 
 sued by the disappointed glances of gesturing wayfarers 
 who wanted it to take them to Liverpool Street. 
 
 After about two hours of fine confused shopping the 
 Major stopped his bus at a Tube station in the north of 
 London. 
 
 " I mustn't forget my pens," said he. " I have to 
 spend three quarters of my time mewed up in the office, 
 and I don't grumble; but I'm very particular about 
 nibs, and if I don't have my own I can not work. It's 
 useless to expect it." Then to the soldier : " Hall ! " 
 
 " You go down to Partridge and Cooper's, at the cor- 
 ner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, and buy a six-
 
 IN THE MACHINE 391 
 
 penny box of their ' No. 6 Velvet ' pen-nibs. You un- 
 derstand : ' No. 6 Velvet '." 
 
 " Yessir. With the bus, sir.? " 
 
 " With the bus. Here's sixpence." He took a coin 
 out of the bag, locked it, and gave the key to George. 
 " And keep an eye on this bag, my boy. You will then 
 come back and wait for us — let me see — outside Pic- 
 cadilly Tube Station in Jermyn Street." 
 
 " Yessir." 
 
 The Major and George entered the North London 
 station and proceeded to the lift. 
 
 " Tickets ! " demanded the lift-man. 
 
 The Major halted and gazed at him. 
 
 "On service!" said the Major with resentment and 
 disdain. " A fortnight ago you civilians were raising 
 your hats to us. Now you ask us for tickets ! 
 Haven't you grasped yet that there's a war on? Don't 
 you think jou'd look better in kliaki ? " He showed 
 excitement, as at every personal encounter. 
 
 The lift-man bowed his head, inarticulately mutter- 
 ing, and the officers passed into the lift, having created 
 a certain amount of interest among the other passen- 
 gers. The Major was tranquillised in a moment. 
 They came to the surface again at Piccadilly Circus, 
 where at the lift a similar scene occurred. 
 
 " Do you know anything about pyjamas.'' " said the 
 Major. 
 
 "Well, sir " 
 
 " I never wear them myself. I'm rather old-fash- 
 ioned. But I have to buy three pairs — suits — for 
 Colonel Hullocher at Swan and Edgar's. Oh ! Bother 
 it ! Have you any money ? I forgot to take some out 
 of the bag." 
 
 The Major purchased the pyjamas with George's 
 money, and his attitude towards the shopman during
 
 392 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 the transaction was defiant, indicating to the shopman 
 that, though personally he, the IMajor, never wore 
 pyjamas, he was an expert in pyjamas and not to be 
 gulled. George took the resulting parcel and the re- 
 ceipted bill, and they walked across to Jermyn Street, 
 where surely the bus, with the sixpenny box of pens, was 
 waiting for them. It was perfectly' magical. As the 
 vehicle swung with them into the Circus the Major ex- 
 claimed : 
 
 " We're getting on very well. What do you say to 
 some tea.^* " 
 
 " Certainly, sir." 
 
 The bus, having stopped by order at the second tea- 
 house on the left in Piccadill}^, was immediately as- 
 saulted, without success, by several would-be passengers. 
 A policeman, outraged by the spectacle of a bus sta- 
 tionary at a spot where buses are absolutely forbidden 
 to be stationary, hurried forward in fury. But the 
 Major, instantly excited, was ready for him. 
 
 " This motor-bus is a military vehicle on service, and 
 I'll thank you to mind your own business. If you've 
 any complaints to make, you'd better make them to 
 Lord Kitchener." 
 
 The policeman touched his hat. 
 
 " They have music here," said the Major mildly, 
 entering the tea-house. " I always like music. Makes 
 things so much jollier, doesn't it-f* " 
 
 During tea the Major enquired about George's in- 
 dividual circumstances, and George said that he was 
 an architect. 
 
 " Student of bricks and mortar, eh? " said the Major 
 benevolently. " How long have you been in the 
 Army.? " 
 
 " Rather less than half a day, sir." 
 
 The Major, raising his eyebrows, was very interested
 
 IN THE MACHINE 393 
 
 and kind. Perceiving that he had virgin material under 
 his hands, he began to shape the material, and talked 
 much about the niceties of the etiquette of saluting, 
 George listened, yet at intervals his attention would 
 wander, and he would be in Elm Park Road. But the 
 illusion of home was very faint. His wife and family 
 seemed to be slipping away from him. " How is it," he 
 thought, " that I am not more upset about Lois than 
 I am.^* " The various professional and family matters 
 which in his haste he had left unsettled were dimin- 
 ishing hourly in their apparent importance. He came 
 back to the tea-house with a start, hearing the Major 
 praise his business capacity as displayed during the 
 afternoon. The friendly aspect of the thin, pallid face 
 inspired him with a sort of emotional audacity, and in 
 ten words he suddenly informed the Major of his do- 
 mestic situation. 
 
 " Hm! " said the Major. " I'm a bachelor myself." 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " I'll give you a tip," said the Major, resuming the 
 interrupted topic. " War is a business. The more 
 business capacity you have, the more likely you are to 
 succeed. I'm a business man myself." 
 
 On leaving the tea-house they discovered the military 
 vehicle surrounded by an enchanted multitude who were 
 staring through its windows at the merchandise — 
 blankets, pans, kettles, saddles, ropes, parcels, stoves, 
 baskets, and box of nibs — within, while the policeman 
 strove in vain to keep both the road and the pavement 
 clear. George preceded the Major, pushing aside 
 with haughty military impatience the civihans so re- 
 luctant to move. He felt as though he had been in 
 the Army for years. No longer did his uniform 
 cause him the slightest self-consciousness. 
 
