The dramatic moment of the birthday feast came nearly at the end of the meal when Mrs. Maldon, having in mysterious silence disappeared for a space to the room behind, returned with due pomp bearing a parcel in her dignified hands.  During her brief absence Louis, Rachel, and Julian—­hero of the night—­had sat mute and somewhat constrained round the debris of the birthday pudding.  The constraint was no doubt due partly to Julian’s characteristic and notorious grim temper, and partly to mere anticipation of a solemn event.

Julian Maldon in particular was self-conscious.  He hated intensely to be self-conscious, and his feeling towards every witness of his self-consciousness partook always of the homicidal.  Were it not that civilization has the means to protect itself, Julian might have murdered defenceless aged ladies and innocent young girls for the simple offence of having seen him blush.

He was a perfect specimen of a throw-back to original ancestry.  He had been born in London, of an American mother, and had spent the greater part of his life in London.  Yet London and his mother seemed to count for absolutely nothing at all in his composition.  At the age of seventeen his soul, quitting the exile of London, had come to the Five Towns with a sigh of relief as if at the assuagement of a long nostalgia, and had dropped into the district as into a socket.  In three months he was more indigenous than a native.  Any experienced observer who now chanced at a week-end to see him board the Manchester express at Euston would have been able to predict from his appearance that he would leave the train at Knype.  He was an undersized man, with a combative and suspicious face.  He regarded the world with crafty pugnacity from beneath frowning eyebrows.  His expression said:  “Woe betide the being who tries to get the better of me!” His expression said:  “Keep off!” His expression said:  “I am that I am.  Take me or leave me, but preferably leave me.  I loathe fuss, pretence, flourishes—­any and every form of damned nonsense.”

He had an excellent heart, but his attitude towards it was the attitude of his great-grandmother towards her front parlour—­he used it as little as possible, and kept it locked up like a shame.  In brief, he was more than a bit of a boor.  And boorishness being his chief fault, he was quite naturally proud of it, counted it for the finest of all qualities, and scorned every manifestation of its opposite.  To prove his inward sincerity he deemed it right to flout any form of external grace—­such as politeness, neatness, elegance, compliments, small-talk, smooth words, and all ceremonial whatever.  He would have died in torment sooner than kiss.  He was averse even from shaking hands, and when he did shake hands he produced a carpenter’s vice, crushed flesh and bone together, and flung the intruding pulp away.  His hat was so heavy on his head that only by an exhausting and supreme effort could he