The Roll-Call - The Roll-Call Part 40
Library

The Roll-Call Part 40

The newspapers had been hot after him, and he knew not how to defend himself. His photograph was implored. He was waylaid by journalists shabby and by journalists spruce, and the resulting interviews made him squirm. He became a man of mark at Pickering's. Photographers entreated him to sit free of charge. What irritated him in the whole vast affair was the continual insistence upon his lack of years. Nobody seemed to be interested in his design for the town hall; everybody had the air of regarding him as a youthful prodigy, a performing animal. Personally he did not consider that he was so very young. (Nevertheless he did consider that he was a youthful prodigy. He could recall no architect in history who had done what he had done at his age.) The town clerk who travelled from the North to see him treated his age in a different manner, the patronizing. He did not care for the town clerk. However, the town clerk was atoned for by the chairman of the new town hall sub-committee, a true human being named Soulter, with a terrific accent and a taste for architecture, pictures, and music. Mr. Soulter, though at least forty-five, treated George, without any appearance of effort, as a coeval. George immediately liked him, and the mere existence of Mr.

Soulter had the effect of dissipating nearly all George's horrible qualms and apprehensions about his own competence to face the overwhelming job of erection. Mr. Soulter was most soothing in the matter of specifications and contractors.

"So you've got into your new room," said John Orgreave.

Never before had he mounted to see George either in the new room or in the old room. The simple fact of the presence there of one of the partners in the historic firm below compensated for much teasing sarcasm and half-veiled jealousy. It was a sign. It was a seal authenticating renown.

"Yes."

"I only wanted to give you a message from Adela. The Ingram young woman is staying with us----"

"Lois?" The name shot out of him unbidden.

"Yes. You're humbly supplicated to go to tea to-day. Four o'clock. Thank God I've not forgotten it!"

George arrived fifty-five minutes late at Bedford Park. Throughout the journey thither he kept repeating: "She said I should do it. And I've done it! I've done it! I've done it!" The triumph was still so close behind him that he was constantly realizing it afresh, and saying, wonder-struck: "I've done it." And the miraculous phantasm of the town hall, uplifted in solid stone, formed itself again and again in his enchanted mind, against a background of tremendous new ambitions rising endlessly one behind another like snowy alps.

"Is this what you call four o'clock?" twittered Adela, between cajolery and protest, somewhat older and facially more artificial, but eternally blonde; still holding her fair head on one side and sinuously waving the palm.

"Sorry! Sorry! I was kept at the last moment by a journalist johnny."

"Oh! Of course!" said Adela, pooh-poohing with her lips. "Of course we expect that story nowadays!"

"Well, it was a chap from the _Builder_, or I wouldn't have seen him.

Can't trifle with a trade paper, you know."

He thought:

"She's like the rest of them, as jealous as the devil."

Then Lois came into the room, hatted and gloved, in half-mourning. She was pale, and appreciably thinner; she looked nervous, weak, and weary.

As he shook hands with her he felt very self-conscious, as though in winning the competition and fulfilling her prophecy he had done something dubious for which he ought to apologize. This was exceedingly strange, but it was so. She had been ill after the death of Irene Wheeler. Having left Paris for London on the day following the races, he had written to her about nothing in particular, a letter which meant everything but what it said--and had received an answer from Laurencine, who announced that her sister was in bed, and likely to be in bed; and that father and mother wished to be remembered to him. Then he wrote to Laurencine. When the result of the final competition was published he had written again to Lois. It seemed to him that he was bound to do so, for had she not willed and decided his victory? No reply; but there had scarcely been time for a reply.

"Did you get my letter?" he smiled.

"This afternoon," she said gravely. "It followed me here. Now I have to go to Irene's flat. I should have been gone in another minute."

"She _will_ go alone," Adela put in anxiously.

"I shall be back for dinner," said Lois, and to the stupefaction of George she moved towards the door.

But just as she opened the door she turned her head and, looking at George with a frown, murmured:

"You can come with me if you like."

Adela burst out:

"He hasn't had any tea!"

"I'm not urging him to come, my dear. Good-bye."

