“Pooh! I do. They had what they called supper, I suppose, poor things! And I’m ashamed to mention it; only I feel hungrier than if I hadn’t eaten anything; so, since you have not, take a cup of coffee with me, man, and lay aside formality for once. What will we have besides the coffee, Dolloway?”
“I couldn’t eat a bite, sir.”
“But you’d not refuse to please your old master, would you, lad? When we have taken all this trouble we want to make our holiday seem a bit like old times. Eh? In the old days, Dolloway, you could out-eat and out-drink me. Yes, yes, you could, indeed! What shall it be?”
“Well, if I must I must, and I’m obliged to you, sir, though I only do it to please you. I heard one of the waiters saying there was a lot of nice venison come in from the West, sir. If it were not spoiled in the cooking a venison steak—done to a turn, sir, done to a turn, as you like it yourself, Mr. Brook—might relish a little. Eh?”
“The very thing, lad, the very thing! I will ring and order it immediately.” Without waiting to be served by his servant, who remained composedly in his arm-chair, Mr. Brook pulled the rope, which he preferred to any modern “button” for bell-ringing purposes, and gave an order for a meal that would have made the Beckwith family’s eyes open in astonishment.
“A fine thing to have such an appetite as ours, Dolloway, at our age! A very fine thing, indeed. Eighty I shall be on my next birthday, and you but two years younger. And I warrant me there are no two other old chaps in this town who will sit down to this kind of a dinner with the relish we will. Eh? That’s the best of using gifts and not abusing them. And my waist measures no more than it did in my youth, lad; which shows I have not been a gourmand, though the truth is I like good living. I like good living immensely. I would like to tell you what a pretty family of five had prepared. Potatoes! nothing but potatoes, except, of course, the inevitable bread and butter and the detestable tea. I don’t wonder the woman had heart-failure, poor thing! And the air of that ‘flat’—it was enough to stifle a body. After our air at home, man.”
“Humph! Then I suppose I am not to know anything about Mr. Conrad’s folks, save what you choose to tell me in driblets, sir,” remarked Dolloway, in the injured tone of one suffering ungratified curiosity.
“You shall know all that I do myself, old fellow; but let us take it over our dinner. I want your advice, too. I am sorry to say that Conrad left his people poorly off.”
“Mr. Beckwith is dead, then, sir?”
“Dead this forty years, lad. Dead for forty years—that boy!” And Mr. Brook sank into a chair opposite his companion, and at the same time into a reverie so deep that even the highly privileged Dolloway dared not interrupt the current of his master’s thought.