“Yes: I feel that I must. But I hate the whole affair. I wish the brute would break his neck. Ready?”
“Yes,” was the reply; and going out to the waiting hansom, they were soon run down to the club, where the choicest little dinner Artingale could select was duly placed before them.
But somehow, nothing was nice. Artingale’s hunger seemed to have departed, and he followed his friend’s example, and ate mechanically. The dry sherry was declared to be watery, and the promised champagne, though a choice brand and from a selected cuvée, was not able to transmit its sparkle to the brains of those who partook.
Artingale talked hard and talked his best. He introduced every subject he could, but in vain, and at last, when the time had come for the claret, he altered his mind.
“No, Mag,” he exclaimed, “no claret to-night. We want nothing calm and cool, old fellow. I feel as if I had not tasted a single glass of wine, but as if you, you miserable old wet blanket, had been squeezing out your drops into a tumbler and I had been drinking them. What do you say to a foaming beaker of the best black draught?”
“My dear Harry, I’m very sorry,” said Magnus, laughing. “There, I’ll try and be a little more lively.”
“We will,” exclaimed Artingale, “and another bottle of champagne will do it.”
Magnus smiled.
“Ah, smile away, my boy, but I’m going to give you a new sensation. I’ve made a discovery of a new wine. No well-known, highly-praised brand made famous by advertisements, but a rich, pungent, powerful, sparkling champagne, from a vineyard hardly known. Here, waiter, bring me a bottle of number fifty-three.”
The wine was brought, and whether its virtues were exaggerated or no, its effects were that for the next two hours life seemed far more bearable to James Magnus, who afterwards enjoyed his coffee and cigar.