Читать книгу: «The Relentless City», страница 8

It was not wonderful that this pot-au-feu of feeling, amounting to positive agitation, did not tend towards the comfort of her company at the rehearsal, nor indeed, on the part of the manageress, toward the calm attitude of the thoughtful critic. In consequence, before the rehearsal was an hour old – it was the first 'without books' rehearsal – the second leading lady was next door to tears, the leading gentleman in sulks, the author in despair, and Mrs. Emsworth in a mood of dangerous suavity that made the aspiring actors heart-sick.

'Miss Dayrell,' she was saying, 'would you mind not turning your back completely on the audience when you speak those lines. Mr. Yates' – this was the leading gentleman – ' I am so sorry to interrupt your conversation, but my throat is rather sore this morning, and I cannot hear myself speak if you talk so loud to your friends. Yes; I think, as you are not on the stage just now, it would be better if you left it. Yes, Miss Dayrell, you see these are perhaps the most important lines in the play which you have to speak, and the audience will have a better chance of understanding it if you let them hear what Mr. Farquar has given you to say. Mr. Farquar, I am afraid the second act is about twice as long as it ought to be. I have cut some of it – at least, with your approval, I propose to cut some of it.'

Mr. Farquar sighed heavily in the stalls. He had spent the greater part of the last three nights in writing more of the second act, because it was not long enough.

'Thank you,' continued Mrs. Emsworth, interpreting the sigh as silence. 'You will see my alterations when we get to them. Would you kindly begin, Miss Dayrell, at "If I had a pitch-fork."'

Suddenly her voice changed to a wheedling tenderness.

'And if my own Teddy Roosevelt hasn't come down of his own delicious accord to see his aunt in her pretty theatre! Teddy, the world is very evil, and my mother bids me bind my hair. I beg your pardon, ladies and gentlemen, but I had to say a word to Popsie Tootsicums. Now, dear Miss Dayrell, let's begin again. You enter. Excellent. You turn. Yes, that's exactly what I want. Now.'

A murmur of relief went round, and the faded actors and actresses raised their drooped heads as when a shower has passed over a drought-dried garden. And Teddy R., the angel in disguise, sat sparsely down in the middle of the stage, and smiled on the spectacle of his beneficent work.

But because the happy appearance of Teddy Roosevelt had made le beau temps for the members of Mrs. Emsworth's company, it did not at all follow that Bilton, when he came to lunch, would find the same sunshine awaiting him, even as there is no guarantee that, because at twelve o'clock on an April day pellucid tranquillity flooded the earth, there will not be a smart hail-storm an hour afterwards. On the contrary, it was safe to bet that, whatever mood Mrs. Emsworth was in, she would be in a different one before long. The spring-day temperament of hers was, in fact, the only thing to be reckoned on. Consequently, since Bilton had not witnessed the varied phases exhibited at the theatre, he hoped, somehow sanguinely, that she would not be in a temper that so roundly labelled him 'beast' at Port Washington Station.

She seemed to have forgotten he was coming to lunch – as a matter of fact, she had, and welcomed him charmingly.

'Dear man,' she said, 'how nice of you to look in. I'm nearly dead with fatigue; let's have lunch at once. Harold, I've acted every part in 'Telegrams' through from beginning to end this morning. Those people are so hard-working, but they are so stupid. In fact, I know every part but my own. That I have promised them to be word perfect in by five o'clock this afternoon.'

'You don't rehearse again this afternoon?' asked he.

'Oh yes, I do. Three hours more this afternoon, then just time for dinner, then theatre again till half-past eleven, then supper at the Waldorf. To-morrow, rehearsal all morning, matinee, evening performance, every interval filled up with reporters and milliners and lime-light people. Oh, well, thank God, we shall all soon be dead. Time to rest then, and time to lunch now.'

'Don't overdo it, Dolly,' said he, as they sat down.

'Overdo it?' My dear boy, it is rather late in the day to recommend me not to overdo it. Besides, we women, and in special this woman, are so much stronger than men. My company follow me through hours of rehearsal, faint yet pursuing. They drop asleep, and I wake them with a gentle touch on their shoulders, and they say, "Is it morning yet?" And I say, "Kindly wake up for ten minutes, and go through this scene, dear, and then you shall go to sleep again." Then, at the end, when I say, "That is all for to-night, ladies and gentlemen," they all hurry away in desperate fear lest I should ask them to supper. "Il faut lutter pour l'art," as Daudet says. I'm so glad I'm not a prig, Harold, who thinks about the exigencies of the artistic temperament. I'm not an artist at all. People come to see me act because I'm (a) rather good-looking, (b) in rollicking good spirits. What delicious cantaloupe! I like my food.'

