IX
Many courageous people are nervous to a fault in certain directions.
Wynne Rendall possessed the pluck of the devil where his point of view or ideals were at stake, but in the performance of simple everyday affairs he was afflicted with a great shyness.
He hovered fearfully before the portals of several small hotels in the Strand district before summoning up courage to enter and take a room. It seemed to him the proprietors of these places would refuse and ridicule him—that they would tax him with his youth, and query if he had ever used a razor. Yet men great and small, of important or insignificant appearance, passed in and out of the swinging doors with the smallest concern imaginable. They dropped their baggage in the hall, and conversed with the clerks about rooms as he might have helped himself to salt at the table.
In all his life Wynne had never stopped at an hotel, and had no experience from which to adjust his actions. He realized, however, that to delay the ordeal indefinitely would serve no useful purpose. An hotel attracted his attention on the opposite side of the road, and squaring his shoulders he boldly approached it. His shame was boundless when he walked deliberately past the open doors and down once more to the Strand.
“That’s the most cowardly thing I have ever done,” he rated himself.
In Villers Street he espied an eating-house with an uncooked sirloin, embellished with parsley and tomatoes, standing on a silver salver in the window. He halted and read the various legends pasted to the inner surface of the plate glass. “A good dinner for 1s. 6d.” “Steaks and onions.” “Stewed tripe.” “Bed and breakfast, 3s.” Without waiting for his courage to ebb he walked inside. A dirty Swiss waiter pulled a chair from a small table and flicked the seat invitingly with a napkin.
“I want—that is, would you be good enough to let me a room. I was recommended to come here—at least I think—”
“A room—sartainly—one minute,” he called a name through an open door, and a stout lady entered. “A room for zis gentleman. You will go wiz her.”
As he mounted the stairs Wynne reflected that there was nothing in it after all. It was the simplest matter. He wished he had omitted the legend about having been recommended to the place; clearly there was no occasion for anything beyond a simple expression of one’s needs. He had not thought to learn anything from a Swiss waiter in a Villers Street hotel, yet a new department of learning had been opened for him from which he might profit in the future.
The room to which he was shown was very ordinary, and made little impression upon him. He threw his bag to the bed and seated himself easily beside it.
The landlady lingered by the door, and he ventured a remark to her:
“I suppose you let quite a number of rooms?”
“It would be,” she answered, “a bad thing for us if we didn’t.”
As there appeared to be nothing further to contribute to that line of inquiry, he nodded and remained silent.
“You’ll want a bit of dinner, I suppose.”
“Oh, yes, thank you—thanks.”
“If you was to order it now it would be ready when you come down.”
“All right,” he said. Then, as she still lingered: “I think I’ll wash my hands if you don’t mind.”
“What’ll you have to eat?”
Of course! It was so obvious—he ought to have thought of that. What could he have? It would betray inexperience to ask what there was—a man of the world would know in an instant what his appetite desired. Wynne had often pictured himself ordering a dinner, but now the time had come he felt strangely unable to do so. His memory served him with a picture of the uncooked sirloin and the tomatoes, but it was unlikely they would oven this on his behalf.
The need to answer being imperative, he ordered “A chop, please, and some potatoes.” After the departure of the landlady he cursed his woeful lack of imagination. He had dreamed to feast, as the old emperors, upon ortolans and the brains of peacocks, and instead he had ordered the very dish which, in the ordinary rotation of the home-menu, would have appeared on his father’s table that night.
Before going downstairs Wynne decided very firmly what he would say when asked as to his choice of drink. He would order shandy-gaff, and he would name it familiarly as “shandy.”
This resolve completed, he opened his suit case and set out his belongings in careless disorder. Beyond doubt it was very fine to be a free-lance and possess a room of one’s own in the heart of London. He took a pace or two up and down the floor and filled his lungs with air. The rumble of traffic and the long-sustained London note, made up of thousands of fine particles of sound, drifted to his ears.
“Something like!” said Wynne. “This is something like!”
He put his head out of the window and spoke again:
“You silly old crowds, all hurrying along. You don’t know me—but one day you shall. Yes, I shall find out all your secrets, and you will come to me to disclose them. Oh! you silly, busy, hurrying old crowds, I’m getting ready for you. Why don’t you look up and see me? Don’t you want to? There’s no charge yet. Look while you have the chance, for later on I shall tip up your chins and hold your eyes whether you want me to or not.”
But none was disposed to glance his way. The day’s work was done, and London emptying itself homeward. There were dinners, warm fires, and welcomes awaiting them, why should they waste a glance upon the white face of an anæmic boy who hung out over the sill of a three-shilling bedroom and blathered his foolish thoughts to the night.
Wynne ordered “shandy” with an air of some importance: by sheer bad luck the Swiss waiter’s vocabulary was deficient of this word. He asked Wynne to repeat it, and, still failing to understand, further asked how the beverage was concocted. This threw Wynne into a blushing difficulty, since he himself was doubtful as to the ingredients used. Accordingly he revoked the order and asked for some ale, and since he stated no particular quantity he was saddled with a bottle of the largest size, which greatly taxed his powers of consumption. He struggled bravely, however, and the good malt fluid gave tone to his being and warmed his imagination.
