The Laslett Affair E-Book

Harold Begbie

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

According to many people, true friendship lasts until the end of life. However, what happens if something goes wrong? The Laslett Affair novel was written on this subject. A story about friends who believe that there is nothing stronger than their friendship and nothing can prevent their friendship. However, everything changes with time...

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I BACKGROUNDS

CHAPTER II MISCHIEF

CHAPTER III MAGNETISM

CHAPTER IV DANGERS

CHAPTER V MISUNDERSTANDING

CHAPTER VI CHECK

CHAPTER VII NEW BEGINNINGS

CHAPTER VIII DELUSION

CHAPTER IX DOWN AND DOWN

CHAPTER X BUT FOR YOU——

CHAPTER XI MEMORIES

CHAPTER XII THE IDOL

CHAPTER I. BACKGROUNDS

I

One winter morning in London, a young man, dressed in almost bridal splendour, hastened through the Narrows of Bond Street with an air which suggested that he was new to freedom, new to a cheque-book, and new to the glances of women, so that many people noticed him, some with amusement, and some with envy.

He was tall and loosely built, with dark hair, small sullen dark eyes, a sulky full mouth, and a skin so intensely fine and bright that the sharpness of the frosty December morning flushed his cheeks to a shining scarlet.

The nervous brightness of his eyes, as well as an increasing flurry in his haste, witnessed to a character as yet unsophisticated. The boy, who no doubt wished to be taken for a man of the world, was plainly aware of glances, and disconcerted by stares. A sense of being uncomfortably different from every one else appeared to agitate his mind. No doubt he found himself wishing that there were more top-hats in the street, and fewer overcoats; and was perhaps unpleasantly conscious of the white carnation in his button-hole as a too conspicuous advertisement of youthful exuberance. In any case he attracted an unusual amount of attention, and the more attention he attracted the unhappier he seemed to be.

A girl coming out of a shop turned to the elderly man who followed her, and said, “Did you see that boy?”

Her companion looked, frowned, and asked, “The silly young ass without an overcoat?”

The girl said, “That’s Stephen Laslett, son of the company promoter. I danced with him the other night.”

The man tossed up his head, and grumbled, “He’ll be worth millions, I suppose; that is if he doesn’t die of pneumonia before he succeeds.”

The girl said, “He was at Eton with Reggie, and he’s now rather a nut at Cambridge; writes amusing verses for the Granta, and makes brilliant speeches at the Union.”

“Oh, does he!” chuckled the old gentleman, very well satisfied. “Then I’ll bet you a bob, my dear, that he’ll illustrate the truth of a great saying in America.”

“What’s that?” she asked indifferently, drawing up before a shop window.

The old gentleman replied, “That there’s only one generation between shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves.”

II

Mrs. Laslett and her daughter Phillida awaited Stephen in the lounge of the Ritz Hotel, where the family was staying till their house in Belgrave Square had recovered from its dedication to War work.

They were both beautifully dressed, and were not undistinguished-looking–Mrs. Laslett, a brunette, upright and vivid; Phillida, a blonde, delicate and pale.

“Stephen is very much en retard,” said his mother, who was unmistakably a lively lady, and might have been described as all eyes and appetite. She leaned forward to look down the long corridor, which was comfortably warm and pleasantly populated. “I must smoke another cigarette,” she announced, and opened her vanity-bag. “Shall I order my little lambkin a cocktail?”

Phillida replied languidly, “Let’s wait till Stephen comes.” She was watching with absorbed interest a group of laughing and loud-voiced young things in the distance.

“He oughtn’t to be late to-day,” Mrs. Laslett declared, with a certain amount of impatience.

A smiling waiter came forward to light madam’s cigarette, after which he moved the table between the two ladies a shade nearer to Mrs. Laslett, wiped it with his cloth, and slid an ash-tray in her direction.

“Shall I bring you a cocktail?” he insinuated.

“We are waiting for Mr. Stephen.”

“Ah! I will come again.”

The orchestra began to tune their strings.

“I wonder what’s keeping him,” Mrs. Laslett complained, glancing at the watch on her wrist. “He was so excited this morning, and told me that I mustn’t be a moment late for lunch.”

“I can tell you what’s keeping him,” Phillida replied. “He has gone to be photographed, and he is choosing a Christmas present for Susan Anstey.”

“Then he’s wasting his money,” retorted Mrs. Laslett, rather angrily, tipping the ash from her cigarette into the tray at her side. “Ridiculous! But London will soon put that childish sloppiness out of his head. Susan’s a plotting and intriguing hussy. She irritates me now every time I see her.”

“She appeals to his clever side,” said Phillida. “They talk books.”

Mrs. Laslett blew a long cloud of smoke from her pursed lips, beat it away from her eyes with a quick movement of her left hand, and exclaimed, “Don’t encourage that idea. For goodness’ sake, don’t do that. I want him to marry usefully. Fancy spending one’s life talking about books! Besides, Susan is after his money–nothing else; books are merely one of her dodges. Look at that old man staring at you. Just look at him. Horrid old thing!” She laughed, partly at the absurdity of the spectacle, and partly out of an indefinable sympathy with the ways of the world, whatever they might be.

Phillida laughed too. “If it amuses him, poor old dear,” she said, with a half-challenging glance at the offender, “it doesn’t worry me. I’m quite used to it now. In fact, I’m rather blasé in that matter.”

“Well, that’s the proper way to take such affairs,” agreed Mrs. Laslett, and almost immediately, growing excitedly serious, she touched Phillida’s arm, and whispered, “Look: now, that’s a man I could love!”

The man to whom so suddenly and excitedly she drew her daughter’s attention was tripping with great animation towards the restaurant in the company of two extravagantly dressed women, one of whom was glancing with affected boredom in her made-up eyes at her own over-painted reflection in a hand-mirror.

Phillida looked, and was so slightly interested by the man, who seemed to her a very commonplace little foreigner, that she almost immediately gave her attention to the two women, who were certainly attractive to a degree almost amazing. But her mother’s whisper came to her again, and then she did look at the man as he passed, eagerly and ardently, before it was too late to see him.

“That’s Leo Daga,” Mrs. Laslett had whispered.

At that name Phillida started, for, like every one else in the world of fashion, she loved the comedies with which Mr. Leo Daga had just recently begun to startle London–delighting in their flippancies, amused by their irreverence, and fascinated by the frankness of their sensuality.