 At Wimbledon in the dusk the bus was met by sev-
 
 394 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 eral military waggons each from a different unit, and 
 each anxious to obtain goods. This piece of organisa- 
 tion rather impressed George. 
 
 " Well, my boy," said the Major. " You'd better go 
 and report yourself. You've been a great help to me." 
 
 George saluted according to the Major's own doc- 
 trine, and departed. At Battery headquarters he met 
 Captain Resmith. 
 
 " How did you get on with Auntie? " asked Resmith 
 in his loud, firm voice. 
 
 George winked. 
 
 Resmith gave a scarcely perceptible smile. 
 
 "Look here," he said. "I'm just going round the 
 horse-lines. If you'll come with me I'll show you a 
 thing or two, and we can choose a mount for you. Then 
 after dinner if you like I'll take you through the orders 
 for to-morrow. By the way, there's a telegram for 
 you." 
 
 The telegram read : 
 
 " Girl. Everything fairly satisfactory. Don't 
 worry too much. Laurencine sleeps here. Nunks." 
 
 The telegram was entirely characteristic of his step- 
 father, — curt, exact, realistic, kind. 
 
 He thought : 
 
 " Three girls, by Jove ! " 
 
 V 
 
 The early sun, carrying into autumn the tradition of 
 a magnificent summer, shone on the artillery camps. 
 The four guns of the No. 2 Battery of the Second Brig- 
 ade were ranged side by side in the vast vague space 
 in front of the officers' hutments. Each gun had six 
 horses in three pairs, and a rider for each pair. On the 
 guns and the gun-teams everything glittered that could 
 glitter, — leather, metal, coats of horses, faces of men. 
 Captain Resmith rode round, examining harness and
 
 IN THE MACHINE 395 
 
 equipment with a microscope that he called his eye. 
 George rode round after him. Sometimes Captain Re- 
 smith spoke to a N. C. O., sometimes even to a man, 
 but for the most part the men stared straight in front 
 of them into eternity. Major Craim trotted up. Cap- 
 tain Resmith approached the Major and saluted, saying 
 in his best military voice: 
 
 " The Battery is all correct and ready to move off, 
 sir." 
 
 The Major in his drawing-room voice replied: 
 
 " Thank you, Captain Resmith." 
 
 Silence reigned in No. 2 Battery, except for the faint 
 jingling restlessness of the horses. 
 
 Then Colonel Hullocher and his adjutant pranced 
 into sight. The Adjutant saluted the Major and made 
 an enquiry. The Major saluted, and all three chatted 
 a little. 
 
 George, who had accompanied Captain Resmith into 
 the background, murmured to him, as cautiously as a 
 convict talking at exercise: 
 
 " He's got his knife into me." 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 « The Colonel." 
 
 "Don't you know why?" 
 
 " No. I was specially recommended to him." 
 
 " Well, that's one reason, isn't it? But there was a 
 difficulty between him and the Major as to when you 
 should come. The old man got the better of him — 
 always does. But he's a good officer." 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " Hullocher. Shut up." 
 
 These two had reached familiarity with the swiftness 
 characteristic of martial life. 
 
 During the brief colloquy Resmith had sat very up- 
 right on his horse, the chin slightly lifted, the head
 
 396 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 quite still, even the lips scarcely moving to articulate. 
 Colonel Hullocher seemed now to be approaching. It 
 was a false alarm. The Colonel and liis adjutant 
 pranced off. After a long time, and at a considerable 
 distance, could just be heard the voice of the Colonel 
 ordering the Brigade to move. But No. 2 Battery did 
 not stir for another long period. Suddenly, amid a 
 devolution of orders, No. 2 Battery moved. The Ma- 
 jor, attended by his trumpeter, and followed by the 
 Battery staff of range-takers, director-men, telephon- 
 ists, and the sergeant-major, inaugurated a sinuous 
 procession into the uneven, rutted track leading to the 
 side-road. Then the guns one by one wheeled to the 
 right, the horses' hoofs stamping into the damp ground 
 as they turned, and became part of the procession. 
 Then the quartermaster and other N. C. O.'s and men 
 joined; and last were Captain Resmith, attended by his 
 trumpeter, and George. Resmith looked over his shoul- 
 der at the Third Battery which under the leadership of 
 another Captain surged behind. There were nearly 
 two hundred men and over one hundred and fifty horses 
 and many vehicles in the Battery. The Major was far 
 out of sight, and the tail of the Column was equally out 
 of sight in the rear, for the total length of Major 
 Craim's cavalcade exceeded a mile ; and of the Brigade 
 three miles ; and two other similar Brigades somewhere 
 in the region of Wimbledon were participating in the 
 grand Divisional trek. 
 
 Captain Resmith cantered ahead to a bend in the 
 track, and anxiously watched a gun-team take the sharp 
 curve, which was also a sharp slope. The impression of 
 superb, dangerous physical power was tremendous. 
 The distended nostrils of horses, the gliding of their 
 muscles under the glossy skin, the muffled thud of their 
 hoofs in the loose soil, the grimacing of the men as they
 
 IN THE MACHINE 397 
 
 used spur and thong, the fierce straining of straps and 
 chains, the creaking, the grinding ; and finally the sway- 
 ing of the 90-millimetre gun coddled and polished, as it 
 swung helplessly forward stern first and its long nose 
 describing an arc in the air behind, — these things mar- 
 vellously quickened the blood. 
 
 " Good men ! " said Captain Resmith, enthusiastic. 
 " It's great, isn't it ? You know, there's nothing so 
 fine as a battery — nothing in the whole world." 
 
 George heartily agreed with him. 
 
 " This is the best Battery in the Division," said 
 Resmith religiously. 
 
 And George was religiously convinced that it was. 
 
