"We must have been there about the same time. I was at Magdalene—a nice snug little college, and becoming quite an intelligent one, from what I've heard. But I haven't been there since I came down. They wouldn't be very proud of me now, I'm afraid. One or two touts or stablemen might recognize me perhaps. They had plenty of money out of me when I had it. I don't belong to that life any more."
He had a sudden mournful droop, and drank what was left in his glass. Wilbraham had lost the impression that he was much affected by what he had drunk, but it returned now. That drop into self-pitying depression immediately after smiling excitement told its tale. His own sobriety was indicated by his glass, still two-thirds full. He had half a mind to remark upon Bastian's helping himself to another stiff peg, which he did with a perfectly steady hand. But he did not know him well enough yet; the time for that sort of sympathy had not yet come.
But he was more than ever interested in him. His fall must have been from a higher social plane than he had suspected. Undergraduates whose money had been spent in connection with horse-flesh usually had more than the average to begin with, and Magdalene had been a super-sporting college in his day and Bastian's day.
"I was the son of a poor parson," he said. "I got my scholarship, and if I had worked I should probably have got my fellowship too. I did work at what interested me, but the devil of it was that it didn't interest the dons. Those prizes are reserved for the people who have the sense to stick at one thing till they've got them. Then they can do what they like. They're not necessarily the people who are best at their subjects. I've got a real love for the classics, and I probably know a good deal more about them than a lot of the people who got Firsts when I only got a Second. It's the concentration of those few years that counts."
Bastian laughed again. "Firsts and Seconds!" he said. "I didn't take a degree at all. The smash had come before then, and I was tied up for life."
Wilbraham was rather taken aback. It looked as if confidences were coming, and he had the gentleman's dislike to receiving them unless they are given with full intention. "Don't tell me anything you'll be sorry for afterwards," he said, with another look at Bastian's glass.
"Oh, my dear fellow, I'm not drunk," said Bastian. "I drink a lot, and no doubt it has had a good deal to do with keeping me where I am; but I don't get drunk. I don't often meet anybody like you, who belongs to the world I used to inhabit. It's a relief sometimes to unburden oneself. Besides, there's Viola. Viola doesn't often get the chance of talking to a gentleman. I think you'll open your eyes when you see Viola. I haven't been able to raise myself out of the muck, but it hasn't touched her. She's the flower that has grown out of it."
Wilbraham still felt some discomfort. If it were true that Bastian never got drunk, he was none the less under the influence of drink now, or he wouldn't have talked about himself with quite that absence of control. He must have been referring to his wife when he had said that he had been tied up for life, and men don't talk to one another in that way about their wives on a first acquaintance when they are in full possession of themselves.
"I shouldn't let anything you told me go any further," Wilbraham said.
Bastian did not seem to have heard this. He was looking down with a frown of concentrated purpose. To unburden himself was evidently imperative on him for the moment, and he was collecting his faculties to that end.