She was disappointed to discover that the author of these notorious plays was a person insignificant in stature, disposed already to corpulence, and of a colour that suggested the need of soap and water, if not of a razor as well. For a moment she wished that she had never seen him, or that her mother had not known his identity, but an impassioned exclamation from Mrs. Laslett–“That man knows women through and through”–dissipated every feeling of disappointment, and sent her gaze after the fashionable playwright with a determination to see him steadily and see him whole.

His face, the olive-coloured face of an Eastern-European, seemed to her to suggest the psychological drama of a divided mind–the dark, luminous, and searching eyes expressing, in spite of their habitual smile, a disposition towards melancholy and reflection, while the coarse mouth expressed nothing, so far as she could see, but a ribald and rejoicing gluttony. What a difficult character to understand!

She was puzzled and confused, and felt herself infinitely green and inexperienced, because she could not begin to understand this man, of whom her mother had just said that he knew women through and through.

“To understand women,” Mrs. Laslett dogmatised, gazing after the departing dramatist, “a man must be half a woman himself. If you notice, Leo Daga has the waist and hips of a woman, and walks with the small steps of a woman. A man like that can enter into all the delicacy and refinement of a woman’s mind. Goodness, what a lover he must be! I hear that scores of women are mad about him. They say his flat is always full of flowers and that there’s no room on his dressing-table for the gifts of his admirers. I wonder who those two women are. I rather think that one of them–”

At this moment Stephen appeared, having changed into a grey suit and carefully chosen harmonious linen and hosiery.

He was now no longer bashful and disconcerted. Here the setting perfectly harmonised with his expensive appearance, and if people stared at him, particularly pretty girls, he knew that it was with no surprise or amusement. Moreover, he responded with delight to the gay welcome of his lively mother and his admiring sister. In a moment, then, he was man of the world in charge of womenfolk. The polite waiter, already at his side, was greeted by name and with a friendly word, cocktails were ordered, cigarettes were lighted, and with smiles and laughter, the three voices often clashing together, mother, son, and daughter chattered, gossiped, and delighted in themselves.

III

At luncheon, which Stephen had ordered to be served quickly, Phillida asked him, mischievously, “What did you choose for her?”

“Something frightfully expensive,” he laughed, and flourished a fork over his plate.

“What was it?”

Mrs. Laslett, who was eating heartily and glancing down the room at Leo Daga, said, “I thought you were grown up. Just now I said to myself, What a man he is! And here you are confessing that you’re still a silly little sentimental boy. Why, I should have thought that you had already seen in London a hundred girls who attracted you far more than simple Susan–who’s not half so simple, believe me or believe me not, as she pretends to be. How good this sauce is! What a pity it makes one fat.”

Stephen smiled with the frankest amusement, knowing what was in his mother’s mind, and liking to find himself a subject of discussion. “Well, that’s the bother,” he confessed. “For example, while I was in the shop this morning a girl came to the same counter so extravagantly beautiful that I wanted to propose to her then and there! Honestly, she was as lovely as an angel. Oh, quite positively. Yes, I assure you. That’s the devastating thing about London. One sees adorable girls at every step. It seems contrary to nature to think of loving only one. Almost they persuade me, the darling buds, to become a Mohammedan. In fact, I’ve been upbraiding myself all the morning for disloyalty to my rustic Susan.”

“Disloyalty!” cut in Mrs. Laslett, and laughed scornfully. “Don’t talk such nonsense! You’re not engaged to the girl. She’s only a friend. Disloyalty! Good heavens, I should be very sorry if I thought you were going to become Susan’s pet poodle–a man with your future! Rustic’s a very good name for her, although she’s as artful in her own sly way as a cage full of monkeys.”

Afraid of this subject, and never caring to speak on one theme for more than a few moments, Mrs. Laslett looked longingly down the room at Leo Daga, and all of a sudden brought conversation round to their engagement for that afternoon.

“I really think it’s too cold for our trip to Twickenham,” she announced, glancing out of a window at the bleak greyness of the park. “Let’s take tickets for a matinée, and keep ourselves warm. I’m sure you only go to these ugly amusements, Stephen, because you think you ought to. It’s just a part of your silly old esprit de corps.”

Stephen laughed at that. “You enjoyed the match last year,” he reminded her. “And this year it’s going to be an epic of a fight. Ha, something tremendous. Have another glass of wine, mother. Oxford’s howling for our blood. Is she not? Thinks she’s got a pack this time that will beat ours to blithereens. And she’s bucking her head off about Butcher–Big Jack Butcher–never was such a Back in the history of Rugger. In other words, high-cockalorum-jig-jig-jig! But let them wait. My dear mother, what are you talking about? To miss this match would be to miss the last train to Paradise.”

Mrs. Laslett laughed. “I shouldn’t mind doing that,” she said, “so long as I could catch the next train to Paris. No; I don’t pretend to be interested in football. I don’t even pretend to care whether Cambridge beats Oxford, or Oxford beats Cambridge, in any of their various games. I’m supremely indifferent to both of them.”

“Which is flat heresy in my presence,” declared Stephen, not without a certain annoyance in his face and in his voice.

“One thing will cheer you up, mother,” said Phillida. “You’ll see Mr. Jodrell.”

“Ah,” cried Stephen; “the finest sprinter in England, an international three-quarters, and my chosen friend for life. Here’s to Hugh Jodrell! God bless him.”

Mrs. Laslett considered and at last remembered that name. This Jodrell had once paid them a visit in the summer holidays when Stephen and he were at Eton. And she had met him three or four times since at Cambridge and once at Lords. Yes, she perfectly remembered him–a boy with very broad shoulders, fair hair, small eyes, and a nose that jutted out from his face like a bird’s beak. Yes, she remembered him, distinctly.

“You mean the boy who is a nephew of the Earl of Norwich?” she inquired languidly, flustered for a moment by the belief that Leo Daga had caught her eye and was answering her look of interest.

Stephen laughed. “Be careful, dear mother. Remember, a little Norwich is a dangerous thing! Think of him only as the greatest sprinter of his times.”

“Still,” said Phillida, “all Norwich is power.”

“Phillida!” exclaimed Stephen, “you should never make other people’s puns. It encourages a second-hand mind; and, besides, intellectual petty larceny is worse than shop-lifting.”

Mrs. Laslett suddenly remembered that she had noticed in young Jodrell a distinct interest in Phillida, and had even contemplated the happy idea of Phillida becoming engaged to this scion of an ancient and noble house. But she hadn’t seen him for a year, and she had almost forgotten his existence, and now, for some reason or another, the thought of Phillida marrying any one at all irritated her nerves; it seemed to force her to contemplate her own image in the glass of time as a grandmother.

