What he thought was just about what any other normal person, under the same circumstances, would have thought. He wondered how long it would be before Peter came back; what they would do when he did come back; and where that night was leading. It might take him, Horace, far,—almost anywhere,—away from himself, to a troop of friends, to the club across the street. Or it might leave him at night’s ordinary destination. But whatever the end, the beginning was his opening, his chance. It had pranced at him in the guise of a crazy, faunlike, drunken thing; thanks to Curtiss, he had recognised it.
He tried to picture to himself the inside of the club house, over whose charmed threshold his friend had just plunged. He also marvelled a moment at the vagaries of inebriety; it was curious, for instance, that any one so far gone—so driven by every whimsical, erratic impulse as Bradley—should give heed to the etiquette that did not permit him to take into the club a man who had no club of his own. How artful the youth must have thought himself, when he left Horace behind, ostensibly to detain any large imaginary sparrows that might pass that way. Hewitt had begun to hope that the drink Bradley brought back might be beer, when the windows opposite blackened, the door slammed, and the boy came toward him once more. His expedition had not been in vain; in one hand he carried a pompous looking bottle, in the other some glasses that clinked cheerfully as he walked. From under one of his arms a second bottle aimed at Hewitt like a small piece of artillery.
“Unload me. That one’s burgundy; look out, don’t spill it, I pulled the cork. The other’s fizz. These are glasses. Got a knife?—cut the wires.” Bradley sat down on the curbstone.
“This looks as if we were going to see the sunrise,” said Hewitt, opening his penknife.
“I’d rather wait till hell freezes over; seen the other thing lots of times.” He filled a long glass more than half full of burgundy, and guzzled it. “Ugh—what belly wash—hot as tea.”
“That’s what you get for looking on the wine when it’s red. Here—try this.” Hewitt handed the other glass. It foamed at the edges.
“I could die drinking this stuff,” said Bradley, fervently.
“You probably will—here, give me some.” Horace with difficulty got possession of the glass, and held it to his lips. Bradley amused himself by wiping his wet hands in his friend’s hair.
They sat there until Peter had managed to drink and spill the contents of both bottles. He refused to tell where his room was, so Hewitt attempted to take him to Claverly. The task called for an infinite amount of patience and tact as well as time. For Peter’s manner, though all at once excessively polite, was firm.
“It’s ever so good of you to take all this trouble for me,” he asserted, in worried tones. Then he would lie down in the street, saying he was a dead horse, and refuse to get up. The affair became almost annoying when, on reaching the inside of Claverly by a great number of almost imperceptible advances, Bradley tore the fire apparatus from its red cage on the wall in one of the long corridors, and screamed “Fire!” like a maniac. If anything in the situation admitted of being called fortunate, it was the proximity of Horace’s room at that particular moment.