"However, I can't sit here depressing myself all day; besides, this bench is damp. What fools those sparrows are to stay chirping in that tree when they might be hopping about in Hampshire—out of reach of Harold's air-gun of course—and what a fool I am! But it's no use for me to go home and work at Joan of Arc. The English archers will only be shooting broad arrows all the time. I'll walk slowly to the Garrick, I think, and have an early lunch."
Perversely enough the club did not seem to contain one sympathetic acquaintance, let alone a friend, that Sunday; and after lunch John was reduced to looking at the portraits of famous dead players, who bored him nearly as much as one or two of the live ones who were lounging in the smoking-room.
"This is getting unendurable," he moaned, and there seemed nothing for it but to sally forth and walk the hollow-sounding city. From Long Acre he turned into St. Martin's Lane, shook off the temptation to bore himself still more hopelessly by a visit to the National Gallery, and reached Cockspur Street. Three or four Sabbath loiterers were staring at a window, and John saw that it was the office of the Cunard Line and that the attraction was a model of the S.S. Murmania.
"What a fool I am!" John murmured much more emphatically than in Staple Inn. He was just going to call a taxi to drive him to Chelsea, when he experienced from yesterday a revulsion against taxis. Yesterday had been a nightmare of taxis, between driving to the Zoo and driving to the police station and driving home after that interview with the forger—by this time John had discarded Hugh as a relation—not to mention Mrs. Worfolk in a taxi, and the children in a taxi, and their luggage buzzing backward and forward between Earl's Court and Hampstead in a taxi. No, he should walk to Chelsea: a brisk walk with an objective would do him good. 83 Camera Square. It was indeed rather a tribute to his memory, he flattered himself, that he could remember her address without referring to her card. He should walk along the Embankment; it was only half-past two now.
It was pleasant walking by the river on that fine afternoon, and John felt as he strode along Grosvenor Road, his spirit rising with the eager tide, that after all there was nothing like the sea, nothing!
"As soon as I've finished Joan of Arc, I shall take a sea-voyage. It's all very well for George to talk about sea-voyages, but let him do some work first. Even if I do send him for a sea-voyage, how will he spend his time? I know perfectly well. He'll feel seasick for the first week and play poker for the rest of the passage. No, no, after the Christmas holidays at Ambles he'll be as right as a trivet without a sea-voyage. What is a trivet by the way? Now if I had a secretary, I should make a note of a query like that. As it is, I shall probably never know what a trivet is; but if I had a secretary, I should ask her to look it up in the dictionary when we got home. I dare say I've lost thousands of ideas by not having a secretary at hand. I shall have to advertise—or find out in some way about a secretary. Thank heaven, neither Hilda nor Beatrice nor Eleanor nor Edith knows shorthand. But even if Edith did know shorthand, she'd be eternally occupied with the dactylography—as I suppose he'd call it—of Laurence's apostolic successes—there's another note I might make. Of course, it's nothing wonderful as a piece of wit, but I might get an epigram worth keeping, say three times a week, if I had a secretary at my elbow. I don't believe that Stephen will make any difficulties about Hugh. Oh no, I don't think so. I was tired this morning after yesterday. This walk is making me see events in their right proportion. Rosification indeed! James brings out these things as if he were a second Sydney Smith; but in my opinion wit without humor is like marmalade without butter. And even if I do rosify things, well, what is it that Lady Teazle says? I wish it were spring all the year round and that roses grew under our feet. And it takes something to rosify such moral anemia as Hugh's. By the way I wonder just exactly whereabouts in Chelsea Camera Square is."
Now if there was one thing that John hated, if there was one thing that dragged even his buoyant spirits into the dust, if there was one thing worse than having a forger for a blood-relation, it was to be compelled to ask his way anywhere in London within the four miles radius. He would not even now admit to himself more than that he did not know the exact whereabouts of Camera Square. Although he really had not the remotest idea beyond its location in the extensive borough of Chelsea where Camera Square was, he wasted half-an-hour in dancing a kind of Ladies' Chain with all the side-streets off King's Road and never catching a glimpse of his destination. It was at last borne in upon him that if he wanted to call on Mrs. Hamilton at a respectable hour for afternoon tea he should simply have to ask his way.
Now arose for John the problem of choosing the oracle. He walked on and on, half making up his mind every moment to accost somebody and when he was on the point of doing so perceiving in his expression a latent haughtiness that held him back until it was too late. Had it not been Sunday, he would have entered a shop and bought sufficiently expensive to bribe the shopman from looking astonished at his ignorance. Presently, however, he passed a tobacconist's, and having bought three of the best cigars he had, which were not very good, he asked casually as he was going out the direction of Camera Square. The shopman did not know. He came to another tobacconist's, bought three more cigars, and that shopman did not know either. Gradually with a sharp sense of impending disgrace John realized that he must ask a policeman. He turned aside from the many inviting policemen in the main road, where the contemptuous glances of wayfarers might presume his rusticity, and tried to find a policeman in a secluded by-street. This took another half-an-hour, and when John did accost this ponderous hermit of the force he accosted him in broken English.
"Ees thees ze vay to Cahmehra Squah?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders in what he conceived to be the gesture of a Frenchman who had landed that morning from Calais.
"Eh?"