She suppressed a shudder and said carelessly, “Well, I suppose I must go, if it’s only to see Mr. Jodrell smothered in mud,” and again she looked across the room to the table at which Mr. Daga was sitting with an enviable woman on either side of him.

“There’s a man you ought to know, and cultivate,” she said to Stephen. “Over there between the windows.”

“He’s Leo Daga,” said Phillida.

Stephen set down his glass with a jerk. “Oh, my aunt,” he exclaimed, with a laugh of great knowingness; “hot stuff, very hot stuff! Let’s have a look at him.” He turned on his chair, and stared down the room. “Well, he ain’t exactly Vere de Vere, is he?–looks more like the superintendent of a restaurant taking a busman’s holiday; all the same, he can write, and every author can’t look like Rupert Brooke, can he? Oh yes, the little beggar can write; and he knows a deal about women, some sort of women. I expect he’s collecting copy from those two vamps at his table. If you look closely you’ll see he’s gloating over them. Ger-loat is the mot juste, as he would put it. What a pity we don’t know him. I’d like to talk to him. Let’s drink his health. Here’s to the Adulterous Lady and her Laureate!”

Mrs. Laslett rebuked him for that, with a laughing, “Stephen! you naughty boy!” and Phillida, regarding him enviously as one who knew more about life than she did, smiled admiration.

Stephen exclaimed, “Here is a quatrain for your edification:

“Smoke not the Pipe, nor yet the Larranaga,

Abandon Ale, abjure old Homer’s Saga;

The Modern Spirit cometh, saying, “Take

Cocktail, and Cigarette, and Leo Daga!’

I’ll polish it after the match,” he said, “and send it to the little squit with my compliments. In the meantime, here’s to him and the Muse of Indecency.”

At this point, Stephen stopped abruptly, put down his glass, and under his breath exclaimed, “Family, pull yourselves together; here comes the Bread Winner!”

William Laslett, famous in two continents for his company promotions, approached the table slowly and wearily, like a man who is bothered as well as tired. He was short, square-shouldered, and fattish, with thin gold-red hair, a yellowish skin, and small deep-set pale eyes which were almost invisible under drooping lids.

“Well,” he asked; “having a good time?” His voice was low, and he spoke with the accent of his Derbyshire ancestors, who were peasants. The question was put rather scornfully, rather contemptuously.

“I’ve just thought of a riddle, Bread Winner,” said Stephen. “Why are you like Debenham and Freebody?”

Mr. Laslett shook his head.

“Because you deal in combinations,” said Stephen.

“I call that horrid,” said Phillida.

“Silence, child,” answered Stephen, “or I’ll turn the hose on you. Hose; do you see the jest? Ha, ha! Bread Winner, may I offer you a glass of château-bottled Moselle, nineteen hundred and eleven?”

“No, thank you.”

“A glass of port, sir?”

“I think not.”

“Then a chair?”

Mr. Laslett ignored this sportive invitation, as if Stephen had now gone far enough in his foolery, and asked, looking from his wife to his daughter, with an air of no interest, “You’re going to this football match, I suppose; all three of you?”

Stephen thrust in the answer. “Why don’t you come too?” he asked, in no mood to be suppressed, much less ignored. “Do you good, Bread Winner. Take you out of yourself. Help you to forget the oppressive number of your millions.”

“No doubt. But I’m going to Manchester.” He looked at his wife. “Anything you want from me?”

“Manchester!” exclaimed Stephen to the gods. “And he might be at Twickenham!”

Mrs. Laslett considered, fingering the spoon in the saucer of her coffee-cup. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, then, I’ll be off. I’ve got some friends lunching with me across the room. See you all later in the week.”

“You’ll be at home for Christmas, I hope?” asked Stephen. “Good King Wencelas expects you, you know. Besides, it’s the feast of Stephen, is it not?”

Mr. Laslett almost smiled at that. “Seems to me,” he said, “that you regard every day in the year as that.”

“I’ve got a handsome present for you,” announced Stephen very impressively.

“And so have I,” said Phillida; “something particularly posh.”

“You mustn’t spoil me, you know,” said the Bread Winner grimly, and walked away from them.

Stephen looked after him, nodded his head very gravely, and said, “There, but for the grace of God, goes Stephen Laslett.” He picked up the waiter’s pencil from a plate at his side, and initialled the bill. “Now, ladies: your sable coats, your muffs, and your fur gloves. The magic word is Twickenham.”

“Muffs!” laughed Phillida; “why, they went out of fashion before I was born.”

As they walked between the crowded tables, Mrs. Laslett looked at Leo Daga, and turning her head said to Phillida, “I shall never be happy till I know that man.”

“I should think that was easy enough,” said Phillida, drawing up to her mother’s side.

“But how?”

“Well, he knows Mrs. Vaudrey; I heard Jane talking about him at their house in the summer. She spoke about him as Leo, as if they knew him quite well.”

Mrs. Laslett’s face burnt with excitement. “I’ll ask Ann Vaudrey to dine,” she exclaimed. “Remind me to telephone directly we get back from this dreadful match.”

“Mind you,” said Stephen, coming between them, “goloshes are verboten. I give you three minutes. You’ll find me at the car. Vite!”

IV

Mrs. Laslett had been used to luxury, that is to say, very great luxury, for more than twelve years; but she still found an almost childish pleasure in her magnificent limousine, just as she had never lost the thrill of putting on new garments or buying an extravagant piece of jewellery.

Therefore when, very expensively dressed, she crossed the pavement from the hotel to her motor-car, at the door of which stood the porter and the chauffeur, while Stephen was already at the wheel, she brightened up, felt that she would enjoy this football match after all, and pleasantly responded to the thunderous stir of Piccadilly and to the stares of curious people who slowed down their paces to watch her progress.

Seated in the car, with a fur rug tucked well round her knees, she expressed the hope, laughingly, as if it were a thing not to be expected, that Stephen would drive carefully; after that, settling herself down to look at the movement of the world from her window, she began to think of the wonderful adventure which was now opening before her, as if by magic–a meeting with the man who knew women through and through.

“I think I must smoke,” she exclaimed, opening her vanity-bag, as the car glided forward after a scarlet omnibus, with little muddy taxi-cabs shooting by it one after another. “I feel desperately the need of being soothed. I don’t know what’s coming to my nerves: they seem to have gone back to that Christmas Eve feeling, when I hung up my stocking and half believed in Santa Claus coming down the chimney. It’s a sort of tiptoe, breathless feeling.”

