“Those we just passed?” Dicky looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know the thin chap, but the other fellow is Gus Torr—why, of course—your cousin. Somehow, I never think of you as belonging to that lot—I mean, being related to them. Of course—that was his sister-in-law you were sitting with. Why did you ask if I knew him?”
“Nothing—I was not sure if it was he—I’ve seen him only once,” Christian replied, with an assumption of indifference. “I remember having noticed then how much he looked like his brother.”
“Yes—poor devils!” commented Dicky, as they entered the manager’s room. Apparently it was in his mind to say more, but the place was crowded, and the problem of getting through the throng to the food and drink monopolized his attention.
Some minutes later, while Christian stood in another corridor, waiting for his friend to bring their hats and coats from the mysteriously elusive spot where he had left them, he overheard the mention of his name. Two women’s voices, wholly unknown to him, came from behind an improvised partition of screens near at hand, with great distinctness.
One of them said: “He spells his name ‘Tower,’ you know. I understand the idea is to make people forget who his father was.”
“Good job, too!” replied the other voice.
Christian turned abruptly, and strode off in the direction whither Dicky had disappeared. “After forty years!” he murmured hotly to himself. “After forty years!” and clenched his fists till the nails hurt his palms.
The two young men walked homeward, arm in arm, through silent streets over which the dawn was spreading its tentative first lights. It was colder than they had thought, and the morning air was at once misty and fresh. In Leicester Square the scent of lilacs came to them; beside the pale, undefined bulk of the squat statue they caught the lavender splash of color which was sister to the perfume.
“By Jove, it’s spring!” said Dicky. He pointed out the flowers, and then, still drawing Christian’s arm to turn his attention to the square, recalled to him as they moved that this was the oldtime haunt of foreigners in London. “Dickens’s villain in ‘Little Dorrit,’ you know—the fellow whose mustache went up and his nose went down—I never can remember his name—he lived here. In those days, all that sort of chappies lived here—the adventurers and jailbirds who had made their own countries too hot to hold them.”