'All the same, I wish you would take more care of yourself,' said he, fostering her present temper with a light and, he hoped, skilful hand. 'I'm sure you do too much, and some day you will break down. You are spending more than your income of nervous energy, you are living on the capital.'

'Just what I mean to do. Like Mr. Carnegie, I think it would be a disgrace to die with an ounce of nervous force left in one. What use is it when one is dead? I am living on the capital; I intend to spend it all. I shall die sooner, no doubt – but, oh, Harold, what an awful old person I should be at sixty if I proposed, which I do not, to live as long. Look at the old women who have spent their youth as I have done. Rouge on their raddled cheeks, clinging to life, mortally afraid of dying, trying to get a few more successes, with one bleary eye anxiously fixed on some back door into heaven, the other roaming round to see if they can't have another little flirtation before they die. No; let me die at the height of my success. I don't want to stumble down-hill into my grave. I want to find it on the mountain-top. And I shall lie down in it quite content, for I have had a good time, and ask no further questions. And, Harold, plant a great crimson rambler, and a vine like Omar, and a few daffodils, and some Michaelmas daisies, on my grave, so that I shall flower all the year round. And come, if you like, once a year to it, and think over any occasion when I have pleased or amused you, and say to yourself if you can, "She was rather a good sort." Then go away to the woman who happens at the time to – oh, I forgot. We've got to have a talk. And I've been doing all the talking. Have you finished lunch? Come into the next room.'

The April day was behaving quite characteristically. It had got cold and cloudy, and a bitter wind blew suddenly. Mentally he shivered, and followed her.

She had thrown herself down on the big Louis XV. couch. Teddy Roosevelt was having his dinner. There was no mitigation within the horizon.

'About Sybil Massington,' she said, and shut her mouth again as if it worked on a steel spring.

Bilton lit his cigar, and took his time, wishing to appear not nervous.

'Ah, yes,' he said. 'I remember.'

'That line is no good,' remarked Dorothy critically. 'You must get more sincerity into it, or drop it.'

He dropped it, and sat down.

'I've been wanting to tell you for some time, Dorothy,' he said, 'that I hope to marry Mrs. Massington. I should have done so before, only it's an awkward thing to say.'

'There is always a slight crudeness in that situation,' said she. 'Men always try to explain away what can't be explained at all. So cut it short. I know you must say a few words, but let them be few.'

'Well, it's just this,', said he: 'we've been great friends, we've got along excellently; you have always been charming to me, and I hope I haven't treated you badly.'

'Oh no, first-class time,' said she, the gamin coming to the surface.

'Well, now I want to marry,' he said, 'and I come to you for your help. If you had been in my position, I would have helped you.'

'Thanks. Well?'

'You know it was a devilish awkward moment last night. And you made it worse. You laughed. You shouldn't have done that.'

Dorothy's face relaxed.

'I couldn't help it,' she said. 'Dramatically, it was perfect, and so funny. Harold, if you could have seen your own face of blank amazement, I really believe you would have laughed too.'

He frowned.

'A pal ought to help a man out,' he said.

'I'm sure you went out pretty quick,' she interpolated. 'Oh, don't peashoot me,' he said. 'Now, a word from you will help me. I can't offer any explanation to Mrs. Massington, simply because, if I tried, she would be convinced there is something to explain. You can. A half word from you will do it. Represent me as your business manager – very business – with an urgent question to ask, and in my stupid, unconventional American way, it not occurring to me that there was any impropriety – '

'And my laugh? How shall I explain that?'

'Because it did occur to you what construction Mrs. Massington would put on it. Because my face of horror when I saw what I had done was so funny. You said so yourself.'

Dorothy paused.

'In other words,' said she slowly, 'I am to tell Mrs. Massington, either directly or by implication, that you and I are you and I, not we – that – just that.'

'Quite so,' he said, 'and very neatly put.'

She sat up.

'I refuse,' she said.

'Why? For what possible reason?'

'For a reason you couldn't appreciate.'

'Let me try.'

