Chapter V

He walked along Queen Victoria Street and, without considering what he was doing, turned into a narrow street that ran off it at an angle of seventy-five degrees. It was a perilous street to traverse for every building in it seemed to have a crane near its roof, and every crane seemed to have a heavy bale dangling from it in mid-air; and from the narrow pavement cellar flaps were raised so that an unwary person might suddenly find himself descending into deep, dark holes in the ground. The roadway was occupied by lorries, and John had to turn and cross, and cross and turn many times before he could extricate himself from the labyrinth into which he had so carelessly intruded. While he was crossing the street at one point, and passing between two lorries, he found himself in front of a coffee-house, and again aware of his hunger, he entered it. He passed to the back of the L-shaped shop, and sat down at a small marble-topped table and waited for a waitress to come and take his order. There was a girl sitting on the other side of the table, but he did not observe her particularly, for her head was bent over a letter which she was reading. He looked about him. The room was full of men and young women, all eating or waiting to eat, and from a corner of the room came a babble of conversation carried on by a group of young clerks, and while John looked at them, a waitress came to him, and said, "Yes, sir?"

He looked up at her hurriedly. "Oh, I want something to eat!" he said. She waited for him to proceed. "What have you?" he asked. She handed a bill of fare to him, and he glanced through it, feeling incapable of choice.

"The sausages are very nice," the waitress suggested.

"I'll have sausages," he replied, thankful for the suggestion.

"Two?"

He nodded his head.

"Tea or coffee?"

"Tea, please. And a roll and butter!"

The waitress left him, and he sat back in his chair, and now he regarded the bent head of the girl sitting opposite to him, and as he did so, she looked up and their eyes met. She looked away.

"What lovely eyes she has," John said to himself.

She stood up as he thought this, and prepared to leave the restaurant, and he saw again that her eyes were very beautiful: blue eyes that had a dark look in them; and he said to himself that a woman who had beautiful eyes had everything. He wished that he had come earlier to the restaurant or that she had come later, so that they might have sat opposite to each other for a longer time. He listened while she asked the waitress for her bill. The softness of her voice was like gentle music. He thought of the tiny noise of a small stream, of the song of a bird heard at a distance, of leaves slightly stirring in a quiet wind, and told himself that the sound of her voice had the quality of all these. He wondered what it was that brought her to the City of London. Perhaps she was employed in an office. Perhaps she had come up to do some shopping.... She moved away, and as she did so, he saw that she had left her letter lying on the table. He leant over and picked it up, reading the name written on the envelope: _Miss Eleanor Moore_. He got up and hurried after her.

The restaurant was a narrow cramped one, and it was not easy for him to make his way through the people who were entering or leaving it, and he feared that he would not be able to catch up with her before she had reached the street. Customers in that restaurant, however, had to stop at the counter to pay their bills, and so he reached her in time.

"Excuse me," he said. "I think you left this letter behind you."

She looked up in a startled manner, and then, seeing the letter which he held out to her, smiled and said, "Oh, thank you! Thank you very much. I left it on the table!"

She took it from him, and put it in a pocket of her coat.

"Thank you very much," she said again, and turned to take her change from the man behind the counter.

John stood for a moment, looking at her, and then, remembering his manners, went back to his seat and began to eat his meal of tea and bread and butter and sausages.

"Eleanor Moore!" he murmured to himself as he cut off a large piece of sausage and put it into his mouth. "That's a very nice name!" He munched the sausage. "A very nice name," he thought again. "Much nicer than Maggie Carmichael."