One other thing I will mention, though this did not come till the winter. The neighbouring house, which hitherto had been a tomb, became alive. I never knew the reason for this sudden awakening, nor whether Schmerveloff had suddenly found himself reduced to taking in lodgers, or whether he was merely holding out a helping hand to co-revolutionaries in the hour of their need; but I do know that presently he began to have a succession of extraordinary visitors. Hairy, uncouth-looking men, with soft hats, came for a week or a month, and brought their women, fat, spare, astrakhan-capped or bare-headed. They wore smocks and embroidered _portières_, and worked at peasant industries. One of them had a child, the sweetest of little girls--but oh, her sweetness vanished from me when she began to play at all hours in the garden, shouting, crowing, and impossible to turn away! I went so far as to wait on Schmerveloff himself about this dreadful child, and was told that, inconvenient as these things might be to me, the question was not a private one at all. It was a Social Question. Society oppressed them, they oppressed me; it was Society that was wrong.... I told our fellows this afterwards, when the Aliens' Act was drafting; Robson was immensely amused. "What did you say?" he asked.... Of course there was nothing to say....
And then, about Christmas, the Social Question became acute indeed. For the development of the peasant industries the most Asiatic barber-robber of the lot set up a furnace, a lathe and an anvil....
No wooden walls (save Nelson's) could have kept that racket out....
Had the sum of the world's beautiful things been added to, I could have grinned and borne it, but it was beaten copper-work the Asiatic made.
Weeks before this invasion of beards and embroidered casement-cloth, I earnestly hoped that my firstborn, when I should have one, would never remember that little house with the glass-panelled door and the verandah. But the prospect of our "domestic event," as Miss Levey called it, hardly weighed on me yet. I gave little heed to Louie Causton's prophecy, that I might sooner or later find myself driven to take the desperate course of telling Evie what, so far, only Louie and myself knew; and I did not see, as Louie seemed to see, where the peril lay. If it was only a question of keeping Evie busy and amused for a little while longer, I thought I should be able to manage that. Only later did I see myself as a man who pours water constantly into a vessel and tells himself that because the level remains the same there is no leak. I still intended to stand between Evie and Life. In effect, if necessary, I would live much of her life for her. And now let me, before I leave this part of my tale, tell you briefly what that life was at its loveliest.