Chapter I

It was noon in the City of London, and the many-sided space on which look the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange and the Mansion House seethed as usual in a strangely disciplined confusion. The pavements bubbled like twisting streams; between the toppling omnibuses figures, hatless yet smartly dressed, dodged and turned; Jewish-looking persons, handsome and otherwise, moved briskly about and talked with gestures; pale women, trim and tired-looking, glanced this way and that on the edges of the pavements; underground passages discharged continual groups and units; taxi-cabs hooted and slipped by; policemen held up hands, dropped them again and took two majestic steps; a grave person in a swallow-tail coat of the colour of crushed strawberry eyed the crowd from the pavement in front of the Bank; the visible world roared and boiled and shifted without advance and without retrogression; and the invisible world of affairs beat steadily and orderly at this central heart of British commerce, under the cloudy September sky.

A large proportion of those who came and went so busily had every right to be there. Old men with grey beards, bright eyes and hooked noses; middle-aged men with hats on the backs of their heads, large waistcoats, and heavy watch-chains and tight trousers — persons of this kind, who care a great deal about money-making and nothing at all about anything else — who think in planes of moneys and investments — are, perhaps, as harmlessly employed in the City as they could well be anywhere; but there were young men there

Digitized by Google too; some bronzed with their summer holiday, some whitefaced from lack of it; some with the build of soldiers, erect and smart; some lithe and quick as athletes; some sturdy and square — these seemed extraordinarily out of place. Two, in particular, looked it, and felt it, and were actually saying it, as they came swiftly across from the direction of Threadneedle Street, and made their way to their regular lunching-place round beyond the Exchange.

" I got back on Saturday," said one; " only a fortnight "

" I got back last night," said the other. " Wouldn't waste a Sunday in town."

They were two such young men as may be seen twenty times over at such an hour and in such a place by any respectably intelligent observer, say, from the top of an omnibus in so long a time as that vehicle occupies in halting at the corner by the Bank. They were both top-hatted, both wore tightly-buttoned black morning-coats — one with a braid edging, and the other without — grey trousers, well-polished boots and white shirts. They walked briskly out of step, side by side, leaning slightly forwards, beginning sentences on one side of a perambulant financier, and, after passing him, finishing them on the other. Their hair was beautifully brushed, and one — he that wore the braiding — was just now withdrawing from his sleeves the white paper sheaths with which he had protected his cuffs during the morning's work. So far the differences were small; both followed precisely the proper convention; and even the differences that remained were not very startling.

Reggie Ballard was the taller of the two, fair-complexioned and blue-eyed, not at all handsome, but quite wholesome-looking. He lived with his mother and sister at

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Wimbledon; he was twenty-two years of age, and had been in the shipping-office of Jenner and Jenner since he was sixteen; he now enjoyed an income of ninety-five pounds a year; he was quite harmless, quite intelligent, and with faint undeveloped artistic tastes of which he was a little ashamed.

It follows, therefore, that Percy Brandreth Smith was the shorter of the two. The first thing one noticed about him was the extremely pleasant darkness — the more vivid in his boyish complexion — of his eyes; and the second, the agreeable curl in his dark hair. Beyond these things one did not notice a great deal unless one made a point of it. He was a year younger than Reggie; he was paler, he was squarer; and he wore at this moment, chiefly because he was hungry, a rather dissatisfied expression.

No one in the world, however, can become wholly conventional before he is thirty years old. Even the constant passing, for nearly three hundred days in the year, of mahogany swing-doors with plate-glass panels, the mounting of four steps, the pushing open of another double-door, and the sitting at an American desk for six hours out of every twenty-four, of such days, dealing in the one case with ships that ply to and from Australia and elsewhere, and in the other with the mysteries of the cocoa-trade — even these things cannot wholly obliterate the divine image in less than fifteen or sixteen years.

There was, therefore, in each of these young men still one open channel that gave upon real existence. In Reggie it led to Religion — he had actually gone so far as to be received into the Catholic Church three years ago; in Percy it led to Romance about the female sex and to vague dreams about leisure and wealth. There was no excuse for Reggie; it was entirely uncharacteristic of his upbringing, which had been sweetly but rigidly Evangelical; there was some excuse for Percy, because there actually was in existence a Mr.

