The Roll-Call - Arnold Bennett (top ten books to read TXT) 📗

rhythm.

"No room!" said George, feeling that he had at last got into the true arena of the struggle for life.

"Oh yes!" said Lois, with superior confidence.

She bore mercilessly across the floor. Round the edge of the huge room, beneath the gallery, were a number of little alcoves framed in fretted Moorish arches of white-enamelled wood. Three persons were just emerging from one of these. She sprang within, and sank into a wicker arm-chair.

"There is always a table," she breathed, surveying the whole scene with a smile of conquest.

George sat down opposite to her with his back to the hall; he could survey nothing but Lois, and the world of the mirror behind her.

"That's one of father's maxims," she said.

"What is?"

"'There is always a table.' Well, you know, there always is."

"He must be a very wise man."

"He is."

"What's his special line?"

She exclaimed:

"Don't you know father? Hasn't Miss Wheeler told you? Or Mrs. Orgreave?"

"No."

"But you must know father. Father's 'Parisian' in _The Sunday Journal_."

Despite the mention of this ancient and very dignified newspaper, George felt a sense of disappointment. He had little esteem for journalists, whom Mr. Enwright was continually scoffing at, and whom he imagined to be all poor. He had conceived Mr. Ingram as perhaps a rich cosmopolitan financier, or a rich idler--but at any rate rich, whatever he might be.

"Of course he does lots of other work besides that. He writes for the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and the _St. James's Gazette._ In fact it's his proud boast that he writes for all the gazettes, and he's the only man who does. That's because he's so liked. Everybody adores him. I adore him myself. He's a great pal of mine. But he's very strict."

"Strict?"

"Yes," she insisted, rather defensively. "Why not? I should like a strawberry ice, and a lemon-squash, and a millefeuille cake. Don't be alarmed, please. I'm a cave-woman. You've got to get used to it."

"What's a cave-woman?"

"It's something primitive. You must come over to Paris. If father likes you, he'll take you to one of the weekly lunches of the Anglo-American Press Circle. He always does that when he likes anyone. He's the Treasurer.... Haven't you got any millefeuille cakes?" she demanded of the waitress, who had come to renew the table and had deposited a basket of various cakes.

"I'm afraid we haven't, miss," answered the waitress, not comprehending the strange word any better than George did.

"Bit rowdy, isn't it?" George observed, looking round, when the waitress had gone.

Lois said with earnestness:

"I simply love these big, noisy places. They make me feel alive."

He looked at her. She was very well dressed--more stylistic than any girl that he could see in the mirror. He could not be sure whether or not her yellow eyes had a slight cast; if they had, it was so slight as to be almost imperceptible. There was no trace of diffidence in them; they commanded. She was not a girl whom you could masculinely protect. On the contrary, she would protect not only herself but others.

"Haven't you cream?" she curtly challenged the waitress, arriving with ice, lemon-squash, and George's tea.

The alien mercenary met her glance inimically for a second, and then, shutting her lips together, walked off with the milk. At Prosser's the waitresses did not wear caps, and were, in theory, ladies. Lois would have none of the theory; the waitress was ready to die for it and carried it away with her intact. George preferred milk to cream, but he said nothing.

"Yes," Lois went on. "You ought to come to Paris. You have been, haven't you? I remember you told me. We're supposed to go back next week, but if Irene doesn't go, I shan't." She frowned.

George said that positively he would come to Paris.

When they had fairly begun the rich, barbaric meal, Lois asked abruptly:

"Why did you write in the middle of the night?"

Sometimes her voice was veiled.

"Why did I write in the middle of the night? Because I thought I would." He spoke masterfully. He didn't mean to stand any of her cheek.

"Oh!" she laughed nicely. "_I_ didn't mind. I liked it--awfully. It was just the sort of thing I should have done myself. But you might tell me all about it. I think I deserve that much, don't you?"

Thus he told her all about it--how he had arranged everything, got a room, meant to have his name painted on the door, meant to make his parents take their holiday on the north-east coast for a change, so that he could study the site, meant to work like a hundred devils, etc. He saw with satisfaction that the arrogant, wilful creature was impressed.

She said:

"Now listen to me. You'll win that competition."

"I shan't," he said. "But it's worth trying, for the experience--that's what Enwright says."

She said:

"I don't care a fig what Enwright says. You'll win that competition. I'm always right when I sort of feel--you know."

For the moment he believed in the miraculous, inexplicable intuitions of women.

"Oh!" she cried, as the invisible orchestra started a new tune. "Do you know that? It's the first time I've heard it in London. It's the _machiche_. It's all over Paris. I think it's the most wonderful tune in the world." Her body swayed; her foot tapped.

George listened. Yes, it was a maddening tune.

"It is," he agreed eagerly.

