Bastian was away longer than it would have taken him to get a glass, and when he returned he had on a collar and a flowing brightly coloured tie. He now looked like an artist, and not so much like a broken-down gentleman-loafer.
"Say when!" he said, pouring out the whisky, and Wilbraham said when, but not immediately.
"I get tired of painting," said Bastian. "It's very hot out there on the moor, and I didn't bring a sketching umbrella with me. I thought I'd have a lazy time with a book. 'David Copperfield.' One of the best books, I consider." He held his head aside as he looked at Wilbraham.
Wilbraham had taken his first sip of whisky. It was only a sip, but his face seemed to expand under it. His heart also expanded towards a Dickens enthusiast, and for a time they talked about Dickens, and found themselves always in encouraging agreement.
"It's a pleasure to have somebody to talk to," said Bastian. "I love being in the country and I hate being in London. I came down here to be as far away from London as possible, but there's no doubt one does want human intercourse. I'm devoted to my little girl, who's here with me; but one wants men to talk to."
"Oh, you've got a daughter with you," said Wilbraham. He had been considering all the time, underneath the conversation, whether or not Bastian could be introduced to Royd. He was a gentleman: that was obvious. But it was equally obvious that he had shed some of the customs usually followed by gentlemen. Would his innate breeding carry him through, with women—with Lady Brent? With a man, or at least with one who prided himself on being able to see beneath the surface, the shocking old clothes and the shag tobacco would make no difference. Then there was the whisky. Wilbraham had rather more than a suspicion that Bastian's case was not so very different from his own: that whisky meant a good deal to Bastian. There were signs of it on his smooth child-like face—a lack of clearness in a skin that was meant to be unusually clear, a slackness of muscle, a look in the eye and in the droop of the mouth; and the second—or possibly the third—allowance that Bastian had poured into his glass had exceeded by a good half inch the not meagre allowance that Wilbraham had accepted in his own. Perhaps it might lead to complications to invite him to Royd. If Wilbraham should decide not to, the daughter might be made an excuse.
"She's a dear child," said Bastian. "Her mother's dead. She was one in a thousand." He sighed. "Viola and I are everything to one another. We're scarcely ever parted, except when we're at work. She has to earn money, poor child, and neither of us manages to earn very much. Still, we're happy together, and happiest of all when we leave the streets behind us and get out into the country."
He was revealing himself as one of those people who like to pour themselves out about their own affairs, not so much out of egotism as from an impulse to show confidence towards their hearers, to establish relations which shall rest upon no misunderstanding, in which nothing shall be kept back.
Wilbraham was without that impulse, but he was also without any large share of egotism. He was interested in other people, and usually preferred that they should talk about themselves, since few people are interesting upon any other subject. He had some curiosity about Bastian's history, which seemed to have had contradictions in it, when his refinement of speech and manner was compared with his confessed and apparent indigence, which was rather below that to which men of birth and breeding sink, even if they are without the earning capacity.
"How old is your daughter?" he asked, a little confused between the mention of her as a child and that of her work.