The clerk, being unable to shut up, got out at once. Then the manager turned to me.
“Extraordinary!” he said seriously. “Most extraordinary. And yet you don’t look as if you’d been drinking.”
Then I got up. “My proposal seems to you very silly,” I said. “And, because I was nervous, I put it all very badly. But I do not think that justifies you in behaving like a cad.”
He gave a jump in his chair. Being a person in authority, he did not get a chance to hear the plain truth about himself often.
“Nor do I,” he said reflectively. “I beg your pardon. Still, the thing was so outrageous; you must see, my dear young lady, that we could not dream for one moment——”
“Thanks,” I said. “I won’t trouble you any further.”
If I had stuck to that man and given him one or two of my ideas in advance, reserving the question of terms, I am not sure that I might not have done something. He would have liked to compensate for his rudeness, if he could have done it. But, being proud and angry and an idiot, I walked out. My one idea was to get out of the awful place.
I tried two or three other shops, and began at the right end, but did very little better. One man listened to three of my ideas for Christmas novelties, very politely regretted that he could not avail himself of them, and showed me out. He used two of those ideas subsequently and made money with them, and I hope it may choke him. Another man listened to a still longer list and, while disclaiming any legal liability, offered me five shillings for my trouble.
So, as things were going rather badly, I was particularly glad of the windfall which came to me in connection with the man behind the door. It was one of those queer things that cannot happen except in big cities. It is part of the fascination of London that every moment of the day and night something more wicked and more strange is happening than one could ever invent.
I had been into the North End Road to do a little shopping. I had got six eggs and a pound of tomatoes and a new tooth-brush and some other luxuries, and my hands were full. I managed to get my door open with the latch-key, but in trying to get it out again I nearly dropped those eggs. So I went through into my little sitting-room, put my parcels down carefully, and was just going back to shut the outer door and get my key, when I distinctly heard the door shut. It did not shut with a bang, as if it had been blown to; it was shut very gently and carefully, as if the object had been to avoid noise. So I was just about as frightened as a school girl in a barrel of live mice. But I went out into the passage all the same.