MR. PETRE
MR. PETRE
MR. PETRE
MR. PETRE
Itwas the 3rd of April, 1953. As the big rotor came up through the Sound at the end of her ten days’ passage from New York, a passenger standing alone forward upon her decks looked at the very shores of Devon close at hand on either side, and delighted in the Spring.
It was nearly two years since he had seen his own country, and he felt the eagerness of his return almost as though he were a boy again. He was a short, rather stout man in later middle age, with gray curling hair, clean shaven, and in his gesture and expression most unmistakably English. His clothes and his boots were American, and his hat; and what was more, when he spoke there was just that trace of American accent and that habitual use of American locutions which so often mark the man who has lived, though for no more than a few months, in wholly American surroundings.
Everything was ready for his landing. He would not be troubled with so much as a handbag. The blessed abolition of passports in 1933 as for Englishmen landing in England saved him the trouble of even that small encumbrance; and as he hated his pockets bulging with papers, he had locked all, down to the least important notes, in a little dispatch box and handed it to his steward. He had nothing on him but one of the tickets under the new system, the ordinary railway ticket for London which they exchange on board against the steamship receipt; and a good wad of £63 in English notes, with a handful of change; he had not even kept a nickel for remembrance. He could recover what he required by the time he had taken his seat in the train; and all this disembarrassment, coupled with the long vacuity of the sea voyage, gave him an odd sense of freedom.
Odd ... and he knew that it was odd. It was a little too complete. His mind seemed to be holding nothing but the scene before him: the vigorous sky, the leaping water and the green above the gray of the rocks with their white fringe of foam.
He felt unnaturally careless. And when his thoughts turned to his luggage and its arrangement, to the petty incidents of that same morning, they were blurred and faded. Nor did he concern himself with their increasing faintness ... he enjoyed relief in it. But he knew that the relief was strange.
His daily life in America had been too much preoccupied, and that for a long time past. He had gone over to judge and help direct an investment in land, which had not turned out too brilliantly. He had not even been able to sell out as he wished; he was still held to it and its mortgage. He had not put things right. He had found it of no purpose to remain. He had turned back homewards—and yet he suffered an uneasy fear that in his absence things might go worse. Too much of his small fortune had been locked up in that venture, and the prospect before him, when he should reach his rooms in London, was not over bright. He was not sure that he could keep up the modest scale of living on which he had arranged his life for the last ten years before this voyage to the States. The place he had inherited in Dorsetshire, and which had been at his disposal since his mother’s death fifteen years earlier, he had let; but there were heavy charges upon it, and he could see little income in what remained of its revenue.
Nevertheless, he did now feel that curious sense of lightness and of carelessness. It was not connected with the returning home: it seemed a new mood of a kind by itself. It came in deep successive waves, each washing out, while it lasted, all responsibility and care; and twice, as they neared the breakwater, he went through an abnormal moment or two of complete freedom, like that of a man who has just wakened from a profound sleep, and has not yet remembered the burdens and details of life.
When he had landed with the other passengers that unknown mood returned upon him with greatly increased force and with more permanence. It enveloped him like a mist. It made him neglectful of all appointment and watch. He forgot his steward altogether; and his luggage, as though it had never been. He found himself doing only that which he could do without any effort of recollection. His empty-handedness, his neglect, made him the first to walk up the platform along the train for London. He took no heed of the reserved places. He chose out an empty seat in a first-class carriage at the head of the train and took a corner looking forward. There he sat in the same continued mood of content and vacuity.
The train filled, and the crush of porters hurrying and crossing each other upon the platform made confusion all along its line. One in particular, badly chivied by an anxious steward, who had implored leave to land in search of a missing client, was asking what he should do. That porter had put a dispatch box, a rug and a small strapped packet upon a reserved place. He had noted the name. But no one had come to claim them. The porter and the steward, looking back to where a couple of belated men were running, saw no sign of the expected figure. The glorious official to whom a clamorous appeal was made refused to delay the train. The whistle sounded, the rotor buzzed, the train drew out. The porter and the steward felt each in his own degree that agony of loss which greater men know when they open their paper of a morning and read of a slump. The one was widowed of a sovereign. The other of half a crown.