 He was astoundingly happy. He thought, amazed^ 
 that he had never been so happy, or at any rate so 
 uplifted, in all his life. He simply could not compre- 
 hend his state of bliss, which had begun that morning 
 at 6.30 when the grey-headed, simple-minded servant 
 allotted to him had wakened him according to instruc- 
 tions with a mug of tea. Perhaps it was the far, thin 
 sound of bugles that had produced the rapturous effect, 
 or the fresh air blowing in through the broken pane of 
 the hut, or the slanting sunlight, or the feeling that he 
 had no responsibility and nothing to do but blindly 
 obey orders. 
 
 He had gone to sleep as depressed as he was tired. A 
 sense of futility had got the better of him. The excur- 
 sion of the afternoon had certainly been ridiculous in a 
 high degree. He had hoped for a more useful evening. 
 Captain Resmith had indeed taken him to the horse- 
 lines, and he had tried a mount which was very suitable, 
 and Captain Resmith had said that he possessed a 
 naturally good seat and hands, and had given him a 
 few sagacious tips. It was plain to him that Resmith 
 had the Major's orders to take him in tutelage and make
 
 398 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 an officer of him. But the satisfactoriness of the even- 
 ing had suddenly ceased. Scarcely had Resmith begun 
 to expound the orders, and George to read the thrilling 
 words, " Second Lieutenant G. E. Cannon to ride with 
 Captain Resmith," when the mess had impulsively de- 
 cided to celebrate the last night in camp by a dinner at 
 the hotel near the station, and George, fit for nothing 
 more important, had been detailed to run off and ar- 
 range for the rich repast. The bulk of the mess was 
 late to arrive, and George spent the time in writing a 
 descriptive and falsely gay letter on slips of yellow 
 Army paper to Lois. The dinner, with its facile laugh- 
 ter and equally facile cynicism, had bored him ; for he 
 had joined the Army in order to save an Empire and a 
 world from being enslaved. He had lain down in his 
 truckle-bed and listened to the last echoing sounds in 
 the too-resonant corridor of the hutments, and thought 
 of the wisdom of Sir Isaac Davids, and of the peril to 
 his wife, and of the peril to the earth, and of his own 
 irremediable bondage to the military machine. He, 
 with all his consciousness of power, had been put to 
 school again ; deprived of the right to answer back, to 
 argue, even to think. If one set in authority said that 
 black was white, his most sacred duty was to concur and 
 believe. And there was no escape. . . . 
 
 And then, no sooner had he gone to sleep than it was 
 bright day, and the faint, clear call of bugles had 
 pierced the clouds of his depression and they had van- 
 ished ! Every moment of the early morning had been 
 exquisite. Although he had not been across a horse for 
 months, he rode comfortably ; and the animal was re- 
 liable. Resmith in fact had had to warn him against 
 fatiguing himself. But he knew that he was incapable 
 of fatigue. The day's trek was naught — fifteen mUes
 
 IN THE MACHINE 399 
 
 or less — to Epsom Downs, at a walk ! . . . Lois? He 
 had expected a letter from " Nunks " or his mother, but 
 there was no letter, and no news was good news, at any 
 rate with " Nunks " in charge of communications. 
 Lois could not fail to be all right. He recalled the wise 
 generalisation of " Nunks " on that point. . . . Break- 
 fast was a paradisaical meal. He had never " fancied " 
 a meal so much. And Resmith had greatly enheartened 
 him by saying sternly : " You've got exactly the right 
 tone with the men. Don't you go trying to alter it." 
 The general excitement was intense, and the solemn 
 synchronising of watches increased it further. An or- 
 derly brought a newspaper, and nobody would do more 
 than disdainfully glance at it. The usual daily stuff 
 about the war ! . . . Whereas Epsom Downs glittered 
 in the imagination like a Canaan. And it lay south- 
 ward. Probably they were not going to France, but 
 probably they would have the honour of defending the 
 coast against invasion. George desired to master gun- 
 nery instantly, and Resmith soothed him wuth the assur- 
 ance that he would soon be sent away on a gunnery 
 course, which would give him beans. And in the mean- 
 time George might whet his teeth on the detailed ar- 
 rangements for feeding and camping the Battery on 
 Epsom Downs. This organisation gave George pause, 
 especially when he remembered that the Battery was a 
 very trifling item in the Division, and when Resmith 
 casually informed him that a Division on the trek occu- 
 pied fifteen miles of road. He began to perceive the 
 difference between the Army and a circus, and to figure 
 the Staff as something other than a club of haughty 
 aristocratic idlers in red hats. And when the Battery 
 M'as fairly under way in the side-road, with another 
 Battery in front and another Battery behind, and more
 
 400 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 Artillery Brigades and uncounted Infantry Brigades 
 and a screen of Yeomanry all visibly marching over the 
 map in the direction of Epsom, and bound to reach a 
 certain lettered square on the map at a certain minute, 
 — when this dynamic situation presented itself to the 
 tentacles of his grasping mind, he really did feel that 
 there could be no game equal to war. 
 
 The Battery rode easy, the men were smoking, talk- 
 ing, and singing in snatches, when suddenly all sounds 
 were silenced. Captain Resmith, who had been sum- 
 moned to the Major, reined in his horse, and George did 
 likewise, and the Battery passed by them on the left. 
 The Major's voice was heard: 
 
 " No. 2 Battery. Eyes — right! " 
 
 George asked: 
 
 "What's this? 
 
 " C. R. A.'s ahead," murmured Resmith. 
 
