Harvey Mayhew—Harvey Mayhew with a pen-stroke through the title which, so short a time since, it had been his chief ambition to display on his cards! No wonder it embarrassed him now. But where on earth had he been all this time? As Campton pondered on the card a memory flashed out. Mayhew? Mayhew? Why, wasn’t it Mayhew who had waylaid him in the Crillon a few hours before war was declared, to ask his advice about the safest way of travelling to the Hague? And hadn’t he, Campton, in all good faith, counselled him to go by Luxembourg “in order to be out of the way of trouble”?
The remembrance swept away the painter’s sombre thoughts, and he burst into a laugh that woke the echoes of the studio.
XII
Not having it in his power to call up his cousin on the telephone, Campton went the next morning to the Nouveau Luxe.
It was the first time that he had entered the famous hotel since the beginning of the war; and at sight of the long hall his heart sank as it used to whenever some untoward necessity forced him to run its deadly blockade.
But the hall was empty when he entered, empty not only of the brilliant beings who filled his soul with such dismay, but also of the porters, footmen and lift-boys who, even in its unfrequented hours, lent it the lustre of their liveries.
A tired concierge sat at the desk, and near the door a boy scout, coiling his bare legs about a high stool, raised his head languidly from his book. But for these two, the world of the Nouveau Luxe had disappeared.
As the lift was not running there was nothing to disturb their meditations; and when Campton had learned that Mr. Mayhew would receive him he started alone up the deserted stairs.
Only a few dusty trunks remained in the corridors where luggage used to be piled as high as in the passages of the great liners on sailing-day; and instead of the murmur of ladies’-maids’ skirts, and explosions of laughter behind glazed service-doors, the swish of a charwoman’s mop alone broke the silence.
“After all,” Campton thought, “if war didn’t kill people how much pleasanter it might make the world!”