But with her cigarette lighted, she ceased to prattle, ceased even to look out of the window, and soon sank into a reverie which lasted until Stephen drew up the car at the gates of the famous ground at Twickenham–a reverie as romantic and sentimental as ever translated a Victorian girl into the world of enchanted make-believe.

A crowd always dissipated Mrs. Laslett’s thoughts, however important those thoughts might be. Something in her disposition streamed out from the centre of her being and mingled itself gratefully in any concourse of human beings bent upon pleasure. She loved the pressure of people in the foyer of a theatre, or at a fashionable garden-party, or at a race-meeting, or in a casino, just as a night-club or a restaurant could never be too crowded for her satisfaction. So, on this occasion, she no sooner found herself at Twickenham, thronged by eager and happy people pressing forward to their seats, than her love-sick desire for the sympathetic friendship of Leo Daga vanished clean out of her mind, and she entirely forgot that only a few minutes ago she had expressed a real reluctance to come to Twickenham at all.

“Now, isn’t this delightful!” she exclaimed to Phillida, with the pack of people crowding her in all directions. “Give me life and I’m satisfied. What I can’t stand is the dead-alive. Stephen, don’t go so fast. You’ve got the tickets. Goodness me, what a crowd! Shall we ever find our places?”

When those places were found–very good places they were too–she began by taking a general and undiscriminating survey of the entire ground, simply seeing masses of human beings, and feeling in her blood the stir and thrill and amusement of so much seething vitality. It was splendid, this spectacle of pleasure-loving humanity. The roar of voices broke in upon her observation from time to time like the smash of waves on shingle, giving her for the moment a sensation which was pleasantly akin to fear.

The spectacle of two old gentlemen meeting on the ground, meeting joyously and evidently with glad unexpectedness, caught her excited eyes. She watched them shake hands–no formality in their case–and saw how they fondled each other’s arms, and smiled, and laughed, and swayed towards each other as they stood talking. The faces of these old gentlemen were extraordinarily gentle, wonderfully charming. How courteous they were to each other–affectionate and yet courteous–and how gracious were all their movements and gestures. Old friends. The meeting of old friends.

She became suddenly angry with these two old men, and exclaimed to herself, “Old humbugs!” and looked away from them.

“There are very few women here,” she said aloud, turning to Phillida.

“I don’t know; there are a lot of girls over there.”

“So there are. Who’s Stephen speaking to?”

“Some one he met at Ciro’s last night.”

“I thought perhaps it might be the Mr. Jodrell he was talking about at lunch.”

“Oh, dear no! Hugh Jodrell’s not a bit like that. Besides, he wouldn’t be in one of the stands! Whatever can you be thinking about?”

“Well, I told you I know nothing about football. I’m beginning to find it even more boresome than I thought it would be.”

Phillida laughed. “That’s good! Why, it hasn’t even begun yet.”

Mrs. Laslett seated herself, and after some moments narrowed down her observation, contemptuously and impatiently, to two old gentlemen immediately in front of her. They were very old indeed, these two; one a clergyman with a thin line of white whiskers descending from his ears; the other, a soldier, some general or field-marshal, perhaps, who wore a big threatening white moustache, and had large generous eyelids which blinked incessantly, and a prominent chin decorated by a miniature imperial.

Mrs. Laslett wondered how old they were; over eighty, she thought, and perhaps nearer ninety. Wonderful how they kept their vitality!

These two old creatures were talking, with an extraordinary fire of animation. The clergyman was leaning forward, and half-turning to the soldier, and as he spoke he used a woollen-gloved hand to emphasise his words by beating it on his knee; the soldier, keeping his eyes rigidly in front of him, flung his head sideways from time to time, thrusting out his two hands which rested on a stick, and almost barked his words at the clergyman over the edge of a noticeably tall collar.

What were they talking about?

Mrs. Laslett, merely to divert herself, leaned forward to overhear them.

“It doesn’t matter what you say,” declared the clergyman, “I know what was the result of that match. Oxford won by a goal to nothing.” The voice was charming in tone, and the accent that of a scholar, but the speaker was evidently exasperated.

“I say that it was a goal and try,” countered the soldier. “I’m entitled to my opinion, I suppose?”

“I saw the match myself, and I say most solemnly and confidently–”

“You’ll back your memory against the Official Programme and the Rugby Football Annual?” demanded the soldier.

“Certainly.”

“Ha!”

The clergyman, irritated by that scornful “Ha!” which was very military in tone, affected to smile, even to laugh, but became extremely serious and a little tremblingly persuasive, as he turned to the now thoroughly annoyed soldier, and declared, “My dear fellow, I tell you I saw Isherwood score the try and saw him convert it into a goal–saw him with my own eyes. That was the first ‘Varsity match. It was played on the Parks at Oxford on the 10th of February 1872. Isherwood, who was at Rugby, scored the try, and converted it. I saw it. And there was no other score. That I’ll swear to.”

There was a pause for a moment, in which the old soldier’s stick went backwards and forwards rather violently, and then he demanded over the side of his tall collar, slowly and emphatically, not looking at his antagonist, “Can you explain to me how it is that in the unchallengeably accurate pages of the Rugby Football Annual the result is given, as I say it was, a goal and a try? That’s all I ask you. Can you explain it?” He swung suddenly round and glanced at the parson.

The parson said, “I haven’t the smallest misgiving in my mind about that match. I was there. I’ve discussed it a hundred times with Lushington and W. O. Moberly. My dear fellow, I assure you that–”

Mrs. Laslett, smiling like a girl of sixteen, turned to Phillida and said, “These two old dears in front of me are fighting like a couple of gamecocks over something that took place in 1872!”

A shout of welcome from the enormous crowd drew her attention to the turf in front of her, now cleared of human beings. The players were streaming out into the wintry air, some of them hugging themselves for warmth, others striding quietly forward as if it were as warm as summer. Mrs. Laslett thought it very undignified and grotesque that they should have numbers on their backs.

The air about her now became full of names. Every one except the two old men in front, who were still arguing, appeared to be engaged in identifying the players. A few of the younger people behind her were naming some of those players in a familiar way, as if to tell the world that they knew these famous men, knew them intimately.

“That’s Big Jack Butcher,” cried Stephen to Phillida. “Look, over there. Isn’t he a whopper? The fellow following him is Watkinson, one of their three-quarters.”

“Where’s Hugh Jodrell?” asked Phillida; “I can’t make him out.”

