“I shall be delighted,” said Gilead gravely. “You heap coals of fire on my head.”
“Then, sir,” said Mr Bundy, with a gleam of real brightness, “do me the favour—the morning is well advanced—to share with me my luncheon, which lies ready for us yonder.”
He led the way to the shed, where lay a basket well packed with pâté de foie gras sandwiches under a napkin, some Bath buns and cream cakes, a syphon of soda-water, a tumbler, and a flask of whisky.
“Sit, sir, sit,” said the stranger; “and, while we eat, I will, with your permission, make known to you that part of my story which turns upon the fortuity which has made you my honoured confidant. It is soon told.”
He offered Gilead a sandwich, took a clump of three himself, devoured two with a falling visage, and, waving the other in his hand, began:—
“My name, sir, is as I told you Emmanuel Bundy; my residence is situate in the Leigham Court Road, Streatham; my business is that of a hide-merchant, in the pursuit of which, I may say, I have amassed a considerable fortune. I am fifty-four years of age. That odious vanity which would falsify the accounts of Nature has never been mine. Years, as they accumulate gold, accumulate wisdom. Why should we boast of the lesser gain and repudiate the greater? Amongst all the possessions which they have brought to me I account none more priceless than my acquaintance with Cornelia Cox.”
He paused a moment to devour his sandwich and to help himself to three more.
“Ah, Mr Balm!” he said, “you must forgive my astonishment over your confession of ignorance as to that transcendent, that incomparable woman. Yet, in truth, my own acquaintance with her dates but from two years back.” (He took half of the three sandwiches at a bite, before he continued):—“I had always found a refuge in books from the monotony of my sordid, and none too savoury occupation. It was left to that moment to reveal to me the full inner heart and significance of literature. Such eloquence, such fire, such an intimate understanding of the deep workings of the human soul! The melting passion of ‘Night-Lights,’ the exquisite je ne sais quoi of ‘Evadne,’ the sensuous luminosity of the ‘Glow-worm’! Here was a woman, I felt, who had tasted the cup of life to its golden depths.”
He sighed, drew himself on a full tumbler of whisky and soda, drained it, sighed again profoundly, and continued, taking another handful of sandwiches:—
“I am a bachelor, sir. I had never until that gracious moment encountered a soul capable of understanding and responding to the deep sentiments within my own. Every profound expression of her feeling seemed to find an echo in my breast. Truths that I had conceived, but had failed to find utterance for, she could crystallize in a phrase. The insensate world of criticism accused her of platitude: jackasses, whose pachydermatous hides were insensible to the fine point of satire, were dull to the blows of anything less than a bludgeon. But I recognized; I understood.