“Very strange,” said Bones, opening a letter—one of two brought by the servant. “Jericho, I suppose to show he bears no malice, asks me to dinner.”
“It is odd,” answered Thrush, reading the twin missive; “but here, too, he asks me. This looks like conscious innocence. Dodo must be jesting, or must be mad.”
“At all events, we’ll go—humph?—I say we’ll go”—Thrush bowed assent—“if only to look about us. Nevertheless, I must say that I am anxious for Dodo—anxious for his wife—anxious for his family. Humph?”
And Rumour blew upon the hole in Jericho’s heart—blew as through a brazen trumpet—making many modulations. We have heard her at the luxurious Cutancome. Let us listen to her at the Horse and Anchor, frequented by Bob Topps whose simplicity and good nature had made him a sudden favourite with the rugged charioteers who drank and baited at the hostelry. “What’s your fare, Bob?” a cabman wag would ask, playfully satirical on Robert’s innocence, “what’s your fare, now, from the first of April to Jerusalem?” Another, in the like vein would demand of Bob “how much he’d take to drive over Lady-day, and set down clear of the water-rate?” And Bob gave and took in the best of humour, and in a few days, with the help of ale—the liberal “footing” of a beginner—commanded, when he would, an attentive audience. And Bob told the story of the duel from the beginning, to pleased listeners. When, however, he came to the hole in the duellist’s heart, the duellist still alive, he met with boisterous unbelief.
“Upon my word and honour, gentlemen”—said Bob earnestly—“I picked the bullet up myself; and it was as flat—as flat as any shilling. It had gone clean through him.”
“And him as it hit,” asked one of the audience, “was still alive?”
“Alive! Why, I tell you, he wanted me to drive him home. But, no, no, says I. In course not: I wasn’t goin’ to pison my cab, and a new un, too, with brimstone,” said Bob sagaciously.
“Well, if that lie isn’t enough to take one’s wheel off,” said an old man, holding Bob’s ale-pot in his hand; and then winking at the donor, and taking a long, deep draught to right himself.
“A hole right through him, eh?” said another, a grave jester. “Why didn’t you thread him with your whip, like a herrin’ through the gills? There’s a song that talks o’ hollow hearts, but I ’spose the song don’t mean hearts with holes in ’em like grindstones.”