CHAPTER IV
Dick Danford was as good as his word. After an hour’s stroll through London, Lord Somerville came to the conclusion that, for the present, his eyes were no more to him than a tail would have been. The old world of before the storm seemed to have vanished in a bottomless pit, and what he viewed instead was as prodigious as what he had hoped to see on his travels across Acheron. He noticed that tricks and mannerisms were as yet clinging to both sexes: women still grasped their invisible dresses as if they had been bunches of keys, twisted about their fingers absent chains round their necks; men tried to put their hands in vanished pockets, and held imaginary umbrellas in front of them (the latter Danford declared were clergymen), and their necks, stiffened by the long use of high collars, gave them the appearance of turkeys. But as to knowing anyone in this Babel of faces, that was quite out of the question; and Lionel went from one ejaculation to another as Dick enumerated the different notabilities of Society, the theatrical world and financial booths. It was like a transformation scene at Drury Lane. The world was not what he had altogether taken it to be, and if he found himself to have been even more swindled than he had believed, still, there were surprises for which he had not been prepared and which were worth living for: the beautiful women were not all as beautiful as he had thought them, but the plain ones had a great many points that commended them to a connoisseur. As to the men whom he had feared as rivals in the arena of good fortunes, they made him smile as he gave an admiring glance at his spinal curve reflected in a shop mirror. The little artist’s conversation was a succession of fireworks; never on the boards had he been more entertaining than this afternoon, acting the part of a humorous Mephistopheles to this masher Faust. He informed Lord Somerville that after he had left him in the morning he had done some good work for the public welfare, and had come to a final arrangement with the Commissioner of Police.
“What for, Danford?” had inquired Lionel.
“Well, I do not know whether it struck you as it did me at your first exit, my lord, but the very first observation that impressed itself on me was the difficulty women had in distinguishing a policeman from an ordinary civilian. I watched many in distress, who gave an appealing look all round for the kindly help of a bobby. It was hard to tell whether that man on the left with a dogged expression and thin legs was the policeman, or whether it was this other on the right, with limbs like marble columns and a puny face. Such dilemmas puzzled the public all through the day, and decided the Committee of Music Hall artists to take the matter in hand and confer with the heads of the Police.”
“Have you come to some understanding, Dick?”
“The thing is settled. Scotland Yard is to be turned into a public gymnasium, and a staff of picked policemen are to instruct the citizens in the art of being their own policemen.”
“How very expeditious you are in your profession. Had this been in the hands of Parliament, we should never have heard anything about it, however pressing the need might have been.”
“Then, another feature of our School of Observation will be special prizes to be awarded to husbands who will recognise their wives, or vice versa, when out of their homes. I think that will take in Society, for I have noticed that the nearer the relationship the more difficult it was to know one another.”
“You are very neat in your remarks, Danford,” said Lionel.
“You see, my lord, every judgment I arrive at is the result of keen observation. I heard once, during our ten days of seclusion, the most awful row in the house next to mine; it belongs to the Longfords—you know, the Longfords who took the Regalia Theatre for a season. Well, their housemaid reported to my landlady what the row was about, and she told me the next morning through the keyhole what had been the matter. The fact was this: Mrs Longford had entered her husband’s room and had had the greatest difficulty in persuading him she was his lawful wife. If such a scene could occur between a couple of twenty years’ standing, in their own house, how much more difficult it would be to recognise your wife in the crowd.”