“But is there a vacant room?” Michael asked in sudden dread of disappointment.
“Look here, you’d better see the place before you decide on leaving here,” Barnes advised. “It isn’t a cross between Buckingham Palace and the Carlton, you know.”
“I suppose it’s the name that attracts me,” said Michael. “It sounds ferocious.”
“I don’t know about the name, but old Ma Cleghorne who keeps the house is ferocious enough. Never mind.” He jingled the five sovereigns.
“I’ll go up and pack,” said Michael. “By the way, I haven’t told you yet that I was run in last night.”
“In quod you mean?” asked Barnes. “Whatever for?”
“Drunk and disorderly in Leicester Square.”
“These coppers are the limit,” said Barnes emphatically. “The absolute limit. Really. They’ll pinch the Archbishop of Canterbury for looking into Stagg and Mantle’s window before we know where we are.”
Michael left Barnes in the drawing-room, and as he turned in the doorway to see if he was at his ease, he thought the visitor and the macaw on its perch were about equally exotic.
They started immediately after lunch and, as always, the drive along the river inspired Michael with a jolly conception of the adventurousness of London. It was impossible to hear the gurgle of the high spring-tide without exulting in the movement of the stream that was washing out with its flood all the listlessness of the hot August afternoon. When Chelsea Bridge was left behind, the mystery of the banks of a great river sweeping through a great city began to be more evident. The whole character of the Embankment changed at every hundred yards. First there was that somber canal which, flowing under the road straight from the Thames, reappeared between a cañon of gloomy houses and vanished again underground not very unlike the Styx. Then came what was apparently a large private house which had been gutted of the tokens of humanity and filled with monstrous wheels and cylinders and pistons, all moving perpetually and slowly with a curious absence of noise. Under Grosvenor Road Bridge they went, the horse clattering forward and a train crashing overhead. Out again from slimy bricks and girders dripping with the excrement of railway-engines, they came into Grosvenor Road. They passed the first habitations of Pimlico, two or three terraces and isolated houses all different in character. There could scarcely be another road in London so varied as this. Maurice had been wise to have his studio in Grosvenor Road. From the Houses of Parliament to Chelsea Bridge was an epitome of London.