He had given Richard a hot, limp hand, on which the veins formed soft ridges in the smooth, brittle skin. His grey hair was disarranged, and he wore a dirty, torn dressing-gown. His face had lost its customary alert expression; but his sunk, shining eyes glanced with mysterious restlessness first at Richard, then at Adeline, who, uttering no further word, covered him well and put the hassock under his feet.
"Well, well, well!" he sighed and closed his eyes wearily. The other two sat silent for a time; then Adeline, talking very quietly, and with a composure not quite unaffected, took up their interrupted conversation. Richard gathered that her justifiable vexation would remain in abeyance till he had gone. Soon her tone grew more natural; she leaned forward with hands clasped round one knee, and Richard felt like a receiver of confidences as she roughly outlined her life in the country which had come to an end only two years ago. Were all the girls so simply communicative, he wondered; it pleased him to decide that they were not, and that to any other but himself she would have been more reserved; that there was, in fact, an affinity between them. But the presence of her uncle, which Adeline seemed able to ignore utterly, hindered Richard from being himself.
"How do you like London, after living so long in the country?" he asked inevitably.
"I know practically nothing of London, real London," she said; "but I think these suburbs are horrid,—far duller than the dullest village. And the people! They seem so uninteresting, to have no character!"
The hoarse, fatigued voice of Mr. Aked crept in between them. "Child!" he said—and he used the appellation, not with the proper dignity of age, but rather like an omniscient schoolboy, home for the holiday, addressing a sister—"Child!"—his eyes were still closed,—"the suburbs, even Walham Green and Fulham, are full of interest, for those who can see it. Walk along this very street on such a Sunday afternoon as to-day. The roofs form two horrible, converging straight lines I know, but beneath there is character, individuality, enough to make the greatest book ever written. Note the varying indications supplied by bad furniture seen through curtained windows, like ours" (he grinned, opened his eyes, and sat up); "listen to the melodies issuing lamely from ill-tuned pianos; examine the enervated figures of women reclining amidst flower-pots on narrow balconies. Even in the thin smoke ascending unwillingly from invisible chimney-pots, the flutter of a blind, the bang of a door, the winking of a fox terrier perched on a window-sill, the colour of paint, the lettering of a name,—in all these things there is character and matter of interest,—truth waiting to be expounded. How many houses are there in Carteret Street? Say eighty. Eighty theatres of love, hate, greed, tyranny, endeavour; eighty separate dramas always unfolding, intertwining, ending, beginning,—and every drama a tragedy. No comedies, and especially no farces! Why, child, there is more character within a hundred yards of this chair than a hundred Balzacs could analyse in a hundred years."
All the old vivacity had returned to his face; he had been rhetorical on a favourite subject, and he was frankly pleased with himself.
"You will tire yourself, uncle," said Adeline. "Shall we have tea?"
Richard observed with astonishment that she was cold and unmoved. Surely she could not be blind to the fact that Mr. Aked was a very remarkable man with very remarkable ideas! Why, by the way, had those ideas never presented themselves to him? He would write an article on the character of Raphael Street. Unwillingly he announced that he must go; to remain longer would be to invite himself to tea.
"Sit still, Larch. You'll have a cup of tea."
Adeline left the room; and when she had gone, Mr. Aked, throwing a glance after her, said,—