AS Dwala and Huxtable were sitting at breakfast one morning, a week later, the butler leaned down in his gentle fatherly way over the Prince’s shoulder, and told him that a man had been asking for him.
‘A blind man, sir, with a little girl with him; very respectable. They came about half-past seven.’
‘Where are they?’
‘They went away again, sir.’
‘Did they say if they were coming back?’
‘Not a word, sir; they just turned round and went into the Park when they heard you wasn’t up.’
Dwala then propounded at length to Huxtable all his ideas about Hartopp and Joey. Huxtable listened quietly, with an occasional colourless: ‘Quite so, quite so.’ He retired to his room after breakfast, and walked up and down a great deal. His ideas cleared after some hours of perambulation. He arrived at the same conclusion as Prosser. Prince Dwala was an eccentric. He thought over the cases of a number of peers and millionaires he knew about who had been eccentric, and suddenly realised that eccentricity was more than respectable; it was chic: it belonged to the grandest school of behaviour. It was not what he had expected in coming to Prince Dwala; his own part would be difficult and call for care. It was like the Boer War; that had been eccentric too; but for that very reason it had been the making of his cousin Jim, who was now in command of a brigade. When he came down to luncheon he looked at Dwala with an interest almost tender.
Meanwhile Hartopp and Joey had not come back. Dwala had been out into Park Lane three or four times in the course of the morning, looking vainly up and down for them. There was only a patient four-wheeled cab, with two big new leather trunks on it, standing a little way off the gate; the driver opened his eyes heavily each time Dwala emerged, and then returned to sleep.
It was one of those solemn summer days which visit London like dreams: one of those days when Hyde Park, with its smooth lawns and ancient dignity of trees, seems like the revelation of a purpose in this fantastic world—a purpose to which the surface of aristocratic life, with its carriages and frocks and parasols, seems so well attuned, that one is convinced that the whole mass of it must needs be as respectable as Nature.
They came at last: Dwala was on the steps to meet them: Hartopp in a well-brushed black tail coat; Joey looking ugly in a tight velvet frock and feathered hat, her hair drawn back into a pig-tail, all clean but her hands.
They both looked tired and saddened. Dwala felt a sudden disillusion, a reduction of something big to small dimensions.
‘Is that your cab outside?’ he asked.
Joey nodded. ‘But we’ve not decided yet. We’ve only come to have a look.’
She ran up the steps, and stopped, peering into the dark entry, awed by the motionless forms of the big footmen.
They went all over the house with Dwala, from bottom to top, conscientiously, doggedly, examining everything. Joey insisted: Hartopp followed, mumbling morosely. Joey listened to all explanations with that air of undue, almost effusive, attentiveness, which marches so nearly with boredom. They saw Huxtable once on a landing: he was passing from one room to another, in spectacles, with a bundle of papers; he always wore spectacles till tea-time. He looked at them drily, externally, as one looks at events in another family.
A kind of depression, a melancholy hush, weighed on the whole house and household, as if someone had just died. One thing only was certain: they all knew that the pretence of a probation was an empty one; Hartopp and Joey had come to stay.
Hartopp was aware of this, and wondered at his own blank listlessness. The Enemy of Society felt suddenly as a wild bull might, which had spent a long hot day goring a big cathedral and was now being led quietly to a pew. There is a magic in our masquerading: it is with deep feelings of solemnity that man shuffles off one disguise and gets into another; the fraudulent company-promoter, growing rich, enters upon his fortune almost with the same ennobling awe as a young girl going to her Confirmation.
Hartopp made an effort: he stopped Dwala as they went downstairs.
‘Let’s understand one another clearly, Prince What’s-your-name. If I come, I come as a free man: Joey too. We come as gentry, or we don’t come at all. The servants are to treat us with respect as such. Do you see?’
‘Of course, of course.’
‘We’ll have the best of everything: eat what we like, drink what we like, spend as much money as we like. Do you see? No d——d philanthropy.’
‘I promise you solemnly.’
‘That’s right.’
The cabman was paid off and the boxes were brought in.
‘Both Joey’s,’ said Hartopp: ‘I’ve brought nothing.’
‘I’ll have a fire in my bedroom, please,’ said Joey.
Huxtable came in at tea-time and recounted three amusing anecdotes, at which Joey stared in awe and the old man chuckled faintly. The butler inquired if the young lady would like a maid to unpack her boxes. Joey declined: she would do it herself.
She went out primly after tea, to see to it, jangling keys on a string. Huxtable went back to some mysterious ‘work.’
Then the air cleared suddenly. The blind man unbent with a touch of humour. It is humour that keeps the door in the wall through which alone we may hope to peep into our neighbour’s garden. We have passed that ivy-grown, impenetrable portal a thousand times, when suddenly one day we find it open, and instead of a dog growling in an arid patch of weeds, we find a friendly neighbour grinning in our face.
‘Do you know what’s in those boxes?’ said Hartopp confidentially.
‘No; what?’
‘Wood pavement.’ He exploded with laughter. ‘Her things weren’t fit to bring, but she wouldn’t be seen arriving without luggage; so she put that in to weight them down. That’s what the fire’s for. She’ll keep ’em locked till she’s got it all burnt—a little day by day. Don’t let her know I told you.’
It was a great nuisance, Dwala said, he had to go out that evening. Huxtable must entertain them. As for himself, he was dining with Lady Wyse.
‘Is Lady Wyse a friend of yours?’
‘A great friend.’
‘The one whose name’s always in the paper?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Well, take my advice and don’t let Joey know.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’d look down on you.’
‘Why? Lady Wyse is a very charming woman.’
‘You say that because you’re a toff. She’d hear a very different name, if she came down our street. I’d tell her straight myself.’