“Well, mental cob-webs I suppose! Anyhow, smugglers’ passages are a bit out of my line. But I have found the opening in the cliff, at least I think so. It’s cunningly hidden from the front by a mass of chalk. I was led to it by what I suppose was the smugglers’ old track. One of my birds landed exhausted on the cliff after a cross-channel flight, and I had to rescue him.”
“Well, I should have been right down that passage and out at the other end if I’d been you. Any objection to my exploring it to-morrow with Bates?”
“None whatever, so long as you bring Bates back undamaged.”
“Oh, Bates!” he said laughing, “It doesn’t matter about me.”
“Not so much, old man. You’ve made me get used to doing without you. But without Bates I should be as a pelican in the wilderness. Come on, if you’ve finished your wine, for I must hear your story, and what you have been doing.”
My diary contains a very complete record of my talk with Edmund on this occasion, and looking back it seems to me that he paid me a great compliment. I see now how perfectly sincere he was. Then I was too absorbed in trifles and pettifogging distrusts to rejoice in what he said at all. I had to precipitate the conversation, and I did it bluntly by asking him why he had left me so long without a letter.
“Don’t you understand,” he asked me, “that I have come to look on you as the ‘friend born for adversity’?”
I told him I didn’t quite follow.
He said, “It’s hard to explain. Potty little things like money come into it so much. But every time I’ve written to you I’ve been in trouble of some sort. You’ve never given me advice. If it’s only been money, you’ve always forked out. But the point is, you’ve always been there—just yourself—someone to be responsible to. Damn it, I can’t explain. But it’s kept me—well—no—I can’t say straight, exactly, but reasonably decent. So that I could come back and shake your hand, anyhow.”
“And you have prospered, after all?”