Bosinney's office was in Sloane Street, close at, hand, so that he would
be able to keep his eye continually on the plans.
Again, Irene would not be to likely to object to leave London if her
greatest friend's lover were given the job. June's marriage might depend
on it. Irene could not decently stand in the way of June's marriage; she
would never do that, he knew her too well. And June would be pleased; of
this he saw the advantage.
Bosinney looked clever, but he had also--and--it was one of his great
attractions--an air as if he did not quite know on which side his bread
were buttered; he should be easy to deal with in money matters. Soames
made this reflection in no defrauding spirit; it was the natural
attitude of his mind--of the mind of any good business man--of all those
thousands of good business men through whom he was threading his way up
Ludgate Hill.
Thus he fulfilled the inscrutable laws of his great class--of human
nature itself--when he reflected, with a sense of comfort, that Bosinney
would be easy to deal with in money matters.
While he elbowed his way on, his eyes, which he usually kept fixed on
the ground before his feet, were attracted upwards by the dome of St.
Paul's. It had a peculiar fascination for him, that old dome, and
not once, but twice or three times a week, would he halt in his daily
pilgrimage to enter beneath and stop in the side aisles for five or
ten minutes, scrutinizing the names and epitaphs on the monuments. The
attraction for him of this great church was inexplicable, unless it
enabled him to concentrate his thoughts on the business of the day. If
any affair of particular moment, or demanding peculiar acuteness, was
weighing on his mind, he invariably went in, to wander with mouse-like
attention from epitaph to epitaph. Then retiring in the same noiseless
way, he would hold steadily on up Cheapside, a thought more of dogged
purpose in his gait, as though he had seen something which he had made
up his mind to buy.
He went in this morning, but, instead of stealing from monument to
monument, turned his eyes upwards to the columns and spacings of the
walls, and remained motionless.
His uplifted face, with the awed and wistful look which faces take on
themselves in church, was whitened to a chalky hue in the vast building.
His gloved hands were clasped in front over the handle of his umbrella.
He lifted them. Some sacred inspiration perhaps had come to him.
'Yes,' he thought, 'I must have room to hang my pictures.