Adela and George exchanged a glance, each signalling to the other that perhaps this sick, strange girl ought to be humoured. He abandoned the tea.... He was in the street with Lois. He was in the train with her.

Her ticket was in his pocket. He had explained to her why he was late, and she had smiled, amiably but enigmatically. He thought: "She's no right to go on like this. But what does it matter?" She said nothing about the competition--not a word of congratulation. Indeed she hardly spoke beyond telling him that she had to choose some object at the flat.

He was aware of the principal terms of Irene's will, which indeed had caused the last flutter of excitement before oblivion so quickly descended upon the notoriety of the social star. Irene's renown had survived her complexion by only a few short weeks. The will was of a rather romantic nature. Nobody familiar with the intimate circumstances would have been surprised if Irene had divided her fortune between Lois and Laurencine. The bulk of it, however, went back to Indianapolis. The gross total fell far short of popular estimates. Lois and Laurencine received five thousand pounds apiece, and in addition they were requested to select each an object from Irene's belongings--Lois out of the London flat, Laurencine out of the Paris flat. Lois had come to London to choose, and she was staying with Adela, the sole chaperon available. Since the death of Irene, Mrs. Ingram had been excessively strict in the matter of chaperons.

They took a hansom at Victoria. Across the great square, whose leaves were just yellowing, George saw the huge block of flats, and in one story all the blinds were down. Lois marched first into the lift, masterfully, as though she inhabited the block. She asked no one's permission. Characteristically she had an order from the solicitors, and the keys of the flat. She opened the door without any trouble. They were inside, within the pale-sheeted interior. Scarcely a thing had yet been moved, for, with the formalities of the judicatures of France, England, and the State of Indiana to be complied with, events marched slowly under the sticky manipulation of three different legal firms. Lois and George walked cautiously across the dusty, dulled parquets into the vast drawing-room. George doffed his hat.

"I'd better draw the blinds up," he suggested.

"No, no!" she sharply commanded. "I can see quite well. I don't want any more light."

There was the piano upon which Laurencine had played! The embrasure of the window! The corner in which Irene had sat spellbound by Jules Defourcambault! The portraits of Irene, at least one of which would perpetuate her name! The glazed cases full of her collections!... The chief pieces of furniture and all the chairs were draped in the pale, ghostly sheeting.

Suddenly Lois, rushing to the mantelpiece, cried:

"This is what I shall take."

It was a large photograph of Jules Defourcambault, bearing the words: "_a Miss Irene Wheeler. Hommages respectueux de_ J.D.F."

"You won't!" he exclaimed, incredulous, shocked. He thought: "She is mad!"

"Yes, I shall."

There were hundreds of beautiful objects in the place, and she chose a banal photograph of a despicable creature whom she detested.

"Why don't you take one of _her_ portraits? Or even a fan. What on earth do you want with a thing like that?" His voice was changing.

"I shall take it and keep it for ever. He was the cause of it all. This photograph was everything to her once."

George revolted utterly, and said with cold, harsh displeasure:

"You're simply being morbid. There's no sense in it."

She dropped down into a chair, and the impress of her body dragged the dust-sheet from its gilt arms, exposing them. She put her face in her hands and sobbed.

"You're awfully cruel!" she murmured thickly.

The sobs continued, shaking her body. She was beautifully dressed. Her shoes were adorable, and the semi-transparent hose over her fine ankles.

She made a most disturbing, an unbearable, figure of compassion. She needed wisdom, protection, guidance, strength. Every bit of her seemed to appeal for these qualities. But at the same time she dismayed. He moved nearer to her. Yes, she had grandeur. All the costly and valuable objects in the drawing-room she had rejected in favour of the satisfaction of a morbid and terrible whim. Who could have foreseen it?

He moved still nearer. He stood over her. He seized her yielding wrists.

He lifted her veil. Tears were running down her cheeks from the yellow eyes. She looked at him through her tears.

"You're frightfully cruel," she feebly repeated.

"And what if I am?" he said solemnly. Did she really think him hard, had she always thought him hard--she, the hard one? How strange! Yet no doubt he was hard.

His paramount idea was:

"She had faith in me." It was as if her faith had created the man he was. She was passionately ambitious; so was he.