The Roll-Call | Page 6

Policemen at times can be very apposite.
George moved his gaze and looked with admirable casualness around.
"Officer, is this Alexandra Grove?" (His stepfather had taught him to
address all policemen as 'officer.')
"It is, sir."
"Oh! Well, which is No. 8? There're no numbers."
"You couldn't be much nearer to it, sir," said the policeman dryly, and
pointed to a large number, fairly visible, on the wide gate-post. George
had not inspected the gate-post.
"Oh! Thanks!"
He mounted the steps, and in the thick gloom of the portico fumbled for
the bell and rang it. He was tremendously excited and expectant and
apprehensive and puzzled. He heard rain flatly spitting in big drops on
the steps. He had not noticed till then that it had begun again. The bell
jangled below. The light in the basement went out. He flushed anew.
He thought, trembling: "She's coming to the door herself!"

III
"It had occurred to me some time ago," said Mr. Haim, "that if ever you
should be wanting rooms I might be able to suit you."
"Really!" George murmured. After having been shown into the room
by the young woman, who had at once disappeared, he was now
recovering from the nervousness of that agitating entry and resuming
his normal demeanour of an experienced and well-balanced man of the
world. He felt relieved that she had gone, and yet he regretted her
departure extremely, and hoped against fear that she would soon return.
"Yes!" said Mr. Haim, as it were triumphantly, like one who had
whispered to himself during long years: "The hour will come." The
hour had come.
Mr. Haim was surprising to George. The man seemed much older in his
own parlour than at the office--his hair thinner and greyer, and his face
more wrinkled. But the surprising part of him was that he had a home
and was master in it, and possessed interests other than those of the
firm of Lucas & Enwright. George had never until that day conceived
the man apart from Russell Square. And here he was smoking a
cigarette in an easy-chair and wearing red morocco slippers, and being
called 'father' by a really stunning creature in a thin white blouse and a
blue skirt.
The young girl, opening the front door, had said: "Do you want to see
father?" And instantly the words were out George had realized that she
might have said: "Did you want to see father?" ... in the idiom of the
shop-girl or clerk, and that if she had said 'did' he would have been
gravely disappointed and hurt. But she had not. Of course she had not!
Of course she was incapable of such a locution, and it was silly of him
to have thought otherwise, even momentarily. She was an artist.
Entirely different from the blonde and fluffy Mrs. John Orgreave--(and
a good thing too, for Mrs. John with her eternal womanishness had got
on his nerves)--Miss Haim was without doubt just as much a lady, and
probably a jolly sight more cultured, in the true sense. Yet Miss Haim
had not in the least revealed herself to him in the hall as she indicated

the depository for his hat and stick and opened the door of the
sitting-room. She had barely smiled. Indeed she had not smiled. She
had not mentioned the weather. On the other hand, she had not been
prim or repellent. She had revealed nothing of herself. Her one feat had
been to stimulate mightily his curiosity and his imagination concerning
her--rampant enough even before he entered the house!
The house--what he saw of it--suited her and set her off, and, as she
was different from Mrs. John, so was the house different from the
polished, conventional abode of Mrs. John at Bedford Park. To
George's taste it knocked Bedford Park to smithereens. In the parlour,
for instance, an oak chest, an oak settee, an oak gate-table, one
tapestried easy chair, several rush-bottomed chairs, a very small brass
fender, a self-coloured wall-paper of warm green, two or three old
engravings in maple-wood or tarnished gilt frames, several small
portraits in maple-wood frames, brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece
and no clock, self-coloured brown curtains across the windows (two
windows opposite each other at either end of the long room), sundry
rugs on the dark-stained floor, and so on! Not too much furniture, and
not too much symmetry either. An agreeable and original
higgledy-piggledyness! The room was lighted by a fairly large oil-lamp,
with a paper shade hand-painted in a design of cupids--delightful
personal design, rough, sketchy, adorable! She had certainly done it.
George sat on the oak settle, fronting the old man in the easy chair. It
was a hard, smooth oak settle; it had no upholstering nor cushion; but
George liked