‘Is he going on with that, now he’s married?’
‘Surely.’
‘Not coming to England?’
‘Not this year. They have a nice home – horses and dogs. They have some hunting there, too. Perhaps he’ll bring my sister over for a trip, next fall.’
‘Oh!’ said Michael. ‘And are you staying long, yourself?’
‘Why! I’ll go back for Christmas. I’d like to see Rome and Seville; and I want to visit the old home of my people, down in Worcestershire.’
‘When did they go over?’
‘William and Mary. Catholics – they were. Is it a nice part, Worcestershire?’
‘Very; especially in the spring. It grows a lot of fruit.’
‘Oh! You still grow things in this country?’
‘Not many.’
‘I thought that was so, coming on the cars, from Liverpool. I saw a lot of grass and one or two sheep, but I didn’t see anybody working. The people all live in the towns, then?’
‘Except a few unconsidered trifles. You must come down to my father’s; they still grow a turnip or two thereabouts.’
‘It’s sad,’ said Francis Wilmot.
‘It is. We began to grow wheat again in the war; but they’ve let it all slip back – and worse.’
‘Why was that?’
Michael shrugged his shoulders: ‘No accounting for statesmanship. It lets the Land go to blazes when in office; and beats the drum of it when in opposition. At the end of the war we had the best air force in the world, and agriculture was well on its way to recovery. And what did they do? Dropped them both like hot potatoes. It was tragic. What do you grow in Carolina?’
‘Just cotton, on my place. But it’s mighty hard to make cotton pay nowadays. Labour’s high.’
‘High with you, too?’
‘Yes, sir. Do they let strangers into your Parliament?’
‘Rather. Would you like to hear the Irish debate? I can get you a seat in the Distinguished Strangers’ gallery.’
‘I thought the English were stiff; but it’s wonderful the way you make me feel at home. Is that your father-in-law – the old gentleman?’
‘Yes.’
‘He seems kind of rarefied. Is he a banker?’
‘No. But now you mention it – he ought to be.’
Francis Wilmot’s eye roved round the room and came to rest on ‘The White Monkey’.
‘Well, now,’ he said, softly, ‘that, surely, is a wonderful picture. Could I get a picture painted by that man, for Jon and my sister?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Michael. ‘You see, he was a Chink – not quite of the best period; but he must have gone West five hundred years ago at least.’
‘Ah! Well, he had a great sense of animals.’
‘We think he had a great sense of human beings.’
Francis Wilmot stared.
There was something, Michael decided, in this young man unresponsive to satire.
‘So you want to see Cruft’s Dog Show?’ he said. ‘You’re keen on dogs, then?’
‘I’ll be taking a bloodhound back for John, and two for myself. I want to raise bloodhounds.’
Michael leaned back, and blew out smoke. To Francis Wilmot, he felt, the world was young, and life running on good tyres to some desirable destination. In England –!
‘What is it you Americans want out of life?’ he said abruptly.
‘Well, I suppose you might say we want success – in the North at all events.’
‘We wanted that in 1824,’ said Michael.
‘Oh! And nowadays?’
‘We’ve had success, and now we’re wondering whether it hasn’t cooked our goose.’
‘Well,’ said Francis Wilmot, ‘we’re sort of thinly populated, compared with you.’
‘That’s it,’ said Michael. ‘Every seat here is booked in advance; and a good many sit on their own knees. Will you have another cigar, or shall we join the lady?’
Chapter Five
SIDE-SLIPS
IF Providence was completely satisfied with Sapper’s Row, Camden Town, Michael was not. What could justify those twin dismal rows of three-storeyed houses, so begrimed that they might have been collars washed in Italy? What possible attention to business could make these little ground-floor shops do anything but lose money? From the thronged and tram-lined thoroughfare so pregnantly scented with fried fish, petrol, and old clothes, who would turn into this small backwater for sweetness or for profit? Even the children, made with heroic constancy on its second and third floors, sought the sweets of life outside its precincts; for in Sapper’s Row they could neither be run over nor stare at the outside of cinemas. Hand-carts, bicycles, light vans which had lost their nerve and taxicabs which had lost their way, provided all the traffic; potted geraniums and spotted cats supplied all the beauty. Sapper’s Row drooped and dithered.