They settled themselves for the afternoon under an awning outside a café by which royalty, it was supposed, would eventually pass. There they conversed with friends, and Tommy drew pictures, and time, as usual, passed agreeably and sociably. At about six o'clock there came by an informant, who remarked that royalty had gone for a drive in the opposite direction. Tommy started in pursuit, and did not join Betty again till it was too late for the theatre. So they asked some friends and had a supper-party at a restaurant instead, because the theatre money must be somehow spent. Its spending, and a good deal more besides, proved beautifully easy. Then they came home through the lit streets; the flare of them and the noise of them and the gay people who lounged and talked in them always made the Crevequers feel cheerily at home, and flowing over with the milk of human kindness.
Beyond the flaring, screaming world there was a soft summer moon, nearly at the full, and spaces of silver light on the land and the dark, still sea. But these children of the gay streets had no concern with the moon; the lamps were for them, and the flare of lights that lit the coster's barrow and the pedlar's awning. They loafed along with the true vagrant's air of irresponsible well-being to their home, which was in a narrow street sloping upwards out of the Toledo—sloping up steeply, and laid out in shallow steps.
The Crevequers lived in a flat at the top of a tall pink house. None of the occupants of the house seemed to have yet retired; most of them were in the street outside. The Crevequers stayed for a little to talk to them, then went in and climbed many flights of dark stone stairs, and came at last into the room where they lived. The room had an inexpensive air. It had, however, no lack of contents, and these were, without exception, in unexpected places; the books, for instance, lay on the floor in a corner—a battered selection from the light literature of two languages. There were papers, half-finished drawings, writing and painting materials, littered over the table among half-emptied bottles, cigarettes, and unwashed glasses. The ceiling was interesting; it was partially covered with a design in bold colours, unfinished; it gave the impression of being worked at, spasmodically, at irregular intervals, by more than one artist; it had an interesting air of awaiting the next inspiration. It was an untrammelled composite, so far, of the beauties of nature, imaginative and highly exciting dramatic incident, and scenes from pagan lore, with, whenever imagination or space required padding, a cherub plunging through a festoon of flowers. Some of the designs bore a vaguely familiar air; the visitor to Pompei might have recognized, for instance, the lady on her knees with a bird's-nest full of infants. The most note-worthy point about this ceiling was that it was really not badly painted.
The most comfortable features of the room were two large arm-chairs, one on each side of the stove. Tommy cleared a space in one of them and subsided into it. Betty dragged a spirit-lamp and a saucepan of milk from under the table and knelt over it, whistling a soft, tired little tune the while. Tommy, lying in his chair, whistled too, feeling in his pockets for matches.
'Cocoa, Tommy?' Betty broke her tune to say.
'No.' He had found a match, and was scraping it perseveringly on his knee. 'It's going to boil over,' he remarked.
She caught it off with a deft hand and poured it into a cup, and, carrying it to the other arm-chair, in which she did not trouble to clear a space, she lay back with a sigh of contented languor.
'Cigarette, please. Thank you.'
There was a battering at the door, and an influx of three youths and two young women. It seemed that they had been having supper together—enough supper to raise their spirits and to make them very sociable and amiable. The Crevequers, having also had supper, were sociable and amiable too, and Tommy got out more wine, and the room became blue with smoke and full of laughter; and Tommy played his banjo, and Betty sang a song which amused them all very much, and the three young men and the two young women shouted the chorus. None of the other occupants of the house seemed to be disturbed—they were probably used to it. The company stayed late. These pleasant gatherings are hard to break up, and the Crevequers' friends seemed attached to them. With the young man who had drunk most wine Tommy made a bet and won it; it was a five-franc note, and it was satisfactory as it changed hands to feel that the loser, in his then state of warm generosity, did not at all miss it. Tommy did a further stroke of business by arranging an evening of cards with this gentleman for the following week. At last, with hilarious leave-taking, the visitors departed, some to their rooms in the same house, some elsewhere, all very merry and affectionate.
'It hasn't been a really busy day—not so very,' Betty remarked presently. 'Why are we tired?'