“Wait a moment. There he is! Look; the centre of those three on the left. Good old Jod! By gad, he’s trained to a hair. You can see that, can’t you? Fit as a racehorse. Finest sprinter in all England, best three-quarters in the whole world; good old Jodder! A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift!”

Mrs. Laslett caught some of these words, but felt none of Stephen’s enthusiasm. Stephen was very young; at times, absurdly young. She knew that she would understand nothing of the game, and would be only confused by attempting to identify any of these thirty young men in different coloured jerseys, or to watch their bewildering movements. Why should she be bothered by attending to them? More interesting to her was the immense spectacle of these thirty or forty thousand people crowding the ground on every side, as if life itself hung upon the result of the players’ antics with a ball. Yes, these people were worth watching; but the game–well, she might just as well look at two people playing Mah-Jong, or whatever it was called.

Voices came to her, “Oxford’s the lustier eight.” “Smithson’s the man for the blind side of a scrummage.” “Egerton’s a greatly improved wing three-quarters.” “No one’s faster than Jodrell.” “Cambridge has got the cleverer back division.”

What a strange power games possessed to maintain some people’s interest in life! And she herself couldn’t understand that interest, could not begin to imagine it. No doubt Stephen would still be looking at a ‘Varsity match fifty years hence, probably quarrelling with some other old veteran over the result of this afternoon’s contest. She began to feel isolated from humanity. A feeling came to her that she would like to understand games, would like to have the same feelings as all these keen people about her.

She heard a whistle blown, noticed that the roar of voices suddenly died down to a murmur, and glanced towards the turf so beautifully smooth and green even under a grey sky and in that murky air. Well, the game had begun, she supposed. Some one had kicked the ball, and there it was now bouncing up from the ground. Some one ran to catch it; all the others ran after him, some quickly and some slowly; and then–for her, absolute confusion. Yet the roar of voices rose again, tumultuous, terrific, and Stephen’s shout came to her like a battle-cry.

What a problem Stephen presented to her mind! Here was a handsome young man, with his pockets full of money, the heir to many millions of money–here was this good-looking young son of fortune, with innumerable pretty girls longing for a smile from his eyes, shouting at a football match, like a mere schoolboy! How differently, if she had been in his shoes, would she have ordered life! Goodness, what a time she would have had!

She sat back in her place, closed her eyes, shivered a little, and presently found her thoughts travelling in a direction which satisfied her. She imagined herself back in the hotel, and imagined that the dark expressive eyes of Leo Daga, so full of secrets, were suddenly raised to look at her across the restaurant. Bliss! If Ann Vaudrey could come to dine that very night! She would ring her up directly she got back. Why hadn’t she rung her up before she started?

Once or twice the roar of voices was so great that she opened her eyes, but only to see the same confusion of moving figures on the misty ground, and to see that confusion end in the boring event which Stephen called a scrum. How often that shrill whistle blew in her ears, as if something really exciting had occurred, and yet when she opened her eyes it was always to see only some tiresome pause in this tiresome game.

She began to tell herself a story, just as she had told herself stories as a child. She met Leo Daga in this story, and he was drawn to her at once, and they made secret plans to be alone together, and she said to him, when they were parting, “I married for money; I have been faithful to my husband; I have been a good mother; and I’m not happy. What is it that I want? Why am I not satisfied? Why should love seem to me the most desirable and necessary thing in life? You who understand women, you who know our cravings, tell me why I want so tremendously–to commit a big sin?” There the story hung, astonished at its own daring, too bewildered to frame Leo Daga’s answer.

Suddenly Stephen’s voice rose to a shout. “By gad, he’ll get through! What a breakaway! That’s Thompson. He’s devilish fast. Gad, he has sold Carter a dummy. Ah! Jodder will collar him. He’s funking a straight path. Good old Hugh! Run, man, run! No, by heaven, he’s missed him. Oh, Hugh, Hugh! It’s no use. By gad, he’s through. He’ll score. Nothing can save it. He’ll score–”

The rest was drowned in a shout so tremendous that every nerve in Mrs. Laslett’s body tingled.

“For pity’s sake, tell me what has happened,” she shouted to Phillida.

Phillida shouted back, “Oxford has got through and touched down.”

She tried hard to understand what followed, and did at least perceive that the ball was kicked wide of the goal-posts, concluding from Stephen’s scream of infernal joy that Cambridge had done something very creditable, in which it was her duty to rejoice.

“Come,” she said to Phillida, “that was much better, wasn’t it?” She was perhaps a little ashamed of that daring pronouncement in her story–I want so tremendously to commit a big sin.

Later in the afternoon, however, when she was comfortably telling herself that the match now would soon be over, she came to the conclusion that things were not going well for Cambridge. She heard Stephen say repeatedly, “This is awful!” or “This is the very devil!”–and saw him take out his watch and heard him exclaim, “Only eight minutes more.” She began to look at Stephen, so handsome and alert, and to feel sorry for him.

“Is anything very wrong?” she asked Phillida.

“Oxford’s score is a try,” Phillida explained; “there’s only a few minutes’ more play; and the ball’s in the Cambridge half.”

“The Cambridge half is this end of the ground?” asked her mother, very intelligibly.

“Yes.”

“And this, I imagine, is another scrum?”

“Yes.”

“God, this is awful!” muttered Stephen, breathing very hard; “only five minutes!”

Mrs. Laslett said, “Why does Stephen take things so seriously?–it is very absurd of him. He’s suffering, poor boy. Fancy suffering about a game! What does it matter?”

Before Phillida could reply there was another of those tremendous shouts which made Mrs. Laslett’s nerves tingle. “Well passed, by Jove!” shouted the old clergyman in front of her, leaping up. “Great work,” bawled the old soldier, leaning on his stick and staggering to his feet. “Hugh’s caught it!” yelled Stephen. There was a shout like thunder, “Jodrell! Jodrell!” All round the ground, “Jodrell! Jodrell!” Stephen’s voice rang like a shriek in his mother’s ear, “Jodrell! Jodrell!”

“Finest pass I ever saw in my life,” shouted the old parson, dancing on his feet.

“It was very good, certainly,” allowed the old soldier.

Even Mrs. Laslett could understand now what was happening. Jodrell had caught the ball from a half-back, and was running with it, running like a hare from the scrum, running to the other end of the ground, running with his head thrown back, his right arm working like a piston, outdistancing every one else, breaking clean ahead from every other man on the field–except one, the big man by the posts on the far side of the field, who was advancing quite slowly and calmly to meet him.

