Somehow from those two first sentences Pump realised that these two eccentric aristocrats had unconsciously recognised each other. The fact that it was unconscious seemed, somehow, to exclude him all the more. He stirred a little the moonlit dust of the road with his rather dilapidated boots and eventually strolled across to speak to the chauffeur.
“Is the next police station far from here?” he asked.
The chauffeur answered with one syllable of which the nearest literal rendering is “dno.” Other spellings have been attempted, but the sentiment expressed is that of agnosticism.
But something of special brutality of abbreviation made the shrewd, and therefore sensitive, Mr. Pump look at the man’s face. And he saw it was not only the moonlight that made it white.
With that dumb delicacy that was so English in him, Pump looked at the man again, and saw he was leaning heavily on the car with one arm, and saw that the arm was shaking. He understood his countrymen enough to know that whatever he said he must say in a careless manner.
“I hope it’s nearer to your place. You must be a bit done up.”
“Oh hell!” said the driver and spat on the road.
Pump was sympathetically silent, and Mr. Wimpole’s chauffeur broke out incoherently, as if in another place.
“Blarsted beauties o’ dibrike and no breakfast. Blarsted lunch Hivywood and no lunch. Blarsted black everlastin’ hours artside while ’e ’as ’is cike an’ champine. And then it’s a dornkey.”
“You don’t mean to say,” said Pump in a very serious voice, “that you’ve had no food today?”