Meanwhile the author of their misfortunes sat all alone in his comfortable carriage, looking at the houses slipping by and the beginning of the countryside. Then he grew drowsy and sank into his corner and fell asleep. He half awoke at a hand tapping upon his shoulder and a voice asking him for his ticket. He had it upon him; he felt for it, found it in an inside pocket and handed it over, and in a moment was asleep again.
When he woke it was but slowly, for evidently he had been more fatigued than he knew, and the strain of a rough voyage had weighed upon him. The express was already roaring past Newbury Race-course.
He recognized the place and suddenly connected it in his mind with a name ... the name of some one living thereabouts.... Yes, ... it was certainly some one connected with those trees and heaths beyond ... but what was the name? He sought and sought, and nothing would come. It was very aggravating, this little lapse. He remembered how often of late he had had slight trouble of that kind. Then he set out to try and recover the name by a chain. He had passed a race-course. He knew it of old. He would connect things up link by link. First he looked at his watch. It was just at 12.30. He had started from.... Where had he started from?
That really$1m> exasperating ... that was even serious.
He shook his head with the sharp gesture a man makes when he is trying to be rid of some passing nervous affection, and he did what the efficiency men call “concentrating.” But his concentration was poor. Not a word would come.
Then overwhelmingly, in a flash, the truth broke upon him. He had lost all conception of his past: every image of it. He knew where he was. All about him, the landscape, the type of railway carriage—everything was familiar, but of any name or place or action or movementin connection with himselfprior to that sleep nothing whatsoever remained.
He passed his hand across his forehead, and stared at the empty cushions opposite him, waiting for this very unpleasant mental gap to close up, and for his normal self to return. It did not return. What was worse, he felt a sort of certitude within him that it had gone for ever—that it was no good looking for it. It was as though he had died.
Through all the remaining hour of the run into Paddington he was seeking, seeking, seeking. The Thames, distant Windsor, Slough went past, the first houses of London: he knew them all as well as he knew his own voice; but of any link between these and himself, of any action or emotion of his past identity, there was no trace at all. It was not even blank. It was nothingness.
The train drew up, the herd of passengers bundled out, and he, at the head of the train, among the first. He went uncertainly sauntering down the platform. He was half inclined to ask some one where the train had come from. He even found himself listening to one or two groups of people in the hope that he should hear its name; but he was ashamed to listen too long, and still more ashamed to put the question which had at first occurred to him. It was a pity. If he had acted there and then he would have saved himself a great deal of coming trouble. But he had already begun to feel a mixture of shame and fear lest his humiliation should be discovered. That dangerous mood was to grow.
Mechanically he hailed one of the new rotor taxis—he recognized them, though he could not tell where or how (they had just been coming in the year before he left England; but of that year there was nothing now in his mind). It suddenly broke upon him that he could not tell the taxi where to drive.
Now the man who drove the taxi judged tips by wealth and wealth by external signs. So he said, with simple judgment, “The Splendide?”
His fare nodded hastily and got in. Anywhere would do. Here again the name was perfectly familiar to him. The picture of the big hotel in his mind was quite clear. He could have told you exactly where it was in London. But for the soul of him he couldn’t have told youhowhe knew. He nodded, and the rotor cab jerked and plunged and pulled up sharp and jerked forward again for its half-hour to the Splendide, with the stricken man inside concentrating away for dear life and getting nowhere.
During the Berkeley Street block, and to the whirring of the mighty little engine and the shaking of the cab, he suddenly shouted PETRE at the top of his voice. The driver opened the door sharply and barked at him, “What say?”
“Nothing,” said the greatly relieved man, sighing deeply. “I was talking to myself.”
