THREE:He stood a minute or two at the front door, with broken melodies from Omar Khayyam lingering like fragments of half-remembered tunes in his head. And Thou, beside me singing in the wilderness, was one that sang itself again and again to him. But no one had ever sung to him in the wilderness. The chink of money, the flattering rustle of bank-notes had sung to him in the High Street, and he could remember certain ardours of his early manhood, when the thought that Emmeline was waiting for him at home made him hurry back from the establishment which had been the nucleus-cell which had developed into the acres of show-rooms and passages that he now controlled. But Emmelines presence at home never made him arrive at his work{47} later than nine oclock next morning. No emotion, caused either by Emmeline or ledger-entries, had ever dominated him: there had always been something beyond, something to which perhaps his books and his Sunday afternoon dimly led. And they could scarcely lead anywhere except to the Wilderness where the Thou yet unencountered, made Paradise with singing.... Then with a swift and sudden return to normal consciousness, he became aware that Mrs Goodfords bath-chair was no longer drawn up on the grass below the larches, and that he might, without risk of being worried again, beyond the usual power of Emmeline to worry him, take his cup of tea in the drawing-room before going to evening service.Ah, that would not be quite right, would it?{279} said Lord Inverbroom, still unperturbed, if Miss Propert has not cared to speak to you of him.
