Chapter 15 - Page 2

street
that ran at right angles to Piccadilly. His first idea had been
to take them to his father's house in Winchester Square, a large,
dull mansion which at this period of the year was shrouded in
silence and brown holland; but he bethought himself that, the
cook being at Gardencourt, there was no one in the house to get
them their meals, and Pratt's Hotel accordingly became their
resting-place. Ralph, on his side, found quarters in Winchester
Square, having a "den" there of which he was very fond and being
familiar with deeper fears than that of a cold kitchen. He
availed himself largely indeed of the resources of Pratt's Hotel,
beginning his day with an early visit to his fellow travellers,
who had Mr. Pratt in person, in a large bulging white waistcoat,
to remove their dish-covers. Ralph turned up, as he said, after
breakfast, and the little party made out a scheme of
entertainment for the day. As London wears in the month of
September a face blank but for its smears of prior service, the
young man, who occasionally took an apologetic tone, was obliged
to remind his companion, to Miss Stackpole's high derision, that
there wasn't a creature in town.

"I suppose you mean the aristocracy are absent," Henrietta
answered; "but I don't think you could have a better proof that
if they were absent altogether they wouldn't be missed. It seems
to me the place is about as full as it can be. There's no one
here, of course, but three or four millions of people. What is it
you call them--the lower-middle class? They're only the
population of London, and that's of no consequence."

Ralph declared that for him the aristocracy left no void that
Miss Stackpole herself didn't fill, and that a more contented man
was nowhere at that moment to be found. In this he spoke the
truth, for the stale September days, in the huge half-empty town,
had a charm wrapped in them as a coloured gem might be wrapped in
a dusty cloth. When he went home at night to the empty house in
Winchester Square, after a chain of hours with his comparatively
ardent friends, he wandered into the big dusky dining-room, where
the candle he took from the hall-table, after letting himself in,
constituted the only illumination. The square was still, the
house was still; when he raised one of the windows of the
dining-room to let in the air he heard the slow creak of the
boots of a lone constable. His own step, in the empty place,
seemed loud and sonorous; some of the carpets had been raised,
and whenever he moved he roused a melancholy echo. He sat down in
one of the armchairs; the big dark dining table twinkled here and
there in the small candle-light; the pictures on the wall, all of
them very brown, looked vague and incoherent.