Anthony Hope - A Young Man's Year

"That's it! Go 'ome now," the policeman suggested again, infinitely patient and persuasive.

The man made a sudden move towards the door of the public-house where an official, vulgarly known as the 'chucker out,' stood smiling on the threshold.

"No, sir, you don't !" said the policeman, suave but immensely firm, laying a hand on his arm.

"The officer's quite right. Do come along," again urged the lady.

But the movement towards the public-house door, which revealed to Arthur the face of the obstinate lingerer, showed him to the lingerer also – showed Arthur in his evening uniform of tall hat, white scarf, and silk-faced coat to Sidney Barslow in his 'bowler' hat of rakish cut, and his sporting fawn-coloured coat, with the big flower in his buttonhole and his stick with a huge silver knob. The stick shot out – vaguely in Arthur's direction.

"I'm a gentleman, and, what's more, I can prove it. Ask that gentleman – my friend there – "

Arthur's face was a little flushed. His mind was full of those terrible quick visions of his – a scuffle on the pavement, going bail for Sidney Barslow, giving evidence at the Police Court. "A friend of the prisoner, Mr. Arthur Lisle, Barrister, of Garden Court, Middle Temple" – visions most terrible! But he stood his ground, saying nothing, not moving a limb, and meeting Barslow's look full in the eyes. All the rest were staring at him now. If he remained as he was they would take it as a denial of Barslow's claim to acquaintance. Could he deny it if Barslow challenged him? He answered – No.

But some change of mood came over Sidney Barslow's clouded mind. He let his stick fall back to his side again, and with an angry jerk of his head said:

"Oh, damn it, all right, I'm going! I – I was only pulling your leg."

"That's right now!" applauded the policeman. "You'd better take 'im in a taxi, miss."

"And put a ticket on 'im, in case 'e falls out, miss," some friendly adviser added.

Arthur did not wait to see the policeman's excellent suggestion carried into effect. The moment that Sidney Barslow's eyes were off him, he turned quickly up a by-street, and took a roundabout way home.

He had much to be thankful for. The terrible visions were dissipated. And – he had not run away. Oh, how he had wanted to run away from the danger of being mixed up in that dirty job. He thanked heaven that he had stood his ground and looked Barslow in the face.

But what about the next time they had to look one another in the face – at the Sarradets' in Regent's Park?

Marie's remonstrance with her brother was not ill-received – Raymond was too amiable for that – but it was quite unsuccessful. Just emerged from an exhaustive business training on the latest lines at home and abroad, able (as he pointed out in mingled pride and ruefulness) to correspond about perfumes in French, German, Spanish, and Italian, and to talk about them in three of those languages, he declared openly not for a lifetime of leisure but for an hedonistic interval. Further, he favoured a little scattering of money after so much amassing.

"If Pops," he observed, "would only go back to his Balzac, he would see how much harm and sorrow this perpetual money-grubbing causes among the business classes of our beloved France. In England a more liberal spirit prevails, and after a hundred and fifty years we ought to be able to catch it. In fact I have caught it, Marie."

"You have; and you'll catch something else – from Pops – if you don't look out," said Marie, who could not help smiling at the trim, spry, gay little fellow. Like herself, he was dark and lively, but of the two she was the manager, the man of business.

"Besides it does the house good. 'Who's that?' they ask. 'Young Sarradet.' 'What, the scent and soap people?' 'The same.' 'Dashed fine business that!'" He enacted the dialogue with dramatic talent. "As an advertisement I'm worth all my debts, dear sister."

Marie was too much amused to press her point further. "You rather remind me of Bob Sawyer," she remarked. "But, anyhow, be here oftener in the evenings, if you can. That'll go a long way towards pacifying Pops. When you're away, he sits thinking of the money you're spending. Besides, he does like to have you here, you know."

"You tell me when Amabel Osling is coming, and I'll be here."

"I'm glad you like Amabel. She's pretty, isn't she?"

"She's all right. Otherwise I didn't think it was very lively."

