He had, behind his unhappy experiences, the resolved certainty that he was marked apart by destiny for some extraordinary future: his very misfortunes seemed to prove this. He had bought for himself a second-hand copy of that romance to which I have made earlier allusion. It exercised, at this time, an extraordinary influence upon him, and in the hero’s fight against an overwhelming fate he saw his own history, even when the circumstance was as trivial as his search for a stud under the washing-stand. So young was he, so crude, so sentimental, impulsive, suspicious, self-confident, and lacking in self-confidence, loyal, ambitious, modest and conceited that it was not strange that Philip did not understand him.
On the evening of his dinner with Philip he dressed with the utmost care. There were three dress-shirts in his drawer, and it was, of course, fate that decided that there should be something the matter with all of them—one of them had been worn once already, one was frayed at the cuffs, one had a cracked and gaping stud hole. He pared the frayed cuffs with his scissors, and hoped for the best. He then produced the only valuable article in his possession, a pearl stud given to him by his Uncle Bob on his last birthday. He was greatly afraid of this stud, because the head of it screwed into the body of it, and he was never sure whether he had screwed it sufficiently. Suppose it were to leap into the soup! Suppose it were to fall off and he not see it and lose it! Such catastrophes were only too probable where he was concerned. He screwed it in so vigorously to-night that he made a grey mark round the stud-hole. He dabbed this with a sponge, and the grey mark was greyer. His father had told him that he must never wear a “made-up” evening tie, but he had not told him how to tie one that was not made-up, and Henry had been too timid to enquire. To-night, by a sudden twist of genius, he produced something that really seemed satisfactory; one end was longer than the other, but his father approved of a little disorder—when the tie was too neat it was almost “made-up”. Henry’s dress-clothes, lying there upon the bed, seemed a little faded. The trousers glistered in the electric light, and the tails of the coat were sadly crumpled. But when they were on his body Henry gazed at them with pleasure. One trouser leg seemed oddly longer than the other, and his shirt cuff had disappeared altogether, but the grey mark round the stud was scarcely visible, and his collar was beautifully clean.
His face was red and shining, his hair was plastered down with water; it was a pity that there were three red pimples on his forehead, but there had been four yesterday. His ears, too, were dreadfully red, but that was from excitement.
He had an opera hat and a black greatcoat with a velvet collar, so that he felt very smart indeed as he slipped out of the house. He was glad that he had escaped the family, although he fancied that Aunt Aggie watched him from the top of the stairs. He would have liked to have seen Katherine for a moment, and had he spoken his heart out, he would have assured her that, for her sake, he would do his best to love Philip. It was for her sake, after all, that he had dressed so carefully, for her sake that he wanted to be a fine figure in the world. If he had seen her, all that he would have said would have been: “So long, Katherine. Dining with Philip, you know. See you in the morning....”
He rode on an omnibus from Whitehall to Piccadilly Circus, and walked then to Jules’. The clocks were striking half-past seven, the appointed hour, as he entered. A stout man like an emperor insisted on disrobing him of his greatcoat, and he felt suddenly naked. He peeped into the room, which was very empty, and all the waiters, like figures in Mme. Tussaud’s, stared at him together. He was sure that his tie had mounted above his collar; he put up his hand, found that this was so, and thought that the emperor was laughing at him. He bent down to tie his shoe, and then, just as a large party entered the restaurant, there was a little pop, and the head of his pearl stud was gone. He was on his knees in a second.
“Beg pardon, sir,” said the Emperor. “Allow me.”
“No,” said Henry, whose face was purple, whose heart was beating like a hammer, and through whose chasm in his shirt a little wind was blowing against his vest.
“It’s my stud. I can—I beg your—Oh, there—No, it isn’t—”
He was conscious of towering forms above him, of a lady’s black silk stockings, of someone saying: “Why, dammit”; of a sudden vision of the pearl and a large masculine boot thundering towards it.