Haydock had tried to see something of the child during his first month or two in college.
“An older boy can do so much for a younger one, Philip,” Mrs. Ware had said to him, with her hazy maternal trustfulness, just before college opened. “William is fond of you, I know; and it’s a great comfort to feel that you will be there, and that he’s going to room with John.” If the good woman derived tranquillity of mind from the fact that her son and Haydock chanced to inhabit the same town, Haydock did not consider it worth while to explain that the coincidence, regarded in the light of its moral significance, was unimportant. He had called on Billy and John as soon as they were settled; but Billy had never returned the compliment, although John did frequently. Once he had asked the room-mates to dinner; Billy, he learned later, had been too drunk that evening to recall the engagement for the moment. Since then, the helpful influence, in the belief of which Mrs. Ware existed placidly, had perforce exerted itself across a theatre, or from the platform of a passing electric car.
“Oh, I don’t mind his smoking,” said John, with the faintest emphasis on the last word.
“No?” Haydock kept his back turned, and continued to touch delicately, here and there, the corners of his picture frames. As a matter of fact, he made some of them rather more crooked than they were at first. But he felt that if he didn’t deter John by turning suddenly and giving him all attention, he would hear the whole story; John very evidently had brought one with him.
“Of course, I don’t smoke, myself,” John went on slowly; “it’s just happened that way, I suppose. But I don’t mind it in Billy. You can always stop if it begins to hurt you. I think I like to see him do it,” he ended, with unusual tolerance.
“Yes,” agreed Haydock, deliberately, “if it hurts you, you can always stop smoking.” He, too, emphasised the last word softly, in a way that left the tale still untold. Haydock was something of an artist in assisting confidences where the spirit was willing and the vocabulary weak.
“Ware is really a bully chap; he was a perfect corker at school.” John’s remark was a circuitous paraphrase of, “Isn’t it too bad!”
“He certainly is most attractive; I’ve rarely known anybody who was more so,” Haydock assented, with an enthusiasm he genuinely felt; “but I don’t see much of him now.” His regret, too, was real.
“That’s it! that’s just it!” John burst out so hotly that the senior, who was filling his pipe at the table, almost looked up in ill-timed surprise. “Nobody sees anything of him any more; nobody who ought to, like you.”
“And you,” added Haydock, to himself. The situation was perennial; he divined it perfectly.