figure perhaps condemned to years of solitude in London. When there was no one else to see, he saw Adeline,—Adeline with her finger on her lips, Adeline angry with her uncle, Adeline pouring out tea, Adeline reaching down his hat from the peg, Adeline laughing at the gate. There was something about Adeline that.... How the name suited her!... Her past life, judging from the hints she had given, must have been interesting. Perhaps that accounted for the charm which....
Then he returned to the book. He half regretted that Mr. Aked should have a hand in it at all. He could do it himself. Just as plainly as if the idea had been his own, he saw the volume complete, felt the texture of the paper, admired the disposition of the titlepage, and the blue buckram binding; he scanned the table of contents, and carelessly eyed the brief introduction, which was, however, pregnant with meaning; chapter followed chapter in orderly, scientific fashion, and the last summoned up the whole business in a few masterly and dignified sentences. Already, before a single idea had been reduced to words, "The Psychology of the Suburbs" was finished! A unique work! Other authors had taken an isolated spot here or there in the suburbs and dissected it, but none had viewed them in their complex entirety; none had attempted to extract from their incoherence a coherent philosophy, to deal with them sympathetically as Mr. Aked and himself had done—or rather were to do. None had suspected that the suburbs were a riddle, the answer to which was not undiscoverable. Ah, that secret, that key to the cipher! He saw it as it might be behind a succession of veils, flimsy obstructions which just then baffled his straining sight, but which he would rip and rend when the moment for effort came.
The same lofty sentiments occupied his brain the next morning. He paused in the knotting of his necktie, to look out of the window, seeking even in Raphael Street some fragment of that psychology of environment invented by Mr. Aked. Nor did he search quite in vain. All the phenomena of humble life, hitherto witnessed daily without a second thought, now appeared to carry some mysterious meaning which was on the point of declaring itself. Friday, when the first formal conference was to occur, seemed distressingly distant. But he remembered that a very hard day's work, the casting and completing of a gigantic bill of costs, awaited him at the office, and he decided to throw himself into it without reserve; the time would pass more quickly.
Chapter XIII
Every solicitor's office has its great client, whose affairs, watchfully managed by the senior partner in person, take precedence of all else, and whom every member of the staff regards with a particular respect caught from the principals themselves. Messrs. Curpet and Smythe were London agents to the tremendous legal firm of Pontifex, of Manchester, said to enjoy the largest practice in the midlands; and they were excusably proud of the fact. One of the first lessons that a new clerk learnt in the establishment at New Serjeant's Court was that, at no matter what expenditure of time and trouble, Pontifex business, comprising some scores of separate causes, must be transacted so irreproachably that old Mr. Pontifex, by repute a terrible fellow, might never have cause of complaint. On those mornings, happily rare, when a querulous letter did by chance arrive from Manchester, the whole office trembled apprehensively, and any clerk likely to be charged with negligence began at once to consider the advisability of seeking a new situation.
The Pontifex bill of costs was made up annually in June. As the time drew near for presenting it, more and more clerks were pressed into its service, until at the last everyone found himself engaged, in one way or another, upon this colossal account.
When Richard arrived at the office, he found the immense pile of white foolscap sheets upon his table, and next it the still higher pile of blue sheets forming the draft bill. All was finished except the checking of the figures and the final castings. As the cashier and accountant, he was ultimately responsible for this. He parcelled out the sheets, keeping the largest share for himself, and the work began. In every room there was a low muttering of figures, broken by an occasional oath when someone happened to lose the thread of an addition. The principals hovered about, full of solicitude and encouragement, and, according to custom on such occasions, lunch was served on the premises at the firm's expense. Richard continued to add while eating, keeping his head clear and seldom making a mistake; nothing existed for him but the column of pounds, shillings, and pence under his eyes.
The pile of finished sheets grew, and soon the office boys, commanded by Jenkins, were passing the earlier portion of the bill through the copying-press. As the hours went by, the helpers from other departments, no longer required, went back to their own neglected duties, and Richard did the last additions alone. At length the bill was absolutely finished, and he carried it himself to the stationer's to be sewed. In half an hour it came back, and he laid it ceremoniously before Mr. Curpet. The grand total went round the office, leaping from lip to lip like the result of an important parliamentary poll. It was higher than in any previous year by nearly a thousand pounds. Each of the clerks took a personal pride in its bigness, and secretly determined to petition for an increase of salary at the first opportunity. They talked together in groups, discussing details, while a comfortable lassitude spread from room to room.
Richard stood by the open window, absently watching the pigeons and the cleaners at the Law Courts opposite. In a corner an office boy, new to his work, was stamping envelopes with slow precision. Jenkins, with one foot on a table, was tying a shoe lace. It had struck six ten minutes ago, and everyone was gone except Mr. Smythe, whose departure Jenkins awaited with impatience. The hot day subsided slowly to a serene and lovely evening, and the customary noises of the Strand ascended to Richard like the pastoral hum of a valley to a dweller on a hill, not breaking but rather completing the stillness of the hour. Gradually his brain freed itself from the obsession of figures, though he continued to muse vaguely over the bill, which had just been posted. It would certainly be settled by cheque within a week, for Messrs. Pontifex were invariably prompt. That cheque, which he himself would enter and pay into the bank, amounted to as much as he could earn in twenty years, if he remained a clerk. He tried to imagine the scene in which, at some future date, he would give Mr. Curpet notice of his intention to resign his position, explaining that he preferred to support himself by literature. The ineffable sweetness of such a triumph! Could he ever realise it? He could, he must; the alternative of eternal clerkship was not to be endured. His glance fell on Jenkins. That poor, gay, careless, vulgar animal would always be a clerk. The thought filled him with commiseration, and also with pride. Fancy Jenkins writing a book called "The Psychology of the Suburbs"!
"I'm going to smoke," Jenkins said; "be blowed to Bertie dear." (Mrs. Smythe had once addressed her husband in the office as "Bertie dear," and thenceforth that had been his name among the staff.) Richard made no answer. When a minute later Jenkins, discreetly directing his puffs to the open window, asked him for the titles of one or two of Zola's novels in English, and their price, he gave the required information without turning round and in a preoccupied tone. It was his wish at that moment to appear dreamy. Perhaps a hint of the intellectual difference between them would suggest itself even to Jenkins. Suddenly a voice that seemed to be Mr. Smythe's came from the other side of the glass partition which separated the room from the general corridor.
"Jenkins, what the devil do you mean by smoking in the office?" The pipe vanished instantly, and Jenkins faced his accuser in some confusion, only to find that he had been victimised. It was Mr. Aked.
"You're as gassy as ever, I see," Jenkins said with a shade of annoyance. Mr. Aked laughed, and then began to cough badly, bending forward with flushed cheeks.
"Surely you shouldn't have left the house to-day," Richard said, alarmed.
"Why not?" The retort was almost fierce.
"You're not fit."
"Fiddlesticks! I've only got a bit of a cough."
Richard wondered
