"Oh, you fellows, you fellows!" he said. There was silence for a minute, then he sobbed out again: "It's the first time I've been treated like a gentleman by men that knew me, these fifteen years. It—it gets me in the throat!"
His body shook with sobs. Fielding and Dicky were uncomfortable, for these were not the sobs of a driveller or a drunkard. Behind them was the blank failure of a life—fifteen years of miserable torture, of degradation, of a daily descent lower into the pit, of the servitude of shame. When at last he raised his streaming eyes, Fielding and Dicky could see the haunting terror of the soul, at whose elbow, as it were, every man cried: "You are without the pale!" That look told them how Heatherby of the Buffs had gone from table d'hote to table d'hote of Europe, from town to town, from village to village, to make acquaintances who repulsed him when they discovered who he really was.
Shady Heatherby, who cheated at cards!
Once Fielding made as if to put a hand on his shoulder and speak to him, but Dicky intervened with a look. The two drank their coffee, Fielding a little uneasily; but yet in his face there was a new look: of inquiry, of kindness, even of hope.
Presently Dicky flashed a look and nodded towards the door, and Fielding dropped his cigar and went on deck, and called down to Holgate the engineer:
"Get up steam, and make for Luxor. It's moonlight, and we're safe enough in this high Nile, eh, Holgate?"
"Safe enough, or aw'm a Dootchman," said Holgate. Then they talked in a low voice together. Down in the saloon, Dicky sat watching Heatherby. At last the Lost One raised his head again.
"It's worth more to me, this night, than you fellows know," he said brokenly.
"That's all right," said Dicky. "Have a cigar?"
He shook his head. "It's come at the right time. I wanted to be treated like an Englishman once more—just once more."