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Page 14
"Thank you so much," murmured a voice behind him. It seemed to come
from the floor.
"Not at all," said George, trying a sort of vocal chip-shot out of
the corner of his mouth, designed to lift his voice backwards and
lay it dead inside the cab.
He gazed upon Piccadilly with eyes from which the scales had
fallen. Reason told him that he was still in Piccadilly. Otherwise
it would have seemed incredible to him that this could be the same
street which a moment before he had passed judgment upon and found
flat and uninteresting. True, in its salient features it had
altered little. The same number of stodgy-looking people moved up
and down. The buildings retained their air of not having had a bath
since the days of the Tudors. The east wind still blew. But,
though superficially the same, in reality Piccadilly had altered
completely. Before it had been just Piccadilly. Now it was a golden
street in the City of Romance, a main thoroughfare of Bagdad, one
of the principal arteries of the capital of Fairyland. A
rose-coloured mist swam before George's eyes. His spirits, so low
but a few moments back, soared like a good niblick shot out of the
bunker of Gloom. The years fell away from him till, in an instant,
from being a rather poorly preserved, liverish greybeard of
sixty-five or so, he became a sprightly lad of twenty-one in a
world of springtime and flowers and laughing brooks. In other
words, taking it by and large, George felt pretty good. The
impossible had happened; Heaven had sent him an adventure, and he
didn't care if it snowed.
It was possibly the rose-coloured mist before his eyes that
prevented him from observing the hurried approach of a faultlessly
attired young man, aged about twenty-one, who during George's
preparations for ensuring privacy in his cab had been galloping in
pursuit in a resolute manner that suggested a well-dressed
bloodhound somewhat overfed and out of condition. Only when this
person stopped and began to pant within a few inches of his face
did he become aware of his existence.
"You, sir!" said the bloodhound, removing a gleaming silk hat,
mopping a pink forehead, and replacing the luminous superstructure
once more in position. "You, sir!"
Whatever may be said of the possibility of love at first sight, in
which theory George was now a confirmed believer, there can be no
doubt that an exactly opposite phenomenon is of frequent
occurrence. After one look at some people even friendship is
impossible. Such a one, in George's opinion, was this gurgling
excrescence underneath the silk hat. He comprised in his single
person practically all the qualities which George disliked most. He
was, for a young man, extraordinarily obese. Already a second
edition of his chin had been published, and the perfectly-cut
morning coat which encased his upper section bulged out in an
opulent semi-circle. He wore a little moustache, which to George's
prejudiced eye seemed more a complaint than a moustache. His face
was red, his manner dictatorial, and he was touched in the wind.
Take him for all in all he looked like a bit of bad news.
George had been educated at Lawrenceville and Harvard, and had
subsequently had the privilege of mixing socially with many of New
York's most prominent theatrical managers; so he knew how to behave
himself. No Vere de Vere could have exhibited greater repose of
manner.
"And what," he inquired suavely, leaning a little further out of
the cab, "is eating you, Bill?"
A messenger boy, two shabby men engaged in non-essential
industries, and a shop girl paused to observe the scene. Time was
not of the essence to these confirmed sightseers. The shop girl was
late already, so it didn't matter if she was any later; the
messenger boy had nothing on hand except a message marked
"Important: Rush"; and as for the two shabby men, their only
immediate plans consisted of a vague intention of getting to some
public house and leaning against the wall; so George's time was
their time. One of the pair put his head on one side and said:
"What ho!"; the other picked up a cigar stub from the gutter and
began to smoke.
"A young lady just got into your cab," said the stout young man.
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