A Knight on Wheels. Ian Hay
to the manager; and that financial Janus would emerge smiling from his temple behind the glass screens and come round to the front of the counter and shake hands with Uncle Joseph and engage him in agreeable conversation, while Philip watched the cashier licking his thumb and counting bank-notes with incredible rapidity. After entering the numbers of the notes in a big book the cashier would seize the bag containing the gold and silver—quite a number of Uncle Joseph's subscribers used to send actual coin in registered envelopes: they were of the type which does not understand postal orders and mistrusts cheques—and pour it in a jingling cascade upon the counter. Then, having counted it by playing lightning arpeggios upon it with his fingers, he would sweep it up in a brass coal-shovel and fling it contemptuously into a drawer already half-full, hopelessly mixing it with other people's money from the start. To Philip, like most of us, banking was a mystery.
The manager and Uncle Joseph then shook hands, and the proceedings terminated with a vote of want of confidence in the weather. After that Uncle Joseph and Philip walked to Swiss Cottage Station, where Uncle Joseph departed alone by the Underground—to another bank, in the Edgeware Road this time. Here he deposited a bundle of cheques and crossed postal orders. The majority of these were drawn to the order of the Treasurer of the International Brotherhood of Kind Young Hearts, though a fair proportion bore the names of Master T. Smith and the Reverend Aubrey Buck.
Out of consideration for the manager of the bank at Hampstead, who, had he been asked to place sums of money intended for such a diversity of people to the credit of a single individual, would undoubtedly have become greatly confused—and deeply interested—Uncle Joseph kept a separate account at the Edgeware Road Bank for all contributions to his benefactions which did not arrive in the form of notes or cash. These he invariably endorsed, "Everard James, Secretary." The same name was inscribed upon his pass-book. It was understood in the Edgeware Road Bank that Mr. James was general director of a large philanthropic institution, and the fact that he paid in so many cheques endorsed by other people was doubtless due to the circumstance that these were minor officials of the same organization—as, indeed, they were.
Philip usually devoted his solitary walk home from Swiss Cottage Station to a minute inspection of the shop-windows in Finchley Road. On this particular Thursday afternoon, though, he began to run. The soundness of his physical condition may be gauged from the fact that he ran up Netherhall Gardens, a declivity much in favour with prospective purchasers of motor-cars, out on trial trips, and in corresponding unfavour with would-be vendors of the same—to say nothing of the inhabitants of the Gardens.
He ran on past the newly built Tube Station, up Frognal, and presently reached the outskirts of Hampstead Heath. It was half-past three, and the red wintry sun was sinking low.
Suddenly he paused, and then stopped dead. He was conscious, deep down within him, of a recurrence of the sensation which had stirred him on the previous Sunday, as he walked over this part of the Heath with Uncle Joseph. On that occasion he had noticed a little girl sitting on a gate. She had smiled at Philip as he passed—a wide and friendly smile. Philip had not returned it, for Uncle Joseph had noted the smile and improved the occasion at once.
"You see, Philip?" he said. "The hunting instinct already! That child has never seen you before; she will never see you again; she would not care if you went to perdition to-morrow, though she would feel intensely gratified if she could be certain that you had gone there on her account. She is nothing to you, or you to her. But you are a man and she is a woman. So she smiles at you. It is the first and most primitive of the arts of attraction. There is nothing behind the smile—nothing but an undeveloped predatory instinct. And that is what Man has to struggle against all the days of his life, to the detriment of his own and the world's progress."
Long before Uncle Joseph had concluded these timely observations the little girl was out of sight. "Predatory" was a new word to Philip. He made a mental note of it, and resolved to question Uncle Joseph as to its meaning on a more suitable occasion. Meanwhile he felt that he had had an escape—an escape and a warning.
Still—here he was, four days later, back on the same dangerous spot. And there, sitting on the same gate, with the setting sun glinting on her long, honey-coloured pigtail, sat the little girl.
"Hallo, boy!" she said, and smiled again.
Philip gave her a severe look.
CHAPTER III
SAMSON AND DELILAH
I
The little girl continued to sit upon the top rail of the gate, with her heels on the second and her long black legs tucked up beneath her. She had taken off her jacket, and was using it as a cushion to mitigate the hardness of her perch. She was dressed in a blue cotton frock, which was gathered in round her waist with a shiny red leather belt. At least Philip considered it red: the little girl would have explained that it was cérise.
She also continued to smile. Her teeth were very small and regular, her eyes were soft and brown, and some of her hair had blown up across the front of her tam-o-shanter, which matched the colour of her belt.
Philip stood stock still, and surveyed her a little less severely.
"Hallo, boy!" said the little girl again.
"Hallo!" said Philip, in guarded tones.
"I saw you on Sunday," the little girl informed him.
"Yes, I know," said Philip coldly, and prepared to pass on. Uncle Joseph's warning had recurred to him with the mention of Sunday.
"Don't go," said the small siren on the gate.
"I think I will," said Philip.
"Why?"
Philip hesitated. Uncle Joseph had trained him always to say exactly what he thought, and never to make excuses. But he experienced a curious difficulty in informing this little creature that he was leaving her because she belonged to a dangerous and unscrupulous class of the community. It was the first stirring of chivalry within him. So he did not reply, but began to move away, rather sheepishly.
The little girl promptly unlimbered her stern-chasers, and the scornful accusation rang out:—
"You're shy!"
Into an ordinary boy such an insult would have burned like acid. But Philip merely said to himself thoughtfully, as he walked away:—
"I wonder if I am shy?"
Then presently he decided:—
"No, I'm not: I can't be, because I wanted to stay and talk to her!"
He walked on a few yards, and then paused again. Boy nature, long dormant, was struggling vigorously to the surface.
"I won't be called shy!" he said to himself hotly.
He turned and walked quickly back.
The little girl was still sitting on the gate, studiously admiring the sunset. Once more Philip stood before her.
"I say," he said nervously, "I'm not shy."
The little girl looked down languidly.
"Have you come back again?" she enquired.
"Yes," said Philip, scarlet.
"Why?"
"I wanted to tell you," pursued Philip doggedly, "that I wasn't shy just now."
The little girl nodded her head.
"I see," she said coldly. "You were not shy—only rude. Is that it?"
The greater part of Philip's short life had been spent, as the reader knows, in imbibing the principle that a man not only may, but, if he values his soul, must, be rude to women upon all occasions. It is therefore regrettable to have to record that at this point—at the very first