Aristocracy (Social class) -- England -- Fiction; England -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- Fiction; Rich people -- Fiction
“No, I can’t,” said the woman. “There’s no rich folks in these here
parts. But next door at the wine shop they’ve got a ‘Directory’; I’ll
go and get it for you.”
In a few minutes she returned with the huge red volume under her arm
and laid it open on the table.
“What trade’s your Ameriky man?” she asked.
Airley smiled grimly.
“A gentleman. Money makes gentlefolks.”
“Here you are, then,” she said, turning over the leaves to the West-end
division of the book. “You can look out the name yourself.”
“No, I can’t,” he answered. “I can’t read.”
“Lord, man, you are behind the time o’ day!” said the woman. “Well,
tell me the name agen and I’ll look it out for you.”
He repeated it slowly three times over:
“Massarene--Massarene--William Massarene.”
She whirled the leaves about for a few minutes, and then she said
triumphantly:
“Here you are!
“_William Massarene, M. P.; Harrenden House, Gloucester Gate; Carlton
Club; Vale Royal, South Woldshire Cottesdale Grange, Salop; Blair
Airon, Caithness, N. B._
“That’s your friend, isn’t it? My, he must be a swell!”
“Which of all them places is in this city?” asked the man.
“Why, Carlton Club and Gloucester Gate, of course, you gaby!”
“Where’s Gloucester Gate?” said Airley heavily, without resenting her
epithet.
She told him how to get to it. He bade her good-day, murmured a hoarse
and tardy “thank ye,” and went out of her doorway.
The woman looked after him with some misgiving in her mind.
“I wish I hadn’t give him the address,” she thought; “he looks like an
anarchist, he do.”
She was tempted for the moment to go and tell the policeman at the
corner to keep an eye on this stranger, but there were no serious
grounds for doing so, and the police were not beloved by those who work
for their living in great cities.
So Robert Airley went on his way unnoticed, one of the many
ill-fed, ill-clad, gaunt, and weary-looking men who may be counted
by tens of thousands in the London streets, and who sometimes are
ill-bred and disrespectful enough to die on their pavements. He was
not an anarchist, but had been always a strictly law-abiding and
long-suffering man, and was by nature very patient and tender-hearted.
But a direful purpose had entered into him now, and worked havoc in his
gentle breast, and changed his very nature. He walked on through the
maze of many streets which divided the humble eating-house from the
precincts of Hyde Park. It was four in the afternoon, and the traffic
was great and the carriages were countless. But he scarcely noticed
them except to get out of their way, and he went on steadily down
Piccadilly with its close-packed throngs, and onward past Apsley House
and the French Embassy, until he approached what a cabman standing on
the curbstone told him were Gloucester Gate and Harrenden House. When
he saw its magnificent frontage, its gilded gates, its stately portals,
he looked up at them all, and a bitter fleeting smile crossed his face
for an instant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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