But the Verinders were better informed. Dyke’s visiting cards told them that he belonged to a club in Pall Mall—one of the oldest and best clubs in the street.
“When will you go there?” asked Mr. Williams.
“Now,” said Eustace resolutely.
He parted with his father in Cockspur Street, and strolled on to Pall Mall by himself.
It was now what journalists of those days called the apotheosis of the London season; what was then considered a flood of traffic came pouring down Waterloo Place; large open carriages with a mother and one daughter on the back seat, and a red book and another daughter on the front seat, swept across to and from Carlton House Terrace, while splendid padded veterans at the corner outside the Senior and sedate members of the Government outside the Athenæum took off their silk hats or even kissed the tips of their gloved fingers. The pavements of Pall Mall were full of gentlemen in black coats and top hats, with here and there a white waistcoat and a button-hole to light up the throng; the sentry in scarlet and bearskin outside the War Office stood presenting arms to the passage of a field officer; and one had a sensation of the further glories at the end of the street—Marlborough House, with the Prince and Princess of Wales perhaps just emerging from the gates, the old palace where a brilliant levée had taken place that morning, the drive shaded by close-standing elms along which people drove to daylight drawing-rooms—an impression of the leisurely pomp, the well-ordered stately calm of the whole realm.
It was 1895, essentially yesterday, and yet, if judged by external aspect alone, another world—the world in which people behaved with dignity, looked pleasant, and never did objectionable things. Eustace Verinder, tall, dark, already bald under his silk hat, looking like the cabinet-minister that he intended later on to be, formed a small but harmonious part of this world; and his blood boiled tepidly at the thought that any intruder should dare at once to violate the governing code of good manners and menace his sister’s fair name.
As he approached Dyke’s club an amazingly incongruous figure came down its steps. It was a tall big man in a sombrero hat, with a canvas wallet slung over his back and a long staff in his hand; he looked like a pilgrim, like a youthful Tolstoy, like anything strange and odd and absurdly out of place. Eustace noticed the outlandish dun colour of his flannel suit, the huge collar of his flannel shirt flapping over his jacket and all open at the hairy throat, and, feeling shocked at such a moving outrage to convention, stared after him as he stalked across the roadway and disappeared into St. James Square.
The hall porter told Eustace that Mr. Dyke had just left the club. “Just this minute, sir. Shall I send the boy to see if he can catch him?”