‘My dear fellow, of course you do,’ answered the doctor, ‘and with your energy you might do anything. Collect postage-stamps, coins, fossils, write stories for the magazines, join an amateur dramatic club, go in for athletics, learn the banjo. Why, my dear fellow, with your leisure and your money, there is no end of things you might find to do!’
Gurth turned almost savagely on his companion. The bantering tone displeased him.
‘Drop it, Birnie!’ he said. ‘Don’t you know when a man’s in earnest? I’m sick of the useless life I lead, I tell you. I want something to engage my thoughts—something to call out the latent energy there is in me. I’ve got money, and I believe I’ve got brains, and yet I’m nobody. I don’t mean to be nobody any longer.’
‘Good gracious me, Gurth, you astonish me!’ said the doctor, assuming a serious tone. ‘I thought you shrank from publicity of any kind! I always fancied that you hated society, and that being nobody was your favourite rôle.’
‘That’s done with for ever! I’m a new man, Oliver Birnie! The Gurth Egerton you know was drowned in the Bon Espoir.’
Birnie went up to Gurth, and took his hand professionally to feel his pulse.
Gurth snatched his hand away. ‘Don’t be a fool, old man!’ he exclaimed. ‘I know what I’m saying. I’m going in for a new life, and I want you to help me. Sit down.’
Birnie sat down wondering what Gurth’s new craze could be. He saw that banter was out of place, and that, whatever Gurth had got on his mind, it was evidently something which had been there a long time.
For a moment the two men sat opposite each other in silence. Then Gurth, with a slight tremor in his voice, began:
‘I’m going to talk about a time, Birnie, which we had both rather forget; but I can’t avoid it. Once in my life you did me a great service.’