But so wide was the gulf between their points of view that mere argument could not hope to bridge it. If she was in grim earnest, so was he; moreover she had entered into a compact he was determined she should fulfill. Before consenting to release her she would have to show very good cause at any rate.
Suddenly, in the give-and-take of conflict, Laxton came into her mind. The memory of Beaconsfield Villas, the whimsical creatures of another orbit, and the childhood which now seemed ages away, fired her with a new idea. She would take him to see the humble people among whom she had been brought up.
CHAPTER V
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
I
The flight of time had affected Beaconsfield Villas surprisingly little. Laxton itself had deferred to Anno Domini in many subtle ways; it had its electric trams and motor-buses, and the suburb had doubled in size, but no epoch-making changes were visible in the front sitting-room of Number Five. In that homely interior the cosmic march and profluence was simply revealed by a gramophone, the gift of Mary, on the top of the sewing machine in the corner, and by the accession to the walls of lithograph portraits of the son and grandson of the august lady who still held pride of place over the chimney-piece.
The afternoon was stifling even for South London in the middle of June. And Joseph Kelly, who had attained the rank of sergeant in the Metropolitan Police Force, not having to go on duty until six o’clock that evening, was seated coatless and solemn, spectacles on nose, smoking a well-colored clay and reading the Daily Mail. At the level of his eyes, in portentous type was, “Laxton Bye-Election. A Sharp Contest. New Home Secretary’s Chances.” Joe was a shade stouter than of yore, his face was even redder, a thinning thatch had turned gray, but in all essentials the man himself was still the genial cockney of one-and-twenty years ago.
The outer door of the sitting-room, which was next the street, was wide open to invite the air. But ever and again there rose such a fierce medley of noises from a mysterious cause a little distance off, that at last Joe got up from his chair, and waddling across the room in a pair of worn list slippers, banged the door against the sounds from the street which had the power to annoy him considerably.
Hardly had Joe shuffled back to his chair and his newspaper when the door was flung open again and an excited urchin thrust a tousled head into the room.
“‘Vote for Maclean an’ a free breakfast-table’!”
The law in the person of Sergeant Kelly rose from its chair majestically.