"And yet," Edward Henry Machin reflected as at six minutes to sixhe approached his own dwelling at the top of Bleakridge, "and yet—Idon't feel so jolly after all!"
The first two words of this disturbing meditation had reference to thefact that, by telephoning twice to his stockbrokers at Manchester,he had just made the sum of three hundred and forty-one pounds in apurely speculative transaction concerning Rubber Shares. (It was inthe autumn of the great gambling year, 1910.) He had simply opened hislucky and wise mouth at the proper moment, and the money, like ripe,golden fruit, had fallen into it, a gift from benign heaven, surelya cause for happiness! And yet—he did not feel so jolly! He wassurprised, he was even a little hurt, to discover by introspectionthat monetary gain was not necessarily accompanied by felicity.Nevertheless, this very successful man of the world of the Five Towns,having been born on the 27th of May 1867, had reached the age offorty-three and a half years!
"I must be getting older," he reflected.
[1]He was right. He was still young, as every man of forty-three willagree, but he was getting older. A few years ago a windfall of threehundred and forty-one pounds would not have been followed by morbidself-analysis; it would have been followed by unreasoning, instinctiveelation, which elation would have endured at least twelve hours.
As he disappeared within the reddish garden wall which shelteredhis abode from the publicity of Trafalgar Road, he half hoped to seeNellie waiting for him on the famous marble step of the porch, for thewoman had long, long since invented a way of scouting for his adventfrom the small window in the bathroom. But there was nobody on themarble step. His melancholy increased. At the mid-day meal he hadcomplained of neuralgia, and hence this was an evening upon which hemight fairly have expected to see sympathy charmingly attired in theporch. It is true that the neuralgia had completely gone. "Still," hesaid to himself with justifiable sardonic gloom, "how does she know myneuralgia's gone? She doesn't know."
Having opened the front-door (with the thinnest, neatest latch-keyin the Five Towns), he entered his home and stumbled slightly over abrush that was lying against the sunk door-mat. He gazed at that brushwith resentment. It was a dilapidated hand-brush. The offensive objectwould have been out of place, at nightfall, in the lobby of any house.But in the lobby of his house—the house which he had planned a dozen