CHAPTER XXIX.
"YOU REMEMBER MISS DENIS?"
"I say to thee, though free from care,
A lonely lot, an aimless life,
The crowning comfort is not there—
Son, take a wife."
Jean Ingelow.
Scene: a splendidly furnished dining-room in the most fashionable square in London; season, end of July; hour, nine p.m.; dramatis personæ, a father and son; the former, an old gentleman with a red face, beaky nose, and bristling white hair, is holding a glass of venerable port between his goggle eye and the light, and admonishing his companion, a sunburnt young man, who is leaning back in his chair and carelessly rolling a cigarette between his fingers. A young man so dark, and tanned, that his visage would not look out of place beneath a Spanish sombrero; nevertheless, we have no difficulty in recognizing our former friend, Gilbert Lisle.
"It's positively indecent for a man of your position to go roaming the world, like some ne'er-do-well, or family black sheep. FitzCurzon told me he met you on the stairs of some hotel in San Francisco, in a flannel shirt, butcher boots, and a coat that would have been dear at fourpence! He declared, that you looked for all the world like a digger."
"Curzon—is—a—puppy, who trots round the globe because he says it's 'the thing to do,'" (imitating a drawl), "and never is seen without kid gloves, and if asked to dine on bear steaks in the Rockies, would arrive in evening dress and white tie,—or perish in the attempt; not that he ever ventures off the beaten track of ocean steamers and express trains; he could not live without his dressing case, and a hard day's ride would kill him. He was in the finest country in the world for sport, and he never fired a cartridge!" It was evident from the speaker's face, that this latter enormity crowned all.
"Well, you shot enough for six! I should think you have killed every animal, from a mosquito to an elephant; this house is a cross between a menagerie and a museum. You have been away two years this time, Gil. 'Pon my word, you are as bad as the prodigal son." Here he swallowed the port at a gulp.