"I believe you!"
Barclay pushed a silver box across the table, and seating himself opposite, touched a match to the cigar which he had been about to light at the Rathbawnes' door, and which he still held between his lips.
"Help yourself," he added. "Your supper will be up presently. Meanwhile, shall I fire away, or will you?"
Cavendish let the first smoke from his cigarette curl slowly up his cheek before replying. In the full light now first resting upon it, his face showed as that of a man approximately Barclay's age, but pinched by want, and deeply lined by dissipation. His under lids were puffy and discolored, and a dozen heavy creases ran, fan-like, from the corners of his eyes. Hair already turning white and an unkempt mustache and beard completed the picture. His clothes were faded and frayed, no linen was visible, and his boots were cracked and soggy. There was nothing about him to suggest the former estate of gentleman save his hands, which, while thin and tremulous, were clean and well-kept, in singular contrast to the slovenliness of his attire.
"Age before respectability," he said in reply to Barclay's question, with a shrug. "I'll go first. It will save your asking questions. We parted in anger, Barclay."
"Let that pass," put in the Lieutenant-Governor, briefly. "Two years wipe out all scores as petty as was the cause of our quarrel."
"Well, then," continued Cavendish more easily, "when I left Kenton City, it was with the best intention in the world of making a fresh start in some place where my story wasn't known. I went to New York. I had a little money, but only a very little, and not the most remote idea of how difficult it is for a man to make his way in a place where he is unknown, particularly if he has no credentials and is too proud to ask for any from his old associates. Moreover, I'd been drinking hard for six months and there was no such thing as clipping it short all at once. I had an idea of tapering off, and perhaps, if I had found a job, I might have done so. As it was I climbed up one step and fell down two, and that went on indefinitely. It wasn't as if I'd had a distinct aim or anything in my life which made it seem worth living. I didn't half care. I'd set my heart on something which I couldn't get, and—well, never mind that. It is all as long ago as the Flood! I got work now and again, tried reporting, and teaching, and copying. But each time it was a grade lower, and I stuck to nothing but the whiskey—except when I had a little more money than usual, and then it was absinthe."
He touched his eyes, and then raised his hand to the level of his chin, with the fingers held wide apart and rigid, and watched it tremble for an instant in silence.
"I haven't seen a mirror in weeks," he went on, "but I know the signs are all there. That's the story. I could string it out for an hour, but it would all be in the same key. I've simply been going down, down, down. I'm what the old judge called me—do you remember it came out in the 'Record?'—I'm a common drunk, Barclay. And I don't care! I've been on the point of putting an end to it many a time—but I always held out for another drink! Now, even my pride's gone. It stuck to me longer than anything else, but it's taken itself off at last. I've been feeling lately that I'm pretty near the end, and I wanted to see Kenton City again before it came. That's the reason I walked all the way from Pittsburg, and I've been begging on the streets since I got in. I thought nobody would recognize me."
"But I did," said Barclay.