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It was Mr. Truslove’s custom after dinner to put a comfortable chair out on his balcony, read the daily paper and then fall asleep. On reaching the first landing of the main staircase he would pass the door of Mrs. Pomeroy’s private room, which also was her office. It was Mrs. Pomeroy’s habit to keep this door closed, which was understandable, for a woman who had so many domestic duties, and both residents and staff to rule or humour, might claim the right of some seclusion. On this particular day Mr. Truslove paused, and hesitated, for Mrs. P’s. door was open. Mr. Truslove, being a separative person, had to provide himself with human contacts by exercising a lively and inquisitive interest in other people’s affairs. He stepped aside and knocked on the door. There was no answer, and Mr. Truslove entered.

The room was empty. Not even Rose, Mrs. Pomeroy’s small daughter, was here to challenge him with her pretty primrose face. Mr. Truslove glanced round the room, but his eyes gave particular attention to the mantelpiece. Yes, that was the peculiar thing about the Pomeroy mantelpiece and the walls of the room. There were no photographs. It was a very photographic age, so far as family portraits were concerned, and Mr. Truslove would have expected to see some portrait of the late Mr. Pomeroy upon the mantelpiece. It held a clock, various vases, two bronze figures, but no portraits. Nor were there any family groups upon the walls, especially those recording the sacrament of marriage.

Mr. Truslove sneaked out again, ruminating upon the strange absence of such records.

“Peculiar,” thought he—“one would have expected to see the late Mr. P. about somewhere. Yes, very peculiar indeed! Now—I wonder—had—there been a Mr. P.?—And if so had he been quite respectable?”

Respectable! Mr. Truslove passed on, secretly chuckling, to his own room.

Respectability! Assuredly in no other age and in no other country had Respectability become so absolute and so necessary as in this Victorian England. Southfleet reeked of it, if such a virtue could be comparable with a smell. Mrs. Pomeroy’s private hotel was so utterly respectable that the Immaculate Conception itself could not have been a fit subject for discussion. Virtue was everywhere, in the round-topped, black-seated dining-room chairs, in the chaste legs of the tables, in the antimacassars, the pure white lace curtains, the sedate wall-papers, and especially so in the rather forbidding beds. No one could very well imagine unseemly raptures in or on these beds. Mr. Truslove, who was something of a Hedonist, had obtained permission to supply himself with a special mattress, and when he was absent, the thing was stored for him in the hotel’s lumber room, and when he needed it it was taken out to air.

Mr. Truslove’s own room had the privilege of being somehow male. He was allowed to smoke in it. A pipe-rack and tobacco jar stood upon the mantelpiece. It possessed a comfortable sofa which was not too stuffed with virtue, a bookcase full of yellow-back novels, and there were sporting prints upon the walls. In the cheffonier lived a whisky decanter, a bottle of old port and half a dozen glasses. Even the table advertised a certain ironic untidiness, and the one thing Mr. Truslove would not tolerate was the tidying up of that same table.

Mr. Truslove lifted his chair through the french window, filled and lit a pipe, and taking the daily paper with him, sat down to digest his dinner. He was a wiry and active old gentleman of three-and-sixty, grizzled, sharp-faced, shaven as to chin, but wearing little side whiskers which were known as mutton chops. There were playful wrinkles round Mr. Truslove’s grey-blue eyes, for Mr. Truslove—like many old gentlemen—was reverting to the mischievous moods of boyhood. He sat and smoked, and surveying life and the sea and sky, left his paper unread upon his knees. He could see much of Southfleet from this gazebo, and on this summer day it was like a plaque of blue and white majolica. The pier thrust a black nose into the sea. Immediately below him the trees and shrubberies of Caroline Gardens slung a green garland above the foreshore. The white Regency curve of Wellington Crescent turned a supercilious cheek away from the Old Town with its pubs, its cheap lodging-houses, its pleasure boats, and its black old jetty where tubby brigs unloaded coal. Mr. Truslove had a fondness for the Old Town. It was more alive and less respectable. People got drunk there. On Bank Holidays, if you strolled that way in the evening, you might be lucky enough to see a fight, or Cockney girls and Cockney lads dancing to a barrel organ. Mr. Truslove sat and saw and contemplated. This balcony was a good spy-point provided Miss Popham did not pop out on her neighbouring balcony, and start twittering at you. When this happened Mr. Truslove either took his chair inside, or pretended to be asleep.

A lady passed along by the gardens, a very rustly, silky lady with yellow hair and a sprightly bonnet, Mrs. Else who lived at No. 9. Mrs. Else was provocative and refreshing. She dared to be deliciously feminine in a world that took life in little, ladylike sips. That quidnunc, the Rev. John Chatterway who occupied No. 11, had christened her “What Else?”, which was pretty, and suggestive when coming from the lips of a cleric.

Mr. Truslove heard a door bang, and saw Rose Pomeroy scudding across the road in pursuit of Mrs. Else. Children liked the flavicomous lady. She smelled nice and looked nice, and was generous with candy and chocolates. Moreover, she did not talk to children as though they were half-witted and had been born inevitably to original sin.

Mr. Truslove sat up and smiled. Mrs. Else had turned at the sound of Rose’s pursuing feet, and was waiting for the child, but she did not see Mr. Truslove’s smile. Moreover, Mr. Truslove’s smile was somewhat for himself. Three or four years ago he had thought of paying court to Mrs. Else, but a sage voice within him had said: “You’re not up to it, my lad; you are too old,” and Mr. Truslove had refrained.

“Hallo, darling,” said Mrs. Else, “coming to listen to the band with me?”

“May I?”

“May you indeed, my sweet! It will cost me just fourpence. Does your mother——?”

“Oh, mother’s going to London.”

“Well, I’ll play Auntie. Come along,” and Mrs. Else bent down and kissed the child.

Mr. Truslove caught himself being sentimental. Why had not Mrs. Else children of her own? Just the sort of woman to be a mother. What had Else been thinking about, if there had been a Mr. Else?

The lady and the child disappeared beyond the green dip of the shrubbery where it flowed down Pier Hill, and to replace them Tom Swaine’s “Victoria” turned the corner by the Regent Hotel, and came to rest outside Mrs. Pomeroy’s. Tom Swaine remained on his box. It was evident that he had been ordered. He was an oddity, with a face like Punch, and a nose the colour of good red wine. In summer it was light claret, in winter port.

Mrs. Pomeroy appeared, dressed for some occasion, and Mr. Truslove, leaning forward, watched her enter the carriage.

“The station, Swaine.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Pomeroy put up her parasol, and Mr. Truslove lay back in his chair. Why the carriage, when the railway station was less than half a mile away? Oh, no doubt—prestige. Mrs. Pomeroy was becoming a prosperous woman, and prosperity deserved its panache.

Then, Miss Popham simpered out on to her portion of the balcony, and Mr. Truslove hurriedly put his paper over his head.

Damn the woman!

He had been caught. There was no time for disappearance. Mr. Truslove and Miss Popham played a game together, like two of those toy figures in a weather predictor. When one popped out the other popped in.

Mr. Truslove produced a snore.