 Then another officer cried : 
 
 " Right section. Eyes — right.** 
 
 And then an N. C. O. bawled : 
 
 " A sub-section. Eyes — right.*' 
 
 Then only did George, from the rear, see the drivers 
 with a simultaneous gesture twist their heads very 
 sharply to the right, raise their whips, and f.ing the 
 thongs over the withers of the hand-horses, while the 
 section-officer saluted. 
 
 Another N. C. 0. bawled: 
 
 " B sub-section. Eyes — right.** 
 
 And the same action followed. 
 
 Then another officer cried : 
 
 " Left section. Eyes — right.** 
 
 So the rite proceeded. 
 
 Resmith and George had now gone back to their 
 proper places. George could see the drivers of the last
 
 IN THE MACHINE 401 
 
 gun gathering up the whip-thongs into their hands pre- 
 paratory to the salute. C sub-section received the com- 
 mand. 
 
 And then, not many yards ahead, the voice of an 
 N. C. O. : 
 
 " D sub-section. Eyes — right." 
 
 Heads turned ; whips were raised and flung outwards ; 
 horses swerved sHghtly. 
 
 " Get ready," muttered Resmith to George. 
 
 The figure of the C. R. A., Brigadier-General Ran- 
 nion, motionless on a charger, came into view. George's 
 heart was beating high. Resmith and he saluted. The 
 General gazed hard at him and never moved. They 
 passed ahead. 
 
 The officer commanding the Third Battery had al- 
 ready called: 
 
 " No. 2 Battery. Eyes — right." 
 
 The marvellous ceremonial slipped rearwards. 
 George was aware of tears in his eyes. He was aware 
 of the sentiment of worship. He felt that he would have 
 done anything, accomplished any deed, died, at the bid- 
 ding of the motionless figure on the charger. It was 
 most curious. 
 
 There was a terrific crash of wood far behind. Res- 
 mith chuckled. 
 
 " One of those G. S. waggons has knocked down the 
 Automobile Club ' Cross Roads ' sign," he said. " Good 
 thing it wasn't a lamp-post ! You see, with their eyes 
 right they can't look where they're going, and the whip 
 touches up the horses, and before you can say knife 
 they're into something. Jolly glad it's only the Am. 
 Col. Jones will hear of this." He chuckled again. 
 Jones was the Captain commanding the Ammunition 
 Column.
 
 402 THE ROLL-CAIX 
 
 The order ran down the line : 
 
 "Eyes — /row*." 
 
 Soon afterwards they came to some policemen, and 
 two girls in very gay frocks with bicycles, and the cross- 
 roads. The Battery swung into the great high-road 
 whose sign-post said, " To Ewell and Epsom." Another 
 unit had been halted to let the Artillery pass into its 
 definitive place in the vast trek. It was about this time 
 that George began to notice the dust. Rain had fallen 
 before dawn and made the roads perfect; but now 
 either all the moisture had evaporated in the blazing 
 sun, or the Battery had reached a zone where rain had 
 not fallen. At first the dust rose only in a shallow sea 
 to the height of fetlocks ; but gradually it ascended 
 and made clouds and deposited a layer on the face and 
 on the tongue and in the throat. And the surface itself 
 of the road, exasperated by innumerable hoofs and 
 wheels, seemed to be in a kind of crawling fermentation. 
 The smell of humanity and horses was strong. The 
 men were less inclined to sing. 
 
 " Left ! " yelled a voice. 
 
 And another: 
 
 " Left! " 
 
 And still another, very close on the second one: 
 
 "Left!" 
 
 " Keep your distances there ! " Resmith shouted vio- 
 lently. 
 
 A horn sounded, and the next moment a motor-car, 
 apparently full of red-hats, rushed past the Battery, 
 overtaking it, in a blinding storm of dust. It was gone, 
 like a ghost. 
 
 " That's the Almighty himself," Resmith explained, 
 with unconscious awe and devotion in his powerful voice. 
 " Gramstone, Major-General."
 
 IN THE MACHINE 403 
 
 George, profoundly impressed (he knew not why), 
 noticed in his brain a tiny embryo of a thought that it 
 might be agreeable to ride in a car. 
 
 A hand went up, and the Battery stopped. It was 
 the first halt. 
 
 *' Look at your watch," said Resmith, smiling, 
 
 " Ten to, exactly." 
 
 " That's right. We have ten minutes in each hour." 
 
 All dismounted, examined horses for galls and looked 
 at their shoes, took pulls at water-bottles, lit cigarettes, 
 expectorated, coughed, flicked at flies with handker- 
 chiefs. The two chromatic girls cycled past slowly, 
 laughing. A stretcher-party also went past, and 
 shortly afterwards returned with the stretcher laden. 
 
 VI 
 
 It was after the long halt at midday that the weather 
 changed. The horses, martyrised by insects, had been 
 elaborately watered and fed, with immense labour; offi- 
 cers and men had eaten rations and dust from their 
 haversacks, and for the most part emptied their water- 
 bottles ; and the march had been resumed in a temper 
 captious and somewhat exacerbated. 
 
 " Get your horse away ; he's kicking mine ! " said 
 Captain Resmith impatiently to George, reflecting the 
 general mood. And George, who was beginning to ex- 
 perience fatigue in the region of the knees, visited on 
 his horse the resentment he felt at Resmith's tone. 
 
