The Roll-Call | Page 3

omnibuses that bore them obscurely away. At intervals an individual
got out of an omnibus and adventured hurriedly forth and was lost in
the gloom. The omnibuses, all white, trotted on an inward curve to the
pavement, stopped while the conductor, with hand raised to the
bell-string, murmured apathetically the names of streets and of
public-houses, and then they jerked off again on an outward curve to
the impatient double ting of the bell. To the east was a high defile of
hospitals, and to the west the Workhouse tower faintly imprinted itself
on the sombre sky.
The drops of rain grew very large and heavy, and the travellers, instead
of waiting on the kerb, withdrew to the shelter of the wall of the
Queen's Elm. George was now among the group, precipitated like the
rest, as it were, out of the solution of London. George was of the age
which does not admit rain or which believes that it is immune from the

usual consequences of exposure to rain. When advised, especially by
women, to defend himself against the treacheries of the weather, he
always protested confidently that he would 'be all right.' Thus with a
stick and a straw hat he would affront terrible dangers. It was a species
of valour which the event often justified. Indeed he generally was all
right. But to-night, afoot on the way from South Kensington Station in
a region quite unfamiliar to him, he was intimidated by the slapping
menace of the big drops. Reality faced him. His scared thought ran:
"Unless I do something at once I shall get wet through." Impossible to
appear drenched at old Haim's! So he had abandoned all his pretensions
to a magical invulnerability, and rushed under the eave of the Queen's
Elm to join the omnibus group.
He did not harmonize with the omnibus group, being both too elegant
and too high-spirited. His proper rôle in the circumstances would have
been to 'jump into a hansom'; but there were no empty hansoms, and
moreover, for certain reasons of finance, he had sworn off hansoms
until a given date. He regarded the situation as 'rather a lark,' and he
somehow knew that the group understood and appreciated and perhaps
resented his superior and tolerant attitude. An omnibus rolled palely
into the radiance of the Queen's Elm lamp, the horses' flanks and the
lofty driver's apron gleaming with rain. He sprang towards the vehicle;
the whole group sprang. "Full inside!" snapped the conductor
inexorably. Ting, ting! It was gone, glimmering with its enigmatic load
into the distance. George turned again to the wall, humiliated. It
seemed wrong that the conductor should have included him with the
knot of common omnibus-travellers and late workers. The conductor
ought to have differentiated.... He put out a hand. The rain had
capriciously ceased! He departed gaily and triumphantly. He was
re-endowed with the magical invulnerability.
The background of his mind was variegated. The incidents of the
tremendous motor-car race from Paris to Berlin, which had finished
nearly a week earlier, still glowed on it. And the fact that King Edward
VII had driven in a car from Pall Mall to Windsor Castle in sixty
minutes was beautifully present. Then, he was slightly worried
concerning the Mediterranean Fleet. He knew nothing about it, but as a

good citizen he suspected in idle moments, like a number of other good
citizens, that all was not quite well with the Mediterranean Fleet. As for
the war, he had only begun to be interested in the war within the last six
months, and already he was sick of it. He knew that the Boers had just
wrecked a British military train, and his attitude towards such methods
of fighting was rather severe and scornful; he did not regard them as
'war.' However, the apparent permanence of the war was splendidly
compensated by the victory of the brothers Doherty over the American
lawn-tennis champions in the Gentlemen's Doubles at Wimbledon.
Who could have expected the brothers to win after the defeat of R.H.
by Mr. Gore in the Singles? George had most painfully feared that the
Americans would conquer, and their overthrowing by the twin brothers
indicated to George, who took himself for a serious student of affairs,
that Britain was continuing to exist, and that the new national
self-depreciative, yearning for efficiency might possibly be rather
absurd after all.
In the midst of these and similar thoughts, and of innumerable minor
thoughts about himself, in the very centre of his mind and occupying
nearly the whole of it, was the vast thought, the obsession, of his own
potential power and its fulfilment. George's egotism was terrific, and as
right as any other natural phenomenon. He had to get on. Much money
was included in his scheme, but