Hal took a cab and they began to grope their way toward his father's town house. Even in his thought he didn't call it home. Oh for the land of sunshine, he thought, where one can look into the infinite sky, and beyond and beyond and still beyond. Here he felt as if he were knocking his head against it. One didn't breathe; one swallowed the air in chunks and gulps. They almost rode down a procession of the unemployed, an army with banners, but an army with none of the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. Hal shrank back in his cab and shivered in his great-coat. Their banners were dirty, but it was evident that each soldier of despair had made some little effort with bad success to make as decent an appearance in the public eye as possible. They were a sad lot with their gaunt faces and soiled and tattered clothes. They were of all ages and states of desperation, from the young mechanic with youth and health still left, to the wretch who had been submerged, who couldn't work if it were given him to do, fit only to fertilize the soil. Hal's cabman lost his way for a moment and they got into Hyde Park. One of its orators was about to dismiss his small audience because he could scarcely see or be seen by them as they huddled close to him and to each other, and the speaker complained that the fog got into his throat and wellnigh choked him. Hal called to his driver to stop and they drew up to the curb. Hal was not unfamiliar with the Hyde Park meetings and their speakers, but never in his life before had he stopped to listen. It was an admirable safety-valve where cranks could talk to cranks. That they had or could have any message to him or for the world had never entered his mind. The unemployed had impressed him painfully. They were wandering hopelessly up and down crying in unison: "Work, work! We want work." This dull cry and their faces peering at him out of clammy shadows and yellow smears had got on his nerves. He was curious to hear what the orator of such people had to say on such a day.

"One moment and I'll close. You think I'm a layin' of it on, that I'm a makin' it up, but I 'old in my 'and a report of Lord George 'amilton, Royal Commissioner, on the condition of the English poor, and these is 'is words, not mine, 'is, moind ye.

"The conditions of life in London and other large cities 'ave produced a degenerate race, morally and physically enfeebled."

Hal drove on. When he reached his father's house there was a new servant at the door and he had to explain who he was. This was the glorious civilization he was coming back to. This was its welcome to him! Oh, John McCloud! Is this your Christian civilization?

CHAPTER XVIII

The Earl of Kerhill's town house was plain and formal on the outside. Within, it was beautiful, but cold and stately. Even the arrangement of its contents was apparently fixed and unalterable. At any rate no one could remember when any one had had the courage to meddle with its established order. Hal remembered that he had early gained the impression that it was not a place for little boys to live in. Thou-shalt and Thou-shalt-not seemed to divide the house between them. And now amid its Boulle and Tudor tables, its Venetian carved chairs, its Chippendales, its tapestries and portraits of knights and ladies, its plate and glass, its marbles and carvings, Hal felt more of an anachronism than ever. Cold and stately and solemn! It was as if it felt superior to its tenants. "Look back," it seemed to say to any one inclined to be familiar with it; "look back and tell me where are the brave and beautiful and gallant lords and ladies who once danced here and feasted here, loved, and made merry here? Gone and forgotten! The present lord, he, too, will soon be with the others. I was before them and I will be after them. I am a house with an individuality. People come and people go, but I remain. Cold, stately, and solemn!" The library was the most livable room and even the library was stately. Perhaps there were people so lost to the eternal fitness of things, so empty and shallow that they might be flippant in it, but it required an effort, and even shallow people were not allowed to forget that Grinling Gibbons had done the carvings about the noble fire-place.

The house seemed to have forgotten Gibbons and to arrogate the carvings to itself. It was a proud house. The library at least looked inhabited. Perhaps the books gave it the human touch that linked up the past and the present and brought people and things into relations, distant relations no doubt, but still relations. It is not surprising that Nat-u-ritch's son had never liked the Earl's town house.

Lady Winifred was writing at a heavy oak table elaborately carved, the light from a jewelled lamp falling over her high-bred face and her abundant hair which had great snow patches lying gently on it. She needed that softening touch of white, for there was a mocking light in her eyes and a cynical play of the lips. Andrews had placed the coffee service and the liqueurs on a small table before a high-backed Charles II chair on the other side of the room.

"Andrews, ask the gentlemen to take their coffee here with me."

"Yes, my lady."