 At precisely that moment some drops of rain fell. 
 Nobody could believe at first that the drops were rain- 
 drops, for the whole landscape was quivering in hot 
 sunshine. However, an examination of the firmament 
 showed a cloud perpendicularly overhead; the drops 
 multiplied; the cloud slowly obscured the sun. An al-
 
 404 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 most audible sigh of relief passed down the line. Every- 
 body was freshened and elated. Some men with an 
 instinct for the apposite started to sing: 
 
 " Shall we gather at the river? " 
 
 And nearly the whole Battery joined in the tune. 
 The rain persevered, thickening. The sun accepted 
 defeat. The sky lost all its blue. Orders were given 
 as to clothing. George had the sensation that some- 
 thing was lacking to him, and found that it was an 
 umbrella. On the outskirts of Ewell the Battery was 
 splashing through puddles of water ; the coats of horses 
 and of men had darkened ; guns, poles, and caps car- 
 ried chaplets of rain-drops ; and all those stern riders, 
 so proud and scornful, with chins hidden in high, up- 
 turned collars, and long garments disposed majestically 
 over their legs and the flanks of the horses, nevertheless 
 knew in secret that the conquering rain had got down 
 the backs of their necks, and into their boots and into 
 their very knees ; but they were still nobly maintaining 
 the illusion of impermeability against it. The Battery, 
 riding now stiffly " eyes front," was halted unexpectedly 
 in Ewell, filling the whole of the village, to the village's 
 extreme content. Many minutes elapsed. Rumour 
 floated down that something was wrong in front. Cap- 
 tain Resmith had much inspectorial cantering to do, and 
 George faithfully followed him for some time. At one 
 end of the village a woman was selling fruit and ginger- 
 beer to the soldiers at siege prices ; at the other men and 
 women out of the little gardened houses were eagerly 
 distributing hot tea and hot coff'ee free of charge. 
 The two girls from the cross-roads entered the village, 
 pushing their bicycles, one of which had apparently lost 
 a pedal. They wore macintoshes and were still laugh- 
 ing.
 
 IN THE MACHINE 405 
 
 At length George said : 
 
 " If you don't mind I'll stick where I am for a bit." 
 
 " Tired, eh? " Resmith asked callously. 
 
 " Well ! I shall be if I keep on." 
 
 " Dismount, my canny boy. Didn't I tell you what 
 would happen to you? At your age " 
 
 " Why ! How old d'you think I am? " 
 
 " Well, my canny boy, you'll never see thirty again, 
 I suppose." 
 
 " No, I shan't. Nor you either." 
 
 Captain Resmith said: 
 
 " I'm twenty-four." 
 
 George was thunderstruck. The fellow was a boy 
 and George had been treating him as an equal! But 
 then the fellow was also George's superior officer, and 
 immeasurably his superior in physique. Do what he 
 would, harden himself as he might, George at thirty- 
 three could never hope to rival the sinews of the boy 
 of twenty-four, who incidentally could instruct him on 
 €very conceivable military subject. George, standing 
 by his sodden horse, felt humiliated and annoyed as 
 Resmith cantered off to speak to the officer commanding 
 the Ammunition Column. But on the trek there was no 
 outlet for such a sentiment as annoyance. He was Res- 
 mith's junior and Resmith's inferior, and must behave, 
 and expect to be behaved to, as such. 
 
 " Never mind ! " he said to himself. His determina- 
 tion to learn the art and craft of war was almost savage 
 in ferocity. 
 
 When the Battery at length departed from Ewell the 
 rain had completed its victory, but at the same time 
 had lost much of its prestige. The riders, abandoning 
 illusion, admitting frankly that they were wet to the 
 skin, knowing that all their clothing was soaked, and, 
 satisfied that they could not be wetter than they were
 
 406 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 if the bottom fell out of the sky, simpl}' derided the rain 
 and plodded forward. Groups of them even disdained 
 the weather in lusty song. But not George. George 
 was exhausted. He was ready to fall off' his horse. 
 The sensation of fatigue about the knees and in the 
 small of his back was absolute torture. Resmith told 
 him to ride without stirrups and dangle his legs. The 
 relief was real, but only temporary. And the Battery 
 moved on at the horribly monotonous tiring walk. Ep- 
 som was incredibly distant. George gave up hope of 
 Epsom ; and he was right to do so, for Epsom never 
 came. The Battery had taken a secondary road to the 
 left which climbed slowly to the Downs. At the top 
 of this road, under the railway bridge, just before fields 
 ceased to be enclosed, stood the two girls. Their 
 bicycles leaned against the brick-wall. They had taken 
 off their macintoshes, and it was plain from their cling- 
 ing coloured garments that they too were utterly 
 drenched. They laughed no more. Over the open 
 Downs the wind was sweeping the rain in front of it ; 
 and the wind was the night wind, for the sky had begun 
 to darken into dusk. The Battery debouched into a 
 main road which seemed full of promise, but left it 
 again within a couple of hundred yards, and was once 
 more on the menacing, high, naked downs, with a wide 
 and desolate view of unfeatured plains to the north. 
 The bugles sounded sharply in the wet air, and the Bat- 
 tery, now apparently alone in the world, came to a halt. 
 George slipped off his horse. A multiplicity of orders 
 followed. Amorphous confusion was produced out of 
 a straight line. This was the bivouacking ground. And 
 there was nothing, — nothing but the track by which 
 they had arrived, and the Downs, and a distant blur to 
 the west in the shape of the Epsom Grand Stand, and 
 the heavy, ceaseless rain, and the threat of the fast de-
 
 IN THE MACHINE 407 
 
 scending night. According to the theory of the Divi- 
 sional Staff a dump furnished by the Army Service 
 Corps ought to have existed at a spot corresponding to 
 the final letter in the words " Burgh Heath " on the 
 map, but the information quickly became general that 
 no such dump did in practice exist. To George the sit- 
 uation was merely incredible. He knew that for him- 
 self there was only one reasonable course of conduct. 
 He ought to have a boiling bath, go to bed with his 
 dressing-gown over his pyjamas, and take a full basin 
 of hot bread-and-milk adulterated by the addition of 
 brandy — and sleep. Horses and men surged peri- 
 lously around him. The anarchical disorder, however, 
 must have been less acute than he imagined, for a soldier 
 appeared and took away his horse; he let the reins slip 
 from his dazed hand. The track had been transformed 
 into a morass of sticky mud. 
 
