“Why, I certainly had a sore head when I wrote it. Your nephew and I didn’t click.”
“That, I should think, might make you all the more doubtful as to whether you were just.”
“If I withdrew my criticism, I wouldn’t be saying what I really thought.”
“You are convinced that you had no hand in your failure to reach your objective?”
The frown on the giant’s brow had a puzzled quality, and Adrian thought: ‘An honest man, anyway.’
“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” said Hallorsen, slowly,
“You chose my nephew, I believe?”
“Yes, out of twenty others.”
“Precisely. You chose the wrong man, then?”
“I surely did.”
“Bad judgment?”
Hallorsen laughed.
“That’s very acute, Mr. Curator. But I’m not the man to advertise my own failings.”
“What you wanted,” said Adrian, dryly, “was a man without the bowels of compassion; well, I admit, you didn’t get him.”
Hallorsen flushed.
“We shan’t agree about this, sir. I’ll just take my little lot of skulls away. And I thank you for your courtesy.”
A few minutes later he was gone.
Adrian was left to tangled meditation. The fellow was better than he had remembered. Physically a splendid specimen, mentally not to be despised, spiritually—well, typical of a new world where each immediate objective was the most important thing on earth till it was attained, and attainment more important than the methods of attainment employed. ‘Pity,’ he thought, ‘if there’s going to be a dog-fight. Still, the fellow’s in the wrong; one ought to be more charitable than to attack like that in public print. Too much ego in friend Hallorsen.’ So thinking, he put the maxilla into a drawer.
CHAPTER 5
Dinny pursued her way towards St. Augustine’s-inthe-Meads. On that fine day the poverty of the district she was entering seemed to her country-nurtured eyes intensely cheerless. She was the more surprised by the hilarity of the children playing in the streets. Asking one of them the way to the Vicarage, she was escorted by five. They did not leave her when she rang the bell, and she was forced to conclude that they were actuated by motives not entirely connected with altruism. They attempted, indeed, to go in with her, and only left when she gave them each a penny. She was ushered into a pleasant room which looked as though it would be glad if someone had the time to enter it some day, and was contemplating a reproduction of the Castelfranco Francesca, when a voice said:
“Dinny!” and she saw her Aunt May. Mrs. Hilary Cherrell had her usual air of surmounting the need for being in three places at once; she looked leisurely, detached, and pleased—not unnaturally, for she liked her niece.
“Up for shopping, dear?”
“No, Aunt May, I’ve come to win an introduction off Uncle Hilary.”
“Your Uncle’s in the Police Court.”
A bubble rose to Dinny’s surface.
“Why, what’s he done, Aunt May?”
Mrs. Hilary smiled.
“Nothing at present, but I won’t answer for him if the magistrate isn’t sensible. One of our young women has been charged with accosting.”
“Not Uncle Hilary?”
“No, dear, hardly that. Your uncle is a witness to her character.”
“And is there really a character to witness to, Aunt May?”
“Well, that’s the point. Hilary says so; but I’m not so sure.”
“Men are very trustful. I’ve never been in a Police Court. I should love to go and catch Uncle there.”
“Well, I’m going in that direction. We might go together as far as the Court.”
Five minutes later they issued, and proceeded by way of streets ever more arresting to the eyes of Dinny, accustomed only to the picturesque poverty of the countryside.
“I never quite realised before,” she said, suddenly, “that London was such a bad dream.”
“From which there is no awakening. That’s the chilling part of it. Why on earth, with all this unemployment, don’t they organise a national Slum Clearance Scheme? It would pay for itself within twenty years. Politicians are marvels of energy and principle when they’re out of office, but when they get in, they simply run behind the machine.”
“They’re not women, you see, Auntie.”
“Are you chaffing, Dinny?”
“Oh! no. Women haven’t the sense of difficulty that men have; women’s difficulties are physical and real, men’s difficulties are mental and formal, they always say: ‘It’ll never do!’ Women never say that. They act, and find out whether it will do or not.”
Mrs. Hilary was silent a moment.
“I suppose women ARE more actual; they have a fresher eye, and less sense of responsibility.”
“I wouldn’t be a man for anything.”
“That’s refreshing; but on the whole they get a better time, my dear, even now.”
“They think so, but I doubt it. Men are awfully like ostriches, it seems to me. They can refuse to see what they don’t want to, better than we can; but I don’t think that’s an advantage.”
“If you lived in the Meads, Dinny, you might.”
“If I lived in the Meads, dear, I should die.”
Mrs. Hilary contemplated her niece by marriage. Certainly she looked a little transparent and as if she could be snapped off, but she also had a look of ‘breeding,’ as if her flesh were dominated by her spirit. She might be unexpectedly durable, and impermeable by outside things.
“I’m not so sure, Dinny; yours is a toughened breed. But for that your uncle would have been dead long ago. Well! Here’s the Police Court. I’m sorry I can’t spare time to come in. But everybody will be nice to you. It’s a very human place, if somewhat indelicate. Be a little careful about your next-door neighbours.”
Dinny raised an eyebrow: “Lousy, Aunt May?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say not. Come back to tea, if you can.”
She was gone.
The exchange and mart of human indelicacy was crowded, for with the infallible flair of the Public for anything dramatic, the case in which Hilary was a witness to character had caught on, since it involved the integrity of the Police. Its second remand was in progress when Dinny took the last remaining fifteen square inches of standing room. Her neighbours on the right reminded her of the nursery rhyme: ‘The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker.’ Her neighbour on the left was a tall policeman. Many women were among the throng at the back of the Court. The air was close and smelled of clothes. Dinny looked at the magistrate, ascetic and as if pickled, and wondered why he did not have incense fuming on his desk. Her eyes passed on to the figure in the dock, a girl of about her own age and height, neatly dressed, with good features except that her mouth was perhaps more sensuous than was fortunate for one in her position. Dinny estimated that her hair was probably fair. She stood very still, with a slight fixed flush on her pale cheeks, and a frightened restlessness in her eyes. Her name appeared to be Millicent Pole. Dinny gathered that she was alleged by a police constable to have accosted two men in the Euston Road, neither of whom had appeared to give evidence. In the witness-box a young man who resembled a tobacconist was testifying that he had seen the girl pass twice or three times—had noticed her specially as a ‘nice bit’; she had seemed worried, as if looking for something.
For somebody, did he mean?
That or the other, how should he know? No, she wasn’t looking on the pavement; no, she didn’t stop, she passed HIM, anyway, without a look. Had he spoken to her? No fear! Doing? Oh, he was just outside his shop for a breath of air after closing. Did he see her speak to anyone? No, he didn’t, but he wasn’t there long.
“The Reverend Hilary Charwell.”
Dinny saw her uncle rise from a bench and step up under the canopy of the witness box. He looked active and unclerical, and her eyes rested with pleasure on his long firm face, so wrinkled and humorous.