CHAPTER XVI.
‘This is the short and long of it.’
‘This is the short and long of it.’
‘This is the short and long of it.’
‘This is the short and long of it.’
The moon is streaming brilliantly over the silent streets as the two men leaving Fitzwilliam Square turn presently into Stephen’s Green and then down Dawson Street. Crosby’s footsteps are bound for the Gresham Hotel, and Wyndham, who should have gone the other way, considering his rooms are in Elgin Road, walks with him silently, and so mechanically that it becomes at once plain to Crosby that he has lost himself a little in a world of troublous thought.
Determining to let him find his way out of his mind’s labyrinth by himself, Crosby maintains a discreet silence, refraining evenfrom good words and the whistle that has come to be part of him during his strange wanderings by sea and land, and is difficult to discard when in the midst of civilization.
It is not until they have reached the railings that run round Trinity College, where the glorious light of the moon is lighting up the old and splendid pile, that Wyndham speaks.
‘I’ve had the deuce of a time,’ says he.
‘Well, I could see that,’ says Crosby, turning his cigar in his fingers. ‘I’m rather disappointed in you, do you know, Paul. How you are to make a fortune out of your profession is to me a mystery. Throw it up. You are certainly not a liar born.’
‘I’m in a tight place,’ says Wyndham disgustedly, ‘but I dare say I’ll get out of it. Well’—reluctantly—‘good-night.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ says Crosby, tucking his arm into his; ‘come and have a pipe with me, and—if you can bring yourself to it—give voice to this worry of yours, and get it off your mind.’
A pipe is a great help; soothed by it, and the influence of the society of his old chum, Wyndham, seated comfortably in a huge armchair in Crosby’s room, tells the latter the whole of his remarkable acquaintance with his unknown guest at the Cottage.
It is, to confess the truth, a rather lame story, very lamely told; and at the close of it Wyndham looks at his friend, at least at as much of him as he can see, Crosby being now enclouded in smoke. He had been smoking very vigorously, indeed, all through the recital, and there had been moments when he had seemed to be choking, but whether altogether from the smoke Wyndham felt uncertain.
‘Well, that’s the story,’ says he at last, flinging himself back in his chair.
There is a short silence.
‘Then I suppose you could not think of a better one?’ says Crosby, beginning to choke again.
‘Oh, I knew how you’d take it—how any fellow would take it,’ says Wyndham wrathfully.‘I can see that there isn’t a soul in the world who would believe such an idiotic story as mine. But there it is, and you can take it or leave it as you like. But for all that, Crosby, you ought to know me well enough to understand that I should not trouble myself to lie to you unless there was occasion for it.’
At this Crosby gives way to a roar.
‘Well, I honestly believe there’s no occasion now,’ says he; ‘and for the rest, dear old chap! of course I believe every word you have said. You must be thoroughly hipped, or you’d have seen how I was enjoying the joke. Come, it seems we have both had adventures in Arcadia, and that we have both come in rather sorry fashion out of them.’
‘Oh, you—you can afford to speak of adventures,’ says Wyndham ruefully. ‘You’re accustomed to them, but I—I confess this last and first has been enough for me. You who have faced lions——’
‘Not so many, after all,’ interrupts Crosby,laughing. ‘Don’t magnify them like that. I’ve shot a few, I confess, but I only seem to remember seven. One does remember them when one’s face to face with them. But there is not such a lot to remember, after all.’
‘It would serve, so far as I am concerned,’ says Wyndham frankly. ‘Indeed, I think I could do with one—always supposing he was dead. As for how I feel now, it is as though I were in a den of them, and I doubt if I’ll come as well out of it as Daniel did.’
Crosby regards him with an amused eye.
‘Apropos your tenant,’ says he, ‘when are you going to introduce your aunt to your young man?’
‘Oh, get out!’ says Wyndham.
‘That’s a lion if you like,’ says Crosby.
‘Which—my aunt or my tenant?’
‘I haven’t seen the tenant. Still, it strikes me that she will be a lion, too. I’d get out of that den if I were you.’
‘Well, I want to. But what’s one to do? I can’t get rid of either of my lions.’
‘Not even of the tenant?’
‘I don’t see how I can, now I have given my promise.’
‘Well, introduce them to each other; that’s a capital suggestion if you will only look into it. Whilst they claw each other, you may be able to make your escape.’
‘Introduce them?’ Wyndham pauses, as if sounding the proposition, then gives way to wrath. ‘Hang it!’ says he; ‘you are worse than Job’s three comforters all rolled into one.’