 vn 
 
 It was night. The heavy rain drove out of the dark 
 void from every direction at once, and baptised the 
 chilled faces of men as though it had been discharged 
 from the hundred-holed rose of a full watering-can. 
 The Right and the Left sections of the Batter}' were 
 disposed on either side of the track. Fires were burn- 
 ing. Horse-lines had been laid down, and by the light 
 of flickering flames the dim forms of tethered animals 
 could be seen with their noses to the ground pessimistic- 
 ally pretending to munch what green turf had survived 
 in the mud. Lanterns moved mysteriously to and fro. 
 In the distance to the west more illuminations showed 
 that another unit had camped along the track. The 
 quartermaster of No. 2 had produced meagre tinned 
 meats and biscuits from his emergency stores, and had 
 made a certain quantity' of tea in dixies; he had even
 
 408 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 found a half-feed of oats for the horses ; so that both 
 horses and men were somewhat appeased. But the offi- 
 cers had had nothing, and the Army Service Corps de- 
 tachment was still undiscoverable. 
 
 George sat on an empty box at the edge of the track, 
 submissive to the rain. Resmith had sent him to over- 
 look men cutting straight branches in a wood on Park 
 Downs, and then he had overlooked them as, with the 
 said branches and with waterproofs laced together in 
 pairs, they had erected sleeping shelters for the officers 
 under the imperfect shelter of the sole tree within the 
 precincts of the camp. From these purely ornamental 
 occupations he had returned in a condition approximat- 
 ing to collapse, without desire and without hope. The 
 invincible cheerfulness of unseen men chanting music- 
 hall songs in the drenched night made no impression on. 
 him, nor the terrible staccato curtness of a N. C. O. 
 mounting guards. Volition had gone out of him ; his 
 heart was as empty as his stomach. 
 
 Then a group of officers approached, with a mounted 
 officer in the middle of them, and a lantern swinging. 
 The group was not proceeding in any particular direc- 
 tion, but followed the restless motions of the uneasy 
 horse. George, suddenly startled, recognised the voice 
 of the rider; it was Colonel Hullocher's voice. The 
 Brigade Commander had come in person to investigate 
 the melancholy inexcusable case of No. 2 Battery, and 
 he was cursing all men and all things, and especially the 
 Divisional Staff. It appeared that the Staff was re- 
 sponsible for the hitch of organisation. During the 
 day the Staff had altered its arrangements for No. 2 
 Battery of the Second Brigade, and had sent an incom- 
 plete message to the Army Service Corps Headquarters. 
 The A. S. C. had waited in vain for the completion of 
 the message and had then, at dark, despatched a convoy
 
 IN THE MACHINE 409 
 
 with provender for No. 2 and instructions to find No. 
 2. This convoy had not merely not found No. 2, — it 
 had lost itself, vanished in the dark universe of rain. 
 But let not No. 2 imagine that No. 2 was blameless ! 
 No. 2 ought to have found the convoy. By some means, 
 human or divine, by the exercise of second sight or the 
 vision of cats or the scent of hounds, it ought to have 
 found the convoy, and there was no excuse for it not 
 having done so. Such was the expressed opinion of Col- 
 onel Hullocher, and a recital by Major Craim of the 
 measures taken by him did nothing to shake that 
 opinion. 
 
 "How exactly do you stand now?" the Colonel 
 fiercely demanded. 
 
 " The men and the horses will manage fairly well with 
 what they've had, sir," said the Major, and he incau- 
 tiously added, " but my officers haven't had anything 
 at all." 
 
 The Colonel seized the opening with fury : 
 
 "What the devil do I care for your officers.'' It's 
 your horses and your men that I'm thinking about. 
 It's to-morrow morning that I'm thinking about. 
 
 The horse, revolving, cut short his harangue. 
 
 *' Keep that d — d lantern out of his eyes ! " cried 
 the Colonel. 
 
 George jumped up, and as he did so the water swished 
 in his boots, and a stream poured off his cap. The 
 horse was being fatally attracted towards him. The 
 beam of the lantern fell on him, illuminating before his 
 face the long slants of rain. 
 
 " Ha ! Who's this.'' " the Colonel demanded, steady- 
 ing the horse. 
 
 George smartly saluted, forgetting his fatigue. 
 
 " You, is it.f* And what are you supposed to be
 
 410 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 doing? Look here " Colonel Hullocher stopped in 
 
 full career of invective, remembering military etiquette, 
 "Major, I suggest joxi send Mr. Cannon with 
 some men to find the convoy." The Major having 
 eagerly concurred, the Colonel went on : " Take a few 
 men and search every road and track between here and 
 Kingswood station — S3'stematicall3% Kingswood's the 
 rail-head, and somewhere between here and there that 
 convoj'^ is bound to be. Systematically, mind 1 It's 
 not a technical job. All that's wanted is commonsense 
 and thoroughness." 
 
 The Colonel's gaze was ruthlessly challenging. 
 George met it stiffly. He knew that the roads, if not 
 the tracks, had already been searched. He knew that 
 he was being victimised by a chance impulse of the 
 Colonel's. But he ignored all that. He was coldly 
 angry and resentful. Utterly forgetting his fatigue, 
 he inimically surveyed the Colonel's squat, shining figure 
 in the cavalry coat, a pyramid of which the apex was 
 a round head surmounted by a dripping cap. 
 
 " Yes, sir," he snapped. 
 