"N-no. It was hardly one of our best evenings," Marie admitted reluctantly.

It hadn't been – that first meeting of her circle after Arthur Lisle's dinner party. They had all been there, including Raymond, whose exchanges of wit and chaff with Joe Halliday were generally of themselves enough to make the evening a success. It had not been a success – at least from the moment of Arthur's arrival. Mildred Quain had started off about the party at once; her curiosity concerning the Norton Wards was insatiable – she seemed to be working up a regular cult of them. Marie herself had been benevolently inquisitive too, hoping to hear that Arthur had had a grand time and made a great impression. But the topic had seemed distasteful to Arthur, he tried to get away from it directly; when the persevering Mildred dragged him back, his replies grew short and his manner reserved; he seemed ill at ease. As for Sidney Barslow, as soon as ever Arthur and his party came on the scene, he turned sulky – indecently sulky. It was painful as well as absurd, and it got worse when Joe Halliday, trying (in justice let it be said) to lighten the atmosphere by jocularity, suggested, "And, after it all, I suppose some beautiful lady took you to your humble home in her six-cylinder car?" Arthur answered dryly, with a pointed ignoring of the joke, "I walked home by Oxford Street." Joe, still persevering, asked, "No romantic adventures on the way?" "Nothing out of the common," Arthur replied in a cool hard voice which was very rare in his mouth, but meant, Marie knew, serious displeasure. In fact she was just going to make some laughing apology for the catechism through which he had been put when Sidney Barslow, who had been glowering worse and worse every minute, suddenly broke out:

"There's an end of the thing, at all events, at last!" And he looked at Arthur, as it seemed to her, with a curious mixture of anger and fear, a sort of snarling defiance.

"It was not I who introduced the subject or was responsible for its continuance," said Arthur, in the iciest of all his cool voices. "That you must do me the justice to admit, Barslow."

Then an awful pause – even Joe gravelled for a joke – and the most obvious clumsy resort to "a little more music"! The strains failed of soothing effect. On the one side a careful but disdainful courtesy, on the other a surly defiance – they persisted all the evening, making everybody uncomfortable and (as Marie shrewdly guessed) inquisitive. This was something much worse, much more pronounced, than mere 'grating.' There was, on Sidney's side at least, an actual enmity; and Arthur, noting it, treated it with contemptuous indifference.

"Have you had a row with Sidney about anything?" she managed to whisper to Arthur.

"No."

"Have you said anything to annoy him, do you think?"

He looked straight into her eyes. "I haven't spoken to him since we were last here."

Sidney she did not venture to approach in confidence; he was altogether too dangerous that night. She did not know the occasion which had fanned a smouldering hostility into flame, which had changed a mere 'grating' of the one on the other, an uncongeniality, into feelings much stronger and more positive. Even had she known it, perhaps she was not well enough versed in the standards and the moods of men to understand all that it carried with it. Sidney Barslow was not particularly ashamed of what had happened to him in itself: in suitable company he would have found it a story he could tell and be sure of a humorous sympathy; there was nothing to be remorseful or miserable about. As long as a man did his work and earned his 'screw' (and Sidney held a good position in a wholesale linen-merchant's business and was doing well) he was entitled to his amusements – if you like, his dissipations – while he was young at all events. If indiscretions marked them, if one sometimes tumbled over the line, that was in the nature of the case. He would not have minded an encounter with Joe Halliday outside that public-house in the least – no, nor even with young Raymond Sarradet, Marie's brother though he was. Nay, he would not much have minded being seen even by Arthur Lisle himself; for if Arthur had been shocked, Sidney would, in all sincerity, have dubbed him a milksop; the man who would be shocked at a thing like that was certainly a milksop. He was not even afraid of Arthur's betraying him to Marie – not because he thought his enemy above that, but because he had an easy confidence that he could put the matter right with Marie, and a strong doubt whether women objected to that sort of thing so much as they were in the habit of pretending; in their hearts they like a man to be a man, Sidney would have told himself for comfort.