“P.S.—I enclose P.O. for that 10s. I owe you.”
I received this letter on a Wednesday morning.
It was written from the Club, but the Club address was carefully scored out and no other given.
The “P.O.” was not enclosed.
In spite of these obstacles, however, we somehow met and arranged to start on Saturday; and the night before we dined together in that excellent little Soho restaurant—“there’s nothing,” my friend always said, “between its cooking and the Ritz, except prices”—and discussed our prospects, he going to finish a book at a Barbizon inn, I to inspect certain machinery in various Continental dairies.
His heart, it was plain, however, was neither in the cooking nor the book, nor in my wonderful machinery. Like a boy with a secret, he was mysterious about something hitherto unshared. Happy, too, for he kept smiling at nothing.
“The fact is,” he observed at last over coffee, “I’m really a vile, simply a vile sailor.”
“I remember,” I said, for we had once been companions on the same yacht.
“And you,” he added, holding the black eyebrows steady, “you—are another.” When dealing with simple truths he was often brutally frank.
“What’s the good of talking about it?”