 By rights the t3'rant ought to have rolled off his horse 
 dead. But Colonel Hullocher was not thus vulnerable. 
 He could give glance for glance with perhaps any 
 human being on earth, and indeed thought little more of 
 subalterns than of rabbits. 
 
 He finished, after a pause: 
 
 "You will be good enough, ^Nlajor, to let this officer 
 report to me personally when he has found the convoy." 
 
 " Certainly, sir." 
 
 The horse bounded away, scattering the group. 
 
 Rather less than half an hour later George had five 
 men (including his own servant and Resmith's) and six 
 lanterns round a cask on the top of which was his map. 
 There were six possible variations of route to Kings-
 
 IN THE MACHINE 411 
 
 wood station, and he explained them all, allotting one to 
 each man and keeping one for himself. He could detect 
 the men exchanging looks, but what the looks signified 
 he could not tell. He gave instructions that everybody 
 should go forward until either discovering the convoy 
 or reaching Kingswood. He said with a positive air of 
 conviction that by this means the convoy could not fail 
 to be discovered. The men received the statement with 
 strict agnosticism ; they would not see things with the 
 eye of faith, fortified though they were with tea and 
 tinned meats. An offered reward of ten shillings to the 
 man who should hit on the convoy did not appreciably 
 inspirit them. George himself was of course not a bit 
 convinced b}' his own argument, and had not the slight- 
 est expectation that the convoy would be found. The 
 map, which the breeze lifted and upon which the rain 
 drummed, seemed to be entirely unconnected with the 
 actual facts of the earth's surface. The party mounted 
 tired, unwilling horses and filed off. Some soldiers in 
 the darkness, watching the string of lanterns, gave a 
 half-ironical " Hurrah." One by one, as the tracks 
 bifurcated, George despatched his men, with renewed 
 insistent advice, and at last he and his horse were alone 
 on the Downs. 
 
 His clothes were exceedingly heavy with all the mois- 
 ture they had imbibed. Repose had mitigated his fa- 
 tigue, but every slow, slouching step of the horse, inten- 
 sified it again — and at a tremendous rate. Still, he did 
 not care, having mastered the great truth that he would 
 either fall off the horse in exhaustion or arrive at King's- 
 wood, — and which of the alternatives happened did not 
 appear to him to matter seriously. The whole affair 
 was fantastic ; it was unreal, in addition to being silly. 
 But, real or unreal, he would finish it. If he was a 
 phantom and Kingswood a mirage, the phantom would
 
 412 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 reach the mirage or sink senseless into astral mud. He 
 had Colonel Hullocher in mind, and, quite illogicallj, 
 he envisaged the Colonel as a reality. Often he had 
 heard of the ways of the Army, and had scarcely cred- 
 ited the tales told and printed. Well, he now credited 
 them. Was it conceivable that that madman of a Col- 
 onel had packed him, George, off on such a wild and 
 idiotic errand in the middle of the night, merely out of 
 
 caprice? Were such doings 
 
 He faintly heard voices through the rain, and the 
 horse started at this sign of life from the black unknown 
 world beyond the circle of lantern-light. George was 
 both frightened and puzzled. He thought of ghosts 
 and haunted moors. Then he noticed a penumbra round 
 about the form of what might be a small hillock to the 
 left of the track. He quitted the track, and cautiously 
 edged his horse forward, having commendably obscured 
 the lantern beneath his overcoat. The further side of 
 the hillock had been tunnelled to a depth of perhaps 
 three feet ; a lantern suspended somehow in the roof 
 showed the spade which had done the work ; it also 
 showed, within the cavity, the two girls who had accom- 
 panied the Brigade from Wimbledon, together with two 
 soldiers. The soldiers were rankers, but one of the girls 
 talked with perfect correctness in a very refined voice; 
 the other was silently eating. Both were obviously tired 
 to the limit of endurance, and very dirty and draggled. 
 The gay colours of their smart frocks had, however, sur- 
 vived the hardships of the day. George was absolutely 
 amazed by the spectacle. The vagaries of autocratic 
 Colonels were nothing when compared to this extrava- 
 gance of human nature, this glimpse of the subterranean 
 life of regiments, this triumphant and forlorn love-folly 
 in the midst of the inclement, pitiless night. And he 
 was touched, too. The glimmer of the lantern on the
 
 IN THE MACHINE 41S 
 
 green and yellow of the short skirts half disclosed under 
 the macintoshes was at once pathetic and exciting. 
 The girl who had been eating gave a terrible scream; 
 she had caught sight of the figure on horseback. The 
 horse shied violently and stood still. George persuaded 
 him back into the track and rode on, guessing that 
 already he had become a genuine phantom for the self- 
 absorbed group awakened out of its ecstasy by the 
 mysterious vision of a nightrider. 
 
 Half a mile further on he saw the red end of a ciga- 
 rette swimming on the sea of darkness ; his lantern had 
 expired and he had not yet tried to re-light it. 
 
 " Hi there ! " he cried. " Who are you.? " 
 
 The cigarette approached him, in a wavy movement, 
 and a man's figure was vaguely discerned. 
 
 " A. S. C. convoy, sir." 
 
 " Where are you supposed to be going to ? " 
 
 " No. 2 Battery, Second Brigade, Sir. Can't find it, 
 sir. And we've got ofF the road. The G. S. waggon 
 fell into a hole and broke an axle, sir." 
 
 " And what do you think you're doing? " 
 
 " Waiting for daylight, sir." 
 
 The man's youthful voice was quite cheerful. 
 
 *' D'you know what time it is .'' " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " How many other vehicles have you got .'' '* 
 
 " Three altogether, sir. Six horses." 
 
 " Well, I'm from No. 2 Battery, and I'm looking for 
 you. You've unharnessed, I suppose." 
 