The taxi driver slammed the door, looked at the policeman whose hand still barred the traffic, jerked his thumb towards the inside of his cab, touched his forehead and smiled. The policeman also deigned to smile. Then the flood was released and they jerked off again.
Petre, that was it ... Petre.... That was his name! But what Petre? He could not tell. The sound was perfectly clear and perfectly familiar.... Petre. Petre it was: he was quite certain of that.—Thank God, he was certain of that!... And during the next three blocks in the traffic his certitude grew firmer and firmer. He clung to the protection of that word Petre as does a drowning man to a deck chair. That was something to go on, anyhow.... He could not see it as P-e-t-e-r or P-e-t-r-e. It was only the sound he was sure of. But when he came to think of it, it must be Petre, for he had not in his mind any savor, not even the slightest, of a grotesque connotation, and if it had been “Peter,” however familiar to him, it would have sounded a little silly in his ears.... No, it must certainly be Petre. It was a good name.... There was—he had a vague idea—a Lord Petre. He did not think he was—or had been—a lord. He would have remembered that at least, though all the rest had gone. No, it was Mr. Petre all right.... Mr. something Petre, as Mr. J. Petre.... But what was that Christian name, or those Christian names?
He had reached the Splendide. Mr. Petre (for he could now securely call himself by his right name, an anchor-hold in such an awful tide) got out and vastly overpaid the cab. The new rotor cabs had the fare marked up in large red ticking figures inside. It was a rule brought in by Jessie Anderson when she was at the Home Office in the last Administration. It had always annoyed her to peer through the glass, and she was no longer young. Mr. Petre quite understood the meaning of those figures; shillings and pence were familiar to him and the connection of their symbols with the coins in his hand was part of himself, though he could not have told you where or when he had last handled such coins.
Now and then he would hesitate over a detail. He had puzzled a minute before getting the name of Oxford Street as they crossed it. But the run of London life was as common to him as to any of the myriads around. It was only the bond between them and his past self that had snapped.
He knew the Splendide. He knew the ritual of registration. He even knew the liveries with their absurd gold crowns. He knew it was strange to take a room without luggage. He feared resentment. Yet he rightly judged such eccentricity stood a better chance at the more expensive hotels than the less.
He was full of the ordeal before him, and he approached it rather nervously. But he put on as bold a front as he could, and gave the name “Petre” in rather a loud voice, and with that slight American intonation which was his though he knew it not.
He was surprised at a certain note in the clerk’s reply, something between the tone in which a man addresses a great lady advanced in years and that in which he would address (were addresses paid to such things) a unicorn or any other apparition; and the voice using these tones said quite low, so that no one around should hear, and with a certain thrill of reverence displayed and of astonishment controlled:
“Mr. John K. Petre?”
Mr. Petre nodded rapidly. It was no good seeking for the real Christian names: these would do as well as any other for the time being.
He was relieved to see the right spelling coming out from the tip of the clerk’s pen in the register: “John K. Petre.” No place of residence followed. The clerk knew too much for that. He made an inclination that was nearly a bow as he sent for the boy in buttons, and begged Mr. Petre in a still lower voice to let him know if the suite he had chosen would do: it had only three rooms, he said, but it was the best unoccupied and over the garden. Two hundred dollars—forty pounds.
unicorn“... As though he were a Unicorn.”
“... As though he were a Unicorn.”
Mr. Petre recollected the £63 he had upon him and the very strange condition under which he was attacking this stronghold. He firmly refused anything but a plain bedroom and bathroom. He would not even have a sitting-room, and the clerk this time really did bow, as a worshiper might incline to a saint who was beyond the pale of mortal kind. He whispered rather than spoke the number “44,” and Mr. Petre, before going to the lift, said:
“One moment, I have no luggage.” He said it in the over-emphatic tone which men use to say anything startling that has to be forced down; he repeated it in that same firm voice in which the slight American accent was emphasised: “I have no luggage.”
