THE ROLL-CALL. Bennett Arnold

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СКАЧАТЬ widespread in the arcana of the architectural world. George had gradually grown certain of victory. And yet, at Mr. Haim's words, his hopes sank horribly away.

      "Have we won?" he asked sharply.

      "That I can't say, Mr. Cannon," answered Haim.

      "Well, then, how do you know he's heard? Has he told you?"

      "No," said the factotum mysteriously. "But I think he's heard." And upon this Mr. Haim slouched off quite calmly. Often he had assisted at the advent of such vital news in the office—news obtained in advance by the principals through secret channels—and often the news had been bad. But the firm's calamities seemed never to affect the smoothness of Mr. Haim's earthly passage.

      The door into the principals' room opened, and Mr. Enwright's head showed. The gloomy, resenting eyes fixed George for an instant.

      "Well, you've lost that competition," said Mr. Enwright, and he stepped into full view. His unseen partner had ceased to dictate, and the shorthand-clerk could be heard going out by the other door.

      "No!" said George, in a long, outraged murmur. The news seemed incredible and quite disastrous; and yet at the same time had he not, in one unvisited corner of his mind, always foreknown it? Suddenly he was distressed, discouraged, disillusioned about the whole of life. He thought that Everard Lucas, screwing up a compass, was strangely unmoved. But Mr. Enwright ignored Lucas.

      "Who's got it?" George asked.

      "Whinburn."

      "That chap!... Where are we ?"

      "Nowhere."

      "Not placed?"

      "Not in it. Skelting's second. And Grant third. I shouldn't have minded so much if Grant had got it. There was something to be said for his scheme. I knew we shouldn't get it. I knew that perfectly well—not with Corver assessing."

      George wondered that his admired principal should thus state the exact opposite of what he had so often affirmed during the last few weeks. People were certainly very queer, even the best of them. The perception of this fact added to his puzzled woe.

      "But Whinburn's design is grotesque!" he protested borrowing one of Mr. Enwright's adjectives.

      "Of course it is."

      "Then why does Sir Hugh Corver go and give him the award? Surely he must know——"

      "Know!" Mr. Enwright growled, destroying Sir Hugh and his reputation and his pretensions with one single monosyllable.

      "Then why did they make him Assessor—that's what I can't understand."

      "It's quite simple," rasped Mr. Enwright. "They made him assessor because he's got so much work to do it takes him all his time to trot about from one job to another on his blooming pony. They made him assessor because his pony's a piebald pony. Couldn't you think of that for yourself? Or have you been stone deaf in this office for two years? It stands to reason that a man who's responsible for all the largest new eyesores in London would impress any corporation. Clever chap, Corver! Instead of wasting his time in travel and study, he made a speciality of learning how to talk to committees. And he was always full of ideas like the piebald pony, ever since I knew him."

      "It's that façade that did for us," broke in another voice. John Orgreave stood behind Mr. Enwright. He spoke easily; he was not ruffled by the immense disappointment, though the mournful greatness of the topic had drawn him irresistibly into the discussion. John Orgreave had grown rather fat and coarse. At one period, in the Five Towns, he had been George's hero. He was so no longer. George was still fond of him, but he had torn him down from the pedestal and established Mr. Enwright in his place. George in his heart now somewhat patronized the placid Orgreave, regarding him as an excellent person who comprehended naught that was worth comprehending, and as a husband who was the dupe of his wife.

      "You couldn't have any other façade," Mr. Enwright turned on him, "unless you're absolutely going to ignore the market on the other side of the Square. Whinburn's façade is an outrage—an outrage. Give me a cigarette. I must run out and get shaved."

      While Mr. Enwright was lighting the cigarette, George reflected in desolation upon the slow evolving of the firm's design for the Law Courts. Again and again in the course of the work had he been struck into a worshipping enthusiasm by the brilliance of Mr. Enwright's invention and the happy beauty of his ideas. For George there was only one architect in the world; he was convinced that nobody could possibly rival Mr. Enwright, and that no Law Courts ever had been conceived equal to those Law Courts. And he himself had contributed something to the creation. He had dreamed of the building erected and of being able to stand in front of some detail of it and say to himself: "That was my notion, that was." And now the building was destroyed before its birth. It would never come into existence. It was wasted. And the prospect for the firm of several years' remunerative and satisfying labour had vanished. But the ridiculous, canny Whinburn would be profitably occupied, and his grotesque building would actually arise, and people would praise it, and it would survive for centuries—at any rate for a century.

      Mr. Enwright did not move.

      "It's no use regretting the façade, Orgreave," he said suddenly. "There's such a thing as self-respect."

      "I don't see that self-respect's got much to do with it," Orgreave replied lightly.

      ("Of course you don't," George thought. "You're a decent sort, but you don't see, and you never will see. Even Lucas doesn't see. I alone see." And he felt savage and defiant.)

      "Better shove my self-respect away into this cupboard, I suppose!" said Mr. Enwright, with the most acrid cynicism, and he pulled open one door of a long, low cupboard whose top formed a table for portfolios, dusty illustrated books, and other accumulations.

      The gesture was dramatic, and none knew it better than Mr. Enwright. The cupboard was the cupboard which contained the skeleton. It was full of designs rejected in public competitions. There they lay, piles and piles of them, the earliest dating from the late seventies. The cupboard was crammed with the futility of Enwright's genius. It held monuments enough to make illustrious a score of cities. Lucas & Enwright was a successful firm. But, confining itself chiefly to large public works, it could not escape from the competition system; and it had lost in far more competitions than it had won. It was always, and always would be, at the mercy of an Assessor. The chances had always been, and always would be, against the acceptance of its designs, because they had the fatal quality of originality combined with modest adherence to the classical tradition. When they conquered, it was by sheer force. George glanced at the skeleton, and he was afraid. Something was very wrong with architecture. He agreed with Mr. Enwright's tiresomely reiterated axiom that it was the Cinderella of professions and the chosen field of ghastly injustice. He had embraced architecture; he had determined to follow exactly in the footsteps of Mr. Enwright; he had sworn to succeed. But could he succeed? Suppose he failed! Yes, his faith faltered. He was intensely, miserably afraid. He was the most serious man in Russell Square. Astounding that only a few minutes ago he had hung triumphantly by his feet from the mantelpiece!

      Mr. Enwright kicked-to the door of the cupboard.

      "Look here," he said to his partner, "I shan't be back just yet. I have to go and see Bentley. I'd forgotten it."

      Nobody was surprised at this remark. Whenever Mr. Enwright was inconveniently set back he always went off to visit Bentley, the architect of the new Roman Catholic Cathedral СКАЧАТЬ