CHAPTER XI
A SIDE-LIGHT UPON APPEARANCES
He watched the last sway of her skirt, the last toss of her head, as she ran down the hill of the Broad Walk, then, repeating mechanically to himself:
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water,
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after,
and, wondering what it all meant, wondering if, after all, those nursery rhymes were really charged with subtle meaning, he made his way to Victoria Gate in the Park Railings.
In the high road, he saw a man he knew, a member of his club, top-hatted and befrocked. The silk hat gleamed in the sunlight. It looked just like a silk hat you would draw, catching the light in two brilliant lines from crown to brim. The frock coat was caught with one button at the waist. Immaculate is the word. John hesitated. They were friends, casual friends, but he hesitated. There might be two opinions about the soft felt hat he was wearing. He found it comfortable; but one gets biased in one's opinions about one's hats. Even the fact that the evening before he had driven with this friend in a hansom for which he had paid as the friend had no money on him at the time--even this did not give him courage. He decided to keep to his, the Park side of the Bayswater Road.
But presently the friend saw him, lifted his stick, and shook it amicably in greeting. He even crossed the road. Well, after all, he could scarcely do anything else. John had paid for his hansom only the evening before. He remembered vividly how, on the suggestion that they should drive, his friend had dived his hand into his pocket, shaken his bunch of keys and said, with obvious embarrassment, that he had run rather short of change. It always is change that one runs short of. Capital is never wanting. There is always a balance at the poor man's bank, and the greater his pride the bigger the balance. But at that moment, John had been rich in change--that is to say, he had half a crown.
"Oh--I've got heaps," he had said. It is permissible to talk of heaps when you have enough. And he had paid for the whole journey. It was not to be wondered at then, that his friend came amicably across the road.
John greeted him lightly.
"Going up to town?"