'I can't explain it even. But the outline is this: I respect and like Sybil Massington, therefore I will not assist you to marry her. It is not my business to open her eyes – you may marry her if you can – but neither is it my business to close them. Even if you wished it, I would not marry you myself, because I don't think you would be a – well, a satisfactory husband. So I will not help you.' 'Bilton's face was clearly given him to conceal his thoughts. On this occasion it expressed nothing whatever, though he thought a good deal.

'You want to stand in my light, then,' he said.

'Not at all, only I won't hold the candle for you.'

'You refuse to tell the truth to Mrs. Massington; you refuse to tell her what you know – namely, that I came to your room last night merely to congratulate you on your success?'

'I refuse to tell her a fag-end of the truth like that – a truth that is designed to deceive.'

His eye wandered round the room before he replied, and in its course fell on the grate. To-day also there was a torn letter lying in it. A slight tinge of colour came into his face.

'I can't understand you,' he said. 'As far as I know, you on the whole wish me well; you have assured me that you would not marry me yourself. What do you want, then? Do you want to be paid for doing it? If you are not unreasonable in your demands, I will meet them.' She got up, her eyes blazing.

'That is enough,' she said. 'Not another word, Harold, or I assure you I will throw the heaviest and hardest thing I can lift at you. I mean it.'

A rather ugly light came into his eyes – a stale, unwholesome sort of glow.

'Pray don't,' he said; 'we will leave the subject. I think you are behaving most ungenerously – that is all. I should like a few words with you about your dresses in "Telegrams." I will wait till you are ready to discuss them with me. Take a cigarette.'

She looked at him a moment in silence. In spite of herself, she could not help feeling the infernal mastery he had over her. As always, the more violent she became the more he seemed steeped in a calm compound of indifference and almost boredom. And since it is obviously more exhausting to continue violent than to continue calm, it followed that she had to compose herself, thus changing first, while he merely remained unmoved. It had happened often before, and it happened now.

'What is it you want me to say to Mrs. Massington?' she asked at length.

'Pray do not let us discuss it. You might throw something at me,' said he, smiling inwardly.

'Don't you see my point?' she asked. 'Besides, a word from me would do no good. She saw the terms we were on. It was obvious, blatant.'

'Then no harm would be done by your saying a word. She would not be deceived.'

'No; but she would think I tried to deceive her.'

'Would you mind that?' he asked.

'Very much. I like her.'

Bilton knew well the value of the waiting game in an argument, the futility of trying to persuade a woman to do something, especially if she shows the least sign of persuading herself. So he said nothing whatever, since her re-opening the subject pointed to an already existing indecision. But her final answer, when it came, was not in the least what he expected.

'And I refuse finally to help you,' she said. 'If you wish, I will discuss the dresses.'

Bilton would never have made himself so successful a career as he had had he not possessed to a very high degree the power of concentrating his mind on one thing, to the complete exclusion of other preoccupations, and for the next half-hour no cloud of what had happened crossed in his mind the very clear sky of the new play's prospects. He was able to give his whole and complete attention to it, until between them they had settled what he desired to settle. Then, since, like all other days, it was a busy day with him, he rose.

'Good-bye, Dorothy,' he said, 'and don't overdo it.'

Once again she wavered.

'And do you forgive me?' she asked.

'Not in the least. But I don't imagine you care.'

'But I do care.'

He drew on his gloves with great precision.

'I beg your pardon; if you really cared you would do as I ask,' he said. 'Good-bye. I shall be at the theatre this evening.'

She let him go without further words, and, in spite of the heat, he walked briskly down Fifth Avenue. He was not a forgiving man, and though he would not put himself out to revenge himself on anyone, since he had more lucrative ways of employing his time and energies, he was perfectly ready, even anxious, to do her an ill-turn if he had the opportunity. And certainly it seemed to him that there was a handle ready to his grasping when he remembered the torn note from Bertie Keynes which he had picked up in the grate. How exactly to use it he did not at present see, but it seemed to him an asset.

CHAPTER X

One afternoon late in October Ginger was sitting cross-legged on the hearthrug of Judy's drawing-room. Outside a remarkably fine London fog had sat down on the town during the morning, and, like the frog footman in 'Alice in Wonderland,' proposed to sit there till to-morrow, if not for days and days. But a large fire was burning in the grate, for Judy detested unfired rooms, and the electric light was burning. The windows were not shuttered nor the blinds drawn, because Ginger, a Sybarite in sensations, said it made him so much more comfortable to see how disgusting it was outside. So the jaundiced gloom peered in through the windows, and by contrast gave an added animation to Ginger's conversation. He had usually a good deal to say, whether events of interest had occurred lately or not. But just now events of some importance to him and Judy had been occurring with bewildering rapidity, and in consequence conversation showed even less signs than usual of flagging.

