“Come and stay with me till your ship comes home.”
He squeezed my arm and shook his head. That’s what’s so queer about gentility! If only I could have established a blood tie! Ruding would have taken help or support from his kinsfolk—would have inherited without a qualm from a second cousin that he’d never seen; but from the rest of the world it would be charity. Sitting in that cab of his, he told me, without bitterness, the tale which is that of hundreds since the war. Ruding could not be pitied to his face, it would have been impossible. And when he had finished I could only mutter:
“Well, I think it’s damnable, considering what the country owes you.”
He did not answer. Whatever his limitations Miles Ruding was bred to keep his form.
I nearly shook his hand off when I left him, and I could see that he disliked that excessive display of feeling. From my club doorway I saw him resume his driver’s seat, the cigarette still between his lips, and the lamplight shining on his lean profile. Very still he sat—symbol of that lost cause, gentility.
1920.
A HEDONIST
Rupert K. Vaness remains freshly in my mind because he was so fine and large, and because he summed up in his person and behaviour a philosophy which, budding before the war, hibernated during that distressing epoch, and is now again in bloom.