we saw one, laid for four, at which only one man was sitting.
“Hullo!” said Julian, “there’s Malim. Let’s go and see if we can push into his table. Well, Malim, how are you? Do you know Cloyster?”
Mr. Malim had a lofty expression. I should have put him down as a scholarly recluse. His first words upset this view somewhat.
“Coming to Covent Garden?” he said, genially. “I am. So is Kit. She’ll be down soon.”
“Good,” said Julian; “may Jimmy and I have supper at your table?”
“Do,” said Malim. “Plenty of room. We’d better order our food and not wait for her.”
We took our places, and looked round us. The hum of conversation was persistent. It rose above the clatter of the supper tables and the sudden bursts of laughter.
It was now five minutes to twelve. All at once those nearest the door sprang to their feet. A girl in scarlet and black had come in.
“Ah, there’s Kit at last,” said Malim.
“They’re cheering her,” said Julian.
As he spoke, the tentative murmur of a cheer was caught up by everyone. Men leaped upon chairs and tables.
“Hullo, hullo, hullo!” said Kit, reaching us. “Kiddie, when they do that it makes me feel shy.”
She was laughing like a child. She leaned across the table, put her arms round Malim’s neck, and kissed him. She glanced at us.
Malim smiled quietly, but said nothing.
She kissed Julian, and she kissed me.
“Now we’re all friends,” she said, sitting down.
“Better know each other’s names,” said Malim. “Kit, this is Mr. Cloyster. Mr. Cloyster, may I introduce you to my wife?”
Chapter 7
I MEET MR. THOMAS BLAKE
Someone had told me that, the glory of Covent Garden Ball had departed. It may be so. Yet the floor, with its strange conglomeration of music-hall artists, callow university men, shady horse- dealers, and raucous military infants, had an atmosphere of more than meretricious gaiety. The close of an old year and the birth of a new one touch the toughest.
The band was working away with a strident brassiness which filled the room with noise. The women’s dresses were a shriek of colour. The vulgarity of the scene was so immense as to be almost admirable. It was certainly interesting.
Watching his opportunity, Julian presently drew me aside into the smoking-room.
“Malim,” he said, “has paid you a great compliment.”
“Really,” I said, rather surprised, for Julian’s acquaintance had done nothing more, to my knowledge, than give me a cigar and a whiskey-and-soda.
“He’s introduced you to his wife.”
“Very good of him, I’m sure.”
“You don’t understand. You see Kit for what she is: a pretty, good-natured creature bred in the gutter. But Malim—well, he’s in the Foreign Office and is secretary to Sir George Grant.”
“Then what in Heaven’s name,” I cried, “induced him to marry–-“
“My dear Jimmy,” said Julian, adroitly avoiding the arm of an exuberant lady impersonating Winter, and making fair practice with her detachable icicles, “it was Kit or no one. Just consider Malim’s position, which was that of thousands of other men of his type. They are the cleverest men of their schools; they are the intellectual stars of their Varsities. I was at Oxford with Malim. He was a sort of tin god. Double-first and all that. Just like all the rest of them. They get what is looked upon as a splendid appointment under Government. They come to London, hire comfortable chambers or a flat, go off to their office in the morning, leave it in the evening, and are given a salary which increases by regular gradations from an initial two hundred a year. Say that a man begins this kind of work at twenty-four. What are his matrimonial prospects? His office work occupies his entire attention (the idea that Government clerks don’t work is a fiction preserved merely for the writers of burlesque) from the moment he wakes in the morning until dinner. His leisure extends, roughly speaking, from eight-thirty until twelve. The man whom I am discussing, and of whom Malim is a type, is, as I have already proved, intellectual. He has, therefore, ambitions. The more intellectual he is the more he loathes the stupid routine of his daily task. Thus his leisure is his most valuable possession. There are books he wants to read—those which he liked in the days previous to his slavery— and new ones which he sees published every day. There are plays he wants to see performed. And there are subjects on which he would like to write—would give his left hand to write, if the loss of that limb wouldn’t disqualify him for his post. Where is his social chance? It surely exists only in the utter abandonment of his personal projects. And to go out when one is tied to the clock is a poor sort of game. But suppose he
