"Now then let's go into 333, and get a mutton chop."
"No."
Elsley was too shy; he was "not fit to be seen."
"Come to my rooms, then, in the Adelphi, and have a wash and a shave. It will make you as fresh as a lark again, and then we'll send out for the eatables, and have a quiet chat."
Elsley did not say no. Thurnall took the thing as a matter of course, and he was too weak and tired to argue with him. Beside, there was a sort of relief in the company of a man who, though he knew all, chatted on to him cheerily and quietly, as if nothing had happened; who at least treated him as a sane man. From any one else he would have shrunk, lest they should find him out: but a companion, who knew the worst, at least saved him suspicion and dread.
His weakness, now that the collapse after passion had come on, clung to any human friend. The very sound of Tom's clear sturdy voice seemed pleasant to him, after long solitude and silence. At least it kept off the fiends of memory.
Tom, anxious to keep Elsley's mind employed on some subject which should not be painful, began chatting about the war and its prospects. Elsley soon caught the cue, and talked with wild energy and pathos, opium-fed, of the coming struggle between despotism and liberty, the arising of Poland and Hungary, and all the grand dreams which then haunted minds like his.
"By Jove!" said Tom, "you are yourself again now. Why don't you put all that into a book!"
"I may perhaps," said Elsley proudly.
"And if it comes to that, why not come to the war, and see it for yourself? A new country—one of the finest in the world. New scenery, new actors,—Why, Constantinople itself is a poem! Yes, there is another 'Revolt of Islam' to be written yet. Why don't you become our war poet? Come and see the fighting; for there'll be plenty of it, let them say what they will. The old bear is not going to drop his dead donkey without a snap and a hug. Come along, and tell people what it's all really like. There will be a dozen Cockneys writing battle songs, I'll warrant, who never saw a man shot in their lives, not even a hare. Come and give us the real genuine grit of it,—for if you can't, who can?"