“Can’t refuse!” said Charles Hackett, and he sat down, with one long leg over the arm of the chair. “That’s good!” he added, at the first puff of the cigar.
Wickham Hackett looked down at the papers on his desk, because the sight of this battered rover stirred him almost intolerably. He could remember such a different Charles, years and years ago—such a careless, joyous, and triumphant Charles; and to see him now, like this—
The returned wanderer had come into his brother’s office two weeks ago, in his old casual way, as if the twelve years of his absence were nothing at all.
“Touch of fever,” he had said. “The doctors tell me I can’t live in a tropical climate any more, so I’ve come home. Do you think you can find me some sort of a job, Wick? There’s not a damned thing I can do that’s any use; but you’re such a big fellow now, you might be able to find me something, eh?”
“I’ll find you a job,” Wickham Hackett had promised.
Then Charley had begun asking about old friends. This one was dead, that one gone away; all the inevitable vicissitudes of twelve years were starkly revealed. It had been horrible, as if Charles were a ghost come back to a world that had long forgotten him.
“Well, yes, of course—it’s natural,” he had said. “The life there, in the West Indies—quite different, you know. I like it.”
“That’s hard luck, Charley,” Wickham Hackett had said.
“No,” Charles had said. “No luck about it, Wick. I had it coming to me. I’ve lived hard, and now I’ve got to pay. I’m forty, my health is broken, and I haven’t a damned cent. That’s not bad luck, Wick—it’s bad management;” and he had smiled, his teeth very white against his sunburned face.
That was the worst of it, to Wickham Hackett’s thinking—that incurable carelessness and swagger of his brother’s. He was not sobered or steadied by whatever misfortunes had befallen him. He still laughed, as a man of another day might have laughed, with his back to the wall and nothing left him but the sword in his hand. In a way, it was admirable, but it was hard to witness that flashing smile, that debonair manner—with the threadbare overcoat and the shabby hat!