The Voice in the Fog - Page 7/93

Daniel Killigrew, of Killigrew and Company (sugar, coffee and spices),

was in a towering rage; at least, he towered one inch above his normal

height, which was five feet six. Like an animal recently taken in

captivity he trotted back and forth through the corridors, in and out

of the office, to and from the several entrances, blowing the while

like a grampus. All he could get out of these infernally stupid beings

was "Really, sir!" He couldn't get a cab, he couldn't get a motor, he

couldn't get anything. Manager, head-clerk, porter, doorman and page,

he told them, one and all, what a dotty old spoof of a country they

lived in; that they were all dead-alive persons, fit to be neither

under nor above earth; that they wouldn't be one-two in a race with

January molasses--"Treacle, I believe you call it here!" And what did

they say to this scathing arraignment? Yes, what did they say?

"Really, sir!" He knew and hoped it would happen: if ever Germany

started war, it would be over before these Britishers made up their

minds that there was a war. A hundred years ago they had beaten

Napoleon (with the assistance of Spain, Austria, Germany and Russia),

and were now resting.

Quarter to one, and neither wife nor daughter; outside there, somewhere

in the fog; and he could not go to them. It was maddening. Molly

might be arrested and Kitty lost. Served him right; he should have put

his foot down. The idea of Molly being allowed to go with those

rattle-pated women! Suffragettes! A "Bah!" exploded with a loud

report. Hereafter he would show who voted in the Killigrew family.

Poor man! He was made of that unhappy mental timber which agrees

thoughtlessly to a proposition for the sake of peace and then regrets

it in the name of war. His wife and daughter twisted him round their

little fingers and then hunted cover when he found out what they had

done.

He went out again to the main entrance and smoked himself headachy. He

hated London. He had always hated it in theory, now he hated it in

fact. He hated tea, buttered muffins, marmalade, jam, toast, cricket,

box hedges three hundred years old, ruins, and the checkless baggage

system, the wet blankets called newspapers. All the racial hatred of

his forebears (Tipperary born) surged hot and wrathful in his veins.

At the drop of a hat he would have gone to war, individually, with all

England. "Really, sir!" Nothing but that, when he was dying of

anxiety!