"But you speak up too late, my boy," answered Foe. "What's the use of telling me that Farrell is no class? As if I didn't know that! … Why, man, I didn't choose Farrell, to pay my attentions to him. If the gods had paid me the compliment of sending along the late Mr. Gladstone, or the present Archbishop of Canterbury (whoever he may be), or General Booth (if he's alive), to knock out eight years of my life like so many skittles in an alley, I'd have felt flattered, of course. But they didn't: they sent along Farrell, and I bow my head before a higher wisdom which, you'll allow, has been justified of its child. Could the late Mr. Gladstone—since we've instanced him—have done it more expeditiously, more thoroughly, with a neater turn of the wrist?… No. Very well, then! Better men than I have married their cooks and been content to recognise that it just happened so. You can start apologising for Farrell when I start complaining he's inadequate."
Jack's eyes, during this speech, were for Jimmy, of course, and I had used the opportunity to watch his face pretty narrowly. It was a little more than ordinarily pale, but composed, as his tone was light and his manner of speech almost flippant. I wondered.…
"Jimmy meant," said I, "that you're too good to match yourself against Farrell. The harm he's done you is atrocious—I can hardly look you in the face, Jack, and speak about it.… All the same, Jimmy talks sense: an outsider like Farrell isn't worthy of your steel, as the writers say."
"We'll wait till he has felt it." Jack stood up, pushed his hands into his trouser-pockets, took one turn around the room, returned, and came to a halt on the hearth-rug. "There's another point," said he. "You fellows can never get it out of your heads that your thoroughbred is always, and necessarily, more sensitive than your mongrel. It must be so—you don't trouble about evidence: it's fixed in your minds a priori: which means that you're just as unscientific and at least as far from the truth as I should be if I posited the exact opposite… As a matter of fact, some miss in the breeding will usually carry with it an irritable protective nerve and keep the animal sensitive on points which the thoroughbred ignores. Your cripple thinks of his hip, your hunchback of his spine: your well-formed man takes his hip and spine for granted. Your bastard is sensitive on historical fact and predisposed to lying about it.… Stated thus, my counter-proposition is obvious. You won't be so ready to agree when I go on to assure you that sensitiveness in these mongrels and misfits often spreads from the centre over the whole nervous system.—But, anyway, you knew my poor hound, the pair of you. Not much breeding in Billy, eh?… Well, he bit four blackguards before they laid him out: bit 'em deep, too, and I won't answer for the virus. That dog died defending my papers. He fought on his honour, and he knew it, Roddy. He suffered, Jimmy—even if he was dead when they threw him into the fire. And—I'm going to give your Farrell the benefit of the doubt. … Where's the tobacco?"
I passed him the jar. "We'll allow for the moment that you are right, Jack," said I. "At all events, you've made out a case. But where do I come in? What's the part you propose for me in this show? Pull yourself together and admit that I'm asking a sweetly reasonable question."
"Didn't I explain?" Jack answered testily. "Surely I made it clear? All I ask of you is to post me out from time to time the money I ask for travelling expenses.… That doesn't compromise you, eh? … Damn it all, Roddy," he exploded, "I counted you were my friend to that extent!"
"That's all right, Jack," said I. "But a friend is one thing and an accomplice is another. What's your game with Farrell? You haven't told me yet, though you're asking what gives me the right to know."
He picked up his coat and hat and turned on me with a smile, very faint and weary and a trifle absent-minded.
"To tell you the truth," said he, as if searching for something at the back of his mind, "I haven't thought it out quite accurately. It's near enough to warrant what preparations I'm making: but it hasn't the shape of a clean proposition—which is the shape my conscience demands.… Don't hurry me, Roddy: let me come around again to-morrow.… I can't invite you to my flat, because I'm making arrangements to shut it up, and these details get in the way, all the time.… Tell you what.—Meet me, you two, at Prince's Grill-room to-morrow, one-fifteen, and you shall have the plan of campaign on a half-sheet of notepaper. I'm a brute, Roddy, to bother you with these private affairs in the middle of your politics. But one-fifteen to-morrow, if you can manage. Sure? Right, then.— So long!"
He wagged, at the door, a benediction on us with his walking-stick and went down the stairs, I strolled to the window and watched him cross the turfed square of the court. Jimmy had taken up the poker and started raking the lower bars of the grate.