Yes, Mrs. Laslett understood, and thrilled. She felt her body grow tense and knew that she was holding her breath, but did not realise that she was running with Hugh Jodrell. She became angry and indignant. Why does Hugh Jodrell run straight towards that great big person advancing towards him? Why not avoid him? How stupid of Hugh Jodrell to risk an encounter. Surely to goodness there is plenty of room on either side of him!

A moment before her knees were working like a sewing-machine in sympathy with Jodrell’s magnificent run; now they were frozen stiff, and her whole body was locked in a paralysis of fear. The meeting of those two men! How awful it must be. She imagined black hatred in the heart of Big Jack Butcher, and delirious terror in the mind of Hugh Jodrell.

There was a roar of thunder all round her, a clash of voices that seemed to possess the whole earth, shot through with cries and yells that swept her forward on a wave of inexpressible emotion. The meeting of those two men!

Suddenly came absolute silence. She couldn’t breathe. She shivered like a leaf. Stephen’s mutter reached her, wrenched out of him, between his teeth, “Watch for Jodder’s swerve!” Then–what happened? Those two men on the field seemed to her to crash together, and there was a flash in the air which she could not follow, and then–pandemonium.

For some reason or other, every one in the stand seemed to go mad, particularly Stephen; even the two old men in front of her were shouting to each other, crying and laughing, rolling about, clasping each other by the hand, saying that they would not have missed that for anything on earth. Missed what? Good heavens, would no one tell her?

Something of enormous importance had occurred, that was clear, and something, she imagined, which was quite wonderfully splendid for Cambridge. She felt that she must share in it. She had an overwhelming desire to understand exactly what had happened.

She turned to Phillida, and caught her by the arm, shaking it. Phillida’s face came round to her, and Mrs. Laslett gasped with astonishment, for Phillida’s face was as white as paper, and her eyes were streaming with tears.

“Didn’t you see?” said Phillida, laughing and crying. “Every one thought Hugh Jodrell was going to dodge at the last moment; but he didn’t; he charged straight at Butcher; and just as Butcher flung himself forward to collar Hugh by the knees, Hugh jumped clean over him, clean over his body, and touched down right in the middle of the Oxford goal!”

V

Before the curtain went up, it was apparent to every one in the theatre that there was going to be trouble. Managers, hoping for the best, endeavoured to dispel the fears of actors and actresses on the stage, and a telephone message to the police was mentioned in the front of the house as a promise of security to gentlemen anxious about the safety of their wives.

But the din of voices in the theatre grew steadily louder; songs of a tipsy character came rowdily from the stalls; a party of young men standing in a box on the dress-circle tier was amusing itself by dropping lemons into the orchestra.

Hugh Jodrell, who was wearing the old-fashioned dress-suit of an older brother, and whose collar was frayed, and whose black tie was not of a fashionable shape, sat very upright in his stall and wished himself back at home. He had been made the hero of the dinner, and as fuss of any kind tended to disorganise his disposition, he had not enjoyed that festivity; moreover, he was entirely convinced that the really decisive thing in the match was Gunning’s amazing pass from the blind side of that critical scrummage, at the last moment in the game, the finest and surest pass he had ever seen; and besides this, he was still in training, booked to play for England in ten days’ time, and therefore in no mood for frolic.

All the same, sitting in his stall with no mind for a rag, he kept a smile on his face, hating to appear different from other members of the team, and looked about him as if the excitement amused him, as if he too was as ready as any one else for the fun of a lively night.

“Look at our brilliant Stephen,” said one of his neighbours, and laughingly indicated Stephen Laslett, who was standing up in the box on the dress-circle tier full of noisy young men, and was now apparently endeavouring to address the whole theatre.

“He’s pretty tight,” said Hugh’s other neighbour. “Wilson dined with Carrington, and he said that Stephen arrived at the dinner in a state of glory; must have had a dozen cocktails before he started. Couldn’t talk of any one but you, Jodder. I hope he isn’t going to fall out of the box. He might hurt some one.”

Jodrell, who was very fond of Stephen, and admired the brilliant ease of his mind, and believed that he might do wonderful things in the House of Commons, kept an eye on him, and felt sick to see his greatest friend making so conspicuous an ass of himself.

He had liked Stephen from their first association at Eton, and had felt that Stephen conferred a great honour by his friendship. He had never lost that early sense of inferiority even when he himself came to great triumphs at Cambridge. Stephen, in his eyes, had three wonderful gifts–swiftness of thought, vivid sympathies, and a gay gallantry of spirit. Moreover, Stephen was wonderfully attractive in appearance, and had an inherent dashingness of nature which made him a commanding figure in all assemblies. But, chief quality of all, Stephen was also, in his intimacies, a humble person, and would pour out to Jodrell his doubts, perplexities, and temptations, so that Jodrell, in trying to help him, had come to love him. No other man of his experience had so many gifts, so many attractions, so great a promise of a brilliant future, and yet so confiding and friendly a nature.

No sooner did the curtain go up, and the chorus begin to sing, than a loud cheer, mingled with discordant cries, filled the whole theatre, completely drowning the music. This loud cheer, and the various cries, were quite evidently inspired by the provocative dresses of the chorus. The chorus, visibly shaken, bravely kept up its usual smile, danced merrily, and pretended to be still singing, the cheers and cries growing louder and louder.

Jodrell looked away from Stephen, who was leaning right over the box to blow kisses to the girls on the stage, and sinking down in his stall gave himself up to a miserable effort to attend to the show.

At last, as if they had simultaneously exhausted themselves, all the raggers in the theatre suddenly fell silent, and the voices of the singers came to the audience with a pleasant freshness and sweetness. Even Jodrell revived, and sat up again in his seat. But almost immediately shouts were raised throughout the house, and various unpleasant insults were thrown at the girls of the chorus–insults which could be plainly heard, and which were awkward for married people to hear.

A famous comedian made his entrance. He was greeted first with resounding cheers, which delighted him, and then by angry boos and shouts of, “Go home: we don’t want you: we want the girls.” He pretended to be amused. He indulged in gestures and grimaces which he hoped might bring the interrupters to accept him; he walked easily and cheerfully about the stage, speaking to various ladies of the chorus; he advanced to the front and indulged in a laughing conversation with the conductor of the orchestra; then, suddenly straightening himself up, he gazed, as if spellbound, at the party of roysterers in the box.

There was a sudden pause. He seized it, and called up to the box, “Mr. Jodrell, I congratulate you. I never saw a finer–”

Deafening cheers filled the house, almost drowning the cries of, “He’s in the stalls! Jodder, stand up! We–want–Jodder! We–want–Jodder!” The comedian beat time to this cry, and in a sudden pause exclaimed, “And some people want our show, and I hope they’ll get it.” There were loud cheers for this. “If any one,” he shouted in a stern and angry voice which produced instant silence, “had interrupted your show this afternoon, by Jove, I’d have killed him!”