The clerk showed no surprise at all. If Mr. John K. Petre chose to travel without luggage, it seemed to be in the clerk’s eyes but one more evidence of more than human greatness.
“I shall go out and buy what I need,” continued Mr. Petre, still firmly, “when I have washed, in a few minutes.”
“Can we——” insinuated the clerk.
“No,” said Mr. Petre yet more firmly, and almost readily. “I always do these things myself.”
But when and where he had done these things himself he could not possibly have told, for Mr. Petre had no idea what things he did and what things he did not do. His new life had begun less than a couple of hours before, and the old one was lost.
He followed the boy to the lift, and as he went he was reassured. For he said to himself, “I am some one of consequence. I am known.” But on that thought followed its terrifying successors—The more imperative his need for caution (the lift was taking him up to No. 44); the worse the ridicule if his secret were discovered before he had found himself (the lift had reached the landing); the deeper his humiliation and (the door of 44 was opened for him—no, he needed nothing; it shut upon him and he was seated alone in despair) the more intolerable his lot. What if that unknown life of his had been passed in some great household, a grandeur of spouse and children and domestics; lived for years with intimates who should know what had befallen him? He would be marked. A diminished man. One who had “had an accident.” Pitied, despised, his relapse awaited. He recoiled at the thought!...
No! There must be no discovery by others. With infinite caution, catching and comparing every word, he would pick up piece by piece the truth about himself. He would secretly effect his own restoration. But what of questions? How should he answerthem?
While Mr. Petre was moving towards the lift, magnificently waved forward by dazzling liveries and piloted in procession by the boy in buttons, a young fellow who had been sitting in the lounge of the hotel talking to an older man got up and sauntered towards the registration counter.
He had heard a name—and that name was gold. For though the clerk had whispered Mr. Petre had spoken loudly and without discretion.
The young man dug his hands into his trousers pockets, looked for a moment through the windows toward the street, and then turned sharply beyond the register book to the office where inquiries were made. As he did so he kept his head well to the left, outwards from the counter; but his eyes shot furtively to the right, and he spotted the name upon the open page. It was John K. Petre all right. He had thought as much.
At the Inquiry he asked whether there was a telegram for Gadget, and was not surprised to hear that there was none; indeed, he had only that moment made up the name. But such is the spell of association over even the sharpest crook that he could not help saying, “John K. Gadget”; so much was the famous name of John K. Petre now branded upon his brain.
He sauntered back again to his chair, sank down, and took up speech again with his companion.
The young man himself was tall, just an inch or two overdressed, with black hair, greased, brushed back over a high narrow forehead and thin face, of the bony sort, which is also called “distinguished,” the long narrow chin and the high narrow forehead were each a long way from the advanced cape of the squeezed nose. He made delicate gestures with his right hand. He spoke leisurely and high.
His companion was of no such exalted station. He was squat, round-headed, double-chinned, with a thick, frowsy, gray mustache; short, ill-combed hair; and dressed in clothes so loose and creased that they disgraced that cavern of the rich. His boots were shameful, and even his collar was dubious.
“Well, Arthur?” said he to the young man.
“Well, Batterby, he’s come here.”
“Oh, he has, has he? I told you so!” said Batterby, not without pride.
“Yep,” answered the more elegant Arthur. “There’s the name right enough. John K. Petre. But you know what I told you. He makes it a point to keep low and dark. I’d use it—but I wouldn’t print it. I’ve heard what he does when he’s given away. Oh! He’s savage! The clerks are paid in all these places to keep it quiet whenever hedoescome over. Once they did get hold of him in theHowl, when he came over four years ago, and they printed a story about him. Then they found he controlled half the poison ads.: Rodney’s Cure, and the Pain-killer and Voler’s Pills—and he made ’em print a denial too, displayed. And then he broke ’em! Oh! he’s savage.”
