and her nose, behind the nostrils, joined the cheek in a lovely contour, like a tiny bulb. Yes, she was superb. But what mastered him was less her fresh physical charm than the rapt and extreme vitality of her existing. … He knew from her gestures and the tools on the table that she could be no amateur. She was a professional. He thought: Chelsea! … Marvellous place, Chelsea! He ought to have found that out long ago. He imagined Chelsea full of such pictures—the only true home of beauty and romance.
Then the impact of a single idea startled his blood. He went hot. He flushed. He had tingling sensations all down his back, and in his legs and in his arms. It was as though he had been caught in a dubious situation. Though he was utterly innocent, he felt as though he had something to be ashamed of. The idea was: she resembled old Haim, facially! Ridiculous idea! But she did resemble old Haim, particularly in the lobal termination of the nose. And in the lips too. And there was a vague, general resemblance. Absurd! It was a fancy. … He would not have cared for anybody to be watching him then, to surprise him watching her. He heard unmistakable footsteps on the pavement. A policeman darkly approached. Policemen at times can be very apposite. George moved his gaze and looked with admirable casualness around.
"Officer, is this Alexandra Grove?" (His stepfather had taught him to address all policemen as 'officer.')
"It is, sir."
"Oh! Well, which is No. 8? There're no numbers."
"You couldn't be much nearer to it, sir," said the policeman dryly, and pointed to a large number, fairly visible, on the wide gate-post. George had not inspected the gate-post.
"Oh! Thanks!"
He mounted the steps, and in the thick gloom of the portico fumbled for the bell and rang it. He was tremendously excited and expectant and apprehensive and puzzled. He heard rain flatly spitting in big drops on the steps. He had not noticed till then that it had begun again. The bell jangled below. The light in the basement went out. He flushed anew. He thought, trembling: "She's coming to the door herself!"
III
"It had occurred to me some time ago," said Mr. Haim, "that if ever you should be wanting rooms I might be able to suit you."
"Really!" George murmured. After having been shown into the room by the young woman, who had at once disappeared, he was now recovering from the nervousness of that agitating entry and resuming his normal demeanour of an experienced and well-balanced man of the world. He felt relieved that she had gone, and yet he regretted her departure extremely, and hoped against fear that she would soon return.
"Yes!" said Mr. Haim, as it were triumphantly, like one who had whispered to himself during long years: "The hour will come." The hour had come.
Mr. Haim was surprising to George. The man seemed much older in his own parlour than at the office—his hair thinner and greyer, and his face more wrinkled. But the surprising part of him was that he had a home and was master in it, and possessed interests other than those of the firm of Lucas & Enwright. George had never until that day conceived the man apart from Russell Square. And here he was smoking a cigarette in an easy-chair and wearing red morocco slippers, and being called 'father' by a really stunning creature in a thin white blouse and a blue skirt.
The young girl, opening the front door, had said: "Do you want to see father?" And instantly the words were out George had realized that she might have said: " Did you want to see father?" … in the idiom of the shop-girl or clerk, and that if she had said 'did' he would have been gravely disappointed and hurt. But she had not. Of course she had not! Of course she was incapable of such a locution, and it was silly of him to have thought otherwise, even momentarily. She was an artist. Entirely different from the blonde and fluffy Mrs. John Orgreave—(and a good thing too, for Mrs. John with her eternal womanishness had got on his nerves)—Miss Haim was without doubt just as much a lady, and probably a jolly sight more cultured, in the true sense. Yet Miss Haim had not in the least revealed herself to him in the hall as she indicated the depository for his hat and stick and opened the door of the sitting-room. She had barely smiled. Indeed she had not smiled. She had not mentioned the weather. On the other hand, she had not been prim or repellent. She had revealed nothing of herself. Her one feat had been to stimulate mightily his curiosity and his imagination concerning her—rampant enough even before he entered the house!
The house—what he saw of it—suited her and set her off, and, as she was different from Mrs. John, so was the house different from the polished, conventional abode of Mrs. John at Bedford Park. To George's taste it knocked Bedford Park to smithereens. In the parlour, for instance, an oak chest, an oak settee, an oak gate-table, one tapestried easy chair, several rush-bottomed chairs, a very small brass fender, a self-coloured wall-paper of warm green, two or three old engravings in maple-wood or tarnished gilt frames, several small portraits in maple-wood frames, brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece and no clock, self-coloured brown curtains across the windows (two windows opposite each other at either end of the long room), sundry rugs on the dark-stained floor, and so on! Not too much furniture, and not too much symmetry either. An agreeable and original higgledy-piggledyness! The room was lighted by a fairly large oil-lamp, with a paper shade hand-painted in a design of cupids—delightful personal design, rough, sketchy, adorable! She had certainly done it.
George sat on the oak settle, fronting the old man in the easy chair. It was a hard, smooth oak settle; it had no upholstering nor cushion; but George liked it.
"May I smoke?" asked George.
"Please do. Please do," said Mr. Haim, who was smoking a cigarette himself, with courteous hospitality. However, it was a match and not a cigarette that he offered to George, who opened his own dandiacal case.
"I stayed rather late at the office to-night," said George, as he blew out those great clouds with which young men demonstrate to the world that the cigarette is actually lighted. And as Mr. Haim, who was accustomed to the boastings of articled pupils, made no comment, George proceeded, lolling on the settle and showing his socks: "You know, I like Chelsea. I've always had a fancy for it." He was just about to continue cosmopolitanly: "It's the only part of London that's like Paris. The people in the King's Road," etc., when fortunately he remembered that Mr. Haim must have overheard these remarks of Mr. Enwright, and ceased, rather awkwardly. Whereupon Mr. Haim suggested that he should see the house, and George said eagerly that he should like to see the house.
"We've got one bedroom more than we want," Mr. Haim remarked as he led George to the hall.
"Oh yes!" said George politely.
The hall had a small bracket-lamp, which Mr. Haim unhooked, and then he opened a door opposite to the door of the room which they had quitted.
"Now this is a bedroom," said he, holding the lamp high.
George was startled. A ground-floor bedroom would have been unthinkable at Bedford Park. Still, in a flat. … Moreover, the idea had piquancy. The bedroom was sparsely furnished. Instead of a wardrobe it had a corner curtained off with cretonne.
"A good-sized room," said Mr. Haim.
"Very," said George. "Two windows, too, like the drawing-room." Then they went upstairs to the first floor, and saw two more bedrooms, each with two windows. One of them was Miss Haim's; there was a hat hung on the looking-glass, and a table with a few books on it. They did not go to the second floor. The staircase to the second floor was boarded up at the point where it turned.
"That's all there is," said Mr. Haim on the landing. "The studio people have the second floor, but they don't use my front door." He spoke
