But so went forth Darnell, day by day, strangely mistaking death for
life, madness for sanity, and purposeless and wandering phantoms for
true beings. He was sincerely of opinion that he was a City clerk,
living in Shepherd's Bush--having forgotten the mysteries and the
far-shining glories of the kingdom which was his by legitimate
inheritance. II

All day long a fierce and heavy heat had brooded over the City, and as
Darnell neared home he saw the mist lying on all the damp lowlands,
wreathed in coils about Bedford Park to the south, and mounting to the
west, so that the tower of Acton Church loomed out of a grey lake. The
grass in the squares and on the lawns which he overlooked as the 'bus
lumbered wearily along was burnt to the colour of dust. Shepherd's Bush
Green was a wretched desert, trampled brown, bordered with monotonous
poplars, whose leaves hung motionless in air that was still, hot smoke. The foot passengers struggled wearily along the pavements, and the reek
of the summer's end mingled with the breath of the brickfields made
Darnell gasp, as if he were inhaling the poison of some foul sick-room. He made but a slight inroad into the cold mutton that adorned the
tea-table, and confessed that he felt rather 'done up' by the weather
and the day's work. 'I have had a trying day, too,' said Mary. 'Alice has been very queer
and troublesome all day, and I have had to speak to her quite seriously. You know I think her Sunday evenings out have a rather unsettling
influence on the girl. But what is one to do?' 'Has she got a young man?' 'Of course: a grocer's assistant from the Goldhawk Road--Wilkin's, you
know. I tried them when we settled here, but they were not very
satisfactory.' 'What do they do with themselves all the evening? They have from five to
ten, haven't they?' 'Yes; five, or sometimes half-past, when the water won't boil. Well, I
believe they go for walks usually. Once or twice he has taken her to the
City Temple, and the Sunday before last they walked up and down Oxford
Street, and then sat in the Park. But it seems that last Sunday they
went to tea with his mother at Putney. I should like to tell the old
woman what I really think of her.' 'Why? What happened? Was she nasty to the girl?' 'No; that's just it. Before this, she has been very unpleasant on
several occasions. When the young man first took Alice to see her--that
was in March--the girl came away crying; she told me so herself. Indeed,
she said she never wanted to see old Mrs. Murry again; and I told Alice
that, if she had not exaggerated things, I could hardly blame her for
feeling like that.' 'Why? What did she cry for?' 'Well, it seems that the old lady--she lives in quite a small cottage in
some Putney back street--was so stately that she would hardly speak. She
had borrowed a little girl from some neighbour's family, and had managed
to dress her up to imitate a servant, and Alice said nothing could be
sillier than to see that mite opening the door, with her black dress and
her white cap and apron, and she hardly able to turn the handle, as
Alice said. George (that's the young man's name) had told Alice that it
was a little bit of a house; but he said the kitchen was comfortable,
though very plain and old-fashioned. But, instead of going straight to
the back, and sitting by a big fire on the old settle that they had
brought up from the country, that child asked for their names (did you
ever hear such nonsense?) and showed them into a little poky parlour,
where old Mrs. Murry was sitting "like a duchess," by a fireplace full
of coloured paper, and the room as cold as ice. And she was so grand
that she would hardly speak to Alice.' 'That must have been very unpleasant.' 'Oh, the poor girl had a dreadful time. She began with: "Very pleased to
make your acquaintance, Miss Dill. I know so very few persons in
service." Alice imitates her mincing way of talking, but I can't do it. And then she went on to talk about her family, how they had farmed their
own land for five hundred years--such stuff! George had told Alice all
about it: they had had an old cottage with a good strip of garden and
two fields somewhere in Essex, and that old woman talked almost as if
they had been country gentry, and boasted about the Rector, Dr.
Somebody, coming to see them so often, and of Squire Somebody Else
always looking them up, as if they didn't visit them out of kindness. Alice told me it was as much as she could do to keep from laughing in
Mrs. Murry's face, her young man having told her all about the place,
and how small it was, and how the Squire had been so kind about buying
it when old Murry died and George was a little boy, and his mother not
able to keep things going. However, that silly old woman "laid it on
thick," as you say, and the young man got more and more uncomfortable,
especially when she went on to speak about marrying in one's own class,
and how unhappy she had known young men to be who had married beneath
them, giving some very pointed looks at Alice as she talked. And then
such an amusing thing happened: Alice had noticed George looking about
him in a puzzled sort of way, as if he couldn't make out something or
other, and at last he burst out and asked his mother if she had been
buying up the neighbours' ornaments, as he remembered the two green
cut-glass vases on the mantelpiece at Mrs. Ellis's, and the wax flowers
at Miss Turvey's. He was going on, but his mother scowled at him, and
upset some books, which he had to pick up; but Alice quite understood
she had been borrowing things from her neighbours, just as she had
borrowed the little girl, so as to look grander. And then they had
tea--water bewitched, Alice calls it--and very thin bread and butter,
and rubbishy foreign pastry from the Swiss shop in the High Street--all
sour froth and rancid fat, Alice declares. And then Mrs. Murry began
boasting again about her family, and snubbing Alice and talking at her,
till the girl came away quite furious, and very unhappy, too. I don't
wonder at it, do you?' 'It doesn't sound very enjoyable, certainly,' said Darnell, looking
dreamily at his wife. He had not been attending very carefully to the
subject-matter of her story, but he loved to hear a voice that was
incantation in his ears, tones that summoned before him the vision of a
magic world. 'And has the young man's mother always been like this?' he said after a
long pause, desiring that the music should continue. 'Always, till quite lately, till last Sunday in fact. Of course Alice
spoke to George Murry at once, and said, like a sensible girl, that she
didn't think it ever answered for a married couple to live with the
man's mother, "especially," she went on, "as I can see your mother
hasn't taken much of a fancy to me."