Derelicts

CONTENTS


Warm day” said the policeman.
The man thus addressed looked up from the steps, where he was sitting bareheaded, and nodded. Then, rather quickly, he put on his hat.
“Not much Bank Holiday hereabouts.”
“So much the better,” said the man.
“It’s all very well for them as likes it,” said the policeman, wiping his forehead.
It was the first Monday in August, and his beat was not a lively one. Curiosity had attracted him toward the sitting figure, and the social instinct prompted conversation. Receiving, however, an uninterested nod in reply to his last remark, he turned away reluctantly and continued his slow tramp up the street.
The man took no notice of his departure, but, resting his chin on his hands, gazed wistfully across the road. Why he had come here to Holland Park he scarcely knew. Perhaps, in his aimless walk from his lodgings in Pimlico, he had unconsciously followed a once familiar track that had brought him to a spot filled with sweet and bitter associations.
The blinds were drawn in the great house opposite that stared white in the noonday sun. A beer-can hanging on the area railings announced the caretaker. Like most of the mansions in the long, well-kept street, it seemed abandoned to sun and silence.
It was the first time he had seen the house since the cloud had fallen upon his life. Once its interior had been as familiar to him as his own boyhood’s home. Its inmates gave him flattering welcome. He was courted for his brilliant promise and admired for his good looks. A whisper of feasting and riotous living that hovered around his reputation caused him to be petted by the household as the prodigal cousin. The comforts of wealth, the charm of refinement, the warmth of affection, were his whenever he chose to knock for admittance at that door. Now he had lost them all, as irrevocably as Adam lost Eden. He was an outcast among men. Not only had he forfeited his right to mount the steps, but he knew that the very mention of his existence in that household brought shame and fierce injunctions of silence.