Hugo: A Fantasia on Modern Themes - Arnold Bennett

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trouble, my dear sir. Convey my decision to Louis Ravengar, and give him my compliments. We are old acquaintances.'

      'You are?' The solicitor seemed astonished in his imperturbable way.

      'We are.'

      'I will convey your decision to my clients.'

      Accepting a cigar, Mr. Polycarp departed.

      Without giving himself time to think, Hugo went straight to Department 42, and direct to the artist in hats. She stood pale and deferential to receive him. The heat was worse than ever.

      'Your name is Payne, I think?' he began. (He well knew her name was Payne.)

      'Yes, sir.'

      Other employés in the trying-on room looked furtively round.

      'About half-past eleven an old gentleman, with white moustache, came into this room, Miss Payne. You remember?'

      'Yes, sir.'

      'What did he want?'

      'He was inquiring about a hat, sir,' she hurriedly answered.

      'For a lady?'

      'Yes, sir.'

      'Thank you.'

      And he hastened back to his central office, and breathed a sigh. 'I have actually spoken to her,' he murmured. 'How charming her voice is!'

      But Miss Payne's physical condition desolated him. If she was so obviously exhausted at 12.30, what would she be like at the day's end?'

      'I've got it!' he cried.

      He seized a pen and wrote: 'Notice.—The public are respectfully informed that this establishment will close to-day at two o'clock.'

      He rang a bell, and a messenger appeared.

      'Take this to the printing-office instantly, and tell Mr. Waugh it must be posted throughout the place in half an hour.'

      Shortly after two o'clock Sloane Street was amazed to witness the exodus of the three thousand odd. The closure was attributed to a whim of Hugo's for celebrating some obscure anniversary in his life. Many hundreds of persons were inconvenienced, and the internal economy of scores of polite homes seriously deranged. The evening papers found a paragraph. And Hugo lost perhaps a hundred and fifty pounds net. But Hugo was happy, and he was expectant.

      At ten o'clock that night a youngish man, extremely like Simon Shawn, was brought by Simon into Hugo's presence under the dome. This was Simon's brother, Albert Shawn, a member of Hugo's private detective force.

      'Sit down,' said Hugo. 'Well?'

      'I reckon you've heard, sir,' Albert Shawn began impassively, 'the yarn that's going all round the stores.'

      'I have not.'

      'Everyone's whispering,' said Albert Shawn, gazing carefully at his boots, 'that Mr. Hugo has taken a kind of a fancy to Miss Payne.'

      Hugo restrained himself.

      'Heavens!' he exclaimed, with a clever affectation of lightness, 'what next? I've only spoken to the chit once.'

      'Don't I know it, sir!'

      'Enough of that! What have you to report?'

      'Miss Payne left at 2.15, whipped round to the flats entrance, took the lift to the top-floor, went into Mr. Francis Tudor's flat.'

      'What's that you say? Whose flat?' cried Hugo.

      'Mr. Francis Tudor's, sir.'

      Mr. Tudor was famous as the tenant of the suite rented at two thousand a year; he had a reputation for being artistic, sybaritic, and something in the inner ring of the City.

      'Ah!' said Hugo. 'Perhaps she is a friend of one of Mr. Tudor's—'

      'Servants,' he was about to say, but the idea of Miss Payne being on terms of equality with a menial was not pleasant to him, and he stopped.

      'No, sir,' said Albert Shawn, unmoved. 'She is not, because Mr. Tudor shunted out all his servants soon afterwards. Miss Payne was shown into his study. She had her tea there, and her dinner. The Hugo half-guinea dinner was ordered late by telephone for two persons, and rushed up at eight o'clock.'

      'I wonder Mr. Tudor didn't order an orchestra with the dinner,' said Hugo grimly. It was a sublime effort on his part to be his natural self.

      'I waited for Miss Payne to leave,' continued Albert Shawn. 'That's why I'm so late.'

      'And what time did she leave?'

      'She hasn't left,' said Albert Shawn.

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      Hugo dismissed Albert, with orders to continue his vigil, and then he rang for Simon.

      'Do you think I might have some tea?' he asked.

      'I am disposed to think you might, sir,' said Simon the cellarer. 'It is eight days since you indulged after dinner.'

      'Bring me one cup, then, poured out.'

      He was profoundly disturbed by Albert's news. He was, in fact, miserable. He had a physical pain in the region of the heart. He wished he could step off Love as one steps off an omnibus, but he found that Love resembled an express train more than an omnibus.

      'Can she be secretly married to him?' he demanded half aloud, sipping at the tea.

      The idea soothed him exactly as much as it alarmed him.

      'The question is,' he murmured angrily, 'am I or am I not an ass? … At my age!'

      He felt vaguely that he was not, that he was rather a splendid and Byronic figure in the grip of tremendous emotions.

      Having regretfully finished the tea, he unlocked a bookcase, and picked out at random a volume of Boswell's 'Johnson.' It was the modern Oxford edition—the only edition worthy of a true amateur—bound by Rivière. Like all wise and lettered men, Hugo consulted Boswell in the grave crises of life, and to-night he happened upon the venerable Johnson's remark: 'Sir, I would be content to spend the remainder of my existence driving about in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.'

      He leaned back in his chair and laughed. 'In the whole history of mankind,' he asserted to the dome, 'there have only been two really sensible men. Solomon was one, and Johnson the other.'

      He restored the book to its place, and sat down to the piano-player, and in a moment the overture to 'Tannhäuser,' that sublime failure to prove that passion is folly, filled the vast apartment. The rushing violin passages, and every call of Aphrodite, intoxicated his soul and raised his spirits till he knew with the certainty of a fully-aroused instinct that Camilla Payne must be his. He became optimistic on all points.

      'A lady insists on seeing you, sir,' said Simon Shawn, intruding upon the Pilgrims' Chant.

      'She may insist,' Hugo answered lightly. 'But it all depends who she is. I'm—'

      He stopped, for the insisting lady had entered.

      It was Camilla.

      He jumped up. Never before in his career had he been so astounded, staggered, charmed, enchanted, dazzled, and completely silenced.

      'Miss Payne?' he gasped after a prolonged pause.

      Simon Shawn effaced himself.

      'Yes,

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