NOW it is as much as their jobs are worth for the authorities responsible for the amenities of the town not to employ a man on the clear understanding that every once in a while he climbs to the very top of Lord Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square to cleanse away such refuse as might have collected about the immortal sailor’s feet. And it is to the good man who undertakes this perilous task that we owe a piece of information which cannot fail to interest gentles and simples. He tells how he never but finds numerous pigeons lying dead about the feet of our sailor hero. Sometimes there will be not more than a score or so, sometimes there may be close on an hundred, and he relates on oath how he once removed, in a bag which he takes up with him for that purpose, the bodies of pigeons to the number of one-hundred-and-thirty-four: among which, he tells with awe, there was the corpse of a pretty white dove.
That was on the evening of the first of May of the year of grace 1924, and the reason why the good man tells with awe of the dove among the pigeons is because it was on that very evening that he was vexed by a strange phenomenon. The facts may interest the curious.
The prodigious number of the dead pigeons had kept him at his task much later than usual; and as he picked up the dove he chanced to look up at Lord Nelson, who stood at that moment in the light and shadow of the sun as it set beyond Admiralty Arch, and the good man fancied that the stern face of my Lord Nelson frowned.
Unseemly though it is to doubt any man’s word, the sceptical sort may be permitted to question whether the fellow was at that moment seeing straight, and whether it was not the fanciful light of twilight that had set him thinking that Lord Nelson had indulged in a passing frown.
But to more kindly folk the good man’s fancy will not present such marvellous features when they know that it was on the evening of that first of May that Miss Pamela Wych came upon an event beneath Lord Nelson’s eyes that completely changed the course of her whole life.
II
The clear cool eyes of Miss Wych were clouded that spring evening. Miss Wych was thinking. All about her the London of Oxford Street marched and screamed and hooted, but Miss Wych walked unheeding, alone as a tulip in a wild garden. The London of Oxford Street was like a soiled silk handkerchief waving frantically to the evening sun but the genius of thought draped the young lithe figure with a rare calm dignity. Now Miss Wych was nearly always calm, for such was her nature. But she was not always dignified, for dignity comes very rarely to youth, dignity is a gentle blossom that grows with the years, and when dignity comes to youth it comes always unconsciously, it is fleeting, frail, sad. We are not speaking of the dignity of anger, but of the dignity of sorrow. Miss Wych was sad that evening.
All that day, whilst she was at her allotted tasks in the millinery department of Messrs. Come & Go, Miss Wych had been saying to herself: “I must think. I will think this evening. One doesn’t think nearly enough. I will think a lot this evening. I will walk home, thinking. I do hope it keeps fine.”
That is what Miss Wych had thought, for she was very conscientious in the fulfilment of her duties in the millinery department, and she always did her best not to intrude her private concerns into her service of Messrs. Come & Go. Not that either Mr. Come or Mr. Go could possibly have noticed it if she had, since her service was but an atom among the service of one thousand and five hundred employées; for Messrs. Come & Go’s was advertised as the largest store in London, and why should anyone doubt the verity of such beautiful advertisements as those of Messrs. Come & Go, which tell unceasingly of the divers bargains that can be bought for next to nothing by Mr. Everyman and Mrs. Everywoman merely by entering within and being smiled at affectionately by either Mr. Come or Mr. Go in person, and all delivered at Mr. Everyman’s door within twenty-four hours in plain motors. Anyone can see by their advertisements that Mr. Come and Mr. Go have got all other men beat on philanthropy, and how they manage to live at all is very puzzling, but no doubt they have private incomes of their own and don’t rely on making any money out of their store.
Miss Wych had never so much as set eyes on her great employers, but she would wonder a great deal about them, and she would wonder particularly about the great men’s youth. Now Miss Wych admired success above all things. Those clear cool eyes looked at life, this teeming chaotic life in which she was an atom of service, and as she looked at life a prince in shining armour of gold and sapphire stepped forth from the boiling ranks, brave with triumph, flaming with youth, indeed a very prince of princes. And the name of this prince was Success. That is how Miss Wych thought of success, like a glorious lover. She loved success, like a glorious lover. And once upon a time she had tried to win him for herself, Miss Wych had once tried her fortune on the stage, but unfortunately the glorious lover had looked very coldly on her, for, as the producer had said: “Miss Wych is a nice girl but a bum actress.”