"Beverley?" I repeated.
"Beverley," he nodded, "Peregrine Beverley, very much at your service—late of Beverley Place, Surrey, now of Nowhere-in-Particular."
"Beverley," said I again, "I have heard that name before."
"It is highly probable, Mr. Vibart; a fool of that name—fortunate or unfortunate as you choose to classify him—lost houses, land, and money in a single night's play. I am that fool, sir, though you have doubtless heard particulars ere now?"
"Not a word!" said I. Mr. Beverley glanced at me with a faint mingling of pity and surprise. "My life," I explained, "has been altogether a studious one, with the not altogether unnatural result that I also am bound for Nowhere-in-Particular with just eight shillings and sixpence in my pocket."
"And mine, as I tell you," said he, "has been an altogether riotous one. Thus each of us, though by widely separate roads—you by the narrow and difficult path of Virtue, and I by the broad and easy road of Folly—have managed to find our way into this Howling Destitution, which we will call Nowhere-in-Particular. Then how does your path of Virtue better my road of Evil?"
"The point to be considered," said I, "is not so much what we now are, but rather, what we have done, and may ultimately be, and do."
"Well?" said he, turning to look at me.
"For my own achievements, hitherto," I continued, "I have won the High Jump, and Throwing the Hammer, also translated the works of Quintilian, with the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, and the Life, Lives, and Memoirs of the Seigneur de Brantome, which last, as you are probably aware, has never before been done into the English."
"Ha!" exclaimed Mr. Beverley, sitting up suddenly, with his ill-used hat very much over one eye, "there we have it! Whoever heard of Old Quin—What's-his-name, or cared, except, perhaps, a few bald-headed bookworms and withered litterateurs? While you were dreaming of life, and reading the lives of other fellows, I was living it. In my career, episodically brief though it was, I have met and talked with all the wits, and celebrated men, have drunk good wine, and worshipped beautiful women, Mr. Vibart."