All the tables had one occupant or another. He was forced to seat himself at the same table with some man and a girl, who were already half through their meal. He did so with apologies, quite aware of the annoyance he was causing. But he was not sensitive. He had the right to a seat at the table. The rules of the restaurant offered no restrictions. With it all, he was British.
"Hope you'll excuse my intrusion," he said shortly.
The man, a clerk, with slavery written legibly across his face, offered some mumbled acceptance of the inevitable. Traill himself would not have borne with any such intrusion. He would have called the manager—insisted upon having the table to himself; but he intruded his presence with only a momentary consciousness of being in the way.
His manner with waiters was peremptory. He gave them the recognition of the position which they occupied, but beyond that, scarcely looked upon them as human.
"Look here," he began, "I want so and so—" he named a dish that was unknown to the companion of the young clerk. She felt a certain respect of him for that. Her friend had ordered the most ordinary of food and had tried to do it in a lordly manner. There was no lordliness about Traill. He wasted no time with a waiter; he had never met a German waiter who was worth it. All this gave the impression of brusqueness. The girl liked it. She looked at her friend and wished she was dining with Traill. But Traill took no notice of her. Except an occasional glance, he ignored them both. As soon as he could, he ordered an evening paper and sat concealed behind it—truly British in every outline. The music in the place was good, but no music appealed to him. It came as a confused wreckage of sounds to his ears as he read through the news of the evening; and when the girl rattled her spoon on the coffee cup and the young man clapped his hands vigorously at the conclusion of a selection, he looked over the top of his paper with annoyance. What music had ever penetrated his understanding of the art, had come in the form of chants of psalms and old hymn tunes, which a constant attendance at church in his youth had dinned into him—the driving of soft iron nails into the stern oak. He sang these laboriously with numberless crescendos as he dressed in the mornings.
He finished dinner as quickly as he could. The young people opposite him were insufferably dull. Apparently they had never met each other before and were at a loss to make conversation to suit the occasion. Accordingly, they listened intently to the string band while the young man smoked a long cigar, and in the natural course of things, they applauded after each piece to show that they had heard it. Traill bolted his meal, glad to leave them.
He came out of the restaurant and thanked God—filling his lungs with it—for the clean air. Then he stood on the pavement contemplating the next move. Should he go back to his rooms, read—smoke—fall asleep? Should he turn into a music-hall? When you live alone, the greatest issues of life sometimes resolve themselves into such questions as these.
Finally, scarcely conscious of arriving at any definite decision, he walked slowly back across the Circus in the direction of Lower Regent Street.
Over by the Criterion he heard the sound of footsteps behind him, hurrying; then his Christian name in a woman's voice. He turned.
"I was up nearly at the Prince of Wales's," she said out of breath, "when I saw you crossing the Circus. My—I ran!"