The Roll-Call | Page 8

uplifted.
"My daughter designs bookbindings," said Mr. Haim. "Happens to be very busy to-night on something urgent."
He advanced towards her, George following.
"Awfully good!" George murmured enthusiastically, and quite sincerely, though he was not at all in a condition to judge the design. Strange, that he should come to the basement of an ordinary stock-size house in Alexandra Grove to see bookbindings in the making! This was a design for a boy's book. He had possessed many such books. But it had never occurred to him that the gay bindings of them were each the result of individual human thought and labour. He pulled at his cigarette.
There was a sound of pushing and rattling outside.
"What's that?" exclaimed Mr. Haim.
"It's the area door. I bolted it. I dare say it's Mrs. Lobley," said the girl indifferently.
Mr. Haim moved sharply.
"Why did you bolt it, Marguerite? No, I'll go myself."
He picked up the lamp, which he had put down, and shuffled quickly out in his red morocco slippers, closing the door.
Marguerite? Yes, it suited her; and it was among the most romantic of names. It completed the picture. She now seemed to be listening and waiting, her attention on the unseen area door. He felt shy and yet very happy alone with her. Voices were distinctly heard. Who was Mrs. Lobley? Was Mr. Haim a little annoyed with his daughter, and was Marguerite exquisitely defiant? Time hung. The situation was slightly awkward, he thought. And it was obscure, alluring.... He stood there, below the level of the street, shut in with those beings unknown, provocative, and full of half-divined implications. And all Chelsea was around him and all London around Chelsea.
"Father won't be a moment," said the girl. "It's only the charwoman."
"Oh! That's quite all right," he answered effusively, and turning to the design: "The outlining of that lettering fairly beats me, you know."
"Not really!... I get that from father, of course."
Mr. Haim was famous in the office as a letterer.
She sat idly glancing at her own design, her plump, small hands lying in the blue lap. George compared her, unspeakably to her advantage, with the kind, coarse young woman at the chop-house, whom he had asked to telephone to the Orgreaves for him, and for whom he had been conscious of a faint penchant.
"I can't colour it by gaslight," said Marguerite Haim. "I shall have to do that in the morning."
He imagined her at work again early in the morning. Within a week or so he might be living in this house with this girl. He would be,--watching her life! Seducing prospect, scarcely credible! He remembered having heard when he first went to Lucas & Enwright's that old Haim was a widower.
"Do excuse me," said Mr. Haim, urgently apologetic, reappearing.
A quarter of an hour later, George had left the house, having accepted Mr. Haim's terms without the least argument. In five days he was to be an inmate of No. 8 Alexandra Grove. The episode presented itself to him as a vast, romantic adventure, staggering and enchanting. His luck continued, for the rain-cloud was spent. He got into an Earl's Court bus. The dimly perceived travellers in it seemed all of them in a new sense to be romantic and mysterious.... "Yes," he thought, "I did say good-night to her, but I didn't shake hands."
CHAPTER II
MARGUERITE
I
More than two months later George came into the office in Russell Square an hour or so after his usual time. He had been to South Kensington Museum to look up, for professional purposes, some scale drawings of architectural detail which were required for a restaurant then rising in Piccadilly under the direction of Lucas & Enwright. In his room Mr. Everard Lucas was already seated. Mr. Lucas was another articled pupil of the firm; being a remote cousin of the late senior partner, he had entered on special terms. Although a year older than George he was less advanced, for whereas George had passed the Intermediate, Mr. Lucas had not. But in manly beauty, in stylishness, in mature tact, and especially in persuasive charm, he could beat George.
"Hallo!" Lucas greeted. "How do you feel? Fit?"
"Fit?" said George enthusiastically "I feel so fit I could push in the side of a house."
"What did I tell you?" said Lucas.
George rubbed his hand all over Lucas's hair, and Lucas thereupon seized George's other hand and twisted his arm, and a struggle followed. In this way they would often lovingly salute each other of a morning. Lucas had infected George with the craze for physical exercises as a remedy for all ills and indiscretions, including even late nights and excessive smoking. The competition between them to excel in the quality of fitness was acute, and sometimes led to strange challenges. After a little discussion about springing from the toes, Lucas now accused