CHAPTER XXII
A VISIT TO BRYANSTON SQUARE
Unwillingly enough, I set out with our guest to consult my Uncle Theodore. Assuredly it was a scheme in which common sense, in the general acceptation of that elusive quality, had no part. Yet, however preposterous the proceeding, it was an act of common humanity to take even an extravagant measure for the relief of such an acute suffering. It was impossible not to pity the unhappy creature. Her eyes were wild and her appearance had been transformed into that of a hunted animal.
On the way up to town we were fortunate enough to secure a carriage to ourselves. Throughout the journey my companion hardly addressed a word to me, but she continued to betray many tokens of mental anguish. The train was punctual, and by a few minutes after four o'clock we were in Bryanston Square.
It is only once in a lustrum that I visit my Uncle Theodore. He is rich, a bachelor, and in the family is regarded as an incorrigible crank. The champion of lost causes, a poet, a radical, a practitioner of the occult, a scorner of convention, and a robust hater of many things, including all that relates to the merely expedient, the utilitarian and the material, he is looked upon as a dangerous heretic who might be more esteemed if he belonged to a less eminently responsible clan.
Howbeit, I confess that I never visit my Uncle Theodore without feeling constrained to pay a kind of involuntary homage to his personality. He has a way with him; there is a something about him which is the absolute negation of the commonplace. He is tall and extraordinarily frail, with a picturesque mop of orange-coloured hair, and a pair of large round eyes of remarkable luminosity, which seem like twin moons of liquid light.
It was our good fortune to find this bravo at home and in receipt of my telegram. I left my companion in another room while I went forth and bearded the lion in his den. Dressed in a velvet jacket, a red tie and a pair of beaded Oriental slippers he was in the act of composition, and was writing very slowly with a feathered quill upon a sheet of unruled foolscap.
"I am writing a letter to the time-serving rag that disgraces us," he said with a kind of languid vehemence, "and the time-serving rag won't print it, but I shall keep a copy and publish it in a pamphlet at the price of three-pence."
"Then put me down for four copies," said I. "You know I always regard you as one of the few living masters of the King's English."
"The King's English! The King, my boy, has no English. He has less English than the average self-respecting costermonger."