“Naturally,” Miss Grace said. “But he wasn’t even placed in the Derby. You take my tip, Toddles, he’s a rotter.”
“Laura,” said the Rector, “I am very sorry to hear you employ such an amount of slang. In my opinion it is a most offensive habit, particularly in women.”
“Well, you see, Father,” said his ingenuous daughter, “it’s a short way of saying a lot. Besides, the boys use it.”
“Boys are barbarians,” said her parent.
“Oh, they are,” said Miss Grace. “Well, I think barbarians aren’t half bad. Anyhow, I like what they like, so I s’pose I’m a bit of a barbarian too.”
“Jennings,” said Archie, “serve the claret cup, quick! Grace, we’re going to drink your thundering good health.”
We drank it with rare cordiality. The poor, dear Optimist who was seated at my side had such an agitated hand that a portion of the contents of his glass overflowed upon the cloth.
“You’ve spilt your luck,” said Toddles, in a melancholy undertone.
The Optimist’s condition was indeed to be deplored. The meal was wholly excellent in its unpretentiousness; yet here was this young man, who knew what dining was, utterly unable to appreciate his chance. The way in which he toyed with and disdained fare that could meet the needs of a parson with a palate was tragical indeed. As for me, I was in a humour of sheer devilry. Now I have no wish to bristle with wise saws and modern instances, or even to be suspected of an epigram, but it always seems to me that when emotion overtakes him, a man is either an ox or a giddy ox. I am the latter, and I think when I come to be hanged that I shall go to the gallows whistling. For such is the amount of coarse, brutal, downright British bull-dog that has gone to the formation of my character, that I was able to eat, drink, and let my soul flow at the festive board, well knowing that those indescribably subtle symptoms that had been born so recently within me were growing more inconvenient hour by hour. Looking at the glorious Miss Grace, and the fine figure of a girl she made, and comparing her to the two very, very average men who were in imminent danger, if you will please pardon the outworn image, of fluttering to their doom like moths; comparing her, I say—oh, hang it, what do I say? But there, Impatient Reader, you know what makes my mind so mixed, and why it’s muddling my prose. Or if you don’t, I think you will know, one day, since there comes a moment in the career of every average man—oh, what am I saying?—really, Reader, I had no intention to be rude!—when the sense of one’s own indescribability is really so indescribable that one must feel it before it can be felt—oh damn!
Reader, I am sure I beg your pardon. But you understand me, don’t you? To-night I had dwindled into the condition that I have so lucidly described. Here was I, a mere cub, with only a big appetite and the most animal health to recommend me, looking down a dinner-table towards the One Girl in the World. True, I had sound lungs, a nice wrist for cutting, an eye as clear as Grace’s own, and was mercifully free of the curse of intellect in any form whatever; but surely even such fine attributes as these are not too princely when laid at the feet of the Goddess. No doubt Richard Cranford Dimsdale was a pretty harmless sort of fellow, but an astonishing quantity of harmlessness goes to the making of a husband.