Young Croom, in his borrowed two-seater, had returned to Town at an unobtrusive sixty miles an hour. His first kiss on Clare’s cold but glowing cheek had given him slight delirium. It was an immense step forward. He was not a vicious young man. That Clare was married was to him no advantage. But whether, if she had not been married, his feelings towards her would have been of quite the same brand, was a question he left unexamined. The subtle difference which creeps into the charm of a woman who has known physical love, and the sting which the knowledge of that implants in a man’s senses—such is food for a psychologist rather than for a straightforward young man really in love for the first time. He wanted her, as his wife if possible; if that were not possible, in any other way that was. He had been in Ceylon three years, hard-worked, seeing few white women, and none that he had cared for. His passion had, hitherto, been for polo, and his meeting with Clare had come just as he had lost both job and polo. Clare filled for him a yawning gap. As with Clare, so with him in the matter of money, only more so.

He had some two hundred pounds saved, and would then be ‘bang up against it’ unless he got a job. Having returned the two-seater to his friend’s garage, he considered where he could dine most cheaply, and decided on his club. He was practically living there, except for a bedroom in Ryder Street, where he slept and breakfasted on tea and boiled eggs. A simple room it was, on the ground floor, with a bed and a dress cupboard, looking out on the tall back of another building, the sort of room that his father, coming on the Town in the ‘nineties, had slept and breakfasted in for half the money.

On Saturday nights the Coffee House was deserted, save for a certain number of ‘old buffers’ accustomed to week-ending in St. James’s Street. Young Croom ordered the three-course dinner and ate it to the last crumb. He drank Bass, and went down to the smoking-room for a pipe. About to sink into an armchair, he noticed standing before the fire a tallish thin man with twisting dark eyebrows and a little white moustache, who was examining him through a tortoiseshell-rimmed monocle. Acting on the impulse of a lover craving connection with his lady, he said:

“Excuse me, sir, but aren’t you Sir Lawrence Mont?”

“That has been my lifelong conviction.”

Young Croom smiled.

“Then, sir, I met your niece, Lady Corven, coming home from Ceylon. She said you were a member here. My name’s Croom.”

“Ah!” said Sir Lawrence, dropping his eyeglass: “I probably knew your father—he was always here, before the war.”

“Yes, he put me down at birth. I believe I’m about the youngest in the Club.”

Sir Lawrence nodded. “So you met Clare. How was she?”

“All right, I think, sir.”

“Let’s sit down and talk about Ceylon. Cigar?”

“Thank you, sir, I have my pipe.”

“Coffee, anyway? Waiter, two coffees. My wife is down at Condaford staying with Clare’s people. An attractive young woman.”

Noting those dark eyes, rather like a snipe’s, fixed on him, young Croom regretted his impulse. He had gone red, but he said bravely:

“Yes, sir, I thought her delightful.”

“Do you know Corven?”

“No,” said young Croom shortly.

“Clever fellow. Did you like Ceylon?”

“Oh! yes. But it’s given me up.”

“Not going back?”

“Afraid not.”

“It’s a long time since I was there. India has rather smothered it. Been in India?”

“No, sir.”

“Difficult to know how far the people of India really want to cut the painter. Seventy per cent peasants! Peasants want stable conditions and a quiet life. I remember in Egypt before the war there was a strong nationalist agitation, but the fellaheen were all for Kitchener and stable British rule. We took Kitchener away and gave them unstable conditions in the war, and so they went on the other tack. What were you doing in Ceylon?”

“Running a tea plantation. But they took up economy, amalgamated three plantations, and I wasn’t wanted any more. Do you think there’s going to be a recovery, sir? I can’t understand economics.”

“Nobody can. There are dozens of causes of the present state of things, and people are always trying to tie it to one. Take England: There’s the knock-out of Russian trade, the comparative independence of European countries, the great shrinkage of Indian and Chinese trade; the higher standard of British living since the war; the increase of national expenditure from two hundred-odd millions to eight hundred millions, which means nearly six hundred millions a year less to employ labour with. When they talk of over-production being the cause, it certainly doesn’t apply to us. We haven’t produced so little for a long time past. Then there’s dumping, and shocking bad organisation, and bad marketing of what little food we produce. And there’s our habit of thinking it’ll be ‘all right on the night,’ and general spoiled-child attitude. Well, those are all special English causes, except that the too high standard of living and the spoiled-child attitude are American too.”

“And the other American causes, sir?”

“The Americans certainly have over-produced and over-speculated. And they’ve been living so high that they’ve mortgaged their future—instalment system and all that. Then they’re sitting on gold, and gold doesn’t hatch out. And, more than all, they don’t realise yet that the money they lent to Europe during the war was practically money they’d made out of the war. When they agree to general cancellation of debts they’ll be agreeing to general recovery, including their own.”

“But will they ever agree?”

“You never know what the Americans will do, they’re looser-jointed than we of the old world. They’re capable of the big thing, even in their own interests. Are you out of a job?”

“Very much so.”

“What’s your record?”

“I was at Wellington and at Cambridge for two years. Then this tea thing came along, and I took it like a bird.”

“What age are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Any notion of what you want to do?”

Young Croom sat forward.

“Really, sir, I’d have a shot at anything. But I’m pretty good with horses. I thought possibly I might get into a training stable; or with a breeder; or get a riding mastership.”

“Quite an idea. It’s queer about the horse—he’s coming in as he goes out. I’ll talk to my cousin Jack Muskham—he breeds bloodstock. And he’s got a bee in his bonnet about the re-introduction of Arab blood into the English thoroughbred. In fact he’s got some Arab mares coming over. Just possibly he might want someone.”

Young Croom flushed and smiled.

“That would be frightfully kind of you, sir. It sounds ideal. I’ve had Arab polo ponies.”

“Well,” murmured Sir Lawrence thoughtfully, “I don’t know that anything excites my sympathy more than a man who really wants a job and can’t find one. We must get this election over first, though. Unless the socialists are routed horse-breeders will have to turn their stock into potted meat. Imagine having the dam of a Derby winner between brown bread and butter for your tea—real ‘Gentleman’s Relish!’”

He got up.

“I’ll say good-night, now. My cigar will just last me home.”

Young Croom rose too, and remained standing till that spare and active figure had vanished.

‘Frightfully nice old boy!’ he thought, and in the depths of his armchair he resigned himself to hope and to Clare’s face wreathed by the fumes of his pipe.