Twopence Coloured by Patrick Hamilton Page B

you?”
    “Is there any special time you want to arrive at West Kensington?”
    “No. You see, I said I probably would n’t be there till about seven. I meant to have a sort of look round in London before going on. I did n’t think of a fog and all that. I thought I might have a jolly afternoon by myself.”
    “Oh dear. Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ve a date in Piccadilly. Let’s walk across Buckingham Palace way. The fog’s not so bad, and you’ll get your look round after all. Then I’ll see you to your train.”
    “Oh yes. Let’s.”
    “And you’re going to have your luggage sent for tomorrow ?”
    “Yes,” said Jackie. “That’ll be all right — won’t it?”
    “Yes,” he said. “It will.”
    In a few moments they were out in the street. Mr. Gissing walked at the same rapid pace as before, and there was the same arrangement with respect to the suitcase and attaché-case . They talked about nothing in particular for some time, and then another surprise came.
    “Have you never been up here before?” he asked.
    “Yes. I have been up once. My father brought me up for a week. He was always coming up and down. He was an artist.” Jackie brought out this last fact with some small pride, and as a measure of minor self-defence against the talents and achievements of her companion; and she watched the results in his face.
    “An artist?” he said.
    “Yes,” said Jackie.
    “ Punch ,” added Jackie….
    “Oh! I see light,” said Mr. Gissing. “ Your father was Gerald Mortimer.”
    “Why? Have you heard of him?”
    “Yes. Rather. I remember him well.”
    “Why? Did you know him?”
    “No. Not really. I met him at a dinner once, that’s all: and we walked most of the way home together.”
    “Good Heavens,” said Jackie….
    The prestige which he had now acquired in her eyes was boundless. For if he was not old enough to be her father, he was old enough to have known her father, on equal terms, and yet young enough, if so he wished, to be her own lover, though the thought only entered her mind to be dismissed. And the blending of these two things, like the blending of youth and sorrow in his face, captured her imagination marvellously.
    They walked on for some time in foggy silence after this, and soon he told her (they were entering Pall Mall) that they were n’t far now. And at this news Jackie, who was becoming extremely breathless (for he walked very fast), became also extremely nervous, and wondered what she could say to him before he departed. For that he would immediately depart,and mercilessly at that, on reaching the point he had fixed upon, she already knew enough of his character to appreciate. She, of course, was all for observations on the Smallnesses of the World, after all; and coincidences, and funninesses, and who-would-have-thoughts. But there was something steady in his grey eye, and purposeful, if not vindictive, in his walk, which forbade the slightest indulgence in sentiment of this kind before it was uttered. She therefore said nothing, and tremblingly trusted that he himself would open the subject of their next meeting. This he did.
    “Well, when do I see you again?” he asked. Not a scrap of “may” about it. Pure “when.” And yet Jackie took this all in the course of things, and was content — delighted. At any other time Jackie would have very possibly resented such treatment — she did indeed resent it when thinking it over in bed that night — but he overbore her at the moment. Moreover , in the space of a few minutes, he was about to drop her in the middle of a vast, thronged, unknown, hooting, electriclit , dark-rumbling metropolis, and leave her to shift for herself ; and this fact naturally blunted the finer points of her pride. It is revealing of her state of mind that until this moment she had been utterly unaware and forgetful of her surroundings, and ‘her business in them. It was with a sudden shock that she remembered where she was — London