The Pretty Lady | Page 9

there, by the fire and in front of a
formidable blue chair whose arms developed into the grinning heads of
bronze lions, stood the lacquered table consecrated to his breakfast tray;
and his breakfast tray, with newspaper and correspondence, had been
magically placed thereon as though by invisible hands. And on one arm
of the easy-chair lay the rug which, because a dressing-gown does not
button all the way down, he put over his knees while breakfasting in
winter. Yes, he admitted with pleasure that he was "well served".
Before eating he opened the piano--a modern instrument concealed in
an ingeniously confected Regency case--and played with taste a Bach
prelude and fugue.
His was not the standardised and habituated kind of musical culture
which takes a Bach prelude and fugue every morning before breakfast
with or without a glass of Lithia water or fizzy saline. He did, however,
customarily begin the day at the piano, and on this particular morning
he happened to play a Bach prelude and fugue.
And as he played he congratulated himself on not having gone to seek

Christine in the Promenade on the previous night, as impatience had
tempted him to do. Such a procedure would have been an error in
worldliness and bad from every point of view. He had wisely rejected
the temptation.
In the deep blue arm-chair, with the rug over his knees and one hand on
a lion's head, he glanced first at the opened Times, because of the war.
Among the few letters was one with the heading of the Reveille Motor
Horn Company Ltd.
G.J. like his father, had been a solicitor. When he was twenty-five his
father, a widower, had died and left him a respectable fortune and a
very good practice. He sold half the practice to an incoming partner,
and four years later he sold the other half of the practice to the same
man. At thirty he was free, and this result had been attained through his
frank negative answer to the question, "The law bores me--is there any
reason why I should let it continue to bore me?" There was no reason.
Instead of the law he took up life. Of business preoccupations naught
remained but his investments. He possessed a gift for investing money.
He had helped the man who had first put the Reveille Motor Horn on
the market. He had had a mighty holding of shares in the Reveille
Syndicate Limited, which had so successfully promoted the Reveille
Motor Horn Company Limited. And in the latter, too, he held many
shares. The Reveille Motor Horn Company had prospered and had gone
into the manufacture of speedometers, illuminating outfits, and all
manner of motor-car accessories.
On the outbreak of war G.J. had given himself up for lost. "This is the
end," he had said, as a member of the sore-shaken investing public. He
had felt sick under the region of the heart. In particular he had feared
for his Reveille shares. No one would want to buy expensive motor
horns in the midst of the greatest war that the world, etc., etc.
Still the Reveille Company, after sustaining the shock, had somehow
continued to do a pretty good business. It had patriotically offered its
plant and services to the War Office, and had been repulsed with
contumely and ignominy. The War Office had most caustically
intimated to the Reveille Company that it had no use and never under

any conceivable circumstances could have any use whatever for the
Reveille Company, and that the Reveille Company was a forward and
tedious jackanapes, unworthy even of an articulate rebuff. Now the
autograph letter with the Reveille note-heading was written by the
managing director (who represented G.J.'s interests on the Board), and
it stated that the War Office had been to the Reveille Company, and
implored it to enlarge itself, and given it vast orders at grand prices for
all sorts of things that it had never made before. The profits of 1915
would be doubled, if not trebled--perhaps quadrupled. G.J. was relieved,
uplifted; and he sniggered at his terrible forebodings of August and
September. Ruin? He was actually going to make money out of the
greatest war that the world, etc. etc. And why not? Somebody had to
make money, and somebody had to pay for the war in income tax. For
the first time the incubus of the war seemed lighter upon G.J. And also
he need feel no slightest concern about the financial aspect of any
possible developments of the Christine adventure. He had a very clear
and undeniable sensation of positive happiness.
Chapter 7
FOR THE EMPIRE
Mrs. Braiding came into the drawing-room, and he wondered,
paternally, why she was so fidgety and why her tranquillising mate had
not appeared. To the careless