The day was fixed (her birthday), the dinner ordered and arranged, a man hired for the evening to do the waiting. Without a word being said, it was assumed that there should be the ceremony due to the necklace and the French (style) gown.
As he considered all these preparations, Old Mole thought amusedly that they were not at all for Miss Dufresne and Robert (who had been invited), but rather a homage paid to their possessions, and, searching within himself for the causes of the comfort and satisfaction he felt, he found that this dinner was the first action which had brought them into harmony with the London atmosphere. Ethically there was nothing to be said for such a pretence at hospitality; but as submission to the æsthetic pressure of their surroundings, as expedience, it was quite wonderfully right. It was the thin end of the wedge, the first turn of the gimlet in the boring of the bunghole of the fat barrel of London existence; and, if it were their fate to become Londoners, they were setting about it with sufficient adroitness. He was only afraid that Miss Dufresne would lead him back into the atmosphere of the theater from which he was so relieved to have escaped. The theater that he had known was only an excrescence on English life, a whelk or a wen on its reputable bald head. He had perched on it like a fly, but his concern, his absorbing concern, was to get at the brains inside that head and the thoughts inside the brain.
On the morning of the day fixed for the dinner Robert wired that he could not come, and Old Mole was left with the awful prospect of tackling Miss Dufresne alone. His recollection of her was of a most admirably typical minx with an appetite for admiration and flattery that had consumed all her other desires.
“Lord save us!” he said. “I was baffled by that type as a young man; what on earth can I do with it in my fifties?”
And in his heart he was fearful of spoiling Matilda’s pleasure. This dread so oppressed him that, finding her flurried and irritable with the work of preparation, he decided to absent himself, to lunch at Robert’s club, of which he had just been elected a member, and to soothe himself with a walk through Whitehall and the parks in the afternoon.
As he walked—it was a fine spring day with the most beautiful changing lights and a sweet breeze—he congratulated himself on the wisdom of having come to London. Marriage might be difficult—there was no warrant, Scriptural or other, for expecting it to be easy—but at least in London there was interest. There was not the unrelieved sordidness of other English cities. There was a tradition, some attempt to maintain it, graciousness, a kind of dignity—it might be the dignity of a roast sirloin of beef, but dignity it certainly was—here and there traces of manners, and leisure not altogether swamped by luxury. Coming from Thrigsby was like leaving the racket of the factory for the elegant shop in which the finished articles were sold. He liked that simile, and there he left his speculations concerning London. He was not at his ease in this kind of thinking; a thought was only valuable to him when it was successfully married to an emotion to produce an image. For London he could find no image, and when he thought of England he was taken back to his most vivid emotion, that when in the caravan with Copas they had breasted the hill and come in view of the Pennine Range: but this was a mere emotion mated with no thought. As for the Empire, it simply had no significance. It was a misnomer, or rather, a name given to an illusion, or, at best, a generalization. It was certainly not an entity, but only the impossible probability of a universally accepted fiction. He could not accept it, nor could he accept the loose terminology of the politicians. For this reason he could never now read the newspapers except for the cricket and football news in which his interest was maintained by habit.
Less and less was he interested in things and ideas that were not immediately human, and therefore fluid and varying in form and color as clouds and trees in the wind and birds in the air—and human beings on the earth. Rigid theory and fixed conceptions actually hurt him; they were detached, dead, like windfall fruit rotting on the ground, and everywhere, in books, in the newspapers, in public speeches, he saw them gathered up and stored, because it was too much trouble to take the ripe fruit from the tree, or to wait for the hanging fruit to ripen, or because (he thought) men walk with their eyes to the ground, even as he had done, and see nothing of the beauty above and around them. And, thinking so, he would feel an impulse to arise and shout and waken men, but then, regretfully, he would admit that he was too old to surrender to this impulse, and would think too much before he spoke, and would end by prating like Gladstone or roaring like Tom Paine.
It seemed to him that the character of London was changed or changing. He delighted especially in the young men and women, who walked with a new swagger, almost with freedom, and adorned themselves with gay, bold colors. The young women especially were limber in their movements, marvelously adroit in dodging their hampering garments. Their bodies were freer. They had not the tight, trussed appearance of the young women of his own day and generation. He delighted especially in the young women of London. They gave him hopefulness.
He was pleased to see that the young men delighted in them, also. They walked with their arms in the arms of the young women in a fine, warm comradeship, whereas, in his day, and not so long ago neither, the girls had placed a timid little hand in the arms of their swains and been towed along in a sort of condescension. It pleased him to see the young men frankly, and in spite of themselves and their dignity and breeding, give the proper involuntary salute to passing youth and beauty. . . . As he sat in St. James’s Park a deliciously pretty girl passed by him, and she repeated nothing of the full homage he paid her, but then came a tall young man, sober and stiff, in silk hat and tail coat. They passed, the young man and the young woman: a lifting of the shoulders in the young man, a tilt of the head in the young woman, a half-smile of pleasure, and they went their ways. The young man approached Old Mole. He gave a little start and up went his hand in the old school salute. Old Mole rose to his feet.
“My dear fellow. . . .”