A great pasty of boar’s head
Radishes
Flavons, or open cheesecakes
—with copious canary, malmsey, and flagons of strong October ale to wash all down. The host, bareheaded, muttered for grace a brief Benedictus Benedicat, to which all, save Grenville, removed their hats—to put them on again to dine in.
‘I doff to no Latin,’ said the Sheriff, with a scowl.
Bagott moistened his unsteady lips with his tongue. He looked ill and agitated. The unexpectedness of this visit, with the moral of watchfulness and suspicion it implied, had sent his nerves by the board. He was the mere delapidated ruin of his former self, bloated, coarsened, discoloured. He could not control the twitching of his features or the aphasia which muddled his speech. The signs of his infirmity were too patent on him for any to mistake the cause. He only stared, hearing the rebuke, as if at a loss for its provocation. But Raleigh came to the rescue.
‘Unless to caput aperio,’ said he gaily. ‘For my part I would not be so churlish to an old friend.’
‘No friend of mine,’ growled the other. ‘I always hated it—a Popish crafty language. I was no College ape’ (Raleigh had been at Oriel) ‘to learn to mince and lisp in tricked-up phrases. A dead language, forsooth! Ay, and vampires they that feed on it. Give me full-blooded English for my share.’
‘To bless the food, withal? An you spoke your fullest, we’d see it blasted rather. I’ll say Benedicat with all my heart, and see no more craft in it than a short cut to the joint. Come, Dick: a pledge to our host in better grace.’
Grenville drank it—surlily enough; but it warmed him to a reluctant if temporary urbanity. He was one of those who cannot concede a thing gracefully. He had suspected, perhaps wished to suspect, this man; his suspicions allayed, he grudged himself his own convincement. But already his civility was tempered with contempt when he saw the sort of creature he had to deal with. He had no eyes for any tragedy in this ruin; but only for the baseness of its material aspect; and when, as the dinner proceeded, and the ex-Judge, stimulated by copious libations, steadied, and ran a brief spasmodic stage of brilliancy, only to slide unexpectedly into a condition of maudlin incoherence, he shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and, virtually turning them on his host, addressed himself for the remainder of the meal to Brion. Raleigh seemed to feel the young man’s discomfort, and to sympathise with it; but he could do no more than endeavour to keep the conversation on as natural a plane as possible.