“I do. I don’t know why I am telling you, but there it is. You can’t understand in the least—couldn’t hope to make you.”
Now Skelton with his starch off and in an emergency was a sound man, with a heart as good as any ordinary mortal’s.
He had an eye that no little detail ever escaped. He had seen Jude at Palm Island, he had heard her speak, he had seen her half an hour ago, and Ratcliffe’s manner left him in no doubt as to his absolute earnestness.
The man was about to commit suicide, social suicide. He had seen men do the same thing often in different ways.
He pushed the pineapple away and rose from the table.
“Come into the smoke room,” said he.
In the smoke room he rang for coffee. Not a word about Jude. Dead silence.
Then, when the coffee was brought and the door closed, he turned to the other.
“Ratcliffe, you can’t do this thing. I know. Let me speak for a moment. You are your own master, free to do as you choose; but I must speak. I like you. Our temperaments are dead different, and we don’t make good companions; but you have many sterling qualities, and I don’t want to see you come a mucker. You can do a thing like this in two minutes; but two hundred years won’t get you out of it, once it’s done. (Take sugar in your coffee? Yes, I remember.) See here! I had a young brother once who was going to do just the same,—absolutely ruin himself. I managed to stop it, saved his future and his name.”
He picked a cigar out of a box and, coming to a dead stop in his remarks, cut the end off.