'In fact, the world is like a morning paper, so crammed with news that one can't read any one paragraph without another catching one's eye. And your new paragraph, Judy, is most exciting. What has happened, do you suppose?'

'Nothing – probably nothing; Sybil is just tired of it all. She is like that. She goes on enjoying things enormously till a moment comes; at that moment she finds them instantly and immediately intolerable. I am only surprised that it didn't occur sooner.'

'Well, she had enough of New York pretty soon,' said Ginger. 'She only stopped down at Long Island for ten days. Then she had a month's travelling; she returns to New York on a Monday, and leaves for England forty-eight hours afterwards. You know, she enjoyed it enormously at first. I think something did happen.'

Judy shook her head.

'No; on her return she found she couldn't endure it for a single moment longer. And I'm sure I don't wonder. The description of the pearl-fishing party made me sick. Besides, what could have happened?'

Ginger handed his cup for some more tea.

'If you want me to guess, I will,' he said; 'but I don't think you'll like it.'

'Pray guess,' said she.

'Well, I guess that Bilton – her own Bilton – suddenly behaved like – like Bilton.'

'Why?' said Judy.

'Because she wrote me a letter full of Bilton one week, since when his name has not occurred.'

Judy nodded.

'The same applies to Mrs. Emsworth,' she said. 'Do you think – ?'

'Yes,' said Ginger.

'For a fool, you are rather sharp,' said Judy. 'I wonder if it is so.'

'I don't; I know it,' said Ginger. 'By the way, I saw poor Charlie yesterday.'

'Were you down at Sheringham?'

'No; he has left Sheringham. Apparently you have to get up when a bell rings, and eat all that is given you, and live out of doors till another bell rings. Charlie said he would sooner die like a gentleman than live like a Strasburg goose. So he left. He is down at Brighton in his mother's house, living out of doors.'

Judy stirred her tea thoughtfully.

'Has he told Sybil yet?' she asked. 'You remember he would not let us tell her; he said he wished to tell her himself.'

'I don't know; I know he meant to.'

'Humanly speaking, what chance has he got?' she asked.

'A good one, if he will be sensible; he probably won't. But one person could make him sensible.'

Judy never asked unnecessary questions, and let this pass in silence.

'And have you heard from the millionaire?' she asked.

'Bertie? Yes. Bertie seems uncommonly happy. So should I be if I was going to marry the richest girl in the five continents. Also I think he's in love with her.'

'Isn't Gallio delighted?'

'Yes; for the first time in his life, he really takes an interest in Bertie. He says a man's efficiency is measured by his success. Success means income, you know. Gallio speaks of himself as the most inefficient man of his own acquaintance. But the pictures have to be sold, all the same. Bertie's news came a little too late.'

'Pictures?' asked Judy.

'Hadn't you heard. You see, Gallio, about a month ago, suddenly became aware that he had a genius for speculating on the Stock Exchange. He chose American rails to exercise his genius on. But the American rails went flat, and knocked him flat. So all the Dutch pictures are up at Christie's next week. He doesn't care. As soon as he gets the money for them, he is going to speculate again. He has written to Bertie in case he can get any sort of special information from Palmer. He has stockbrokers to dinner, and lunches with bulls and bears.'

Judy was silent a moment.

'What about Mrs. Emsworth?' she asked suddenly.

Ginger had got hold of a large Persian cat, and was stroking it. The animal was in the full ecstasy of sensuous pleasure, with eyes shut and neck strained to his hand. But, as Judy asked this, he paused a moment, and stroked it the wrong way. It hit at him with its paw, and fled in violent indignation.

'Well, what about Mrs. Emsworth?' he repeated.

'Ginger, don't be ridiculous. It is loyal of you to pretend not to know what I mean, but still ridiculous. How has Bertie managed to do this under her very guns?'

'I suppose he silenced them first,' said Ginger cautiously. 'Or perhaps she has no guns.'

'Why, then, two years ago, did we all talk about nothing else but her and Bertie?'

'Because we are gossips,' said he.

'Do you mean that?'

Ginger examined his injured hand.