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Brandreth — his mother's great-uncle — who was possessed of real country estates. These two, then, had still their dreams. Reggie meditated with his subconscious self, as he sat at his desk and made calculations for Lloyd's, on things like the Monastic Life, or his duties as acolyte in St. Francis', or his private altar (with ten candles) at home; Percy, dozing in his train from Liverpool Street on his way home, woke up to eye scurrying female figures, and imagined what it would feel like to have a man-servant and to go out shooting. In a word, the duty of them both was to mind other people's business, and their relaxation to think about their own.

It is a tolerable definition of a bore that he is one who talks about himself when you want to talk about yourself; but the transposition of the sentence is not always true. A bore, certainly, always does that; but he who does that is not always a bore.

At the end of lunch, for instance, when the two had lighted cigarettes, Percy was not finding Reggie a bore, although Reggie was talking hard about himself, and Percy seriously wanted to tell Reggie more about his own holiday at Yarmouth and a girl he had met there. But Reggie was really being interesting, even on such an amazing subject as a Popish Friar — a personage whom Percy had hitherto thought to have ceased from existence about three hundred and fifty years ago. (He did not actually say so; but he did go so far as to say he had thought there were none in England.)

"Why, my dear chap," cried Reggie (so far as a discreet undertone can be a cry), " there's a whole batch of them down at Forest Gate — and... and... heaps

Digitized by Google more everywhere; besides at St. Francis*. I've only just discovered St. Francis': it's in Kensington; and they've taken me on there as acolyte: I have to wear a brown habit, you know; and I'm going to be a Tertiary."

" Well... about this... this chap you were talking about? " said Percy, completely bewildered, and trying not to appear so.

" Father Hilary, you mean. Well, he's amazing. You should just see the crowds. He's preaching all September; and he preached in May too. He's quite young, you know; he's not been a priest more than two or three years, and he's been at their house in Wales till a year ago."

" I don't like sermons," said Percy. " It seems to me that you can worship God, if you want, just as well in the open air. And down at Yarmouth, for instance "

Reggie waved his hands.

" Oh, Lord! Blue dome, and birds as choristers — I know that stuff. Lord! don't talk such rot! And Father Hilary "

"But what does he do? I don't understand." (Percy was sufficiently pricked by this summary to feel a little annoyed.)

" Preaches, my dear man; preaches! The real thing, you know; not the kind of stuff you hear in your beastly churches; but the real thing. Why "

And Reggie went off into a torrent, while Percy drew solemnly upon his cigarette and thought what a queer chap the other was.

Hitherto Percy had resisted all his friend's enticements. They had discussed religion, of course, as solemnly and judicially as every other subject in heaven and earth. Percy had stood up for the Church of England; he had said that he didn't like candles and incense and fuss: he

Digitized by Google liked a plain sung service (and might have added, with attractive tenor parts in it); and Reggie, on his side, had become incoherent altogether on that mysterious scheme of faith and art and life that the world calls Roman Catholicism. Percy had had it all his own way; he had quoted dicta of the vicar's which Reggie had been unable to answer; he had assumed the sensible, restrained, un fanatical pose which is so hard to storm; he had spoken of Nature, and the Great World and the Heart of Humanity, and a reasonable National Church; he had hinted of Science and vague Agnosticism — which he did not apparently find incompatible with his Church; and all that Reggie had been able to do so far was to wave his hands and describe pieces of ceremonial that he liked, and to quote texts whose force Percy instantly evacuated by references to Higher Criticism and Later Additions. Neither, of course, had known anything whatever about the subject that they discussed; the only difference between them was that Reggie used more or less first-hand observations of his own, and Percy second-hand arguments of other people.

But to-day Percy was a little impressed. It was plain that something had got hold of Reggie, which, hitherto, the other had dismissed as part of the general character of Queer Chap; and this Something had at last solidified in a preacher, who had the additional suggestive fascination of being a Friar.... Well: a preacher made statements that could be tested; it was not a matter of subjective impressions. Why should not he, Percy, do as he was asked, and confront this Friar from a pew? (He would be able to get the proper arguments to use to Reggie afterwards from his own vicar.)

