PAGET GARDENS - The Lion's Share

Page 88 of 228

PAGET GARDENS

"Has anything happened in this town?" asked Audrey of Miss Ingate.

It was the afternoon of the day following their arrival in London from Paris, and it was a fine afternoon. They were walking from the Charing Cross Hotel, where they had slept, to Paget Gardens.

"Anything happened?" repeated Miss Ingate. "What you mean? I don't see anything vehy particular on the posters."

"Everybody looks so sad and worried, compared with people in Paris."

"So they do! So they do!" cried Miss Ingate. "Oh, yes! So they do! I wondered what it was seemed so queer. That's it. Well, of course you mustn't forget we're in England. I always did say it was a vehy peculiar place."

"Do _we_ look like that?" Audrey suggested.

"I expect we do."

"I'm quite sure that I don't, Winnie, anyway. I'm really very cheerful. I'm surprisingly cheerful."

It was true. Also she both looked and felt more girlish than ever in Paris. Impossible to divine, watching her in her light clothes, and with her airy step, that she was the relict of a man who had so tragically died of blood-poisoning caused by bad table manners.

"I've a good mind to ask a policeman," said she.

"You'd better not," Miss Ingate warned her.

Audrey instantly turned into the roadway, treating the creosoted wood as though it had been rose-strewn velvet, and reached a refuge where a policeman was standing. The policeman bent with benevolence and politeness to listen to her tale.

"Excuse me," she said, smiling innocently up at him, "but is anything the matter?"

"_What_ street, miss?" he questioned, bending lower.

"Is anything the matter? All the people round here are so gloomy."

The policeman glanced at her.

"There will be something the matter," he remarked calmly. "There will be something the matter pretty soon if I have much more of that suffragette sauce. I thought you was one of them the moment I saw you, but I wasn't sure."

This was the first time Audrey had ever spoken to a policeman, save Inspector Keeble, at Moze, who was a friendly human being. And she had a little pang of fear. The policeman was like a high wall of blue cloth, with a marvellous imitation of a human face at the top, and above the face a cupola.

"Thank you," she murmured reproachfully, and hastened back to Miss Ingate, who heard the tale with a grinning awe that was, nevertheless, sardonic. They pressed onwards to Piccadilly Circus, where the only normal and cheerful living creatures were the van horses and the flower-women; and up Regent Street, through crowds of rapt and mystical women and romantical men who had apparently wandered out of a play by Henrik Ibsen.

They then took a motor-bus, which was full of the same enigmatic, far-gazing heroines and heroes. When they got off, the conductor pointed dreamily in a certain direction and murmured the words: "Paget Square." Their desire was Paget Gardens, and, after finding Paget Square, Paget Mansions, Paget Houses, Paget Street, Paget Mews, and Upper Paget Street, they found Paget Gardens. It was a terrace of huge and fashionable houses fronting on an immense, blank brick wall. The houses were very lofty; so lofty that the architect, presumably afraid of hitting heaven with his patent chimney cowls, had sunk the lowest storey deep into the earth. Looking over the high palisades which protected the pavement from the precipice thus made, one could plainly see the lowest storey and all that was therein.