THE CHASE.
NIGHT THE EIGHTH.
VENDETTA.
"My dear Roddy,—Don't come around: and for God's sake don't send Jimmy. The word is 'No sympathy, by request.' You will understand.
"I shall call on you at 9 o'clock on Tuesday. Have breakfast ready, for I shall be hungry as a hunter.
"Don't fash yourself, either, with fears that I am 'unhinged' by this business. I am just off to Paddington—thence for the Thames—shan't say where: but it's a backwater, where I propose to think things out. I shall have thought them out, quite definitely, by Tuesday.
"I believe you keep a few bottles of the audit ale. Tell Jephson to open one for a stirrup-cup. You can invite Jimmy.—
Yours truly,
J.F.
"P.S.—I don't know, and can't guess, how you came to tumble in so promptly on the heels of that riot. But you have always been a cherub sitting up aloft and keeping watch over— Poor Jack.
"P.P.S.—This by Special Messenger.… Forgive my breaking away and leaving you all so impolitely. Nothing would do, just then, but to escape and be alone.— Until Tuesday."
"My dear Roddy,—Don't come around: and for God's sake don't send Jimmy. The word is 'No sympathy, by request.' You will understand.
"I shall call on you at 9 o'clock on Tuesday. Have breakfast ready, for I shall be hungry as a hunter.
"Don't fash yourself, either, with fears that I am 'unhinged' by this business. I am just off to Paddington—thence for the Thames—shan't say where: but it's a backwater, where I propose to think things out. I shall have thought them out, quite definitely, by Tuesday.
"I believe you keep a few bottles of the audit ale. Tell Jephson to open one for a stirrup-cup. You can invite Jimmy.—
Yours truly,
J.F.
"P.S.—I don't know, and can't guess, how you came to tumble in so promptly on the heels of that riot. But you have always been a cherub sitting up aloft and keeping watch over— Poor Jack.
"P.P.S.—This by Special Messenger.… Forgive my breaking away and leaving you all so impolitely. Nothing would do, just then, but to escape and be alone.— Until Tuesday."
A boy-messenger brought this missive at 5.30. I read it over in a hurry, and took cheer: read it over a second time, sentence by sentence, and liked it less. It left no doubt, anyhow, that to search for Jack on the reaches of the river would be idle, as to find him would be mean. So there was nothing to do but wait.
That week-end, as it happened, brought a false promise of spring, with a hard east wind and a clear sky.
Punctually at nine o'clock on Tuesday he arrived, clean and hale and positively bronzed. The old preoccupation of over-work rested no longer upon him. We had made ready with grilled sole, omelette, bacon and a cold game-pie. He ate like a cavalryman, talking all the while of his adventures. It appeared that he had chosen the "Leather Bottle" at Clifton Hampden for headquarters, and had spent a part of Sunday discussing Christian Science with an atheistical bagman. He said not a word of Saturday's happenings—talked away, in fact, as if he had returned to us, on perfect terms of understanding, out of a void. Jimmy played up and mulled some beer for us afterwards, on a recipe of which (he gave us to know) the College of Brasenose, Oxford, alone possessed the secret, to be imparted only to such of its sons as had deserved it by godliness and good learning.
Foe commended the brew, declined a cigar, and pulled out his old pipe.