“Never mind, Jimmy.  It’s unfortunate, but it wasn’t your fault.  You couldn’t know.”

“It was my fault.  Nobody but a fool like me would go about beating people up.  But don’t worry, dad.  It’s going to be all right.  I’ll fix it.  I’m going right round to this fellow Percy now to make things all right.  I won’t come back till I’ve squared him.  Don’t you bother yourself about it any longer, dad.  It’s going to be all right.”

CHAPTER VI

JIMMY ABANDONS PICCADILLY

Jimmy removed himself sorrowfully from the doorstep of the Duke of Devizes’ house in Cleveland Row.  His mission had been a failure.  In answer to his request to be permitted to see Lord Percy Whipple, the butler had replied that Lord Percy was confined to his bed and was seeing nobody.  He eyed Jimmy, on receiving his name, with an interest which he failed to conceal, for he too, like Bayliss, had read and heartily enjoyed Bill Blake’s spirited version of the affair of last night which had appeared in the Daily Sun.  Indeed, he had clipped the report out and had been engaged in pasting it in an album when the bell rang.

In face of this repulse, Jimmy’s campaign broke down.  He was at a loss to know what to do next.  He ebbed away from the Duke’s front door like an army that has made an unsuccessful frontal attack on an impregnable fortress.  He could hardly force his way in and search for Lord Percy.

He walked along Pall Mall, deep in thought.  It was a beautiful day.  The rain which had fallen in the night and relieved Mr. Crocker from the necessity of watching cricket had freshened London up.

The sun was shining now from a turquoise sky.  A gentle breeze blew from the south.  Jimmy made his way into Piccadilly, and found that thoroughfare a-roar with happy automobilists and cheery pedestrians.  Their gaiety irritated him.  He resented their apparent enjoyment of life.

Jimmy’s was not a nature that lent itself readily to introspection, but he was putting himself now through a searching self-examination which was revealing all kinds of unsuspected flaws in his character.  He had been having too good a time for years past to have leisure to realise that he possessed any responsibilities.  He had lived each day as it came in the spirit of the Monks of Thelema.  But his father’s reception of the news of last night’s escapade and the few words he had said had given him pause.  Life had taken on of a sudden a less simple aspect.  Dimly, for he was not accustomed to thinking along these lines, he perceived the numbing truth that we human beings are merely as many pieces in a jig-saw puzzle and that our every movement affects the fortunes of some other piece.  Just so, faintly at first and taking shape by degrees, must the germ of civic spirit have come to Prehistoric Man.  We are all individualists till we wake up.