AN ADVENTURER 65 



dered, still humbly, what would do their work in the 

 minds of the newcomers. Looking at the features of 

 the younger people, held in a vice of reserve or pallidly 

 leering, and hearing the snarl of their voices, he was not 

 surprised. They had not been given a chance. How 

 could they have the ease, the state, the kindliness of the 

 old inhabitants? They had no gods, only a brand-new 

 Gothic church. Often they supported this or that new 

 movement, or bought a brave new book, but they con- 

 tinued to sneer timidly or brutally at everything else. 

 They were satisfied with a little safe departure from the 

 common way, some mental or spiritual equivalent to the 

 door-knocker of imitation hammered copper. They did 

 not care very much for trees though they planted them 

 in every street, where the grammar-school boys and 

 errand-boys mutilated them one by one in the dark; they 

 cut off the heads of a score of tall poplars, lest perchance 

 the west wind should one day do the same thing when 

 one of the million was passing below. 



The new people were a mysterious, black-liveried host, 

 the grandchildren of peers, thieves, gutter-snipes, agricul- 

 tural labourers, artisans, shopkeepers, professional men, 

 farmers, foreign financiers, an unrelated multitude. They 

 were an endless riddle to the old man. He used to stare 

 at their houses as one might stare at a corpse in the hope 

 of discovering that there was something alive there. They 

 were as impenetrable as their houses, when at night the 

 blinds of the lighted rooms were drawn and figures or 

 parts of figures shot fantastically by. He read of their 

 bankruptcies, their appointments, their crimes, their 

 successes, unwittingly, in the newspapers. He could 

 F 



