3
To be involved, however innocently, in a street brawl is considerably more characteristic of Vincent Grayle than of myself. I think that he should have discontinued the habit at least when he reached the age of fifty, but I know well that he only regretted his late arrival.
"They keep a stretcher at the House, don't they?" he asked, as he bared his crop of yellow hair to the wind and lit a cigarette in preparation for his vigil by the recumbent agitator. "If not, telephone Cannon Row."
I was starting on my way when I collided with a young man who had joined us unperceived. He was in evening dress with an overcoat across his arm and a sombre-eyed Saint Bernard at his side.
"Someone hurt?" he enquired, after waving away my apologies. "I thought I heard the word 'stretcher.'"
"It was only a street row," Grayle explained callously. "This fellow thought fit to address an anti-recruiting meeting, and his points weren't very well taken."
The young man wrinkled his forehead, laughed and, after a moment's thought, slipped his arms into the sleeves of his overcoat.
"Didn't Doctor Johnson say that every man had the right to express his opinion and that everyone else had the right to knock him down for it?" he drawled. Then abruptly, "Are you Colonel Grayle, by any chance?"
"I am," Grayle answered with a look of surprise.
"I thought I recognised your voice. I collect voices and I heard you last week when the National Registration Bill was in Committee. Do you think it's possible to arrive at a taxi? I live quite near here and I can take the patient home for treatment."
"But why the deuce should you bother about him?" Grayle asked.
The boy smiled to himself and shrugged his shoulders.
"If we cast him off to a hospital, there'll be all sorts of silly questions," he explained. "And I'm a bit of an Ishmaelite myself. What's the extent of the damage?"
The injured man opened his eyes again and reduced his huddled limbs to some sort of order, not without occasional twinges of pain. He seemed nothing but skin and loose bones and might well have fainted from exhaustion rather than injury.
"My left leg's done for," he announced.
The stranger nodded sympathetically.
"Can anyone see a taxi?" he asked. "They've simply disappeared from the streets of London, like Sam Weller's dead donkeys and postboys. Well, you men help him up and give him a hoist on to my shoulders. I'm only a step from here."
At a guess the sprawling figure was some inches taller and at least as heavy as the new-comer, but my suggestion that we should wait for a taxi or send for a stretcher was disregarded.
"Perhaps I'm stronger than I look," he told me; to the injured man he said, "Clasp your hands round my neck; I'll try not to shake you, but it may come a bit painful. And one of you men look after the steering so that I don't tumble off the kerb or get run over. The house is just by the Tate Gallery—a big sort of barn with a lamp over the door—it's called 'The Sanctuary.'"
Grayle started violently and looked at me, but I had appointed myself steersman and was heading for Millbank in the wake of the sombre-eyed Saint Bernard. The young man's looks belied his strength, for he walked fast enough for Grayle to have difficulty in keeping pace, and, as he walked, he told us that the expected division was a false alarm and that the House was up. I hurried along by his side, feeling more and more that the whole evening had passed in a dream and that I should wake up to find myself back in my internment camp. The noise and excitement had tired me into somnolence; the darkened streets added to my feeling of unreality. The dog with a cane and hat in his jaws, one young man with another young man sprawling on his shoulders, Grayle panting on one side and myself guiding the unconvincing procession on the other made up a picture whose reality I myself doubted more than once.
And the house, when we reached it, was a large brick-and-timber warehouse, once the property of a wharfinger, before the Embankment was built, and quite unlike anything that I had expected,—though in keeping with everything that night. I stood waiting for instructions, for there was a modern annexe, with a second floor. I learned afterwards that Whaley, the Pre-Raphaelite, had used the place as a studio.
"It's only about half furnished at present," our young friend informed us, "and I expect you'll find it very untidy. We've not been married a month yet. The house was a wedding-present."
I had guessed him to be the husband of the young bride whom we had met at dinner and could understand why his wife was unprepared for visitors.
"We won't come in," I said, as we stopped under a wrought-iron lamp by a heavy oak door painted in white gothic characters with the name of the house.
