"'The Rajah! That man! Know him? Best lad I ever met in my life. I'm damned if I take his money, and you can go home and tell him so.' He did, though, and I sat with him until three o'clock in the morning talking about Jack, and I had all I could do getting away from him then. Wanted me to move in next day bag and baggage, and stay a month with him. He wasn't so bad when I came to know him, if he was red and claw-y."
I again devoted my thoughts to the dinner—what I could spare from the remarkable personage Marny had been discussing, and who still sat within a few tables of us. My friend's story had opened up a new view of life, one that I had never expected to see personified in any one man. The old-fashioned rules by which I had been brought up—the rules of "An eye for an eye," and "Earn thy bread by the sweat of thy brow," etc.—seemed to have lost their meaning. The Rajah's method, it seemed to me, if persisted in, might help solve the new problem of the day—"the joy of living"—always a colossal joke with me. I determined to know something more of this lazy apostle in a dress suit who dispensed sweetness and light at some other fellow's expense.
"Why do you call him 'The Rajah,' Marny?" I asked.
"Oh, he got that in India. A lot of people like that old lobster in Cairo don't know him by any other name."
"What did he do in India?"
"Nothing in particular—just kept on being himself—just as he does everywhere."
"Tell me about it."
"Well, I got it from Ashburton, a member of the Alpine Club in London. But everybody knows the story—wonder you haven't heard it. You ought to come out of your hole, old man, and see what's going on in the world. You live up in that den of yours, and the procession goes by and you don't even hear the band. You ought to know Jack—he'd do you a lot of good," and Marny looked at me curiously—as a physician would, who, when he prescribes for you, tells you only one-half of your ailment.
I did not interrupt my friend—I wasn't getting thousands for a child's head, and twice that price for the mother in green silk and diamonds. And I couldn't afford to hang out my window and watch any kind of procession, figurative or otherwise. Nor could I afford to exchange dinners with John Stirling.