“It was I tracked him to that boat on my own risk,” said Batterby doggedly. “I paid the clerk at this end out of my own pocket, and he said John K. would be on it, as sure as one can be of him. He’d booked as Carroll, so’s not to be pestered on board. If I liked to take the trouble I could find out that he’d landed and what train he took. It’s a cruel shame if I can’t make a story for theMessengerout of it! His Grace’ll want it too,” he added plaintively. “It’s for him to print or not as he likes. He knows his way about, does the Duke.”
Arthur shrugged his shoulders. “You can tell your gang if you like, Batterby, but it’s at your own risk. He’ll ferret you out and he’ll never let go of you. He bites to the bone: specially newspaper men. That’s what he hates most. You know what he is. If they print they’ll get hell, and even if they only talkyou’llget hell. I’ve told you all I know about him. He comes to London, Paris, Naples, anywhere. Nobody to know when he passed, except his men. And what’s more, he’ll get plenty of people to swear to his being somewhere else. If he makes a row, it isn’t my fault. At any rate, he’s here.... I’ve got to be off. Will you wait while I get my hat and coat?”
Batterby, who had his hat in his hand and his coat on his back, looked uneasy and said, “Yes, if you like.” Arthur sauntered off at his slow pace, and the older, heavier, less consequent man watched him slyly well round the corner, and then lumbered up to the Registration Desk. The book was shut. He leaned with a foolish grin of cunning over the desk, winked, and said to the clerk: “Any one o’ the name o’ Petre registered to-day?”
The clerk said curtly, “No.”
“Nothing like it?” said Batterby, taking out a case with cigarettes upon the one side and notes prominently showing upon the other.
“Nothing,” said the clerk icily.
Batterby tapped the thick red leather binding with a square, short forefinger, and winked again. For answer the clerk put the big book on one side and turned away. His questioner waddled back again to the easy chair and wishedhecould earn money so easily. He looked at his watch, and wondered that Arthur was so long. Yet there was nothing wonderful in the delay. Arthur was telephoning. He was telephoning to Mrs. Cyril.
Before he had returned to the lounge and to the impatient Batterby a stout, rather bewildered man, middle-aged and gray, but active in his step, had passed by him, and had gone rapidly through the great turning doors into the street. It was Mr. Petre, seeking a Gladstone bag and linen and hair brushes, and all that might be necessary to restore him to citizenship. Had Batterby known what presence it was that thus passed he would have been a changed man. But Batterby did not know. Arthur rejoined him, the two went out into the street in their turn.
The Strand is not a good place for conversation in these days, but Batterby was anxious and eager. It was a scoop, if he could bring it off; and poor Batterby lived and kept an unhappy household in Golder’s Green upon scoops; and Arthur was his informant on the great world, in return for services rendered before Arthur had climbed—through a knowledge of Arthur’s earlier days. Arthur knew every one now, and yet could still be squeezed. The shorter and older man looked up at his young companion as they jostled eastward towards Fleet Street.
“Don’t you think I could risk it, Arthur?”
“Oh! I’ve told you,” said Arthur impatiently. “It’s at your risk. But mind you, if he is here he’ll have it denied, and if he isn’t, it comes to the same thing. You’ll get hell. You can’t fight fifty million pound.”
Batterby sighed. It would mean a great scoop.... And he might have had the interview given him. His Grace had given him just that job when he had spotted the secret visit of the French Prime Minister six months before. But French Prime Ministers are small game compared with Americans on the scale of John K. Petre.... Then again, if things went wrong, and he could not make the news good, that meant the sack. His Lordship could be terribly firm; and Batterby thought of the little house in Golder’s Green and the nagging, dissatisfied wife, and inwardly trembled.... No, he couldn’t risk it.... At least, not unless Arthur would guarantee him, and Arthur wouldn’t. Arthur had sworn he would know nothing about it.... So there was an end of it. But it was astonishing how full Batterby’s mind was of John K. Petre; almost as though he had him there by his side, arm in arm. It is said that very great men thus permeate the air of the cities through which they pass. It may be so. Arthur and Batterby melted into the crowd.