"Oh, you must!" he cried. "I may want help. You just push the door—it isn't locked—and, if there's no light on, you'll find the switches to the right. Don't turn it on, though, till the door's shut, or someone will run me in for signalling to German aircraft."
Grayle at least seemed to need no second invitation, and, when our host said that he might want help, I did not see my way to refuse the first. I confess, too, that I was amused and curious; the boy was attractive, with mobile face, dark hair and big, black eyes; I liked his quick smile and rather mischievous laugh, above all, I respected his good-nature in picking up a total stranger, who, so far as one can justify private acts of violence, had been most justifiably punished.
We passed through the hall into a lofty room with long windows far up the walls above ten feet of oak panelling, rough-cut beams melting into the shadows of the roof and a block-floor half-covered with rugs. On a dais to our right as we entered stood a long refectory table between two rows of heavily carved Spanish oak chairs; at the far end was a grand piano; low book-cases ran round the walls, there were three or four big oil-paintings above the panelling, and arranged in half-circles round the two fires were luxuriously large sofas and arm-chairs. I was a little reminded of a college hall, when I looked at the severe table on this dais, the black-beamed roof and panelled walls; I thought of the perfect club smoking room, when I tried one of the chairs; and the whole room, as I surveyed its warm, bright emptiness from the doorway suggested a stage scene at the rise of the curtain.
"It's rather jolly, isn't it?" said my host, when I expressed my admiration. "The bedrooms are all in the new part, but, when we're not asleep, we shall feed and work and live here. Personally I never want more than one room and, if this one isn't big enough, I should like to know what is. I'm sorry my wife isn't in, she could shew you round so much better; but she's dining out to-night."
He settled the injured man in comfort on a long sofa and went to a telephone by the piano. While he waited for his call, we were invited to help ourselves from a side-table on the dais, where a generous choice of cake, sandwiches, fruit, cold meat, cheese and drinks of many kinds awaited us. He hoped that we should find something to our taste; people were apt to drop in at all hours, he assured us, so it was as well to have something handy. I poured myself out a brandy and soda and accepted one of his cigars. My young friend took for granted much that is not usually taken for granted, but I tried to harmonise with his mood and succeeded better, I think, than Grayle, who walked slowly about the room, staring at the furniture and pictures, but not committing himself to criticism. My cigar was hardly alight when the flame-coloured silk curtain over the door was drawn aside and a girl came in, looked round at us incuriously and cut herself a slice of cake. As she prepared to eat it, she caught sight of the figure on the sofa and walked quickly up to our host, who murmured something and shook his head. Five minutes later the doctor arrived, and, while he began his examination, I announced that I must go home.
"My wife will be back any minute now," our host pleaded, putting a repeater to his ear. "Are you sure you won't stay?"
"Let us come again in day-light," I said. "I'm really rather tired now. I've been travelling a lot lately."
He bowed with smiling courtesy.
"I won't keep you, but please come whenever you feel inclined to. You just push the door, as I explained——"
"Don't you ever lock it?" asked Grayle, breaking silence for the first time since we had set out from Parliament Square.
The young man's black eyes smiled wonderingly.
"Why should I?" he asked.
"Prevent things being stolen," Grayle answered.
"Nobody's stolen anything yet,—and we've been here a week! But, if anybody did steal, it would probably mean that he wanted it more than we did."
"What's your objection to locking it?" Grayle pursued.
The boy stood with his hands in his pockets, swaying backwards and forwards from heel to toe and smiling mischievously, with his luminous black eyes upon our faces.
"It seems so inhospitable!" he laughed, "and I love symbols."
"But who d'you keep it open for?" I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
"Your friend, the doctor, his patient, that lady who came in a moment ago. You, if you will come again."
"I shall certainly come again," I said, as we shook hands.
Walking along Millbank, Grayle broke into an unexpected laugh.
"I thought I'd met most kinds of lunacy," he remarked. "Fellow said he was in the House, didn't he? I must look him up in the directory to-morrow and see what their name is. 'The Sanctuary.' I suppose that's a symbol, too."