The chances were that Bill Hollis would be spared this evening an encounter with his father-in-law and former master. But why he should decide so suddenly to take the risk was hard to say, unless it was the half fantastic reaction of an exceedingly impressionable mind to a crisis almost without a precedent in human experience. By nature a sociable fellow, he had now an intense desire to exchange ideas with responsible, knowledgeable people, with those possessing more light than himself. The Duke of Wellington was the headquarters of such in that part of the city; it was the haunt of the quidnuncs and the well informed; and it may have been for that reason that Bill dived suddenly through the swing doors, an act he had not performed for sixteen years, and crossed the dark, cool passage with its highly spiced but not unattractive odors.
It may have been the magnitude of the situation in Europe which had suddenly rendered all private matters ridiculous, or it may have been the talisman under his arm which inspired him with an unwonted hardihood, but instead of turning into the taproom, the first on the left, which would have satisfied the claims of honor and wisdom, he pushed boldly on past the glass-surrounded cubicle of the celebrated but haughty Miss Searson, into the Mecca of the just and the good, sublimely guarded by that peri.
In a kind of dull excitement he entered the famous Bar Parlor. To his surprise, and rather perversely, to his relief, it was empty, except that, behind a counter in a strategical angle that commanded the room as well as the passage, Miss Searson was overwhelmingly present, but absorbed apparently at that moment in crocheting a two-inch lace border to an article of female attire sacred to the pages of the realists.
Nothing seemed to have altered in sixteen years, even to the fly-blown advertisement of Muirhead’s Pale Brandy facing the door, and surrounding Miss Searson the double row of brass taps, it had once been a part of his duties to keep clean. And that lady herself, sixteen years had altered her surprisingly little, if at all. She was what is known technically as a chemical blonde, a high-bosomed, high-voiced, large-featured, large-earringed lady, with remarkable teeth and an aloofness of manner which might almost be said to enforce respect at the point of the bayonet.
When Miss Searson looked up from her crochet she could hardly believe her eyes. William Hollis, in his former incarnation, had been known to her as Bill the Barman, and she in that distant epoch had been known to him as a Stuck-Up Piece. Unofficially of course. Outwardly everybody paid deference to Miss Searson; even the proprietor himself, if he could be said to pay deference to any human being, had always adopted that attitude to Miss Searson; as for Bill the Barman, he had been hardly more than a worm in her sight. And then had come the Great Romance. It had come like a bolt out of clear sky, knocking a whole world askew as Miss Searson understood it; a whole world of sacred values by which Miss Searson and those within her orbit regulated their lives.
The entrance of Bill Hollis into the bar struck Miss Searson dumb with surprise. In a mind temporarily bewildered sixteen years were as but a single day. This was the first occasion in that long period that the incredible adventurer who had suborned the eldest daughter of his stern master into marrying him had dared to revisit the scene of his crime. To weak minds a great romance, no doubt, but the lady behind the bar had not a weak mind, therefore she was not in the least romantic. She saw things as they were, she knew what life was. It was very well for such things to happen in the pages of a novel, but in the daily round of humdrum existence they simply didn’t answer.
It seemed an age to Miss Searson before William the Incredible girded his courage to the point of ordering a pint of bitter. She drew it in stately silence, handed it across the counter and accepted threepence with superb hauteur.
He drank a little. It was no mean brew; and he felt so much a man for the experience that he was able to ask Miss Searson what she thought of the news.
“News,” said Miss Searson loftily. “News?”
“War with Germany.”