Rapturous was the delight of the undergraduates at this stroke. The comedian was cheered and cheered for a full two minutes, and then invited to go ahead, voices assuring him that he should have a fair deal.

To Jodrell’s horror, Stephen Laslett, standing in the box, and swaying over the edge of it, called out to the comedian:

“I give you my word of honour, I’ll see fair play. If any one interrupts you, I’ll chuck him out. And if you come up here, I’ll give you a drink.”

The revue proceeded from that moment with scarcely any serious interruptions, until, late in the evening, when an actor and actress appeared to sing a duet notorious in London both for its innuendoes and the amorous dancing with which it was accompanied. At this number, excitable young men, who had liberally refreshed themselves in the interlude, broke out into disorderly cries, most of them cries of mock protest, but some of them cries of salacious encouragement.

Jodrell turned to the man on his right for relief, “This is getting pretty ghastly. I’ve a good mind to chuck it. What do you think?”

“Oh, we shall have to stick it,” came the answer.

At that moment rose a new shout, sudden and sharp, and every one’s eyes were turned to the box in which Stephen Laslett and his party were leading the disorder. Jodrell looked, and sickened at what he saw, but with a certain swift anxiety in the midst of his disgust.

Stephen had climbed over the edge of the box, and, holding on to the hands of his friends, was being let down to the box below. He hung for a few seconds, his coat-sleeves withdrawing almost to his elbows, his toes feeling for a landing-place, and then slithered out of the grasp of his friends, stumbled awkwardly on the cushioned ledge, sprawled for a moment, staggered up, and swinging himself into the orchestra, presently climbed on to the stage. Amid a scene of the wildest tumult, he attempted to address the house, standing there with a whitish dust all over his splendid clothes, his shirt ridiculously crumpled, his eyes half-closed, his face brick-red. While the pandemonium was at its height, the manager appeared on the stage, and to a chorus of menacing boos attempted to persuade Stephen to withdraw. Stephen, whose hair was hanging limply over his forehead, and whose white tie was a little askew, could be seen stubbornly arguing with the manager, evidently attempting to persuade him that a speech would put an end to the hubbub.

Jodrell, watching Stephen, so handsome and so foolish, so splendidly high-spirited and yet so hopelessly and dreadfully an ass, thought of how often he had listened to his friend’s Platonising in Trinity and to his brilliant speeches in the Union, and wondered how a spirit so fine and swift could be capable of such pitiful folly.

There were cries all over the house of “Speech! Speech!”–accompanied by noises of every conceivable kind, chiefly zoological, and at last the manager desisted from his efforts, and Stephen came forward to the footlights, tremendously cheered.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, very solemnly, in a laughing silence that suddenly fell upon the house. His voice was pitched high, and rang with the excitement of his feelings. “As a member of, and a subscriber to the funds of, the Purity League,” he went on, waiting for a yell of delirious laughter to subside, “I greatly disapprove of the duet which has so rightly met with your protests.” Prolonged cheers greeted this austere judgment. “At the same time, to the pure all things are pure”–cries of, Not at all! Try again! Pure be damned for a tale!–“and if you will listen to this offensive duet, as I intend to listen to it, with a mind absolutely fireproof and a soul which has never known the contagion of the world’s slow stain–”

The shrieks, the yells, the cat-calls, and the shrill whistling which met him at this point, broke him down; he turned to the manager beside him, shook his hand, and was about to go back the way he had come, when the manager, taking his arm, led him gently to one of the wings. At this, there was a sudden movement of young men in the theatre towards the stage. “We want to go too,” they cried. “Put us among the girls.”

The scene that followed was one of wild disorder. The whole house appeared to be on its feet. Cries of derision and shrieks of hysterical laughter mingled with cries of terror. There was a movement of panic. Men and women were trying to escape to the exits; helmeted policemen were hurriedly entering at several points; undergraduates, flourishing walking-sticks and shouting war-cries, were shoving their way through the departing audience with the intention of storming the orchestra. The safety-curtain descended on a stage from which the performers were flying with uncontrollable alarm to the wings, while a few members of the orchestra, sticking to their post, bravely attempted to play the national anthem.

VI

It took Jodrell a considerable time to get his coat and hat from the cloak-room, and when he did eventually extricate himself from the theatre he was separated from his friends.

He found the outer world, which was foggy and cold and damp, almost as tumultuous as the smaller, duskier, and stuffier world of the theatre. As far as eye could see in that lamp-lighted scene there was a complete stoppage of wheeled traffic and a continuous movement of pedestrians in a strange swaying movement, as of water tilted from side to side in a basin. Whistles were blowing in all directions. Shouts, laughter, and singing filled the air. Every now and then the lights shone on the figure of a young man who elevated himself above the mob on the top of a taxi-cab, and stood lurching there till he fell forward and disappeared. Policemen could be seen thrusting their way through the dense pack, while men and women on the tops of buses stood up and surveyed the scene below them, some with consternation and some with cynical amusement.

Jodrell took his bearings, and decided to make his way with the crowd–from which it seemed impossible to disentangle himself–as far as Piccadilly, and then slip into Jermyn Street, and so down to his home in St. James’s Square–a most delectable haven in that horrible heaving sea of riot and tomfoolery. He kept repeating to himself the words of Pepys, “And so to bed,” as he quietly moved westward with the mob, hating the hubbub, disliking intensely the smell of this enormous multitude pressing into him, and longing for fresh air, solitude, and peace.

In the greater brightness of Piccadilly Circus, where the fog had a whiter aspect, he found to his relief that the forces of order were getting hold of the situation. Motor-cars filled with frightened people, and omnibuses packed with excited spectators, were at least on the move; while the stern order of the police, “Pass along, please,” was succeeding up to a point in clearing the pavements of congestion. But there was evidently still some central excitement in the Circus, holding things up, for people were risking their lives among buses and cars by running frantically from that direction, while every now and then Jodrell heard a loud scream from that point, and caught sight of something flung into the air, either a garment or a missile.