Mr. Petre was a full two hours in making his purchases. One very good reason for such delay was that he had no idea of his measurements. Another, that his recent, his overwhelming misfortune had made him mistrustful of himself. He kept on wondering whether he had filled up a sufficient list. At last he had fully packed his newly-purchased bag; he had brought it back to the hotel; he had followed it up to No. 44. He sat down beside it, counted out what remained of his capital and found fifty-two pounds and a few shillings left. He plunged again into that depth of thought wherein he groped like a diver in dim water to find some recollection or some clew—and he found none. The enormous loneliness of the position was upon him: it appalled him even more than the approaching end of his resources. He felt all the millions of London round about him, aloof and hostile: dumb ... when the telephone on the table in his room rang suddenly, and he took it up.
A woman’s voice, very clearly articulate, rather too high, asked if that were Mr. Petre, and announced itself as Celia Cyril. It then cleared its throat, but in a very ladylike manner, and Mr. Petre boldly answered “Yes” and waited; concluding, as he waited, that he ought certainly to have answered “No.” The voice told him it knew hehatedbeing fussed, but he had always made an exception of dear Leonard, hadn’t he? So the voice had taken the liberty to send a note which would explain; but the voice had thought (it said) that it seemed better first to ring up before the note would get to him; because the voice knew that hehatedbeing fussed. And then thought that perhaps it ought not perhaps to have rung up after all. But it did hope he didn’t mind. All of which clear-headed and decisive stuff Mr. Petre received in a complete confusion.
“My only excuse,” the voice went on, “is that you weresogood to dear Leonard, to my dear husband when he was in the States two years ago. You know all that has happened since. You don’t mind my asking?Doyou? You remember my Leonard?”
Now at this moment—I write it down without comment, for all that follows is a commentary upon it, but I think it excusable in a man so hungry to know and so dazed as was Mr. Petre—at this moment, I say, Mr. Petre again answered “Yes.” The clearly articulate voice continued in a tone of relief.
“Ah, Iamso glad. I knew it was a liberty. I know youhateto be fussed. But I do hope you will be able to come, and you will get my note. It ought to be with you any time now. I sent the car with it.” Then the voice said “Good-by” in a fashion which oddly reminded Mr. Petre of pink sugar—but after his great catastrophe he dared not guess whether it were because the late Mr. Cyril or Sir Leonard Cyril, or Lord Leonard Cyril or Leonard Lord Cyril had been connected with sugar, or whether it was only the tone of the voice.
But the recitation of such names suggested to him rather suddenly a book the name of which he perfectly remembered, and he telephoned down at once for the year’sWho’s Who. Now he would make a serious search. He was on a clew.
The first thing he did was to look out Cyril. He found nobody, and in good time it was to be made very clear why he had found nobody of that name. Leonard Cyril was dead. Then he looked out Petre—brilliant thought, and he found many Petres, and read all that was to be read of them closely; but not one suggested anything to his knowledge. He was certainly John K. The clerk had made that clear. There was no John K. inWho’s Who. He sighed. It was a heart-breaking business. Then, the processes of his mind working more fully, but his sense of personality as blank as ever, he tried the telephone book of London. There was a Mrs. Cyril right enough, and she seemed to be well-to-do, for what she had said about her car corresponded with her address. But when he turned to the Petres he was baulked again: there were too many, and not a John K. in the bunch ... and after all, why hadn’t he thought of it? The States!... Was he not an American?... There was evidence that he had been in America. That would make it less incomprehensible—but more difficult to trace through London.... And he didn’tfeelAmerican somehow.... What a business!
Then came the note. A young child, dressed in yet another uniform and with bright, active eyes brought it in. It was but an expansion of the telephone message he had had before. Mrs. Cyril had only just heard of him from a friend who had caught sight of him (he trembled!) in the hotel. She was taking a great liberty, but her late husband had spoken so warmly of him and of the kindness Mr. Petre had shown him when he visited the United States, that she presumed upon that acquaintance and asked him whether he could not lunch with her next Wednesday?