" But I shouldn't know how to behave in a Cath — a Roman church."

"Why, my dear chap, I'll put you up to that in five

Digitized by Google minutes. Lots of Protestants come, anyhow; and nobody notices them."

Percy drew three last whiffs from his cigarette and laid it down.

" Do Protestants, and Anglicans, really come? "

"My dear man, after the sermon last Sunday a good third of the congregation stumped out. They'd only come to hear him. The church was simply packed. People standing in the aisles all the time."

Percy stood up.

" I think I will," he said. " I'll tell you to-morrow." He drew out his watch. "Good gad!..." And he was gone.

Ill

Percy had his innings later in that afternoon over a cup of tea and another cigarette, and enjoyed himself enormously on the subject of Yarmouth and the girl he had met on the pier. He gave his confidences under difficulties, since a lean and satirical-faced young man caught his eye from time to time, from beyond the small marble-topped table where he sat with a glass before him. But he got the main points of it out.

No; he had not actually spoken with her; but he had bowed to her, on the occasion of their fourth encounter on the pier, and she had returned his salutation.

" You know," said Percy, in an earnest undertone, " it wasn't just one of those ordinary things. Lots of chaps do that, I know; and girls like it — girls of a certain kind, I mean — tobacconists' assistants and so on. But this one was quite different."

He explained the differences. This girl had a real mother with whom she walked sometimes, and a brother who

Digitized by Google looked a decent sort of chap. He had seen her reading, too, one day, a novel from Mudie's.... There was all the difference in the world.

" And this isn't like those old affairs," said Percy. " I was a young fool then; I know that well enough." (He sipped his tea and assumed a mature air.)

Reggie listened, nodding and smiling. He was an excellent confidant for this kind of thing: Percy had found that out long ago. He never betrayed confidences; and — more subtle still — he never outraged them by sneers or incredulity; he listened patiently; and... and seemed to understand, Percy thought.

For Percy, in the eighteen months of their acquaintance, had had at least three sets of such confidences to impart. There had been the pale typist, with the intelligent eyes, five years older than himself; the aristocratic attendant in the A.B.C. shop on Ludgate Hill whom he had believed to be of gentle birth; and there had been the desperate affair of the chorus-girl who had turned out to be an excellent wife and mother. For Percy was as shy as such young men usually are: he had not actually spoken yet once to any of the divinities, except, indeed, to order tea and buttered bun, with a meaning air, in the ordinary course of business, of the lady in the tea-shop; all his experiences had been of the purely imaginative order, as romantic as the dreams of a child, and as harmless. Actually to have bowed, with a beating heart, to his last idol, and to have had that bow returned, distinguished, sincerely enough to his own mind, this engagement of his heart from all others that had preceded it.

Both these young men were, therefore, quite good and quite innocent. They were perfectly aware that a good many of their fellows were not; they listened, in the ordinary way of business, to talk and to the recounting of

Digitized by Google detailed histories the very outlines of which would have horrified their good mothers; Percy, at any rate, had nodded and assented to such conversation with an air of complete and world-hardened experience. Yet each of them alike felt infinitely more at his ease in the company of his friend than in that of those other acquaintances; and, largely through such community of experience, the two little hy little had fallen into the way of lunching together when the hour could be arranged, and even, once or twice, had visited one another at home. Each talked, therefore, to the other with the extremest confidence of those intensely intimate things that lay at the heart of each, while the World of Business roared round them, as the solemn tide surges over the rock-depths where the shrimps lie at peace.

" I must be going," said Reggie, at last. " See you on Sunday, anyhow."

He tapped with a coin on the table and caught the eye of an attendant.

" Then what about " said Percy knowingly.

"Well, look here: you'd better be at Kensington High Street, by the booking-office, at half -past ten."

"But, good Lord! "

" Mustn't be a minute later," said Reggie firmly. " Place is packed by twenty to. But I can see that a seat is kept for you till the quarter. And if you're at the booking-office at Kensington at half-past, I'll meet you there myself."

" But I never said " began Percy slowly.

" Rot! of course you're coming. So long, then."

The satirical young man eyed them both over the edge of his emptying glass. He was a thorough business-man.

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