The Roll-Call - The Roll-Call Part 22
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The Roll-Call Part 22

"Yes; but she's not well."

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

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

Laurencine threw laughingly across the table:

"She's as well as I am."

It was another aspect of the younger sister.

When they left the restaurant it was nearly empty. They left easily, slowly, magnificently. The largesse of Everard Lucas--his hat slightly raked--in the foyer and at the portico was magnificent in both quantity and manner. There was no need to hurry; the hour, though late for the end of dinner, was early for separation. They moved and talked without the slightest diffidence, familiar and confident; the whole world was reformed and improved for them by the stimulus of food and alcohol. The night was sultry and dark. The two women threw their cloaks back from their shoulders, revealing the whiteness of toilettes. At the door the head-lights of Miss Wheeler's automobile shot horizontally right across Regent Street. The chauffeur recognized George, and George recognized the car; he was rather surprised that Miss Wheeler had not had a new car in eighteen months. Lucas spoke of his own car, which lay beyond in the middle of the side-street like a ship at anchor. He spoke in such a strain that Miss Wheeler deigned to ask him to drive her home in it. The two young men went to light the head-lights. George noticed the angry scowl on Everard's face when three matches had been blown out in the capricious breeze. The success of the fourth match restored his face to perfect benignity. He made the engine roar triumphantly, imperiously sounded his horn, plunged forward, and drew the car up in front of Miss Wheeler's. His bliss, when Miss Wheeler had delicately inserted herself into the space by his side, was stern and yet radiant. The big car, with George and Laurencine on board, followed the little one like a cat following a mouse, and Laurencine girlishly interested herself in the chase. George, with his mind on Lois, kept saying to himself: "She's been thinking about that little affair ever since last November but one.

They've all been thinking about it." He felt apprehensive, but his satisfaction amounted to excitement. His attitude was: "At any rate I gave them something to think about!" Also he breathed appreciatively the atmosphere of the three women--two seen and one unseen. How extraordinarily different all of them were from Agg! They reminded him acutely of his deep need of luxury. After all, the life lived by those two men about town, George and Everard, was rather humdrum and monotonous. In spite of Everard's dash, and in spite of George's secret engagement, neither of them met enough women or enough sorts of women.

George said to himself: "I shall see her to-night. We shall go up to the flat. She isn't in bed. I shall see her to-night." He wanted to see her because he had hurt her, and because she had remembered and had talked about him and had raised curiosity about him in others. Was she really unwell? Or had she been excusing herself! Was she an angel? He wanted to see her again in order to judge for himself whether she was an angel. If Laurencine said she was an angel she must be an angel. Laurencine was a jolly, honest girl. To be in the car with her was agreeable. But she was insipid. So he assessed the splendidly budding Laurencine, patronizing her a little. Miss Wheeler gave him pause. Her simple phrases had mysterious intonations. He did not understand her glance. He could not settle the first question about her--her age. She might be very wicked; certainly she could be very ruthless. And he had no hold over her. He could give her nothing that she wanted. He doubted whether any man could.

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

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

"And did your sister come with you?"

"No; Lois only came yesterday."

"By herself?"

"Yes."

"I suppose you go about a lot?"

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

"Well, I should prefer Paris."

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

"So's London."

She squirmed about lissomly on the seat.

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

He smiled indulgently and dropped the point.

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

"Yes; we were there on Saturday afternoon."

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

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

George was glad that she had not been enthusiastic about Mrs. Orgreave.

Her reserve showed that she could discriminate. Ecstasy was not altogether a habit. If she said that Lois was an angel, Lois probably was an angel.

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

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

"Well, good night. And thank you so much. It's been most delightful....

We expect you soon, of course."

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

He had assumed that he would see Lois the angel that night.

V

The young men finished the evening at Pickering's. Pickering's was George's club. George considered, rightly, that in the matter of his club he had had great luck. Pickering's was a small club, and it had had vicissitudes. Most men whose worldly education had been completed in St.

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

Moreover, he said that George might conceivably get a permanent bedroom there. The first sight of the prim, picturesque square, the first hint of scandal about the Duke of Wellington, decided George. It was impossible for a man about town to refuse the chance of belonging to a club in a Court where the Duke of Wellington had committed follies.

George was proposed, seconded, and duly elected, together with other new blood. Some of the old blood naturally objected, but the feud was never acute. Solely owing to the impression which his young face made on the powerful and aged hall-porter, George obtained a bedroom. It was small, and at the top of the house; but it was cheap, it solved the even more tiresome and uncomfortable problem of lodging; and further it was a bedroom at Pickering's, and George could say that he lived at his club--an imposing social advantage. He soon learnt how to employ the resources of the club for his own utmost benefit. Nobody could surpass him in choosing a meal inexpensively. He could have his breakfast in his bedroom for tenpence, or even sixpence when his appetite was poor. He was well served by a valet who apparently passed his whole life on stairs and landings. This valet, courteous rather in the style of old Haim, had a brain just equal to the problems presented by his vocation.

Every morning George would say: "Now, Downs, how soon can I have my bath?" or "Now, Downs, what can I have for breakfast?" And Downs would conscientiously cerebrate, and come forth after some seconds with sound solutions, such as: "I'll see if I can put you in before Mr. de Gales if you're in a hurry, sir," or "Scrambled eggs, sir--it'll make a bit of a change." And when George agreed, Downs would exhibit a restrained but real satisfaction. Yes, George had been very lucky. The club too was lucky. The oldest member, who being paralysed had not visited the club for eleven years, died and bequeathed ten thousand pounds to the institution where he had happily played cards for several decades.

Pickering's was refurnished, and the stringency of its rules re-established. The right wing of the committee wished that the oldest member could have managed to die a year or two earlier and so obviated the crisis. It was recognized, however, by the more reasonable, that you cannot have everything in this world.

Pickering's was very dull; but it was still Pickering's. George was often bored at Pickering's. He soon reached the stage at which a club member asserts gloomily that the club cookery is simply damnable.

Nevertheless he would have been desolated to leave Pickering's. The place was useful to him in another respect than the purely material. He learnt there the code which governs the familiar relations of men about town.

On the night of the 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 scattered around, some folded inside out, some not folded, some whose component sheets had been divided for ever like the members of a ruined family.

The windows were open, and one gave a view of the Court's watchful lamp-post, and the other of the house--now occupied by an art dealer and a commission agent--where the Duke had known both illusion and disillusion. The delicate sound of the collision of billiard-balls came from somewhere, and the rat-tatting of a tape-machine from somewhere else. The two friends had arrived at the condition of absolute wisdom and sagacity and tolerance which is apt to be achieved at a late hour in clubs by young and old men who have discussed at length the phenomena of society.

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

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

"Is it?"

They began again to smoke and talk.

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

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

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

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