He was looking to this crowded centre, wondering what particular madness was going on there, when suddenly, over the heads of the crowd and between vehicles stationary in a block, he caught sight of Stephen Laslett, an extraordinarily clear vignette of Stephen himself, surrounded by a blur of swaying undergraduates mixed up, infernally mixed up, with a body of police. It was only a momentary glimpse, but it had a tremendous effect on Jodrell. The look of Stephen’s face frightened him. The boy was evidently mad drunk, and lost to all sense of reason, and yet in a condition of excitement so great that he was capable of using his keen brain to do dangerous things. He was arguing with men who were pushing him, and fierce argument in his condition might easily become a blow. Jodrell said to himself, “I must get hold of him,” and, using as little brute force as possible, edged his way through the crowd to the roadway.

He was nearly caught between two motor-buses, and escaping from that peril received a nasty bump on the leg from a car on the other side, the chauffeur of which grinned quietly as he saw Jodrell crumple up. Hugh thought of his match for England, and limped forward to a strip of pavement in the centre of the Circus, crowded with people. From this point, balancing himself with difficulty on the kerb, he could see Stephen quite clearly, an alarming picture seen vividly between vehicles brought to a standstill and the heads of people in front of him. He pressed his way into the crowd on the refuge, angering two well-dressed, middle-aged men, but maintaining his position. He was considering whether he could risk a further dive through the traffic, loathing the job in hand and cursing this disgraceful rag with all his heart, when one of the two men in front of him said to the other, “Damned young fools! I hope they’ll spend the night in Vine Street.”

Jodrell turned to him, and said, “Who are you calling damned young fools?”

The man looked at Jodrell’s stern face, quailed a little, and said nothing.

“Weren’t you young yourself, once upon a time?” asked Jodrell, and pushed his way between the two men, and passed behind a motor-car, and forced himself forward into the swaying mob in the centre of the roadway.

He set his gaze on the mad-drunk Stephen and battled forward. As he shoved on into the roaring and seething pack, Stephen, who was still some distance off, was grabbed by a policeman and shot suddenly forward. A moment afterwards Jodrell heard himself addressed by name, and turning round saw Big Jack Butcher smiling at his side.

“Bit of a scrum, what?” asked Butcher.

“You’re my man,” said Jodrell. “Quick; follow me!”

“What is it?”

Jodrell put his lips as near as possible to Butcher’s ear, so that no one should hear him, and told Butcher that the police had got a friend of his, and that this friend had to be rescued–a man with a future.

Butcher laughed quietly, and said, “Point him out, old man. The bobbies have got more than one.”

They pressed forward together, shouldering people right and left. Whistles were blowing furiously. Traffic was completely blocked. Shouts, screams, and yells mingled with the sounds of smashing glass and the metallic bangs of sticks on the bonnets of motor-buses. Students of all kinds were attempting to get into motor-cars, or were standing on the steps of others, or were riding on the bonnets of taxis and buses. Beyond them was the pack to which Jodrell and Butcher pressed forward, a pack of lunatic young men engaged in painting London red–most of them with no top coats over their evening clothes, and with shining silk hats pressed over their ears. This central pack was surrounding and attempting to argue with a body of exasperated police who had captured three of its ringleaders.

Jodrell pointed Stephen out, and Butcher said to him, “Get behind me, and when bobby goes down, you catch hold of young Bacchus and run him out of danger before bobby gets up again.”

Butcher lowered his head and went through the tipsy young men as a tank goes through whins. Jodrell walked almost at ease behind those broad shoulders, his eyes set upon Stephen, who was struggling in a policeman’s grasp. Arrived behind that policeman Butcher, pretending that he could not help himself, and angrily shouting out, “Don’t push, confound you!” affected to stumble, fell forward, and suddenly down went the policeman.

Stephen would have fallen too, for the policeman did not easily let go his grip, but Jodrell was over Butcher’s body in a moment, and seized Stephen round the waist, and bore him straight forward, sending people flying to right and to left of him, receiving more than one nasty blow in his progress.

For a few moments the drunken Stephen believed himself to be still in the custody of police, and struggled, shouted, argued, endeavouring all the while to wrench himself free. When at length he discovered his mistake, although he ceased to bawl and to struggle, he complicated matters for Jodrell by attempting to plant his feet firmly on the ground, while he shouted hoarsely, in a voice that cracked comically, “Here’s the hero of the day! Good old Jodder! Three cheers for Jodder!”

Fortunately few people heard him, and those near enough to catch the name either disbelieved him or did not understand what he meant. Annoyed that no cheers were raised, and stupefied by the entire lack of enthusiasm on the part of the crowd, he turned to Jodrell and exclaimed, “What’s the matter with the world? Is it mad, or is it drunk? Damn it, why aren’t they carrying you shoulder high?”

Jodrell silently and relentlessly pressed him forward, his eyes straining for the easiest way to safety. People made way for him as well as they were able, and he heard voices on all sides of him exclaiming, “How horrible!” “How shocking!” or “That’s right; take him home!”

He shot Stephen between two vehicles, and began to press him swiftly forward in the roadway, between the traffic attempting to go north and the traffic attempting to go south. Stephen went headlong for some considerable way, but as they were approaching Lower Regent Street he suddenly realised what Jodrell was doing, and caught hold of the brass rail of a bus and shouted out, “I’m not going home!” and hung there, arguing and furious, his hat on the back of his head, his white tie hanging loose, the front of his shirt gaping open, and blood trickling down his cheek.

The conductor of the bus looked at him for a moment, and then raising his ticket-punch brought it down on Stephen’s fingers.

Once again Jodrell was able to go forward, Stephen yelling and shouting, “I want that devil’s number. He’s smashed my hand. I’ll smash his nose for him. Let me go, Jodder! What the hell are you doing?”

It was easier in Piccadilly, and after a few difficult and sickening minutes Jodrell was bearing the protesting Stephen down a foggy passage into Jermyn Street. Here he got hold of a taxi-cab at the corner of York Street, pushed Stephen inside, and gave his order to the driver, jumping in without having released his hold.

For half an hour the cabman drove them through the quietest and darkest streets of London, where fog hung thick and no shop-signs were to be seen; and during that half-hour Jodrell talked soothingly to Stephen, who was spent to the point of exhaustion.

“You mean to say that I’m not to go to Murray’s?” Stephen asked plaintively, tragically; “an awful lot of pretty girls at Murray’s, best dancers in London, I assure you. By God, Hugh old man, I had the time of my life with the ladies of the chorus behind the scenes. I scattered my calling cards among them. I’m going to send flowers for the whole lot of them to-morrow. Oh, lovely girls! There’s only one religion–Woman–Woman! No more philosophy for me. I’ve graduated man of the world. Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow–ah, to-morrow we ourselves may be with yesterday’s seven thousand years. For some we loved, the loveliest and the best–”