“Cyril and I are not absolutely identical,” Guy answered slowly, his eyes still fixed on Montague Nevitt’s. “Sometimes I feel he does things I wouldn’t do.”
“He has more initiative than you,” Nevitt answered, as if carelessly, though with deep design in his heart. “He acts where you debate. You’re often afraid to take a serious step. Cyril never hesitates. You draw back and falter; Cyril goes straight ahead. But all the more reason, accordingly, that Cyril should admit the lightness of whatever you do, for if you do anything—anything in the nature of a definite step, I mean—why, far more readily, then, would Cyril, in like case, have done it.”
“You think he has more initiative?” Guy asked, with a somewhat nettled air. He hated to be thought less individual than Cyril.
“Of course he has, my dear boy,” Nevitt answered, smiling. “He’d use the money at once, without a second’s hesitation.”
“But I haven’t got the money to use,” Guy continued, after a short pause.
“Cyril has, though,” Nevitt responded, with a significant nod.
Guy perused his boots, and made no immediate answer. Nevitt wanted none just then; he waited some seconds, humming all the while an appropriate tune. Then he caught Guy’s eye again, and fixed him a second time.
“It’s a pity we don’t know Cyril’s address in Belgium,” he said, in a musing tone. “We might telegraph across for leave to use his money meanwhile. Remember, I’m just as deeply compromised as you, or even more so. It’s a pity we should both be ruined, with six thousand pounds standing at this very moment to Cyril’s account at the London and West Country. But it can’t be helped. There’s no time to lose. The money must be paid in sharp by this evening.”
“By this evening!” Guy exclaimed, starting up excitedly.
Nevitt nodded assent. “Yes, by this evening, of course,” he answered unperturbed, “or we become ipso facto defaulters and bankrupts.”