"Where am I supposed to be going?" he said to himself, and then he remembered his excuse to the family, the engagement at nine o'clock. Well, it was true, now he came to think of it: his colonel was giving a reception at his house in Grosvenor Street. The same pompous old fool who had hummed and hawed that morning, and said that under the circumstances, and it was very painful for him to have to say so, but he hoped Johnnie would realise '
"They shall have the pleasure of my company, if they so desire it," he said. He rocked unsteadily on the pavement, smiling to himself, and on the opposite side of the street a cab rumbled by. He summoned it with a flourish of his cane. "No.11 Grosvenor Street," said Johnnie.
It was rather pleasant leaning back in the cab, with his head against the cushion, and it seemed to him that the cab arrived in Grosvenor Street far too soon.
He climbed carefully from his seat, and paid his fare.
The lights shone brightly from the house, and there was a red carpet down from the front door to the pavement. A crowd of people had collected outside in the street to watch the arrival of the guests. The door opened for a moment to admit one of Johnnie's brother officers and his wife, and then closed again, "
"Ere, ain't you got a wife, mister?" said a girl at Johnnie's elbow.
He took off his hat and bowed.
"Unfortunately not," he said, "but would you be good enough to accompany me instead?"
The girl screamed with laughter. She was a little painted prostitute who had walked up from Piccadilly to see the fun.
"What would they say to me if I went inside?" she chaffed.
"That's exactly what I would like to know," said Johnnie. "Will you come with me? Or are you afraid? I'll give you five pounds if you do."
The girl laughed nervously, and another woman, her companion, pulled at her arm.
"Come away," she said. "Don't you see the gentleman's tipsy?"
"Tipsy be damned," said Johnnie. "I'm roaring drunk if you want to know. Here, what about this 8? And he shook five sovereigns in his hand.
"All right, I'll do it," said the girl boldly. "Let go, Annie, will you?"
Johnnie offered her his arm, and rang the bell.
Once more the door opened, and a powdered footman stood within the entrance. A hum of voices greeted Johnnie and his companion. Men in uniform and women in evening dress thronged the stairs. At the head of the stairs on the landing, Johnnie caught a glimpse of his white-haired colonel and his stately wife.
"What's your name, sweetheart?" said Johnnie to the girl beside him.
"Vera," said the girl, hanging back, "Vera Potts… You're not going to take me up there, are you, mister?"
"I most certainly am," said Johnnie. He handed his hat and coat with a bow to the second footman, who was whispering to his colleague in great agitation. "Have the goodness to announce us," said Johnnie, moving forward to the stairs. "Captain Brodrick and Miss Vera Potts. Hullo, my dear Robin, how are you?
And your wife? Delighted to meet you. I don't think you have met Miss Potts. Miss Potts, Captain Sir Robert and Lady Frazer. This way, Vera my dear?
People were falling back against the stairway as Johnnie elbowed his way forward, the girl still clinging to his arm. Johnnie himself could see with difficulty, but he was aware of many heads turned towards him, of several blank expressions, of someone calling to him from the hall below in a voice of extreme urgency, but he felt himself possessed of great power and self-confidence. Now his colonel's head was turned towards him, and the conventional smile of greeting froze on the lips of the colonel's wife, as her outstretched hand, in its long white glove, fell before the grubby paw extended to her by her uninvited guest.
"Good evening, Mrs. Greville," said Johnnie, "good evening, sir. May I present Miss Vera Potts, of the old firm of Potts, Piccadilly?"
"Please to meet you, I'm sure," said his companion.
Mrs. Greville had the distant, far-away expression of one who has received a blow between the eyes, and for one moment Johnnie thought she might faint. But she recovered magnificently, she bowed, she murmured.
The colonel was unmoved. He greeted Johnnie with courtesy, and shook hands with Johnnie's companion. Only the little pulse beating in his forehead betrayed his inner feelings.
"Morton," he said, to a crimson-faced young subaltern at his elbow, "I think Miss Potts would be happier outside. Would you have the goodness to see her to the door? There is another staircase, through the landing there, on the left. Thank you. And will you, Frazer, and somebody else, hail a cab and take Brodrick home? I am afraid he is not very well. '?
"On the contrary," said Johnnie, "I am exceedingly well. And I myself will conduct Miss Potts to her friends. Good evening, sir."
He bowed, he offered his arm once more to his companion, and together they sailed down the staircase and into the hall, stared at by a hundred faces; and so his hat and his coat and his stick again, and out on to the red carpet with the door slamming behind them…
Later, much later, Johnnie pulled aside the curtains in his room in Pall Mall. The morning was foggy and grey. For a while he could not remember what had happened the night before, and he reached for the flask in the drawer of the dressing-table. He felt better after a moment or two, and his eye fell on the sleepy form of Vera Potts, who was lying on his bed. Strange, he had no recollection of anything after leaving Grosvenor Street. He went into the sitting-room and stared vacantly about him. There was his coat, and the much-trimmed hat of Vera Potts, and the fur she had worn about her neck. He took another sip from his flask. Then he noticed a telegram lying on the desk. He put out a shaky hand and opened it. When Vera Potts came into the room, looking for her things, she found Johnnie sitting before his desk, the telegram open in his hand. He was staring straight in front of him.
"What's up?" she said. "Not bad news, is it?"
He did not seem to hear her. He was watching the grey December fog break upon the world outside.
"My grandfather's dead," he said slowly. "That means Clonmere is mine."
The funny thing was that he still felt that the library belonged to the old man, and when he opened the drawers of the great roll-top desk, or turned a key in the book-case, he did so with a certain uneasiness, as if Copper John might walk into the room at any moment, and stand there with his hands behind his back, his eyes narrowing under his thick eyebrows, and demand in cold, measured tones what his grandson was about. The place smelt of him. It was grey, austere. And Johnnie knew that he could never sit there, never write letters with any sense of ease because of the shadow of his grandfather, looking over his shoulder.
The thing was ridiculous, of course. His grandfather had not been to Clonmere for more than six years. And Johnnie tried to picture him, that old deaf man of eighty-four, living with his housekeeper-wife at Lletharrog, waiting for death to claim him, seeing no one, writing to no one, except once a month with great regularity to the manager of the mines on Hungry Hill. Surely there was nothing fearful about that distant figure, sitting day after day in the living-room of the farm-house? And yet Johnnie shuddered, for no reason, and he would shut up the roll-top desk, and push away the chair, and leave the library to the cobwebs and the dust, and go out into the sunlight. There was a queer anti-climax in returning home. All his life he had waited for this moment, dreamt about it, planned for it, and now that it had come the savour was lost to him, the excitement was no longer there. "It's come too late," he thought, wandering about the grounds, listening abstractedly to what the agent had to say.