I nearly fell off the omnibus from sheer surprise. Robinson had all the outward appearance of a churchwarden or sidesman. You might have wagered money that he wore a frock-coat on Sundays, and got the people nicely seated in some place of modern worship, and handed round a plate or a bag at the appointed time. And yet he turned out to be an esoteric Buddhist.
“You never told me this,” I said.
“Why should I?” he asked, very reasonably. “Wise men don’t blaze abroad their opinions for nothing. I don’t know what you are for that matter, and I don’t want to.”
Nevertheless, I told him, and he said that I might as well pursue that idea as any other. Then he resumed his newspaper.
Time passed, and I forgot the matter, and was contented to feel that Robinson had high morals and even refined instincts for such a large man. I came to know him well and went home with him to tea and made the acquaintance of his sister. He told me privately that she was a saintly woman who had seen sorrow and just missed matrimony by a hair’s breadth.
“But,” he said, “I am anxious to see her married. She is only hovering on forty now and will make a good man happy yet.”
For my part I doubted it. Miss Robinson was a painfully plain person, and so abundantly proportioned in every direction physically, that I was conscious of cutting a figure almost ludicrous when sitting beside her. Personally, though Robinson always declared that she “hovered near forty,” my opinion rather inclined me to suspect that she was fluttering past forty-five and that rapidly. She wanted a husband and hope was not dead. I saw nothing saintly in her myself. She struck me as being a trifle vulgar. I could not imagine a man was living in London or the suburbs who would have married her in cold blood.
After I had visited at their little house near Regent’s Park on two or three occasions, Robinson came to smoke a pipe with me at my bachelor diggings. During that evening our friendship advanced by leaps and bounds. We were both communicative and emptied a bottle of whisky and called each other by our Christian names for the first time, and gave each other a great deal of sound advice. By the way, can an esoteric Buddhist have a Christian name?
“You should marry,” said Robinson.
It wanted only fifteen minutes of midnight when he said it. I laughed.