 " Oh, yes, sir, and fed." 
 
 " Well, you'd better harness up your other two carts 
 like lightning and come along with me. Show me the 
 way. We'll see about the G. S. waggon later on." 
 
 " It's about a hundred yards from here, sir." 
 
 For the second time that evening George forgot fa-
 
 414 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 tigue. Exultation, though carefully hidden, warmed 
 and thrilled every part of his body. Tying his horse 
 behind one of the vehicles, he rode comfortabl}' on hard 
 packages till within sight of the Battery camp, when he 
 took saddle again and went off alone to find a celebrated 
 inn near the Epsom Grand Stand, where Colonel Hul- 
 locher and other grandees had billeted themselves. The 
 Colonel was busy with his adjutant, but apparently 
 quite ready to eat George. 
 
 " Ah ! You, is it? Found that convoy? " 
 
 George answered in a tone to imply that only one 
 answer was conceivable: 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Brought it back? " 
 
 " Part of it, sir." 
 
 He explained the circumstances. 
 
 The Colonel coughed, and said : 
 
 " Have a whiskey and soda before you go? " 
 
 George reflected for an instant. The Colonel seem- 
 ingly had a core of decency, but George said in his 
 heart : " I've not done with you yet, my fat friend." 
 And aloud, grimly : 
 
 " Thank you very much, sir. But I shall ask you to 
 excuse me." 
 
 Both the Colonel and the Adjutant were pardonably 
 shaken by this unparalleled response. 
 
 The Colonel barked : 
 
 "Why? Teetotaller?" 
 
 " No, sir. But I've eaten nothing since lunch, and a 
 glass of whiskey might make me drunk." 
 
 Colonel Hullocher might have off*ered George some 
 food to accompany the whiskey, but he did not. He 
 had already done a marvel ; a miracle was not to be 
 expected. He looked at George and George looked at 
 him.
 
 IN THE MACHINE 416 
 
 " No doubt you're right. Good-night." 
 
 " Good-night, sir." George saluted and marched off. 
 
 vin 
 
 He prepared to turn in. The process was the sim- 
 plest in the world. He had only to wrap a pair of 
 blankets round his soaked clothes, and, holding them 
 in place with one hand, creep under the shelter. There 
 were four shelters. The Major had a small one, nearest 
 the trunk of the tree, and the others were double shel- 
 ters, to hold two officers apiece. He glanced about. 
 The invisible camp was silent and still, save for a couple 
 of lieutenants who were walking to and fro like young 
 ducks in the heavy rain. Faint fires here and there in 
 the distance showed how the troops were spread over the 
 Downs. Heaven and earth were equally mysterious and 
 inscrutable. He inserted himself cautiously into the 
 aperture of the shelter, where Resmith already lay 
 asleep, and, having pushed back his cap, arranged his 
 right arm for a pillow. The clammy ground had been 
 covered with dry horse-litter. As soon as he was set- 
 tled the noise of the rain ceaselessly pattering on the 
 waterproof became important. He could feel the chill 
 of the wind on his feet, which, with Resmith's, projected 
 beyond the shelter. The conditions were certainly as- 
 tounding. Yet, despite extreme fatigue, he was not 
 depressed. On the contrary he was well satisfied. He 
 had accomplished something. He had been challenged, 
 and had accepted the challenge, and had won. The de- 
 meanour of the mess when he got back to the camp 
 clearly indicated that he had acquired prestige. He 
 was the man who had organised an exhaustive search 
 for the convoy and had found the convoy in the pitchy 
 blackness. He was the man who had saved the unit 
 from an undeserved shame. The mess had greeted him
 
 416 THE ROLL-CALL 
 
 with warm food. Perhaps he had been lucky, — the 
 hazard of a Hghted cigarette in the darkness ! Yes, but 
 luck was in everytliing. The credit was his, and men 
 duly gave it to him, and he took it. He thought almost 
 kindly of Colonel Hullocher, against whom he had meas- 
 ured himself. The result of the match was a draw, but 
 he had provided the efficient bully with matter for re- 
 flection. After all, Hullocher was right. When you 
 were moving a Division, jobs had to be done, possible or 
 impossible ; human beings had to be driven ; the super- 
 natural had to be achieved. And it had been ! That 
 which in the morning existed at Wimbledon now existed 
 on the Downs. There it laj', safe and chiefly asleep, in 
 defiance of the weather and of accidents and miscar- 
 riage! 'And the next day it would go on. 
 
 The vast ambitions of the civilian had sunk away. 
 He thought, exalted as though by a wonderful dis- 
 covery : 
 
 " There is something in this Army business! " 
 
 He ardently desired to pursue it further. He ar- 
 dently desired sleep and renewal so that he might rise 
 afresh and pursue it further. What he had done and 
 been through was naught, less than naught. To worry 
 about physical discomforts was babyish. Inviting vis- 
 tas of knowledge, technical attainment, experience and 
 endurance stretched before him, illuminating the night. 
 His mind dwelt on France, on Mons, on the idea of 
 terror and cataclysm. And it had room too for his wiffe 
 and children. He had had no news of them for over 
 twenty-four hours ; and he had broken his resolve to 
 write to Lois every day ; he had been compelled to break 
 it. But in the morning, somehow, he would send a tele- 
 gram and he would get one. 
 
 " If it's true the French Government has left 
 Paris "
 
 IN THE MACHINE 417 
 
 The nocturnal young ducks were passing the shelter. 
 
 "And who says it's true? Who told you, I should 
 like to know ! " 
 
 " The Major has heard it." 
 
 " Rats ! I lay you a fiver the Allies are in Berlin 
 before Christmas." 
 
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