She cried:

"Oh! I do love pleasure! And success! And money! Don't you?"

Her eyes had softened; they were liquid with yearning; but there was something frankly sensual in them. This quality, swiftly revealed, attracted George intensely for an instant.

Immediately afterwards she asked the time, and said she must go.

"I daren't keep Irene waiting," she said. Her eyes now had a hard glitter.

In full Regent Street he put the haughty girl into Irene's automobile, which had turned round; he was proud to be seen in the act; he privately enjoyed the glances of common, unsuccessful persons. As he walked away he smiled to himself, to hide from himself his own nervous excitement. She was a handful, she was. Within her life burned and blazed. He remembered Mr. Prince's remark: "You must have made a considerable impression on her," or words to that effect. The startling thought visited him: "I shall marry that woman." Then another thought: "Not if I know it! I don't like her. I do not like her. I don't like her eyes."

She had, however, tremendously intensified in him the desire for success. He hurried off to work. The days passed too slowly, and yet they were too short for his task. He could not wait for the fullness of time. His life had become a breathless race. "I shall win. I can't possibly win. The thing's idiotic. I might.... Enwright's rather struck." Yes, it was Mr. Enwright's attitude that inspired him. To have impressed Mr. Enwright--by Jove, it was something!


CHAPTER IX


COMPETITION

I


On the face of the door on the third floor of the house in Russell Square the words 'G.E. Cannon' appeared in dirty white paint and the freshly added initials 'A.R.I.B.A.' in clean white paint. The addition of the triumphant initials (indicating that George had kissed the rod of the Royal Institute of British Architects in order to conquer) had put the sign as a whole out of centre, throwing it considerably to the right on the green door-face. Within the small and bare room, on an evening in earliest spring in 1904, sat George at the customary large flat desk of the architect. He had just switched on the electric light over his head. He looked sterner and older; he looked very worried, fretful, exhausted. He was thin and pale; his eyes burned, and there were dark patches under the eyes; the discipline of the hair had been rather gravely neglected. In front of George lay a number of large plans, mounted on thick cardboard, whose upper surface had a slight convex curve. There were plans of the basement of the projected town hall, of the ground floor, of the building at a height of twelve feet from the ground, of the mezzanine floor, of the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth floors; these plans were coloured. Further, in plain black and white, there were a plan of the roof (with tower), a longitudinal section on the central axis, two other sections, three elevations, and a perspective view of the entire edifice. Seventeen sheets in all.

The sum of work seemed tremendous; it made the mind dizzy; it made George smile with terrible satisfaction at his own industry. For he had engaged very little help. He would have been compelled to engage more, had not the Corporation extended by one month the time for sending in. The Corporation had behaved with singular enlightenment. Its schedules of required accommodation (George's copy was scored over everywhere in pencil and ink and seriously torn) were held to be admirably drawn, and its supplementary circular of answers to questions from competitors had displayed a clarity and a breadth of mind unusual in corporations. Still more to the point, the Corporation had appointed a second assessor to act with Sir Hugh Corver. In short, it had shown that it was under no mandarin's thumb, and that what it really and seriously wanted was the best design that the profession could produce. Mr. Enwright, indeed, had nearly admitted regret at having kept out of the immense affair. John Orgreave had expressed regret with vigour and candour. They had in the main left George alone, though occasionally at night Mr. Enwright, in the little room, had suggested valuable solutions of certain problems. In detail he was severely critical of George's design, and he would pour delicate satires upon the idiosyncrasy which caused the wilful boy to 'impurify' (a word from Enwright's private vocabulary) a Renaissance creation with Saracenic tendencies in the treatment of arches and wall-spaces.

Nevertheless Mr. Enwright greatly respected the design in its entirety, and both he and John Orgreave (who had collected by the subterranean channels of the profession a large amount of fact and rumour about the efforts of various competitors) opined that it stood a fair chance of being among the selected six or ten whose authors would be invited to submit final designs for the final award. George tried to be hopeful; but he could not be hopeful by trying. It was impossible to believe that he would succeed; the notion was preposterous; yet at moments, when he was not cultivating optimism, optimism would impregnate all his being, and he would be convinced that it was impossible not to win. How inconceivably grand! His chief rallying thought was that he had undertaken a gigantic task and had accomplished it. Well or ill, he had accomplished it. He said to himself aloud:

"I've done it! I've done it!"

And that he actually had done it was almost incredible. The very sheets of drawings were almost incredible. But they existed there. All was complete. The declaration that the design was G.E. Cannon's personal work, drawn in his own office by his ordinary staff, was there, in the printed envelope officially supplied by the Corporation. The estimate of cost and the cubing was there. The explanatory report on the design, duly typewritten, was there. Nothing lacked.

"I've done it! I've done it!"

And then, tired as he was,