She was not at home. The elderly butler said that Mr. Avon had found it necessary to visit Brussels for a few days, and he had thus been delayed on the Continent beyond the date he had appointed for his return. He would probably be in England by the end of the week—the day was Wednesday.
Harold left the gloom of Bloomsbury behind him, feeling a curious satisfaction at having failed to see Beatrice—the satisfaction of a respite. Some days must elapse before he could make known his resolution to her.
He strolled westward to a club of which he was a member—the Bedouin, and was about to order dinner, when someone came behind him and laid a hand, by no means gently, on his shoulder. Some of the Bedouins thought it de rigueur to play such pranks upon each other; and, to do them justice, it was only rarely that they dislocated a friend’s shoulder or gave a nervous friend a fit. People said one never knew what was coming from the moment they entered the Bedouin Club, and the prominent Bedouins accepted this statement as embodying one of the most agreeable of its many distinctive features.
Harold was always prepared for the worst in this place, so when the force of the blow swung him round and he saw an extremely plain arrangement of features, distorted by a smile of extraordinary breadth, beneath a closely-cropped crown of bright red hair, he merely said, “Hallo, Archie, you here? I thought you were in South Africa lion-hunting or something.”
The smile that had previously distorted the features of the young man, was of such fulness that it might reasonably have been taken for granted that it could not be increased; the possessor showed, however, that that smile was not the result of a supreme effort. So soon as Harold had spoken he gave a wink, and that wink seemed to release the mechanical system by which his features were contorted, for in an instant his face became one mouth. In plain words, this mouth of the young man had swallowed up his other features. All that could be seen of his face was that enormous mouth flanked by a pair of enormous ears, like plantain leaves growing on each side of the crater of a volcano.
Harold looked at him and laughed, then picked up a menu card and studied it until he calculated that the young man whom he had addressed as Archie should have thrown off so much of his smile as would enable him to speak.
He gave him plenty of time, and when he looked round he saw that some of the young man’s features had succeeded in struggling to the surface, as it were, beneath the circular mat of red hair that lay between his ears.
“No South Africa for me, tarty chip,” said Archie. (“Tarty chip” was the popular term of address that year among young men about town. Its philological significance was never discovered.)
“No South Africa for me; I went one better than that,” continued the young man.
“I doubt it,” said Harold. “I’ve had my eye on you until lately. You have usually gone one worse. Have you any money left—tell the truth?”