Mr. Petre delved down again into the depths of his mind. Whatever he may have been in that past life of his, he had evidently been courteous, for he felt the necessity of answering by writing and by messenger, and not by telephone. The more he thought of the affair, the more he discovered at once its possibilities and its dangers. In the last few hours the shrinking from humiliation had become an obsession. He was now fixed in a mood such that he would rather have died than admit his hidden trouble. All around him, perhaps, would be people who would know who he was; some perhaps would have met him; his hostess at least would have heard much of him. He would have to play up to all that he could hear, to glean everything that he could, and yet not give away his secret.
For some little time he hesitated. Then he considered that if he never took the plunge he might be lost. Either he must recover his past by clews or by inferences, and these could only be had from witnesses; or else live on a few weeks to the end of his money, and then—what?
Evidently he had been—whatever he was—not only a courteous man, but a man of decision. He took up his pen and wrote a rapid note to Mrs. Cyril, saying how pleased he would be to lunch. He rang at once and sent it off by the messenger. He was a little alarmed to learn that her car had been waiting all the time to take that answer back. Mr. Petre might be a man of decision, but he could not compare with Mrs. Cyril. Whoever he (Mr. Petre) might be, and whoever she (Mrs. Cyril) might be, she (Mrs. Cyril) gave points to him (Mr. Petre). And Mr. Petre drew another deep sigh as he considered the peculiar misfortune of his life, and wondered why he had been pitched upon to suffer so extraordinary a fate.
He could not tell. But I know and I will tell the reader. It was holiday in heaven and a Dæmon, genial, ironic, had been given Mr. Petre for a toy to play with a little while.
He glanced again at the letter, turned over the sheet and found a postscript. “You know how discreet I shall be and how familiar I am with your rules. The Press shall not hear a word of it. It was by the merestaccidentthat I heard of your presence in London myself, and even if you send an answer that you are not there at all, I shallquiteunderstand.—C.C.”
Mr. Petre held those words before him and stared. Then he began to put everything together in a sort of summary. He had been in the States; perhaps he was a native of the States. He didn’t think so; he felt it in his bones that he was not an American. Yet ... at any rate, he had been in the States.
There was another point. The man he had been had some reason or other for keeping very secret; the clerk’s manner had proved that. It made him feel anxious. Had he committed a crime?... No! On reflection, no. If he had Mrs. Cyril would not be so keen to have him to lunch with her. He must have had the power to do some good to the late Cyril; he must have had some great position out there in America.... What?
For a moment he was on the point of drafting an advertisement to sundry American papers, and then that shame came upon him and he put down his pen. He gave it up; he trusted to chance; he awaited Wednesday; and having been apparently in that past of his a naturally hopeful man, he took it for granted that at Mrs. Cyril’s table some light might break. Then he went down to dinner.
He sat there at his lonely table, perfectly clear upon the roof under which he was (it was familiar to him), upon the date, upon the meaning of all that he read in the paper (he was consecutive upon this, not only for the news of the last twenty-four hours, but also, after a gap of about a fortnight, with many older allusions). Oddly enough, certain dull fragments of American news, meaningless to an Englishman, struck him with particular familiarity; and the name of one town in which a bishop in the middle west had denied his Saviour struck him with a feeling of home; but of himself and of who he was—nothing. It was like standing in a well-lit room and looking through the window at a dense fog outside pressing against the panes.
Then he went upstairs again to No. 44 and took off all his clothes and looked on every edge of shirt and collar and vest and drawers and socks for initials. He found a New York price ticket on his shirt, the word “Paramount” on his collar and “Zenith” woven into his socks, but of initials not a sign, and as for his night-shirt, he had just bought it—not pajamas; was that instinct a clew? He was tired out. He put it on and went to bed.