'Yes, I mean that,' he said. 'Bertie told me all that happened. He fell desperately in love with her; he wrote her a very foolish letter, which proposed, oh, all sorts of things – marriage among them. Immediately afterwards she – well, we all began talking about her and Bilton.'

'What happened to the letter?' asked Judy.

'Don't know,' said he.

Judy was silent a little.

'Anyhow, it all hangs together with your idea about Sybil and Bilton,' she said at length.

'I wondered if you were going to see that,' said Ginger rather loftily.

Judy went to the window and looked out.

'I like that fog,' she said, 'because it renders all traffic and business of all sorts out of the question. I like the feeling that London, anyhow, has to pause, and just twiddle its thumbs until God makes the wind blow.'

'After all, a fog comes from smoke, and it was man who lit the fires,' remarked Ginger parenthetically.

'You needn't remind one of that,' said she. 'Now, Sybil told me there were no fogs in New York. That is awful. Her letters were awful. The whole of life was a ceaseless grind; if you stopped for a moment, you were left behind. How hopelessly materialistic! Why, the only people who do any good in the world – apart from making Pullman cars and telephones, that is to say – are exactly those who do stop – who sit down and think. All the same, it is possible to stop too much. You are always stopping. Ginger, why don't you ever do something?'

'Because it is so vastly more amusing to observe other people doing things,' said he. 'As a rule, they do them so badly. Besides, Sybil seems to me an awful warning. She deliberately went to seek the strenuous life. Well, something has happened; the strenuous life has been one too many for her. Oh, by the way, I have more news for you – the most important of all, nearly. You have been talking so much that I couldn't get a word in.'

'Slander,' said Judy. 'Get it in now.'

'Gallio, as you know, has been trying to sell Molesworth. Well, advances have been made to him through an agent about it. He wants to know the name of the purchaser, but he can't find out.'

'What does Gallio care as long as the price is a good one?'

'You can't tell about Gallio; he has some charming prejudices. Besides – I don't understand the ins and outs of it – Bertie's consent has to be obtained. But he is offered two hundred thousand for a barrack he never lives in, and some acres of land which nobody will farm. He has telegraphed to Bertie about it to-day.'

'Well, I suppose it's no use being old-fashioned,' said Judy; 'but I think it's horrible to sell what has been yours so long. Probably the buyer is some awful South African Jew.'

'Very likely. But it's nothing new. Money has always possessed its own buying power – it always will. Only there's such a devil of a lot of it now in certain hands that a poor man can't keep anything of his own. And the hands that own it are not English. But they want England. Anyhow, as you say, it is no use being old-fashioned; but it is an immense luxury. You are luxurious, Judy.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, the greatest luxury of your life was refusing to ask Mrs. Palmer to your house. How you could afford it I don't know.'

'It was delicious,' said Judy with great appreciation.

'Sybil was so sensible about it. She took just your view; she said she couldn't afford it herself, but that I was my own mistress. I wonder – I really wonder – why I find that class of person so intolerable.'

'Because you are old-fashioned; because you do not believe what is undoubtedly true – that wealth will get you anything – '

'Anything material it certainly will get you.'

'Quite so. And this is a materialistic age. I must go, as I'm dining out. Mind you let me know anything fresh in all these events that concern us.'

Ginger went out into the thick, dim-coloured evening with a sense of quickened interest in things. His only passion in life was the observation of other people, but for the last month or two he had found very little to observe. Apart from his work as a clerk in the Foreign Office, which could have been done quite as well in half the time by an ordinary bank clerk at a quarter of his salary, his life was valueless from an economical point of view, while as far as his work went (from the same point of view) he was positively fraudulent. Thus, judged by the relentless standards of America, where work is paid for strictly by the demand which exists for it, and that demand is tested simply and solely by the criterion of whether it adds directly or indirectly to the wealth of the country, Ginger's services would have been dispensed with. For he was – though the wedge was being pulled out, not pushed in – the thin end of that wedge which in the days of George III. had provided so amply for the younger sons, nephews, and connections of the nobility. But the leisured ease in which those fortunate people could live in those days was rapidly passing away, and Ginger, from an economical point of view, was a very small specimen of an interesting survival. For, provided that a thing is done equally well in a cheap way as in an expensive way, it is inexcusable in the public service not to have it done as cheaply as possible. Whether the complete application of this principle will be found wholly successful in its working will be for succeeding generations to determine. But even to-day we have, so to speak, a working model of it in America. The money, once earned, of course becomes the entire property of the individual, and it is perfectly right that beggars should starve for a crust, while on the foreshore of Mon Repos the glutted vulgarocracy gabble and search for pearls.

