“Very good, your lordship.”
“Are you troubled at all with headaches, Mr. Mulliner?”
“Very seldom.”
“Then what you want is Clark’s Cure for Corns. Shall we say one of the large bottles?”
“Certainly.”
“Then that—with a year’s subscription to Our Tots—will come to precisely one pound, three shillings, and sixpence. Thank you. Will there be anything further?”
“No, thank you. Now, touching the matter of—”
“You wouldn’t care for a scarf-pin? Any ties, collars, shirts? No? Then goodbye, Mr. Mulliner.”
“But—”
“Fotheringay,” said Lord Biddlecombe, “throw Mr. Mulliner out.”
As Lancelot scrambled to his feet from the hard pavement of Berkeley Square, he was conscious of a rush of violent anger which deprived him momentarily of speech. He stood there, glaring at the house from which he had been ejected, his face working hideously. So absorbed was he that it was some time before he became aware that somebody was plucking at his coat-sleeve.
“Pardon me, sir.”
Lancelot looked round. A stout smooth-faced man with horn-rimmed spectacles was standing beside him.
“If you could spare me a moment—”
Lancelot shook him off impatiently. He had no desire at a time like this to chatter with strangers. The man was babbling something, but the words made no impression upon his mind. With a savage scowl, Lancelot snatched the fellow’s umbrella from him and, poising it for an instant, flung it with a sure aim through Lord Biddlecombe’s study window. Then, striding away, he made for Berkeley Street. Glancing over his shoulder as he turned the corner, he saw that Fotheringay, the butler, had come out of the house and was standing over the spectacled man with a certain quiet menace in his demeanour. He was rolling up his sleeves, and his fingers were twitching a little.
Lancelot dismissed the man from his thoughts. His whole mind now was concentrated on the coming interview with Angela. For he had decided that the only thing to do was to seek her out at her club, where she would doubtless be spending the afternoon, and plead with her to follow the dictates of her heart and, abandoning parents and wealthy suitors, come with her true mate to a life of honest poverty sweetened by love and vers libre.
Arriving at the Junior Lipstick, he inquired for her, and the hall-porter dispatched a boy in buttons to fetch her from the billiard-room, where she was refereeing the finals of the Débutantes’ Shove-Ha’penny Tournament. And presently his heart leaped as he saw her coming towards him, looking more like a vision of Springtime than anything human and earthly. She was smoking a cigarette in a long holder, and as she approached she inserted a monocle inquiringly in her right eye.
“Hullo, laddie!” she said. “You here? What’s on the mind besides hair? Talk quick. I’ve only got a minute.”
“Angela,” said Lancelot, “I have to report a slight hitch in the programme which I sketched out at our last meeting. I have just been to see my uncle and he has washed his hands of me and cut me out of his will.”
“Nothing doing in that quarter, you mean?” said the girl, chewing her lower lip thoughtfully.
“Nothing. But what of it? What matters it so long as we have each other? Money is dross. Love is everything. Yes, love indeed is light from heaven, a spark of that immortal fire with angels shared, by Allah given to lift from earth our low desire. Give me to live with Love alone, and let the world go dine and dress. If life’s a flower, I choose my own. ’Tis Love in Idleness. When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind! Come, Angela, let us read together in a book more moving than the Koran, more eloquent than Shakespeare, the book of books, the crown of all literature—Bradshaw’s Railway Guide. We will turn up a page and you shall put your finger down, and wherever it rests there we will go, to live forever with our happiness. Oh, Angela, let us—”
“Sorry,” said the girl. “Purvis wins. The race goes by the form-book after all. There was a time when I thought you might be going to crowd him on the rails and get your nose first under the wire with a quick last-minute dash, but apparently it is not to be. Deepest sympathy, old crocus, but that’s that.”
Lancelot staggered.
“You mean you intend to marry this Purvis?”
“Pop in about a month from now at St. George’s, Hanover Square, and see for yourself.”
“You would allow this man to buy you with his gold?”
“Don’t overlook his diamonds.”
“Does love count for nothing? Surely you love me?”
“Of course I do, my desert king. When you do that flat-footed Black Bottom step with the sort of wiggly twiggle at the end, I feel as if I were eating plovers’ eggs in a new dress to the accompaniment of heavenly music.” She sighed. “Yes, I love you, Lancelot. And women are not like men. They do not love lightly. When a woman gives her heart, it is forever. The years will pass, and you will turn to another. But I shall not forget. However, as you haven’t a bob in the world—” She beckoned to the hall-porter. “Margerison.”
“Your ladyship?”
“Is it raining?”
“No, your ladyship.”
“Are the front steps clean?”
“Yes, your ladyship.”
“Then throw Mr. Mulliner out.”
Lancelot leaned against the railings of the Junior Lipstick, and looked out through a black mist upon a world that heaved and rocked and seemed on the point of disintegrating into ruin and chaos. And a lot he would care, he told himself bitterly, if it did. If Seamore Place from the west and Charles Street from the east had taken a running jump and landed on the back of his neck, it would have added little or nothing to the turmoil of his mind. In fact, he would rather have preferred it.
Fury, as it had done on the pavement of Berkeley Square, robbed him of speech. But his hands, his shoulders, his brows, his lips, his nose, and even his eyelashes seemed to
