hung like an ornate curtain between Margaret and the welter of London. Her thoughts turned sadly to house-hunting. Wickham Place had been so safe. She feared, fantastically, that her own little flock might be moving into turmoil and squalor, into nearer contact with such episodes as these.
"Tibby and I have again been wondering where we'll live next September," she said at last.
"Tibby had better first wonder what he'll do," retorted Helen; and that topic was resumed, but with acrimony. Then tea came, and after tea Helen went on preparing her speech, and Margaret prepared one, too, for they were going out to a discussion society on the morrow. But her thoughts were poisoned. Mrs. Lanoline had risen out of the abyss, like a faint smell, a goblin football, telling of a life where love and hatred had both decayed.
Chapter 14
The mystery, like so many mysteries, was explained. Next day, just as they were dressed to go out to dinner, a Mr. Bast called. He was a clerk in the employment of the Porphyrion Fire Insurance Company. Thus much from his card. He had come "about the lady yesterday." Thus much from Annie, who had shown him into the dining-room.
"Cheers, children!" cried Helen. "It's Mrs. Lanoline."
Tibby was interested. The three hurried downstairs, to find, not the gay dog they expected, but a young man, colourless, toneless, who had already the mournful eyes above a drooping moustache that are so common in London, and that haunt some streets of the city like accusing presences. One guessed him as the third generation, grandson to the shepherd or ploughboy whom civilization had sucked into the town; as one of the thousands who have lost the life of the body and failed to reach the life of the spirit. Hints of robustness survived in him, more than a hint of primitive good looks, and Margaret, noting the spine that might have been straight, and the chest that might have broadened, wondered whether it paid to give up the glory of the animal for a tail coat and a couple of ideas. Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it. She knew this type very well—the vague aspirations, the mental dishonesty, the familiarity with the outsides of books. She knew the very tones in which he would address her. She was only unprepared for an example of her own visiting-card.
"You wouldn't remember giving me this, Miss Schlegel?" said he, uneasily familiar.
"No; I can't say I do."
"Well, that was how it happened, you see."
"Where did we meet, Mr. Bast? For the minute I don't remember."
"It was a concert at the Queen's Hall. I think you will recollect," he added pretentiously, "when I tell you that it included a performance of the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven."
"We hear the Fifth practically every time it's done, so I'm not sure—do you remember, Helen?"
"Was it the time the sandy cat walked round the balustrade?"
He thought not.
"Then I don't remember. That's the only Beethoven I ever remember specially."
"And you, if I may say so, took away my umbrella, inadvertently of course."
"Likely enough," Helen laughed, "for I steal umbrellas even oftener than I hear Beethoven. Did you get it back?"
"Yes, thank you, Miss Schlegel."
"The mistake arose out of my card, did it?" interposed Margaret.
"Yes, the mistake arose—it was a mistake."
"The lady who called here yesterday thought that you were calling too, and that she could find you?" she continued, pushing him forward, for, though he had promised an explanation, he seemed unable to give one.
"That's so, calling too—a mistake."
"Then why—?" began Helen, but Margaret laid a hand on her arm.
"I said to my wife," he continued more rapidly—"I said to Mrs. Bast, 'I have to pay a call on some friends,' and Mrs. Bast said to me, 'Do go.' While I was gone, however, she wanted me on important business, and thought I had come here, owing to the card, and so came after me, and I beg to tender my apologies, and hers as well, for any inconvenience we may have inadvertently caused you."
"No inconvenience," said Helen; "but I still don't understand."
An air of evasion characterized Mr. Bast. He explained again, but was obviously lying, and Helen didn't see why he should get off. She had the cruelty of youth. Neglecting her sister's pressure, she said, "I still don't understand. When did you say you paid this call?"
"Call? What call?" said he, staring as if her question had been a foolish one, a favourite device of those in mid-stream.
"This afternoon call."
"In the afternoon, of course!" he replied, and looked at Tibby to see how the repartee went. But Tibby, himself a repartee, was unsympathetic, and said, "Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon?"
"S-Saturday."
"Really!" said Helen; "and you were still calling on Sunday, when your wife came here. A long visit."
"I don't call that fair," said Mr. Bast, going scarlet and handsome. There was fight in his eyes." I know what you mean, and it isn't so."
"Oh, don't let us mind," said Margaret, distressed again by odours from the abyss.
"It was something else," he asserted, his elaborate manner breaking down. "I was somewhere else to what you think, so there!"
"It was good of you to come and explain," she said. "The rest is naturally no concern of ours."
"Yes, but I want—I wanted—have you ever read The Ordeal of Richard Feverel?"
Margaret nodded.
"It's a beautiful book. I wanted to get back to the Earth, don't you see, like Richard does in the end. Or have you ever read Stevenson's Prince Otto?"
Helen and Tibby groaned gently.
"That's another beautiful book. You get back to the Earth in that. I wanted—" He mouthed affectedly. Then through the mists of his culture came a hard fact, hard as a pebble. "I walked all the Saturday night," said Leonard. "I walked." A thrill of approval ran through the sisters. But culture closed in again. He asked whether they had ever read E. V. Lucas's Open Road.
Said Helen, "No doubt it's another beautiful book, but I'd rather hear about your road."
"Oh, I walked."
"How far?"
"I don't know, nor for how long. It got too dark to see my watch."
"Were you walking alone, may I ask?"
"Yes," he said, straightening himself; "but we'd been talking it over at the office. There's been a lot of talk at the office lately about these things. The fellows there said one steers by the Pole Star, and I looked it up in the celestial atlas, but once out of doors everything gets so mixed—"
"Don't talk to me about the Pole Star," interrupted Helen, who was becoming interested. "I know its little ways. It goes round and round, and you go round after it."
"Well, I lost it entirely. First of all the street lamps, then the trees, and towards morning it got cloudy."
Tibby, who preferred his comedy undiluted, slipped from the room. He knew that this fellow would never attain to poetry, and did not want to hear him trying. Margaret and Helen remained. Their brother influenced them more than they knew: in his absence they were stirred to enthusiasm more easily.
"Where did you start from?" cried Margaret. "Do tell us more."
"I took the Underground to Wimbledon. As I came out