So the interesting survival made his groping way westwards, in order to dress for dinner. The fog was extremely dense, and the light from the street-lamps was not sufficient to pierce the thickness that lay between them, so that a man following the curb of the pavement had passed out of range of one before he came within range of the next. Dim shadows of people suddenly loomed large and close, and as suddenly vanished into the fog. In the roadway omnibuses and cabs proceeded at a foot-pace, some drivers even leading their horses; here a hansom had gone utterly astray, and was at a standstill on the pavement, being backed slowly off into the road. Through the dense air sound also came muffled and subaqueously; it was like a city in a dream.

At the corner of Bond Street a man, walking faster than is usual in a fog, ran into Ginger just below a gas-lamp, and apologized in a voice that struck him as familiar. The next moment he saw who it was.

'Pray don't mention it,' he said. 'I thought you were in America, Mr. Bilton.'

Bilton peered at him a moment, and recognised him also. 'Really, Lord Henry, if it was necessary for me to run into someone, I should have chosen you. At the present moment I may be in Australia for all I know. Is this London, and if so, what part?'

'Corner of Bond Street,' said Ginger. 'Which way are you going?'

'South Audley Street,' said the other; 'I'm going to see your father, in fact, about the sale of Molesworth.'

'Are you going to buy it?' asked Ginger.

'No; but I have been asked to communicate direct with him about it. The intending purchaser wants me to see about doing it up.'

'I am going that way too,' said Ginger; 'let us go together. Walking is the only way. You know, we don't know who the intending purchaser is.'

'That so?' asked Bilton. 'Well, there's no reason any longer for secrecy; it's Lewis S. Palmer.'

'Lewis Palmer?' asked Ginger.

'Yes; pity your father didn't ask an extra ten thousand.'

'He would have, if he had known who the purchaser was,' said Ginger candidly. 'Do you know if Mr. Palmer means to live there?' he asked.

'No more than he means to live on the new Liverpool and Southampton line.'

'Ah! he hasn't got that through yet,' said Ginger, with a sudden feeling of satisfaction that there had been considerable difficulties in getting the Bill through the House last session. There had really been no reason why it should not have been passed, except that the Commons objected to it merely because the line was practically to belong to a man who was not English.

Bilton laughed a short, rather shoulder-shrugging laugh.

'London is the last place to know what happens in London,' he said. 'The Bill was passed this afternoon. Lewis S. Palmer owns that line as much as I own my walking-stick. He could sit down on the up-track and Mrs. Palmer on the down-track, and stop all traffic if he chose. You don't seem to like it.'

Ginger rather resented this, chiefly because it was true.

'Why should I not like it?' he said.

'Can't say, I'm sure,' said Bilton. 'I guess your country ought to be very grateful. Palmer will show you how to run a line properly. He won't give you engines which are so pretty that they ought to be hung on the wall, and he won't give you cars covered with gilt and mirrors. But he'll run you trains quicker than you ever had them run yet; he'll give you express freight rates that will be as cheap as transport by sea, and he'll pull the two ports together like stringing beads, instead of letting them roll about unconnected. Of course, he'll get his bit out of it, but all the benefit of rapid transport and cheap fares will be yours. I guess your House of Commons was annoyed they didn't think of it themselves.'

They had got to Hyde Park Corner, and the fog had suddenly grown less dense and the darkness was clarified. Across the open square they could see the dark mass of the arch at the top of Constitution Hill, and farther on the dim shapes of the houses in Grosvenor Place. Hansoms no longer passed as if going to a funeral, but jingled merrily by to the cheerful beat of the horses' hoofs on the road. All the traffic was resuscitated; buses swayed and nodded; silent-footed electric broughams made known their advent by their clear metallic bells, and the two turned more briskly up Hamilton Place.

'And what has brought you to England so suddenly?' asked Ginger. 'I thought you intended to stop in America throughout Mrs. Emsworth's tour.'

'Circumstances altered my plan,' said Bilton. 'I had several pieces of business here; for instance, Lewis S. Palmer wished me to conduct the negotiations of Molesworth, as his agent seemed to be a sort of fool-man, and tell him what must be done to make it liveable in.'