He rose from the table with the pleasant confidence that he had left much of his awkwardness behind. He had thought to spend the evening considering his future, but in his rosy mood he decided a theatre would prove a more agreeable form of entertainment.
Hitherto his playgoing had been confined to a yearly visit to the local pantomime, a performance which had made no special appeal to him. As master of his own choice he repaired to Shakespeare’s Henry VIII., and was vastly impressed by the splendour of it all. Here and there he found himself at variance with the actors’ renderings of certain passages, and during the intervals ruminated upon alternative readings. On the whole, however, the experience was delightful.
At the conclusion he emerged from the theatre in a state of artistic intoxication. He longed for a companion to whom he could express the views which the play had set in motion—any one would do so long as he might speak his thoughts aloud. With all these jostling crowds it was absurd that any one should be denied an audience. Surely some one would be glad to lend an ear. There must be some companionable soul in this great city with a thirst for knowledge and enlightenment.
“The clouds that gather round the setting sun.” Wolsey had been wrong to betray so much emotion in delivering that speech. A man like Wolsey would see grim humour in his own downfall. It was contrary to the character, as he saw it, to stress the emotions of such a coming to pass. Wynne knew the speech intimately, and felt a great desire to repeat it aloud in the way it should be repeated. The Haymarket was hardly a place for such a recital, so he turned into Orange Street and the narrow thoroughfares adjoining. Here in a shadow he began the lines, but had hardly uttered a sound before a step caused him to stop. Looking round he saw a girl walking slowly toward him. A fur swung from her shoulders and a bag dangled in her hand. The white of her boots seemed phosphorescent in the half-light. As she came abreast of him their eyes met. Hers were bold and black-lashed, and the lids drooped in lazy insolence.
“Kiddie,” she said, “coming home?”
And Wynne was startled into replying:
“Why, do you want a friend too?”
She curled her scarlet lips into a smile.
“I always want a friend,” she answered.
“I don’t,” he said; “only sometimes! Sometimes one feels one must confide. I feel like that tonight.”
“Confide in me, then. What’s to stop you?”
“I think I will. You’re frank—unconventional; some one like you I’ve been looking for. I couldn’t sleep tonight—couldn’t go to bed.”
The smile came again—went—and was replaced by an expression of perplexity. It was not the conversational formula to which she was accustomed.
“Well, don’t let’s hang about, anyway,” she said. “There’s sure to be a cab in Waterloo Place. Come on.”
“D’you live far from here, then? It would be jollier to walk, don’t you think?”
She had heard that phrase before, on the lips of economists, and the business side of her nature sprang to action.
“If you’ve no money—better say so.”
“I’ve plenty of money.”
“What do you call plenty?”
“Don’t let’s talk money. People never speak of anything else.”
“I’m beginning to think you know a thing or two.”
“Perhaps I do.” The suggestion flattered him.
“So do I, and I’d like to know what I’m standing for, too. I’m too fly to bounce, kiddie. Get me?”
“No,” he replied. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” He hated confessing this, but it was no less than the truth.
“Of—course—not,” she drawled the syllables, and leaned against his shoulder with fingers that travelled caressingly over his wrist and palm.
“O God!” exclaimed Wynne. “I see.” A kind of fear possessed him and he backed a pace.
“What’s the matter now?”
“Only—only that I’m a fool. I must be. You’re Adventure, aren’t you? Commercial Adventure?”
“Now then! Who are you calling names?”
“I must be a fool.”
This concerned him most, and provided him with courage.
“All boys are fools—men too, for that matter. Come along if you’re coming.”
“But I’m not,” said Wynne.
“Why not?”
“I made a mistake.”
“A mistake, eh? You’re a cheeky little devil. Who are you to speak to a girl? I should like to ask?”
“I didn’t recognize you, that’s all. I’ve never met you before. Another time I shall know. Good-night.”
He turned quickly and walked away.
“Silly little kid!” murmured the girl, and fell into her roving pace once more.
“I wish I had told her how rotten I thought she was,” mused Wynne, as he pulled off his boots before getting to bed. “I might have gone home with her!” He tried to picture such a happening, but it brought nothing to his imagination. There was not the slightest tremble of passion to weigh against his satisfaction at having avoided the offered temptation.
“Fools men must be to yield to that sort. I never should. I think I got out of it all right after the first mistake. Original sin!” He fell to quoting Swinburne, a poet who had pleased his ear alone.
“What sterile growth of sexless root or Epicene,
What flower of kisses without fruit of love, Faustine.”
“She was very pretty—pretty figure—and her hands and feet were small. Yes, all the temptation was there, and I didn’t yield. Glad I met her. It’s helped me to know myself. I’m all right.”
As he drew the blanket under his chin Wynne felt unduly self-satisfied—he forgot, perhaps, that it is easy to resist when there is no impulse to sin.